Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan gets booed by his own constituents

By Michael J.W. Stickings

To Republicans, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is a superstar. To many in the media, he's a towering oracle of economic wisdom. To many in the Democratic Party, he's a political giant far too formidable even to question.

And so Ryan, a worshipper of Ayn Rand, gets away with spinning his right-wing extremism without much of a challenge, except from a few lone liberal voices like Jon Chait and Paul Krugman and from some of us outside the media/political establishment on the left of the political blogosphere.

He is widely touted as one of the true heroes of the moment, if not of our time, a courageous campaigner for fiscal responsibility, for balanced budgets and getting America's economic house in order at long last. And yet what he really is is a campaigner for the same old right-wing Republican economic policies, just with a pretty face and broad media appeal. His version of fiscal responsibility, a pretty standard conservative one, involves cutting programs for the poor and cutting taxes for the rich.

To their and their country's shame, most people don't much care about the poor, who barely have a voice in Washington. Most people also oppose cuts to major entitlement programs like Social Security, and so Ryan, like the rest of his party, doesn't want to go there. Nor, of course, does he support significant cuts to military spending, which would certainly help balance the budget. But the key is that Ryan wants to do everything he can to give the rich as much as possible at the expense of everyone else, not just the poor but everyone who isn't rich, including the middle class, or what's left of it. And in supporting tax cuts for the rich, Ryan exposes himself not as a crusader for fiscal responsibility but as your typical Republican, a party of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, a party that suckers the non-rich into voting for it by playing to deep-rooted fears about race or terrorism or whatever other Other it identifies as a vote-winner.

But you know what? Tax cuts for the rich aren't popular. At all. Republicans generally try to hide their support for such cuts, but they just can't do that anymore, or at least it's more difficult for them to do so, and more and more their real agenda, their plutocratic political agenda, is being exposed. People just need to pay attention.

Which is precisely what some of them are doing, including in Ryan's own district, where this week he was actually booed at a town hall for advocating tax cuts for the wealthy:

In a video posted by ThinkProgress, an attendee at the event this week told Ryan that he believes the rich should pay higher taxes to help close the deficit and strengthen Social Security.

"The middle class is disappearing right now," he said. "During this time of prosperity, the top 1 percent was taking about 10 percent of the total annual income, but yet today we are fighting to not let the tax breaks for the wealthy expire?"

Ryan protested that "We do tax the top," before being drowned out by the audience's jeers.

Here's the clip. Hopefully it's just the start of what Ryan and the GOP deserve, which is the disapproval of voters and, come next November, votes for the other side.

(And instead of cowering in fear before Ryan and his media-enhanced stardom, Democrats should learn from this, as from all the polls showing public opposition to tax cuts for the rich, and counter the Republican agenda with a fair, sensible, and compassionate alternative that doesn't crush the poor, punish the middle class, and let the rich rape and pillage at will.)

I'm glad he does, cuz I don't!

By Carl 

President Obama sees common ground on debt reduction and the budget: 

Democrats and Republicans agree that $4 trillion needs to be slashed over roughly a decade, Obama told a town hall-style event in Virginia. But the two parties disagree on what to cut to get there.

"The big question that is going to have to be resolved is: how do we do it?" Obama told students at a community college. "I don't want to lie to you, there is a big philosophical divide right now."

The president was promoting his plan for cutting the deficit a day after Standard & Poor's threatened to strip America of its prized triple-A credit rating. The Wall Street ratings agency cited concern that Washington's polarized politics would make it difficult to reach a debt deal before the 2012 presidential election.

Obama, who is traveling around the country this week to advocate his deficit proposals, did not show any greater flexibility over his demands that taxes go up for the wealthiest Americans. 

Unless by common ground, he means that the two sides agree on the $4 trillion, I don't see how there's common ground here. Republicans are between Iraq and a hard place, needing to make their Teabagger constituency happy without cutting defense spending, Medicare entitlements or raising taxes.

Democrats have the luxury of standing around, tapping their watches and sighing imaptiently.

Lest you think this is another political kabuki, this year's budget is it. This is the whole enchilada for the progressive movement in this nation. If we allow the Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts, then we have no business being a movement.

Sure, there's some posturing involved: I don't think the Republicans can let this budget go without some attempt at face-saving for their centerpiece platform plank of lower taxes, which has proven over the past thirty years to neither create jobs nor improve the economy much. I think even they know it, and that they're shamelessly pandering to the corporatocracy and the orc minions who somehow believe if they're fervent enough, their overlords will shower gelt upon them.

Likewise, much of the "senior scarifying" that the Dems have been doing is a mask to the very real growth of Medicare and what that bodes for the future of the budget.

I'm not suggesting that we have to have entitlement cuts immediately (frankly, I haven't studied the problem enough to have an opinion) but what I am suggesting is, given the current anti-tax climate, it's going to be hard to justify the kinds of benefits we have to pay out in a few years. When does it become enough? At fifty percent of the budget? We're tracking perilously close to that, which means we're sopping up funds for other critical progressive programs like energy reform and infrastructure repair. I would like this not to have to come down to clean air for our children and grandchildren versus keeping me alive on a ventilator.

All that said, this is an urgently important budget coming upon us, because what grows out of it will impact the next decade's worth of budget proposals and likely the economic growth for the next century, and along with it, the income and well-being of every American.

As Ben Bradlee said during Watergate, "Nothing's riding on this except the... future of the country.

So if you've been holding onto someone's balls for a rainy day, well, the clouds have gathered.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

A failure of leadership: Jonathan Chait and Paul Krugman on Obama, the budget, and the government shutdown that never was

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I haven't written much on the budget/shutdown, mainly because I just haven't had much to say. I never thought a shutdown was likely. Boehner was certainly facing enormous pressure from the right, but most Republicans understood that a shutdown would hurt them politically (if not the country generally), and it was inevitable that a Democratic Party that fears confrontation and that is, for better or worse, all about compromise, would give in. And that's just what happened.

So who won? -- a question Jon Stewart amusingly looked into last night. Well, the Republicans, perhaps, as they came away with fairly significant concessions from the Democrats (even if this was just about domestic discretionary spending), but many on the right aren't happy, whether over the continued funding for Planned Parenthood or over the fact that spending wasn't cut even more -- and while Boehner emerges intact, it's not clear how long he'll be able to hold off the Tea Party. But I'm not really sure the Democrats lost. A shutdown would have been bad for everyone, and so avoiding a shutdown without giving up too much is a sort of "win" for them, as long as they can take the fight to the budget battle still to come and thence into 2012.

And Obama? For a president who is all about compromise, yet another compromise is also a win, and he'll now be able to position himself to secure even greater support from independents when the time comes. He stepped in when he needed to, acted like the mature adult in a world of petulant children, and, however this may irritate progressives (myself included), accepted a deal that will benefit him politically at the expense of fighting the Republicans' disastrous agenda.

That's just the way I see it. I'm not saying I like it.

And the big political problem, it seems to me, is that, once again, Democrats just caved without much of a fight at all, even a symbolic one, except over Planned Parenthood (which, to be fair, is worth fighting for, but it's not the be-all and end-all of federal budget issues), allowing Republicans to secure the upper hand, and a fairly significant "win," despite the fact (forgotten by the media, it seems) that they're still the minority party (controlling the House but not the Senate or the White House) -- even after last November's "shellacking." At TNR yesterday, Jon Chait offered a number of reasons for why this happened. Yes, Democrats are generally more conciliatory (to their credit, perhaps, if not so much in the crucible of legislative politics), and, yes, the issue generally favours Republicans (who can spin their economic and fiscal agenda as "small government" (and who likes taxes? who likes government (until you realize what it does for you)?). But this, to me, is the most convincing explanation:

Republicans were able to credibly threaten a shutdown of the government. That willingness to impose harm on the entire country if they didn’t get a sufficiently friendly outcome proved to be powerful bargaining leverage, moving the goalposts progressively closer to them.

In other words, Republicans are just tougher negotiators, willing to push the country to the brink, or at least to bluff that way, to get their way. It's a game of chicken, and Republicans know that Democrats swerve first. Of course, Democrats should have known better. They should have called that bluff and challenged Republicans to shut down the government. Sure, the government may then have been shut down, but wouldn't Democrats then have "won" politically? At the very least, they would have had a strong case to take to the American people.

But, no. Not this time. Not ever, it seems.

And it doesn't help that Obama himself wasn't really up for a fight. As Paul Krugman writes:

What have they done with President Obama? What happened to the inspirational figure his supporters thought they elected? Who is this bland, timid guy who doesn't seem to stand for anything in particular?

I realize that with hostile Republicans controlling the House, there's not much Mr. Obama can get done in the way of concrete policy. Arguably, all he has left is the bully pulpit. But he isn't even using that -- or, rather, he's using it to reinforce his enemies' narrative.

His remarks after last week's budget deal were a case in point.

Maybe that terrible deal, in which Republicans ended up getting more than their opening bid, was the best he could achieve -- although it looks from here as if the president's idea of how to bargain is to start by negotiating with himself, making pre-emptive concessions, then pursue a second round of negotiation with the G.O.P., leading to further concessions.

And bear in mind that this was just the first of several chances for Republicans to hold the budget hostage and threaten a government shutdown; by caving in so completely on the first round, Mr. Obama set a baseline for even bigger concessions over the next few months. 

I still think Obama succeeded politically, continuing to set himself up nicely for re-election next year. But Krugman is right that he weakened himself and his party over the long run, essentially giving Republicans still more confidence that they can they way, or at least a great deal of their way, just by controlling the House.

It will take more time to sort out who "won" and who "lost" this shutdown battle, but with an absence of principled, determined leadership in the White House, the losers ultimately are the American people, who need something other than the Republican agenda and who have a president who is apparently unwilling to fight for anything at all.

Massive military spending is bringing America down

By Michael J.W. Stickings

ThinkProgress cites a remarkable report showing the enormous cost of the U.S. military:

A new report released today by SIPRI, a Swedish-based think tank, reveals that U.S. military spending has almost doubled since 2001. The U.S. spent an astounding $698 billion on the military last year, an 81% increase over the last decade.

U.S. spending on the military last year far exceeded any other country. We spent six times more than China -- the second largest spender. Overall, the world expended $1.6 trillion on the military, with the United States accounting for the lion's share:



As a percentage of GDP, U.S. military spending has increased from 3.1% in 2001 to 4.8% last year. 

For all the bluster from so-called deficit hawks like Paul Ryan, who isn't really a deficit hawk (let alone a "courageous" one) but rather a media-hyped anti-government Ayn Rand disciple, the real burden on the U.S. budget isn't Social Security or Medicare, nor spending on public broadcasting, nor "waste," but rather the military, which has grown to meet the hegemonic demands of two terrible wars and the maintenance of an empire that is declining and falling.

This just isn't sustainable. As Matthew Yglesias writes, "given that the US share of global economic output is extremely likely to shrink over the next 15 years, we're not going to be able to sustain this kind of hegemonic posture without really crippling the domestic economy."

But of course you can't cut the military, can you? If you do, you're apparently not tough enough on America's enemies, and you may even want the terrorists to win. So instead we get Republicans, who claim to be fiscally conservative deficit hawks but who are really just plutocrats seeking to make life even cushier for the wealthy. And so Paul Ryan's much-ballyhooed and media-applauded "The Path to Prosperity" includes regressive tax cuts and attacks on programs for the poor. Surprise, surprise, surprise.

As for military spending, yes, sure, the argument can be made that the U.S. bears the burden of policing the world in a way no other country does. (And, yes, I support the intervention in Libya, too.) But choices have to be made, and if the U.S. is to recover a sense of fiscal sanity it will need to reduce its military spending and to make do with less. And, of course, to decide what sort of global military power it wishes to be -- and can afford to be. Americans may wish to cling to a sense of unchallenged superiority, with a military able to wield enormous power, but the reality is that, considerations of the dubious justice of overwhelming military might notwithstanding, their country's future requires significantly more constrained objectives.

The real fight

By Carl 

The drums have been beating for months over this fight, ever since the GOP took back the House in November. This week, they get much louder. The time is at hand:

"Obviously, we need to look at all corners of government," said Obama senior adviser David Plouffe in announcing the speech on NBC's Meet The Press. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., on Fox News Sunday, said, "we've had to bring this president kicking and screaming to the table to cut spending."

Obama's forthcoming plan to reduce the government's red ink will also re-frame a variety of budget-related political battles. 

Cantor's comment is particularly irritating, since Obama's original budget proposal cut $33 billion dollars, which is eerily close to what Boener caved in on for the continuing budget resolution.

But I digress...

What this week's battle will really be about is the debt ceiling. Approve it, and the nation can go on and try to get a handle on the bills. Turn it down, and the nation will instantaneously lose any and all credibility in the world, becoming no better than Uganda or Zimbabwe or Myanmar or Greece or Portugal, or any number of nations who have repudiated or otherwise abrogated their responsibilities to the world.

Like those other nations, we will have sold out to tyrannical dictators, only ours won't be in office, only the men behind the curtains.

The Republicans have already signaled they will agree to the raise, but in exchange they want spending cuts.

Um, duh. Then ur doin et rong, if you're going to play brinksmanship without the very real threat you'll go over the edge. After all, what's the thrill in seeing someone swim in the Niagara River if he's tied by a rope to the mainland? It just amounts to an exercise in exhaustion.

What this really amounts to is the Bush tax cuts, which will expire next year after an extension... again... in 2010. Allowing these to expire would of course immediately cut the deficit and the growth of the debt, but it would also inflict pain on the überrich and the corporatocracy.

Pain, in this case, being defined as the bite of the mite that sits on the gnat that's piggybacking on the mosquito on the collective butt.

The rest of the debate is really just smoke and noise and amounts to next to nothing in terms of cuts... no one seriously thinks Paul Ryan's plan is worth the paper it's printed on... and really is just the GOP saving face from the charge of being the Party of No.

Which they are. You really ought to embrace your inner hater, boys.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.) 

Addendum: I just wanted to add my voice to those who are expressing their regrets over the loss of one of our very best and brightest here at The Reaction.

Creature, in your retirement, may you find the thread you believe you've lost and come out fighting again really soon. You will be missed.

Truth in Comics: Paul Ryan's balancing act

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From RJ Matson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (via Taegan Goddard):

We'll add this excellent work to our "Truth in Comics" series. 

And for more on Ryan's much-ballyhooed budget plan, "The Path to Prosperity," see Jon Chait's:

-- "Path To Prosperity Even More Insanely Unworkable Than You Thought";

-- "Republicans Admit Their Health Care Complaint Was Bogus";

-- "The Path To Prosperity And The True Republican Agenda";

-- "The Counterintuitive Liberal Case For Ryan Is Too Counterintuitive";

-- "Ryan's Bipartisanship Fib"; and

-- "The Achilles Heel Of The Path To Prosperity."

Great analysis of a fiscally irresponsible and incredibly cruel plan.

Ugh; or, being under the weather and watching Republicans push America over a cliff

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sorry, I'm a bit under the weather this week, which is why I haven't blogged much the past few days -- it's one of those things that's tough to shake.

But stay tuned. We'll keep posting, and I hope to be back to normal soon.

In the meantime, some suggestions:

-- Karoli, Crooks and Liars: "UPDATED: Conservative Waukesha County Clerk "Finds" 7,000 Votes For Prosser." (Loads of reaction to yesterday's stunning news from Wisconsin at Memeorandum.)

From state to federal...

-- Steve Benen, Political Animal: "Would Boehner Shut Down the Government Over Planned Parenthood?"

It's all (or a lot) about so-called policy riders:

-- Brian Beutler, TPM: "Riders Caused The Storm: Government Shutdown Looms Over Anti-Abortion And Anti-EPA Measures."

And Republicans, who would likely lose politically in the event of a government shutdown (though both sides are preparing their spin), are trying to make it about the troops:

-- Tanya Somanader, ThinkProgress: "While Slamming Obama For Opposition To 'Troop Funding Bill,' House GOP Votes Down Troop Funding -- Twice." 

Just your typical GOP bullshit. I'm surprised they didn't try to make it about 9/11.

Have a nice day.

-- Michael

Words to live by, words to regret

By Carl 

Obama: 'Inexcusable' not to reach budget deal:

"At a time when the economy is still coming out of an extraordinarily deep recession, it would be inexcusable -- given the relatively narrow differences when it comes to numbers between the two parties -- that we can't get this done," Obama said last night at the White House.

Obama has played this budget debacle exactly right, in my opinion, and it's paying huge dividends for Democrats across the nation. He has come off as statesman-like and put no political capital on the line here.

Conservative pundits have been screeching like seagulls about how Obama needs to be more involved, how it's wrong of him to go off to fundraisers for 2012 while the nation faces a crisis, yaddayaddayadda.

First, one wonders where these asshats were during the 6 1/2 years that Bush spent down in Crawford through things like Katrina, but I digress.

The Constitution is pretty clear about the delineation of budget responsibilities: it falls to Congress. What the conservative tactics tell me is, Pelosi and Reid have been playing hardball, drawing lines in the sand and refusing to commit to anything beyond them.

Those lines must be pretty fair ones, too, for moderates or we'd hear a lot of complaining about how entrenched the Dems are being, how special interests are playing fast and loose with the budget and so on. As well, we'd hear that the sides are very far apart. Obama has made a particular point of noting the narrow gap between the two sides.

Clearly, conservatives feel they can get a better deal from Obama. To his credit, he's refused to upend his Congressional leadership.

Contrast Obama with this: 

Boehner 'No daylight' between tea party and me:

"Listen, there's no daylight between the tea party and me," the Ohio Republican said in an interview with ABC News conducted Wednesday.

"None," he said, when questioner George Stephanopoulos pushed back. "What they want is, they want us to cut spending. They want us to deal with this crushing debt that's going to crush the future for our kids and grandkids. There's no daylight there."

I'm grinning as I write this. Boehner is from Ohio. Ohio is a battleground state. While Boehner can slather his district with pork to ensure his re-election, the one thing he cannot do is persuade people that insane folks are sane.

His seat is officially up for grabs now. By marrying himself to the Teabaggers, he will now make the Speaker of the House of Representatives officially responsible for every hate-mongering sign, every slanderous blogpost, each and every outrageous stunt the Teabaggers pull, in and out of Washington, D.C.

There's eighteen months. That's practically an eternity in national politics nowadays. He's hitched his wagon to a failing star whose light is dimming after the supernova of 2010. The Koch brothers' money is running out, or else Glenn Beck would still have his job at FOX and Wisconsin would still be electing Republicans.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

It's not about the money

By Mustang Bobby 

When you see something like the budget that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) proposed with all its cuts to programs that have become ingrained in the fabric of American life such as Medicare, and then listen to the other things the Republicans want to cut such as public broadcasting or regulations on pollution, it's obvious that cutting spending is just an excuse. Like the teabaggers say, they really do want to take the country back: back in time.

They want to go back to the 1950s, or better yet, to the 1920s or even the 19th Century when there were no safety nets for the poor or disabled, when children worked in the textile mills, when minorities were very much in the minority in terms of everything, and everyone was a lot happier as long as you were rich, white, and healthy. If you weren't, well, that was God's will, and if the life expectancy was in the mid-50s and people died from the common cold and 12 hours a day six days a week meant that the factory worker had little time for foolishness and impure thoughts such as striking for a fair wage and shorter working hours, that was the American way.

As Rachel Maddow noted last night, Mr. Ryan said about his proposal, "This isn't a budget, this is a cause." And he's right. His budget proposal perfectly outlines the GOP philosophy of every white man for himself and the rest of you will have to just suck it up and make it on your own, especially if you're older and not feeling too well.

The Republicans know they've lost the battle on such things as multiculturalism, gay rights, women's rights and reproductive choice. They can't make the arguments any more on philosophical grounds because they sound like they're racist, homophobic, misogynistic bigots, so they resort to the one thing they know gets to everyone: money. Sure, we'd love to provide healthcare to all people at an affordable cost but it costs money. Sure, we'd love to turn the public schools into palaces and pay teachers what they're really worth, but we're broke. And yes, we'd love to make sure that all the police and firefighters have a say in their negotiations over their wages, but we just can't afford it. It's their perfect excuse, and it works, at least until you remember that it was the Republicans who got us into this mess in the first place... just as they did in the 1920s when everything was hunky-dory right up to the Crash in 1929.

If Mr. Ryan had made such a budget proposal five years ago, at the height of the Bush administration's two wars that were off the books and the tax cuts that helped get us into the deficit we're in now, he would have been shown the door not by just the Democrats, but by the Republicans as well. His timing would have been way off; the only time the Republicans care about a budget deficit or too much spending is when a Democrat is in the White House. But now they see this as the opportunity to take us back to the good old days on the excuse that we just can't afford to be the America we've become.

If it was merely a matter of budget deficits and revenue, this discussion would have been over long ago. But it's really about going back to the days when the white heterosexual Protestant men were in charge; minorities knew their place, children were seen and not heard (but contributed to the work force), women didn't vote, there was no income tax, and Republicans didn't govern; they ruled. That's what this is all about.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

The one-percent solution

By Carl 

According to President Obama, Congressional Republicans and his office are less than one percent away from a temporary budget deal.

I have an idea.

In order to bridge the gap between the Republicans' budget axe and Obama's budget scalpel, how about we shut the wars in Afghanistan and Libya down, and the occupation in Iraq?

You know, it doesn't have to be a troop pullout. We can simply have a "peace holiday": a short-term cessation of all military activities. Let the troops enjoy the sunshine, soak up local culture, and mingle amongst the citizens of those nations.

We'll save bookoo money on munitions, fuel, reconaissance. All of that will go towards funding important things like feeding the hungry back here at home, helping someone find a job, keeping our borders secure, cleaning up the environment ahead of the busy summer travel season, and Social Security checks flowing.

After all, the cynical timing-- after Social Security checks for April had been sent and cashed -- surely did not play into the Republicans strategy, did it?

That should more than close the gap between both sides and allow time for the rest of us to ridicule the Republican budget proposal for 2012 sufficiently that they tuck their tales between the candyass cheeks and suck it up as the losers they are.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Americans are stupid woefully misinformed

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From TPM (via Libby):

In a CNN poll of American adults released Friday, the median guess on what percentage of the federal budget goes to public broadcasting was 5%. With a $3.55 trillion budget last year, that would put funding for the CBP at approximately $178 billion.

In reality though, that's not even close.

The CPB received about $420 million last year from the federal government, making it roughly one one-hundredth of one percent, of the overall budget. That means that the median response was about 424 times higher than the actual amount of federal funding that went to public broadcasting last year.

Further, 20% of respondents thought CPB funding made up over 10% of the entire budget, including 5% who said it made up at least half.

This, of course, is how Republicans dominate the narrative over the budget, and how they achieve electoral success generally, namely, by feeding, and feeding off, widespread public ignorance.

With respect to the budget, it's how they try to convince you that they can offset their tax cuts (mostly for the wealthy) with spending cuts -- but not cuts to popular entitlement programs like Social Security, and not cuts to military spending, but cuts to "waste" (which never really amounts to much, despite their claims) and to such perennial right-wing targets as the NEA, NPR, and PBS (which are not nearly as significant in terms of federal funding as they suggest).

It's their vicious circle, you see:

-- People are ignorant.
-- Republicans make more people ignorant and people more ignorant.
-- More people vote Republican.
-- More Republicans make more people even more ignorant.
-- Etc., etc., etc.

The truth shall set you free. Which is precisely why Republicans don't want you to have it.

GOP validates America's hatred of Congress

By Nicholas Wilbur

The Republican Party has validated the American public's growing frustration, annoyance, and near-historically low disapproval of Congress with a bill proposed this week that epitomized the do-nothing reputation and partisan bickering of politicians on Capitol Hill.

The proposal, which Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia touted as a safety measure against the looming threat of a government shutdown, would make the Republican Party's February budget proposal the "law of the land" if Congress fails to enact a budget resolution before current government funding expires on April 8.

The Republican Party's February budget proposal, H.R. 1, called for $61 billion in discretionary spending cuts, most of which targeted popular social programs that the Democratic Party vehemently opposed. The bill earned a veto threat from President Obama even before it passed in the House, and after it passed it was deemed dead-on-arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Nobody so much as blinked when the bill died on the Senate floor due to a lack of bipartisan support.

So what will it take to pass this new proposal and to avoid the potentially devastating effects on the economy and job creation if a government shutdown occurs?

In short, a miracle.

In order to become law, Cantor's bill requires that the same Democrats who so staunchly opposed the GOP's $61 billion in spending cuts on March 17 then turn around not two weeks later and vote for those very same cuts.

Not even Rod Serling could have thought up this one.

But lest you should be fooled by the media's claims that this is yet another "symbolic" measure put forth by the ever-unserious GOP, Cantor was quoted Wednesday telling reporters, "We are serious."

The Hill reported that "aides could not immediately explain how their new bill would solve the crisis or whether they expected the Senate to approve it."

 

According to Cantor spokeswoman Leana Fallon, "[I]t is our hope that this bill will, at a minimum, spur the Senate to pass some bill funding the government for the rest of the year so that we can work quickly to resolve any differences." If Congress fails to act, she added, "passing this bill would at least keep the government open."

 

She is correct. Passing this bill would indeed keep the government open. Unfortunately, it would also eliminate the incentive for Republicans to continue negotiations with Democrats. If their original proposal becomes law, there is no need to "spur the Senate to pass some bill funding the government," because Republicans can sit out the remainder of the talks, wait for current funding to expire, then throw a party for their Tea Party constituents when health-care reform is defunded, the Environmental Protection Agency is gutted, and a slew of other social programs are forced to cut core services and, in effect, jobs, on April 9.

 

Putting a new title on an old policy won't change the hearts and minds of Democrats in the Senate. It won't convince the public that Republicans are serious about reaching common ground on the budget. And it definitely won't quell the animosity that Americans feel toward Congress. (According to the latest Gallop poll, Congress has an 18 percent approval rating.)

 

If there is a silver lining to this cloud, it's that voters across the nation, particularly Virginia voters, and especially deficit-hawk conservative voters, begin calculating a taxpayer-based cost-benefit analysis of the type of leadership that comes with paying majority party leaders a salary of $193,000 a year.

 

Or maybe Cantor needs a pay raise.

 

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Obama is a tax-cutting, budget-slashing socialist

By Nicholas Wilbur

President Obama is an unabashed socialist, and the Democratic Party is an unashamed guerrilla band of anti-business, tax-and-spend liberals bent on destroying the American Dream by punishing hard-working entrepreneurs and small business owners in order to pay for social services benefitting the weak, the lazy, and the government-teat-suckling post-hippie stoner generation of anti-capitalistic communists, flag burners, and lifetime welfare recipients.

Right?

Isn't that what the right is always accusing? Is that not the sole purpose for Rupert Murdoch's creation of the Fox News Network – to tell these truths to the American people and open their eyes to the devastation socialism is bringing to the United States?

Let us assume for a moment that everything that comes out of the mouths of Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Megyn Kelly is irrefutable fact.

Why is it, then, that Democrats have, as of this writing, agreed to cut more than $50 billion from Obama's 2011 fiscal year budget proposal?

If Republicans are stereotyped as fearmongering war profiteers, corporate lackeys, and radical Bible thumpers, it's fair to say Democrats are most often stereotyped as anti-business, tax-and-spend defenders of big government.

And yet, it was the Democrats in Congress who voted for a bill in December, signed into law by Obama, to extend tax cuts for all Americans, even the richest income earners. And now they're negotiating with Republicans to reduce government spending in order to quell the conservative base, whom Republicans promised during the 2010 midterm campaign to cut spending by exactly $100 billion.

Are we to believe Democrats are so afraid of a government shutdown they're willing to abandon the core tenets of their ideology, even though the history of 1995 tells us that a shutdown spurred by uncompromising fiscal hawks will pay huge election dividends to the party defending against such massive cuts to social programs? Do they actually believe – as, apparently, a strong bloc of conservative voters did in 2010 – that the deficit is so disgustingly high that Chinese debt collectors will foreclose our homes, repo our cars, and sell the bone marrow they sucked from our children's spines if we don't get our fiscal house in order?

Does any American, particularly the most patriotic among us (those within the Tea Party, of course), actually believe that the deficit monsters will go back into hibernation if Democrats accept the nice, round $100 billion in budget cuts proposed by House Republicans? Will that gargantuan 3.7 percent reduction in the deficit keep us safe from the financial collapse Republicans warned us about in 2010?

Of course, these are all rhetorical questions. The only reason the deficit is a concern is that Republicans made it a concern as part of a carefully orchestrated campaign strategy designed to scare the masses out of their recliners and into the voting booths. Congratulations, GOP. It worked.

When the Federal Reserve announced in February of this year that it had increased its economic growth predictions to as much as 3.9 percent for 2011, the problem of the national deficit suddenly looked less apocalyptic than it had in November, when projections for 2011 growth were a respectable but unflattering 2.7 percent.

Higher economic growth means more government revenue, which means a lower deficit. At 3.9 percent growth, the deficit would fall to $113 billion in 10 years, according to a Time magazine analysis. That doesn't include the hundreds of billions the nation will save at the end of 2012, when tax cuts for the rich are set to expire. (Obama and Democrats have vowed to allow this expiration, although they have supported extending the cuts for Americans making less than $250,000 annually.)

Complete the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq and end the occupation of Afghanistan by 2014, and we're looking at a government surplus by the time Obama leaves the White House... in 2016.

But that's all beside the point. The apocalyptic deficit forecasts during the campaign served one purpose for the Republicans Party, and it wasn't to raise awareness about any real threats to American sovereignty.

The point is that we've allowed the media to portray the Obama Administration's emergency response to the recession as a sign of his socialist governing philosophy even though he agreed to the GOP's demands to spend $800 billion on tax cuts largely benefiting the rich and spending cuts to social programs largely benefiting the working class, the poor, and the elderly.

That said, don't expect the Republican sound machine to take it down a notch on the socialism rhetoric. Fox has a business to run, after all. 

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Credits: cartoon, graph.

A budget stalemate and the hubris of freshman Tea Partiers

By Nicholas Wilbur 

It may have been obvious during the 2010 midterm campaign that the Tea Partiers were delusional, but nobody quite grasped the depth of their derangement until they rewrote a budget proposal last month that nearly doubled the amount of spending cuts originally sought by Republicans in the House, then spent the next two weeks calling on Democrats – without a hint of irony – to get serious about the nation's fiscal disorder. 

After an entire campaign dedicated to making promises about deflating the ballooning size of government, reining in Washington's excessive spending habits, and reducing the dangerously high annual deficit, the House Tea Party members put their money where their mouth was, so to speak. Except they didn't. 

While The Washington Post reported that the proposed $61 billion in spending cuts, if enacted into law, would represent "the largest rescission of federal funds since the conclusion of World War II," the proposal's effect on the deficit is akin to trying to drain the Atlantic by sticking a Slurpee straw into the Potomac. 

From a recent USA Today editorial: 

The $61 billion in spending cuts being sought by House Republicans, and being fiercely resisted by Democrats, represent just 3.7% of this year's deficit and 1.6% of total federal spending. That's not to say there shouldn't be cuts. You have to start somewhere to change attitudes. But any genuine effort to deal with the nation's exploding debt involves tackling benefit programs, reining in defense and security spending, and raising more tax revenue. 

Not only does the proposal fail the long-term litmus test by ignoring Social Security, Medicare, and defense funding – the cash-cow trifecta of federal outlays – it also fails to deliver even a short-term fix.

Run down the line of programs slated for defunding or underfunding and the same scenario emerges: these cuts, other than earning the nod from a handful of anti-ObamaCare, anti-government constituents, achieve almost nothing. (Eliminating funding for both Planned Parenthood and public broadcasting amounts to $790 million in savings, which, when translated into a percentage of the $3.7 trillion federal budget, represents a savings of two millionths of one percent.)

Beyond the dwarfish reach of the proposal, the $61 billion in cuts also happens to be an impossible request in a legislative branch that is only half-controlled by Republicans. 

No Democrat could survive the liberal revolt if they joined Republicans and voted to eliminate funding for health-care reform, Planned Parenthood, and public broadcasting; if they agreed to gut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and eliminate the agency's role as an emissions regulator; or if they capitulated to Tea Party demands and ignored addressing the growing costs of entitlements and defense, which, combined, account for more than 60 percent of federal spending.

This is where the insanity is best showcased. The Democratic Party's vehement opposition to the bill was not classified or privileged information. Majority Leader Harry Reid came right out and called the bill "draconian" – essentially declaring it dead-on-arrival in the Senate after passing in the House along party lines. President Obama didn't even wait for House Republicans to approve the measure before threatening to veto the bill. To assume that the proposal had any chance of becoming law is to acknowledge that the Tea Party is indeed crazy.

But that isn't how politics works. Normally, they'd have used the proposed $61 billion in budget cuts as a benchmark. After a few days of railing Democrats in front of the cameras as tax-and-spend liberals, socialists, and clueless bleeding hearts, the Republican leadership would take over and start negotiating. That's the usual procedure. Announce your ideology-driven initiative, pressure the other party into joining the debate, then actually have a debate. After sanding off the sharp edges and eliminating the parts that both parties know will doom the bill to failure, lawmakers can then work out the finer details, the phrasing, the timeline for implementation, and then, eventually, pass a revised, responsible, and balanced piece of bipartisan legislation. 

Neither side will be fully satisfied, but the problem is addressed. That's the nature of the legislative beast. It's the beauty of democracy. And yes, it's a dirty business. Unless you actually are the messiah, as some apparently hoped of the president during his campaign three years ago, you don't escape the Capitol Hill negotiation mill without a few scars. President Obama learned this lesson with both health-care reform and tax cuts. Unlike Obama's case, however, the learning curve for the Tea Party will be sharp, painful, and fruitless. 

Perhaps the freshman lawmakers, lacking any hands-on experience with the process, thought it would turn out differently, that their bill would somehow survive the Senate, and that Obama might... I don't know, maybe faceplant from a dopamine overdose after laughing himself to death. If the bill were positioned on his desk at just the right angle, and if the pen in his ear made a mark on the signature line of the bill that the Supreme Court ruled was close enough to the left-handed president's chicken-scratch handwriting that it constituted a deliberate signature, then maybe it would be enacted into law. There's no other possible explanation for the Tea Party's ignorance in thinking that their proposals, unchanged, would go anywhere outside of the GOP-dominated House. 

The most appalling part of this Twilight Zone episode is that Republicans had two and a half weeks to work with Democrats on revising the most offensive portions of the bill, and instead of actually negotiating – the usual give-and-take of any bargaining process – Republicans used that time to bicker, accuse Democrats of obstruction, point fingers at the president for not solving everyone's problems, and generally abandon their roles as nationally elected leaders.

When the bill failed in the Senate, this was one response to the Democratic Party's refusal to accept the budget cuts: 

Paying lip service to the threat caused by the deficit is not a substitute for responsible leadership.

Those words came not from the fiery gut of a radical freshman Tea Partier. They came from the 25-year veteran lawmaker and current minority leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell. 

Of course, Democrats were no better. As a means of "compromise," they proposed cutting $6.5 billion, a figure that was so shallow Republicans didn't even bother wasting their breath to scoff at it. But one can't really fault Democrats for not initiating a deal. Cutting social programs wasn't their idea, for one. For two, assuming the stereotypes of the two parties are correct, Democrats wouldn't have proposed any sort of compromise whatsoever. They'd have countered the GOP's budget cut proposal with tax hikes. 

So, here we are nearly halfway through the fiscal year, staring once again down the barrel of a government shutdown, and despite having two months to figure out what is and isn't possible when it comes to reducing spending, our leaders are proving incapable of even beginning a real debate about effective but economically responsible budget cuts. 

We're back at square one, as they say, and it seems our national leaders are playing hopscotch in the quicksand.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.) 

Credits: Image 1, Image 2. 

Boener blinks

By Carl 

Well, well, well... suddenly the Teabag has lost its flavor...

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told a convention of religious broadcasters in Nashville on Sunday evening that a federal government shutdown was not appropriate and not what the electorate wanted.
His remarks were the latest sign that congressional leaders were backing away from the brink of a shutdown.

"Americans want the government to stay open, and they want it to spend less money," Boehner said. "We don't need to shut down the government to accomplish that. We just need to do what the American people are asking of us."

In other words, it's business as usual. That's going to piss off the Teabaggers mightily, many of whom believe the only way to restore sanity to the budget process is to shut the thing down.

The Republicans are in a tough spot, to be sure. This is a giant game of Steal The Bacon, and Obama and the Democrats know all they have to do is prevent the Republicans from bringing the pork back to their side and the game is won. In other words, the Republicans will have to make a proposal that truly makes the necessary cuts to the budget to bring some form of fiscal stability back. Obama's budget proposal was nothing but a gauntlet thrown down.

In order to truly reduce the size of government, three things have to happen. Unfortunately, all three of those things are guaranteed...well, two are. One is unproven... to stifle any economic recovery:

1. Defense spending has to be cut. Unfortunately, defense spending is the one guaranteed job creating program for the district in which the contract is awarded, including the contract for the F-35 engine, the biggest boondoggle in the current developing Pentagon arsenal, and oh by the way, built in Boener's home state of Ohio!
2. Social Security and Medicare have to be reined in somehow. Now, you can't cut current spending. Remember all those elderly Teabaggers with their "keep your government hands off my Medicare" signs? You can cap the cost of living adjustments (COLAs) by faking a zero inflation number, which is accomplished by using core inflation, which excludes food and energy costs, which are "too volatile" to be useful. Are you kidding me? In a day and age when stock traders have software that can suss out microscopic inefficiencies and exploit them for millions in profits, we can't find someone to write a fractal-based program that can include the two biggests costs to an American family?
3. Taxes must be raised. Now, no one is going to propose this without a healthy dose of political cover, because the Teabaggers will flip out, and you know what that means: no more GOP.

Of those three items, only taxes has been unproven to have much direct impact on economic growth. Indeed, one can make the case, as I often have, that the Clinton tax hike on the rich, while lowering taxes on the working and middle classes, actually created robust and exuberant economic growth that was struggling to even begin to break thru when he took office.

Defense spending and social programs that funnel money directly to taxpayers are vital cogs in the economic activity of this nation. Some defense spending clearly can be cut. The F-35 is an example of a program that no one, not even the Pentagon, really wants and is make-work to bolster the bottom lines of the Carlyle Group and Pratt & Whitney. Still, even these are minimal compared to what would happen to deficits should the economy make a startling comeback in the next few years.

It's hard to believe that, just ten years ago, we were running budget surpluses that would pay down the national debt eventually, only to have Republicans decide that deficits don't matter and that matter belongs in the pockets of Americans.

Well, it never made it there, did it?

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Brilliant plan or petty scam? Republicans repackage Democratic budget ideas

By Nicholas Wilbur

Taking credit for someone else's work is called plagiarism – unless you're in politics, in which case it's called bipartisanship.

With Republicans vehement in their opposition to the Democratic Party's plans to merely shear the sheep, and with Democrats equally obstinate in their disregard for the Republican Party's plans to behead the beast, a Congressional showdown over federal spending quickly evolved into a seemingly imminent government shutdown. Even a short-term fix appeared impossible as Republicans proved unwilling to entertain any temporary plans that didn't include spending cuts while Democrats proved unwilling to accept any such budget Band-Aids that did include cuts.

From ToonRefugee.com

But then, as if by magic or some divine intervention, the stars suddenly aligned, the Potomac parted, lions began hiring lambs as anger management counselors, and the two parties put aside their budget differences and began working as one body dedicated not to corporate or ideological interests but to the people who hired them.

With a week remaining before the government ran out of money, and with no agreement in sight, Republicans proposed a plan to fund the government another two weeks as negotiations over a more permanent fix continued.

Fearful of reliving the bare-knuckle beat-down they suffered over similar budget woes in 1995, Republicans decided to avoid the backlash of another government shutdown by proposing what The New York Times described as "a carefully calibrated stopgap measure" that would fund the government for two weeks while the two parties negotiate a more long-term budget resolution.

As promised, Republicans included significant spending cuts to the short-term stopgap measure. But, as the Times noted, "[t]o make it harder for Democrats to object to the temporary plan, Republican architects of the proposal tried to make the cuts relatively painless."

As it turns out, the cuts, totaling $4 billion, weren't so much "relatively painless" as they were pleasurable. Reversing course on their insistence earlier in the week that they would not support a proposal that included any cuts, "Senate Democrats indicated they would be willing to go along with the proposal," the Times reported. Looking at the source of the proposed cuts, it isn't terribly difficult to ascertain why they had a sudden change of heart. From the Times:

(Republicans) came up with the $4 billion by ending eight education, transportation and other programs that President Obama had previously sought to close down, a savings of almost $1.2 billion. They also reclaimed nearly $2.8 billion set aside for earmarks in the current budget; both the House and Senate have agreed to ban such pet projects.

I can't decide if this is utterly brilliant or completely retarded.

It seems as if Republicans have killed three birds with one stone.

First and foremost, they quelled a potential revolt of House Tea Party members by giving them a nice, big, round number which they can throw out to their anti-government constituents as evidence of their hardline stance against excessive federal spending. It was the Tea Party, after all, that accused senior Republicans in the House of going soft on their campaign pledge to slash government spending. Four billion dollars in a two-week funding package more than does the job.

Second, Republicans needed to propose something that Democrats would support. What better way to entice Democrats to back a Republican bill than to use ideas Democrats themselves proposed? As the Times noted, the $1.2 billion in cuts originated from the president's own proposal.

Knowing that the Tea Party could squabble about a puny $1.2 billion, they cut another $2.8 billion slated for earmarks even though both parties already agreed to end the use of earmarks, and even though the president already promised to veto any legislation that landed on his desk with earmarks attached.

Republicans essentially repackaged the president's own ideas and inflated the spending cuts with earmarks that nobody was allowed to include in a budget package anyway.

If it sounds similar to mining for gold in your neighbor's backyard and selling him bullion coins at a discounted rate, it is. Stargazing is free – like breathing oxygen, blinking, and flipping off the IRS building when you drive by – but that doesn't take away from its bipartisan popularity.

This is either the masterpiece of a genius or the scheming plot of an amateur scam artist.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)