Month: January 2010

A Man Of His Word

by digby

It’s hard to know whether Ben Nelson is just doing a full CYA, but this seems to indicate that he was planning to filibuster whatever came out of the health care reform bill conference:

Yesterday, in an interview with LifeSiteNews.com Nelson said that he agreed to the compromise to “get” the final bill into conference and planned to use his leverage as the 60th vote, to insert his original amendment into in the final conference report:

LSN: OK, so you were planning on coming back…

NELSON: Absolutely. That is what I was just trying to tell the gentleman who was arguing about the 60th vote.

LSN: What made you think that it had a shot, after conference?

NELSON: Because they needed 60 votes again.

LSN: Right, but before, you voted for it even without it –

NELSON: To get it there….But, once it went to conference, as part of the conference, there was still another 60 vote threshold, and that is when I would have insisted and that is what Christy was talking about when I mentioned this on the phone – how we would approach this in conference to say, for my last 60th vote, it has to have Nelson/Hatch/Casey.

LSN: Why didn’t you stop it right then and there and say, “No Nelson/Hatch – nothing.”

NELSON: Because, at that point and time, the leverage wasn’t as strong – you have to play it […]

LSN: So, if we got to conference and it was just the Nelson not the Nelson/Hatch/Casey – you would say ‘yes’ because you think it was good enough.

NELSON: I could have but I was going to say – and this was all the plan – that I would insist that it be Nelson/Hatch/Casey.

Nelson/Hatch/Casey, you’ll recall,  was the senate version of the Stupak amendment.

Now, Nelson is very likely trying to mend fences with his forced childbirth supporters, so you have to take what he’s saying with a grain of salt. However, it does lead you to wonder what effect his words will have on Stupak and the boys in the House, who are still in a position to block passage of the Senate bill, even if the leadership gets a “sidecar” deal to pass the liberal imperatives in reconciliation and all the progressives vote for the Senate bill.

It’s hard to see how they could pass Stupak (or Nelson/Hatch/Casey) through reconciliation because nobody wants to make the budgetary argument on abortion. So that means they would have to try to pass it as a stand alone bill with 60. I don’t see how they get there unless they get a substantial number of those who voted against Nelson originally to switch their votes to one that’s even worse.

Presumably, they could get Brown, even though he’s nominally pro-choice. Here’s the list of the others who voted against Nelson/Hatch/Casey:

Akaka (D-HI) Baucus (D-MT) Begich (D-AK) Bennet (D-CO) Bingaman (D-NM) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Burris (D-IL) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Collins (R-ME) Dodd (D-CT) Durbin (D-IL) Feingold (D-WI) Feinstein (D-CA) Franken (D-MN) Gillibrand (D-NY)

Hagan (D-NC) Harkin (D-IA) Inouye (D-HI) Johnson (D-SD) Kerry (D-MA) Kirk (D-MA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Kohl (D-WI) Landrieu (D-LA) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Lieberman (ID-CT) Lincoln (D-AR) McCaskill (D-MO) Menendez (D-NJ) Merkley (D-OR) Mikulski (D-MD)

Murray (D-WA) Nelson (D-FL) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Rockefeller (D-WV) Sanders (I-VT) Schumer (D-NY) Shaheen (D-NH) Snowe (R-ME) Specter (D-PA) Stabenow (D-MI) Tester (D-MT) Udall (D-CO) Udall (D-NM) Warner (D-VA) Webb (D-VA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wyden (D-OR)

So, if it comes down to Stupak and his boys being the last roadblock and demanding passage of the senate version of the Stupak amendment, which of the above could the leadership possibly get to switch?  And could Stupak pass a second time in the house? Would Obama sign it? All big questions.  But if you  ask me if the congress and the president would sell out women to get a bill, I’d have to lean yes. Passage of this bill means that some liberals somewhere must lose something and women’s reproductive freedom seems to have been one of the designated prices to be paid for extending health care to everyone.

Maybe it won’t come to that. It’s possible that Stupak will agree to something that doesn’t require the 60 or enough of his anti-choice posse will see that health care reform is more important than their parochial obsession with other people’s reproductive organs and they will vote for the senate bill which only has the nearly equally bad Nelson compromise. But if you check out the “pro-life” groups online, they are putting tremendous pressure on their people to vote against anything less than the Stupak language.They understand how valuable that is both politically and morally to their cause.  To force pro-choice liberals to vote against their deeply held principles and make the pro-choice president sign it would be a sweet victory and a strong  show of strength.  It would be quite a win for them.

Update: Ron Brownstein has more on pelosi’s statement today that she thinks she can pass a bill in the House if the Senate agrees to reconciliation:

Pelosi identified several key changes that she said must be made in the Senate bill through the reconciliation process to win support for the overall package in the House. These included eliminating the favored treatment in the expansion of Medicaid that Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., won for his home state during the final stages of the Senate negotiation; providing greater affordability for people who would be required to purchase insurance under the bills’ individual mandate; and structuring the new insurance exchanges, or marketplaces, that would be created under the bill. (The House created a national insurance exchange, while the Senate left the exchanges to the states.)

Pelosi seemed most insistent on adjusting the so-called “Cadillac tax” on high-value insurance plans included in the Senate bill. That measure has been a priority of the White House, which views it as a cornerstone of its efforts to control the long-term growth in health care spending. Just before Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, the White House reached an agreement with organized labor to narrow the tax’s application, which labor leaders argue would hit too many of their members. Pelosi described that agreement as “a good start” in revisiting the tax, but added “there are those who would like to go further than that.” Indeed, at another point in the interview, she declared, “The easiest thing is to just get rid of the whole excise tax.”

Asked about the role of abortion in a final resolution of the two chambers’ differences, Pelosi said, “Let’s just say that’s not the subject of our conversations at his time. Right now, we’re talking about affordability for the middle class, fairness for the states and how they help people have access to health care, those kinds of issues, how this is paid for. If we hear back from the Senate that they can’t get 51 votes, there’s no use having all these discussions. The sequencing is, ‘what can they do, and is that something that works for us?’ They know what we need.”

Without offering specifics, Pelosi said that even after the reconciliation process, House members might attempt to pass further legislation to revise the Senate bill. “On a separate track, we’d want to do some of the things that you can’t do under reconciliation but that you can do free-standing,” she said. But, with Brown’s victory, any free-standing health legislation could be blocked by a Senate Republican filibuster.

Would Senate Republicans filibuster a free standing Stupak Amendment? Would Democrats?

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“I Will Not Be Ignored, Barack”

by digby

No, this is not The Onion:

Making friends is crucial. I’m only being partly facetious when I suggest that there should be some sort of in-house list where members of the administration (any administration!) are designated to go out a certain amount, in exactly the same way they make the rounds on Sunday talk shows.

This includes the president! Even senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said this week that Obama “likes the rigor of having a conversation with someone who’s going to push him.” She told The Post, “There’s really no point in him wasting time with people who simply agree with him all the time because it’s not going to refine his position, it’s not going to enlighten his position.” In other words, he’ll certainly accomplish some of that once he gets around town.

Indulge me for a moment on the topic of our cultural bellwether, “Avatar.” In the film, the Pandora natives worship the goddess Eywa, who is the spirit that connects them to their planet. If there is such a goddess in Washington, I believe, it is the spirit of community. Those who live here want to welcome new friends. Washingtonians are open and willing to invite newcomers and make them part of their lives. If they can’t do that, there is automatically a distance that is created so that if — no, make that when — the administration gets into trouble, there is too little sympathy or support.

When an administration begins to express hostility to those in the community, the Na’vi pull out their arrows with the poison tips and begin taking aim. The rougher things get, the more members of the administration need to reach out, not withdraw. Nobody has ever been able to master this yet. Consequently everyone suffers — needlessly.

It would be inspiring to see a new administration understand the simple secret of how to belong to the community. Then, they would never have to hear, as the heroine of Avatar, Neytiri, says to the would-be hero, Jake Sully: “You will never be one of the people.”

Wrong movie.

Hide the bunny, Mr President.

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Who Will He Hear?

by digby

If you want an example of how the media plays into their simple narratives, you will note the difference between the way they’ve played the special elections.

For instance, in this year of alleged Republican insurgency, the Democrats have actually won three congressional seats. Did you know that? I doubt that most people do. And while I completely understand the focus on the Scott Brown race for the symbolism of the “Kennedy seat”, the reading of the electorate in Massachusetts as requiring a sharp turn to the right is not born out by polls there or, even more interestingly, by the election last night in Oregon, which also has an electorate of similar bent to Massachusetts.

They voted yesterday to raise taxes on the wealthy. And Oregon hasn’t voted to raise taxes since 1930. If that’s a turn to the right, then we are all teabaggers now.

Robert Cruikshank at Calitics writes:

The opposition ran a well-funded campaign, led by Nike, Columbia Sportswear, and other big businesses. They were joined by Ari Fleischer’s FreedomWorks and the libertarian publisher of the Oregonian, who used to be at the Orange County Register before it went belly-up. Together they ran a campaign arguing that the tax increases would worsen unemployment. But 55% of voters have rejected that, and instead showed that when a truly progressive campaign is waged, the right-wingers can be beaten. Even on taxes.

What it also shows is that progressive policies, supported by smart progressive organizing led by folks such as former US Senate candidate Steve Novick and the Oregon Bus Project, which reached out to younger voters and had a strong ground game, can beat well-funded, well-organized corporate/teabagger alliances.

Their message was deeply progressive:

These reforms protect nearly $1 billion in vital services like education, health care and public safety. These funds preserve class sizes, save jobs for teachers, provide seniors with in-home care, and provide health care for thousands of Oregonians through the Oregon Health Plan. In this time of economic crisis, we must protect those who have been hit the hardest – seniors, children and the unemployed – without putting more of a burden on the middle class.

This doesn’t fit with the mainstream media’s preferred storyline which has voter anger at Washington defined as a repudiation of liberalism. Indeed, today the gasbags are saying that in tonight’s State of the Union address, “Obama must” emulate Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and … repudiate liberalism. And yet, out in Oregon yesterday, a state that hasn’t voted to raise taxes since 1930, the people voted for an extremely progressive initiative.

One wonders what might happen if the president showed some courage and repudiated the village instead.

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Uncle Roger

by digby

I hope that nobody thinks this isn’t a problem:

Fox is the most trusted television news network in the country, according to a new poll out Tuesday.

A Public Policy Polling nationwide survey of 1,151 registered voters Jan. 18-19 found that 49 percent of Americans trusted Fox News, 10 percentage points more than any other network.

Thirty-seven percent said they didn’t trust Fox, also the lowest level of distrust that any of the networks recorded.

I would guess that most people reading this blog don’t watch Fox news very often, if ever. You should force yourself to do it some time, as an act of citizenship. Then you will understand why those figures send chills down my spine.

Keep in mind that journalism in general is in serious financial difficulties, while Fox is doing well and that the people who make editorial decisions are desperate. Plus, there’s the fact that members of the political press are herd creatures by nature. Not good for the Republic.

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The MOUs Weigh In

by digby

In case you were wondering what Wall Street wants Obama to say in the SOTU, they’ve helpfully shared:

“It [his recent tone] suggested [that] the president is confrontational with business,” says Jeffrey Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial in Boston. “A tone that says he is open to working together, to bring the best minds together, would be welcome.”

Obama’s attacks on the banking establishment rub many in the pinstripe set the wrong way. One is David Kotok, chairman of Cumberland Advisors, a Vineland, N,J., investment manager.

“I would like him to say he will stop vilifying bankers and Wall Streeters, and that he understands that many, many Americans are invested in US stocks and bonds in their 401(k)s. When he throws out mean-spirited commentary about the bankers, he is doing it to all those who are invested in them.”

Many on Wall Street expect Obama to seek another job stimulus package. But they don’t want to see another massive package similar to the $787 billion economic recovery package that Congress approved last February.

“Anything over $200 billion will be way too big, a waste of money,” says Mr. Kleintop, who suggests that the bond market would be happy with anything under $150 billion.

Cool to a spending freeze

Even before the speech, the administration has floated the idea of a freeze on federal discretionary spending, representing about 17 percent of the budget. But “Wall Street,” Kleintop says, “sees right through a freeze.”

Indeed, Scott Brown, chief economist at stock broker Raymond James & Co. in St. Petersburg, Fla., says the bigger problem is entitlement programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

“A three-year freeze on discretionary spending – as Obama is proposing – does not leave you with a lot,” says Mr. Brown.

Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Ore., travels a lot in the Pacific Northwest. He says he would like Obama to soothe the fears of businesses that they are facing “massive tax increases for health and energy.”

“Everywhere I go, I hear people say they could start to throttle up hiring and increase work hours but they are afraid they will get hit with a massive tax increase.”

No new taxes

At the same time, many Wall Street economists would like to see the president suggest rolling back the tax increases that kick in with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for relatively well-to-do wage earners, whose highest marginal tax rate will rise from 35 percent to 39 percent.

“Raising taxes is the last thing you want to do in an economic environment like this” says Robert McIntosh, chief economist at Eaton Vance, a mutual fund group in Boston. “Along with this, I don’t think it makes sense to raise the dividend and capital gains tax rates.”

Mr. McIntosh, like others on Wall Street, would also like to see Obama reduce the budget deficit. On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office said the budget deficit for 2010 would fall slightly, to $1.395 trillion.

“We must get it well under a $1 trillion,” says McIntosh.

First of all, the populist talk is not aimed at your friendly neighborhood financial advisor or personal broker unless they are taking million dollar bonuses from taxpayer money. These Banksters and Masters of the Universe have been utter pigs and there’s no getting around the fact that this whining and moaning about how they are being unfairly treated just makes everyone see red. They really need to grow some cojones and STFU. The people down the food chain in the financial services sector are (mostly) as disgusted with this swinish behavior as anyone. It only hurts the ball team.

And the average American who has their 401k invested in the markets does not confuse themselves with Lloyd Blankfein, I guarantee it. (Unless they are a right wing dittohead who thinks that giving Rush Limbaugh tax cuts will benefit them.)

As for their policy prescriptions, I thought they were fairly restrained. Normally they would have called for total repeal of the capital gains tax, privatization of social security and tort reform so they’re actually being very pragmatic in only wanting to cut social security and medicare and make the Bush tax cuts permanent. But then, they know how to negotiate. It’s what they do.

And anyway, most of it’s just kabuki:

Wall Street is marketing derivatives last seen before credit markets froze in 2007, as the record bond rally prompts investors to take more risks to boost returns.

Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley are encouraging clients to buy swaps that pay higher yields for speculating on the extent of losses in corporate defaults. Trading in credit- default swap indexes rose in the fourth quarter for the first time since 2008, according to Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. data. Federal Reserve data show leverage, or borrowed money, is rising in capital markets.

Investors who retreated to the safety of government debt during the financial crisis are returning to the simplest forms of so-called synthetic collateralized debt obligations after last year’s record 57.5 percent rally in junk bonds left money managers with fewer options. While President Barack Obama’s adviser Paul Volcker has blamed credit swaps and CDOs for taking the financial system “to the brink of disaster,” bankers say the instruments help companies raise capital.

Making An Investment

by digby

DWT is featuring a very important post by Danny Goldberg about the demise of Air America — a post that directly contradicts the conventional wisdom about the reasons for it:

I think that the New York Times got it exactly wrong this morning in declaring that “the enduring legacy of Air America’s failure is that political media from either side of the aisle is more successful when run as a business instead of a crusade.”

[…]

In the early nineteen seventies the Washington Post and New York Times were instrumental in helping expose the Watergate scandal and publishing the Pentagon papers. Conservatives felt that liberals had an advantage in setting the agenda because of the influence of New York and D.C. newspapers on the national media. In 1976 Rupert Murdoch bought the New York Post and it has lost money every year since, the total loss estimated to be more than half a billion dollars. In 1983, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon created the Washington Times, which has also lost money every year. Widely published reports place Moon’s losses at over $1 billion on the Times and other political media including a purchase the venerable wire service UPI. These money losing properties have put dozens of conservatively slanted stories onto the national radar screen, altered the framing of every important political issues, and nurtured virtually every right wing pundit who now thrive as TV talking heads.

More recently, Phillip Anschutz bought the money losing Weekly Standard from Murdoch and announced plans to invest in more conservative media and his fellow billionaire and former Republican Treasury Secretary Pete Petersen started a digital news service called The Fiscal Times.

The fatal flaw in Air America’s genetic code was the pretense that liberal talk radio was a great business opportunity, that progressives could have their cake and eat it too, do well by doing good, make big salaries and get a great return on investment while also pursuing an ideological agenda. Sure, every once in awhile political media like Michael Moore’s movies or Rush Limbaugh’s radio show will make money, but for those interested in influencing public opinion, media in all venues is vital whether they make money or not.

I urge you to read the whole thing. Goldberg was, for a short time, the head of Air America and knows whereof he speaks.

If progressives ever seriously want to challenge conservatism, they would do well to heed his advice: fund progressive media. That assumes there are wealthy progressives who actually want to do that, but if there are, this is how it’s done. With corporate America prepared to unleash unlimited cash, wealthy individuals are going to have to step up and figure where they can best put their money to counteract it and the right wingers that serve them. Progressive media is going to be vital.

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Eyes On The Prize

by digby

So CBS is afraid of the wrath of Focus on the Family and has reversed its previous stance against controversial “issue” ads. It’s going to show a forced pregnancy advertisement starring born again football hero, Tim Tebow sponsored by James Dobson and the gang.

Women’s groups are up in arms and rightfully so. Tebow’s spot evidently discusses his mother’s choice not to have an abortion as proof that other women shouldn’t have the same choice. But if I were one of Tebow’s teammates I might be more concerned about his association with James Dobson who has some very funny ideas about how to keep your sons from “becoming” gay:

Meanwhile, the boy’s father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son’s maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.

Tebow’s dad is a conservative evangelical preacher and often talks about how little Timmy was a weakling who grew into a star athlete. I don’t know if he took him into the shower and showed him his big penis, but that seems to be the way these fellows make Real Men out of their boys. You have to wonder.

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He Said It

by digby

“There’s a lot of populism going on in this country right now, and I’m tired of it.” – Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH)

Gregg, the top Republican on the Budget Committee and a member of the Banking Committee, decried a growing tide of populism spurring senators to oppose Bernanke’s nomination to a second term, and support stringent new rules on large financial institutions.

“That’s pandering populism,” Gregg said during an appearance on CNBC in response to some Democrats’ and Republicans’ criticisms of the Fed chairman. “There’s a lot of populism going on in this country right now, and I’m tired of it.”

Gregg warned that the growing tide of populism would threaten some of the most central institutions to the economy’s recovery.

“What it’s going to do is burn down some of the institutions which are critical to us as a nation and as an economy to recover and create jobs,” he warned.

And don’t forget to cut spending or all those populists might have the time to stop foraging for food and shelter to vote!

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ACORN Nut Busted

by tristero

The rightwing nut who did all those undercover videos of ACORN got busted trying to tap Mary Landrieu’s phones.

Heh. I can only hope the judge does a John Sirica, ie throws the book at him, and finds out exactly who’s been putting him up to this shit.

h/t, Atrios

Update: By digby. I want to also point out that aside from the obvious comparisons to Watergate, there is another more recent comparison that is particularly relevant today.

First, it should be noted again that the ACORN tapes were doctored. Why I’m seeing Tweety play them on a loop anyway, as he’s reporting this story, I’ll leave up to your imagination.

But what I find most intriguing is that a week after conservative hit man David Bossie is reanimated as a conservative hero, that the newest conservative hit man hero is caught wiretapping. Bossie, after all, came to prominence over this:

“Bossie was fired from his job as an investigator working for Representative Dan Burton (R-IN) on the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee in 1998″[9] while “investigating Clinton-Gore campaign finances.”[10] According to a May 7, 1998, front-page article published by the Washington Post,[11] Bossie was fired “after overseeing the release of recordings of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s phone conversations with [imprisoned] Whitewater figure Webster L. Hubbell. The tapes were edited to create the impression that Clinton was involved in billing irregularities at the Arkansas law firm where she and Hubbell worked.”[12]

And then there’s this irony:

Rep. John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, was talking to House Republican leaders when a Florida couple picked up the call on their scanner, taped it and gave it to Democratic House Ethics Committee member Jim McDermott of Seattle, who publicized the tape. The conversation involved the ethics panel’s finding against then House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The Florida couple pleaded guilty to wiretapping and paid fines.

Boehner sued McDermott claiming his Fourth Amendment privacy rights were violated. McDermott said he had a First Amendment right to use the information any way he saw fit. Boehner lost in the trial court, but the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal overruled the lower court, ruling that McDermott’s First Amendment rights were not violated. That case did not reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Not that any of this matters. In our accountability free political culture hypocrisy has been retired.

Still, it’s interesting that the ratfuckers are still out there doing their thing and that the media still falls for it every time. Why, you’d almost think they want to.

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Killing Us Softly With his Song

by digby

Krugman links today to Ronald Reagan’s first State of the Union address and makes this point:

His approval rating was about the same as Barack Obama’s now. His economic track record was considerably worse: instead of presiding over the end of a recession, he had presided over the beginning of one, and the economy was in free fall. Nonetheless, Reagan mounted an unapologetic defense of his economic ideology, combined with a harsh critique of his precedecessors.

Here’s an excerpt:

First, we must understand what’s happening at the moment to the economy. Our current problems are not the product of the recovery program that’s only just now getting under way, as some would have you believe; they are the inheritance of decades of tax and tax, and spend and spend.

Second, because our economic problems are deeply rooted and will not respond to quick political fixes, we must stick to our carefully integrated plan for recovery. And that plan is based on four common-sense fundamentals: continued reduction of the growth in Federal spending, preserving the individual and business tax deductions that will stimulate saving and investment, removing unnecessary Federal regulations to spark productivity and maintaining a healthy dollar and a stable monetary policy the latter a responsibility of the Federal Reserve System.

The only alternative being offered to this economic program is a return to the policies that gave us a trillion-dollar debt, runaway inflation, runaway interest rates and unemployment.

The doubters would have us turn back the clock with tax increases that would offset the personal tax-rate reductions already passed by this Congress.

Raise present taxes to cut future deficits, they tell us. Well, I don’t believe we should buy that argument. There are too many imponderables for anyone to predict deficits or surpluses several years ahead with any degree of accuracy. The budget in place when I took office had been projected as balanced. It turned out to have one of the biggest deficits in history. Another example of the imponderables that can make deficit projections highly questionable: A change of only one percentage point in unemployment can alter a deficit up or down by some $25 billion.

As it now stands, our forecasts, which we’re required by law to make, will show major deficits, starting at less than $100 billion and declining, but still too high.

More important, we are making progress with the three keys to reducing deficits: economic growth, lower interest rates and spending control. The policies we have in place will reduce the deficit steadily, surely and, in time, completely.

Higher taxes would not mean lower deficits. If they did, how would we explain tax revenues more than doubled just since 1976, yet in that same six-year period we ran the largest series of deficits in our history. In 1980 tax revenues increased by $54 bil lion, and in 1980 we had one of our all-time biggest deficits.

Raising taxes won’t balance the budget. It will encourage more Government spending and less private investment. Raising taxes will slow economic growth, reduce production and destroy future jobs, making it more difficult for those without jobs to find th em and more likely that those who now have jobs could lose them.

So I will not ask you to try to balance the budget on the backs of the American taxpayers. I will seek no tax increases this year and I have no intention of retreating from our basic program of tax relief. I promised the American people to bring their taxes x rates down and keep them down to provide them incentives to rebuild our economy, to save, to invest in America’s future. I will stand by my word. Tonight I’m urging the American people: Seize these new opportunities to produce, to save, to invest, and t together we’ll make this economy a mighty engine of freedom, hope and prosperity again.

Now the budget deficit this year will exceed our earlier expectations. The recession did that. It lowered revenues and increased costs. To some extent, we’re also victims of our own success. We’ve brought inflation down faster than we thought we could and in doing this we’ve deprived Government of those hidden revenues that occur when inflation pushes people into higher income tax brackets. And the continued high interest rates last year cost the Government about $5 billion more than anticipated.

He didn’t give an inch.

Now the truth of the matter is that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” because he left a much higher deficit than when he came in and Republican presidents continued to create huge deficits ever since then. But what he did do was make “deficits” the boogeyman which Republicans would use as a weapon against any liberal initiatives. And Democrats still go along with it, as if they were all just born that morning and have no idea what came before.

Clinton had the benefit of a major tech boom that helped turn around the deficit, but there’s little reason to believe that’s going to happen again. And even then, he ended up having to put the surpluses in a metaphorical lock box that was raided at the first opportunity by Bush and Cheney as a gift to their benefactors. And then they ran up another deficit as quickly as they possibly could.

Until Democrats take conservative ideology head on, expose its inconsistency and self dealing and then make an affirmative case for liberalism, this little game of Lucy and the political football will continue. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look as though President Obama is going to be the one to do that, even under these strained economic conditions. In fact, he is playing into the worst misapprehensions among the public instead of educating them about what’s at stake and thus failing to prepare to take the credit when (and if) their programs work. For instance, Robert Gibbs said today that the president looks at the government’s budget just like the average family looks at theirs. If that’s true then he’s committing political malpractice and he shouldn’t be president. He needs to be explaining why and how the government is the only entity that can bring this economy back when the private sector is unable to do it. Indeed, its responsibility is to be the economic engine when everything else is going wrong. And 10% unemployment month after month means that something is still going very, very wrong.

Reagan may have proved that deficits don’t matter politically, but Clinton proved that fixing deficits doesn’t matter politically either. They impeached the man over unauthorized fellatio and then ran on tax cuts, stole the election and immediately put the country into debt all over again. The idea that Democrats will get some political benefit from a lot of sharp talk about deficits and “freezes” is a pipe dream. Obama will be hurt by the bad economy and benefit from its revival. But unlike Reagan, he’s tied his own hands on policy leaving him little room to maneuver if the economy stays bad. And when (if) the economy rebounds he will not seen as someone who was courageous for “staying the course” and validating his own liberal beliefs — he will be seen as having acquiesced to the conservative agenda, which will get all the credit. And conversely, liberalism will be discredited even though it did all the heavy lifting. Awesome.

Update: Oh btw, let’s not even whisper a word about the defense budget. In fact, let’s go for a supplemental!

President Obama’s commitment to “honest budgeting” for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is going to take another hit when the Pentagon asks for over $740 billion in defense funding next month.

The administration came in promising not only to curb the drastic rise in military spending since 2001 but also to account for war spending transparently and on budget. Shortly after taking office, the White House requested $537 billion for the Pentagon as well as $128 billion for the wars in 2010, but stated in its budget documents that war funding is expected to go down to $50 billion for each year afterwards.

Well, so much for that. In addition to another $33 billion the administration will ask for in 2010 money to pay for the Afghanistan surge, the White House is seeking $159 billion for war operations in the 2011 budget request, according to this AP story. So the Obama team was only off by about $110 billion.What’s more, the total $708 billion Pentagon request for 2011 would give about $549 billion for regular military operations, the largest total in history. Although to be fair, that’s only about a 2 percent increase, which roughly matches the rate of inflation.

But those numbers are just the starting point of negotiations; Congress will have to weigh in. House defense spending cardinal John Murtha, D-PA, has already said he wants to add billions to the 2010 war funding bill. Because that’s supplemental legislation, all that money is off budget and therefore not paid for.

So has the administration learned its lesson about promising drastic cuts in war funding? Not by a long shot.

“The Pentagon projects that war funding would drop sharply in 2012, to $50 billion, and remain there through 2015,” the AP story states.

Yeah, right. This is part of the perennial shell game by which the administration is required to project out five years worth of funding, but everybody inside the system knows those projections are pretty much meaningless. This was a common tactic in the Bush years.

Now watch this drive …

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