Month: July 2011

Leaving this all behind

by digby

… for a few hours.

I’m heading out for the evening. If they announce a deal, I’m sure I’ll hear the collective “huzzah” from all of you.(I suppose it might be a raspberry … or a groan.)

In any case, if it happens, consider that it could have been worse.

And that in the next round it almost assuredly will be.

Meanwhile, you might enjoy reading this interesting piece in the NYRB:

Walter Bagehot in The English Constitution divided government into two components, the dignified part and the efficient part. The dignified part is concerned with matters of ceremony, the arrangement and conduct of state occasions for celebration or mourning, the issuance of joint communiqués with foreign leaders and commands delivered from a majestic height. The efficient part is the part of government that governs—by making laws above all, but also by striking bargains between factions, and filling the positions of upper, middle, and lower functionaries, and threshing out party platforms on the way to becoming laws.

Barack Obama from the start of his presidency has exhibited an almost exclusive taste for the dignified part of government.

.

.

Counting chickens

by digby

It’s still my feeling that Democrats will end up backing this deal rather than allow Armageddon — one of the points of letting it go down to the wire is to make it very difficult to fall out. But at least one progressive is saying no:
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Representative Raul Grijalva, who heads a group of liberal Democrats in the House of Representatives, said on Sunday that he would not back an emerging debt-ceiling deal crafted by Republican and Democratic leaders.

“This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it,” Grijalva said in a statement. Grijalva heads the 74-member Congressional Progressive Caucus.

I would expect that both sides will be whipping this pretty hard. it will be interesting to see if the progressives fall behind Grijalva or if Boehner has enough votes to cobble together a majority without them. (I suspect not.)

.

Never Satisfied

by digby

Meanwhile on Planet Teabag:

Tea party activists are bracing for disappointment as negotiations on the debt ceiling move closer to a deal, but sending a clear signal to congressional Republicans that they are even less willing to tolerate compromise and more likely to seek retribution against anyone who has not fully supported their agenda.

They are focused in particular on the fate of the concession they extracted from House Speaker John Boehner in order to get his debt ceiling bill through the House last week – a provision making a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution a prerequisite for raising the debt ceiling again that they regarded as a huge victory.

“If the final bill is passed by establishment Republicans and House Democrats and does not include a balanced budget amendment as a requirement, it will be completely unacceptable and will be seen as a violation of the mandate that the tea party and likeminded people gave Republicans in 2010,” said Ryan Hecker, the leader of a crowd-sourced tea party effort called the Contract from America.

“The tea party didn’t help elect Republicans because they liked Republicans. They elected Republicans to give them a second chance. And if they go moderate on this, then they have ruined their second chance, and there will be a real effort to replace them with those who will stand up for economic conservative values,” said Hecker, who helped conservative House Republicans rally support for the amendment.

I think it’s great that these people are calling the shots in the most powerful nation on earth, don’t you agree?

Of course, we have the Concord Coalition upset that they haven’t slashed entitlements up front, so they aren’t the only bozos in town.

.

Midday Update

by digby

ABC:

Sources from both parties tell ABC News that the major potential roadblock in deficit negotiations– the triggers — are now essentially agreed upon. The plan is for the House to vote on this tomorrow, assuming all goes according to plan.

The agreement looks like this: if the super-committee tasked with entitlement and tax reform fails to come up with $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction that passes Congress, the “neutron bomb” goes off, — as one Democrat put it — spending cuts that will hit the Pentagon budget most deeply, as well as Medicare providers (not beneficiaries) and other programs.

If the super-committee comes up with some deficit reduction but not $1.5 trillion, the triggers would make up the difference.

So it’s a minimum $2.7 trillion deficit reduction deal.

And the debt ceiling will be raised by $2.4 trillion in two tranches: $900 billion immediately, and the debt ceiling will be raised by an additional $1.5 trillion next year – either through passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment, which is unlikely, or with Congress voting its disapproval..

Two items still being negotiated:

1) The exact ratio of Pentagon to non-Pentagon cuts in the trigger – Democrats want 50% from the Pentagon, Republicans want less;

2) Democrats want to exempt programs for the poor from the cuts.

Also Democrats say –- if tax reform doesn’t happen through the super-committee, President Obama will veto any extension of Bush tax cuts when they come up at the end of 2012, further creating an incentive for the super-committee to act.

All sides hope this will be enough to convince the markets and ratings agencies that the federal government is serious about deficit reduction -– in order to avoid default.

Well yes. And then “the market” will smoke a cigarette and roll over and go to sleep.

And I thought the president had promised to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy no matter what?

‘Whatever we agree on, we are still going to have plenty to argue about in 2012,'” a senior administration official said, paraphrasing the president. “‘I’ve said I’m not going to renew the tax cuts for the top two percent. We might agree on tax reform or simplification, but on the upper-income tax cuts we are just going to have to agree to disagree.'”

There have been varying reports that the Bush tax cuts were part of discussions, but I haven’t seen them thrown in in exchange for “tax reform”, that fabulous abstraction in which everyone gets lower rates and the government collects more money (and nobody feels a thing.) I had been hearing that the Bush tax cuts expiring would be the big liberal achievement that would make all this worthwhile. Looks like there’s a possibility even that was too optimistic.

Just keep in mind that progressives should want to do all this.

.

.

Winners and losers

by digby

On CNN just a few minutes ago:

Gloria Borger: it looks like the Republicans are getting an awful lot of what they wanted

Wolf Blitzer: The Senate Republicans are going to be on board. Harry Reid’s going to have a lot of Republican support in the Senate.

The problem’s going to be in the House of Representatives where there’s going to be a lot of opposition. There were more than 20 House Rep that voted against the Speaker John Boehner last week. And there are going to be a lot more Republicans voting against any deal this time.

But here is the key difference. Most of the Democrats will vote in favor of what the President supports.

Borger: So the question is going to be what’s the balance? What does the balance have to be between Democrats and Republicans?

Blitzer: Boehner does have 40 moderate Republicans. And it’s interesting. He was meeting with that, what is it called “first Tuesday” group yesterday, the moderate centrists Republicans in the House of Representatives, they will be on board with Mitch McConnell and the president of the United States. But a lot of conservative Republicans won’t.

And normally, the Speaker doesn’t like to have a vote unless he or she is guaranteed more than a majority of his or her own caucus. 50% percent. He might not get it because he’s going to have more than enough Democrats to get this passed.

Borger: And that’s what gives Nancy Pelosi a little bargaining power as the Wall Street Journal pointed out this week, the tea party Republicans are actually giving Nancy pelosit more leverage in cutting a deal because they need her votes now.

Blitzer: They’ll get a lot of Democratic votes to support it. If the president of the United States — he is not only the commander in chief but he’s also the leader of the Democratic Party — if he comes out on television sometime today or tomorrow or whatever and says “this is a good deal, it’s not perfect but it averts default,economic catastrophe for the country, all that entails,” he’ll get a lot of Democrats.

Borger later said that the GOP Senate hawks were likely to complain about ever having to cut defense spending in any way and that the House Republicans will have a good cry over failing to get their balanced budget amendment signed sealed and delivered in time for labor day, so it’s not as if the GOP is getting a good deal.

In the final analysis it’s the way things have to be:

“When you look at the overall picture, we’re starting to put together you could say, ok, the president gets his deal into 2013, which is what he wanted. The House gets promises of substantial budget cuts and Mitch McConnell gets his commission or committee which he wants to absolutely enforce those budget cuts.

Kind of left out of this are the base of the Democratic Party, they’re not going to be happy about budget cuts to programs like Medicare for example. And what about conservative Republicans who don’t want to put defense in this mix even if they get a promise of no revenues?

So you’re right, there’s something for everyone to hate in all this but in the end that’s the only way to get something like this done.

So the President is happy, the spending cutters are happy, the entitlement slashers are happy.The anti-tax folks are happy, but they might gripe if defense is cut at all at some point in the future. And the Democratic base can go fuck itself.

That’s certainly a deal the Village can get behind.

.

The Bad Deal

by digby

“Conservatives are saying it’s imperfect, to which one must say, the Sistine Chapel is probably in some sense imperfect.” George Will

So you’ve probably heard about the Big Deal that’s (surprise!) congealing today, at the very last minute. Plouffe and McConnell and the rest are all over TV this morning talking about it. I’m a little surprised at how shocked people seem to be. I’ts about what I expected: trillions in cuts, no revenue, a Super Commission with a mandate to cut even more and an up or down vote requirement, and a trigger with mandated cuts if that Commission vote fails.It’s pretty much a combination of the worst aspects of all the Republican plans that have been floated.

This is all they still have to fight over:

As noted here, the issue under contention was the design of a so-called “trigger,” — a penalty written into the bill meant to encourage Congress to pass further bipartisan deficit reduction legislation, authored by a new Special Committee, later this year. Here’s what they’ve reportedly come up with, pending approval from Congressional Democrats and Republicans.

From ABC News, the key detail: “The special committee must make recommendations by late November (before Congress’ Thanksgiving recess). If Congress does not approve those cuts by December 23, automatic across-the-board cuts go into effect, including cuts to Defense and Medicare. This ‘trigger’ is designed to force action on the deficit reduction committee’s recommendations by making the alternative painful to both Democrats and Republicans.”

The Medicare cuts would supposedly fall on Medicare providers, not beneficiaries. The trigger would also include a vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment — but no requirement that it be sent off to the states.

So Medicare is definitely on the chopping block. (Medicaid too — that will be part of the other trillions in discretionary spending.)

But this part is just funny:

on CNN, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said the final trigger must include incentives that don’t simply allow Republicans to draw a line in the sand over revenues. “What is the sword over the Republican?” Schumer asked.

Well it has to be equal — the one thing we are certain of, it has to be of equal sharpness and strength. The preference would be some kind of revenues, on wealthy people, on tax loopholes that would be in that. But another alternative, possible, being discussed, no agreement has been reached, would be defense cuts of equal sharpness and magnitude to domestic cuts.

In the past, when the trigger has had significant defense cuts, it’s brought the parties to the table and they’ve come up with a balanced agreement that had both revenues and cuts.

Perhaps he’s right and some mandated defense cuts will be what finally brings the Tea Party around. Sure.

Unfortunately, the trigger means there will be “entitlement cuts” in the next round:

Under the new proposal, if the new legislative body composed of 12 members of both parties doesn’t come up with a bill that cuts at least $1.8 trillion by Thanksgiving, entitlement programs will automatically be slashed.

The Super Congress will be made up of six Democrats and six Republicans from both chambers. Under the reported framework, legislation the new congressional committee writes would be fast-tracked through the regular Congress and could not be filibustered or amended.

The parties are negotiating the outlines of the super panel’s mandate, deciding roughly how much in cuts must come from defense spending, how much from seniors, how much from veterans, etc.

Last weekend, HuffPost reported on the extraordinary powers being delegated to the emerging Super Congress, but beltway media largely reacted by dismissing it as just another Washington commission. On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sought to disabuse anyone listening of that notion.

“Let me emphasize the joint committee,” McConnell said on CNN’s State of the Union. “In the early stages of this discussion, the press was talking about another commission. This is not a commission. This is a powerful, joint committee with a equal number of Republicans and Senate — equal number of Republicans and Democrats, and, to make a recommendation back to the Senate and House by Thanksgiving of this year for an up or down vote. Think of the base closing legislation that we passed a few years ago for an up or down vote in the Senate.”

The sticking point, said McConnell, is that Republicans are insisting on “triggers” that would automatically fire at beneficiaries of Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare if the Super Congress doesn’t act. “The trigger issue has been the one locked us in the extensive discussions. I thought we were very close to an agreement a week ago today, and then went off to our separate corners and had volleys, and now we are back into the position where we will let you know when we agree to something,” said McConnell.

Republicans rejected tax increases as a trigger incentive, and the White House has responded by proposing automatic defense cuts — which should have the consequence of enlisting defense lobbyists to push for entitlement cuts to stave off their own reductions.

For me this isn’t a shocking disappointment. I have felt that this whole process was a disaster from the beginning and it really doesn’t matter to me if the Democrats eke out a couple of concessions about defense cuts or close a few loopholes “in return” for these cuts. That isn’t “shared sacrifice,” it’s asking the poorest, oldest and sickest among us to give up a piece of their meager security in exchange for the wealthy giving up some tip money and the defense industry giving up a couple of points of profit. It’s stripping the nation of necessary educational, safety and environmental protections while the wealthy greedily absorb more and more of the nation’s wealth and the corporations and financial industry gamble with the rest.

The idea that they are even talking about this at a time of nearly 10% official unemployment with the economy looking like it’s going back into recession (if it ever left) makes this debate surreal and bizarre. To cut the safety net and shred discretionary spending in massive numbers at a time like this is mind boggling. That it’s happening under a Democratic President and a Democratic Senate is profoundly depressing.

But it’s happening. And sadly, I still think it will be mostly Democrats who end up voting for it.

And by the way, David Plouffe and The President really, really need to stop saying that progressives should want to do this bullshit. It’s insulting … and blindingly infuriating.

Update: Ezra’s funny this morning:

Next year’s deadline offers Democrats their only chance to negotiate from a superior strategic position. Republicans will still be able to refuse to raise taxes. But if they do, it won’t matter. The only way they can succeed in keeping taxes from rising is if the Obama administration and the Democrats stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them to extend the Bush tax cuts.

Lol. Like that could ever happen.

.

And That Is Why Tom Friedman Is An Idiot

by tristero

Today’s Times:

Watching today’s Republicans being led around by an extremist Tea Party faction, with no adult supervision, I find my mind drifting back to the late 1980s when I was assigned to cover the administration of George H.W. Bush, who I believe is one of our most underrated presidents.

No, Tom, this is one of the most underrated presidents.

What’s that you say? FDR underrated?? FDR who, along with Lincoln and Washington, always tops historians’ lists of our greatest presidents?

Yes, dear friends, FDR is grossly underrated. Otherwise, this country’s politicians wouldn’t be so hellbent on destroying every single program and policy he put into place. Otherwise, we would be extending his incomplete, yet still breathakingly awe-inspiring social legacy instead of enthusiastically dismantling it. Otherwise, he, and not Ronald Reagan, would be cited as an exemplar by leading presidential candidates of all parties. Otherwise, his name would be ready on the tips of every Democrats’ tongue, rather than being held in abeyance and uttered only as a tepid parry to the slings and arrows of the lunatic right that Friedman, far too belatedly, has come to realize play an enormous role in our political discourse.

Bush Senior was a terrible president, Tom. One of countless examples: Friedman,in his article, approves of Bush for not entering Baghdad at the end of Bush/Iraq I. What Friedman fails to mention is that Bush’s incompetent diplomacy was likely a major factor that reinforced Saddam’s decision to invade Kuwait (see bottom of numbered page 54, column 1). Of course, Bush had no right to invade Iraq – had he done his job and appointed a competent diplomatic corps and supervised them properly instead of relying on rigid ideological “realists” (who were anything but realistic), war might have been averted and the awful moral catastrophe of that war’s end, as US troops watched as Saddam slaughtered countless of his own citizens, would never have happened.

Sorry, my dear historian friends, but you are bunk. While you might like FDR, the fact remains that this country offers only a token public nod to his memory and achievements. For not only in the offices of the government but also in the most influential think tanks, in the largest propaganda mills, in the slightly more legitimate “responsible” media, and most importantly, in the minds of at least half of all American voters, FDR is one of the most underrated and undervalued presidents in our history.

Do Not Go Gently Into That Goodnight
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

If you’re well enough informed to be reading Hullabaloo, then you probably already know that a debt ceiling deal is apparently in the works. And it’s bad. Very, very bad.

• $2.8 trillion in deficit reduction with $1 trillion locked in through discretionary spending caps over 10 years and the remainder determined by a so-called super committee.
• The Super Committee must report precise deficit-reduction proposals by Thanksgiving.
• The Super Committee would have to propose $1.8 trillion spending cuts to achieve that amount of deficit reduction over 10 years.
• If the Super Committee fails, Congress must send a balanced-budget amendment to the states for ratification. If that doesn’t happen, across-the-board spending cuts would go into effect and could touch Medicare and defense spending.
• No net new tax revenue would be part of the special committee’s deliberations.

Needless to say, this is a truly horrible deal. $2.8 trillion in cuts to discretionary spending. An unaccountable “super committee” that will probably recommend cuts and “adjustments” to Medicare and Social Security. No new tax revenue of any kind.

It’s hard to imagine how it gets much worse than this. If this deal goes through, it would represent nothing less than a capitulation on the part of the President and the Democratic Senate to economic terrorism on the part of the Republican caucus, and would set a major precedent for more accountability-free hostage taking in the future. Grover Norquist seems pretty happy about it, and why not? The gameplan for drowning the government in the bathtub is obvious from here. It’s clear that the Democrats won’t do a thing to get in the way, because there’s no hostage the Democrats will be willing to shoot–or even threaten to shoot–when the GOP takes one, nor will the media abandon its postmodern “both sides are just as bad” shtick no matter how asinine the GOP becomes.

None of which even touches the fact that the discretionary spending cuts and bipartisan commission to recommend entitlement cuts are right in line with what President Obama has repeatedly said he wanted, anyway. We’re certainly not going to get any help to stand up to this atrocious “compromise” from the President: he actively wants most of what is in it.

The only saving grace here is that some reports suggest that this might be a trial balloon: i.e., that the reaction from the rank-and-file on both sides might affect the ultimate acceptability of the bill. This is true on general principle, of course: the bill would still have to get through Congress, regardless of what Obama, Reid, McConnell and Boehner may have hammered out behind closed doors.

This is ultimately where the rubber meets the road. The only way to stop this “deal” at this point is to lobby Congress to oppose it.

Call (202)224-3121 and ask to speak to (or leave voicemails for) your Representative and Senators–particularly if they’re Democrats. Tell them you don’t want massive cuts to spending that will throw us even deeper into recession even as corporations are making record profits but not hiring Americans.

It may not be much, but it’s worth a shot. It’s certainly more valuable than screaming helplessly into the online ether even as austerity mania consumes the nation alive. Do not go gently into that goodnight.

Double Feature: Cowboys, Aliens, Sinners & Saints

By Dennis Hartley

Very Serious

by digby

Paul Krugman lauds Jonathan Chait’s jeremiad against the “establishment” for using the debt ceiling as an excuse to slash spending. It’s certainly true that they did that and it was obviously a bad decision, which many of them are now regretting.

But this from Chait is nonsense:

When Republicans first proposed tying a debt ceiling hike to a measure to reduce the deficit, President Obama instead proposed a traditional, clean debt ceiling hike. He found this position politically untenable for many reasons, one of them being that deficit scolds insisted that using the debt ceiling to force a fiscal adjustment was a terrific idea, and that connecting the deficit debate to a potentially cataclysmic financial event was the mark of seriousness.

I know it’s unpleasant to think about, but I’m afraid that the President is one of those serious people. It’s true that they came to believe that it was “politically untenable” to hold fast for a clean debt ceiling, but it’s important to acknowledge why that is. Elizabeth Drew reported:

The question arises, aside from Obama’s chronically allowing the Republicans to define the agenda and even the terminology (the pejorative word “Obamacare” is now even used by news broadcasters), why did he so definitively place himself on the side of the deficit reducers at a time when growth and job creation were by far the country’s most urgent needs?

It all goes back to the “shellacking” Obama took in the 2010 elections. The President’s political advisers studied the numbers and concluded that the voters wanted the government to spend less. This was an arguable interpretation. Nevertheless, the political advisers believed that elections are decided by middle-of-the-road independent voters, and this group became the target for determining the policies of the next two years.

That explains a lot about the course the President has been taking this year. The political team’s reading of these voters was that to them, a dollar spent by government to create a job is a dollar wasted. The only thing that carries weight with such swing voters, they decided—in another arguable proposition—is cutting spending. Moreover, like Democrats—and very unlike Republicans—these voters do not consider “compromise” a dirty word.

The President proposed at least two modest plans for stimulus spending, someone familiar with all these deliberations told me, “but he’s not as Keynesian as before.” This person said, “If the political advisers had told him in 2009 that the median voter didn’t like the stimulus, he’d have told them to get lost.” By 2011, in his State of the Union address in January he moved from jobs creation (such as the stimulus program) toward longer-term investment.

The speech Obama gave on April 13 marked his conversion to fiscal centrism; to being the fiscally responsible Democrat. In that speech he stated that he wanted to reduce the debt by $4 trillion—thus aligning himself with the Republicans—but also asked for revenues to partly offset that reduction. It was all about reelection politics, designed to appeal to this same group of independents. “And that’s why,” I was told by the person familiar with the White House deliberations, “he went bigger in the deficit reduction talks; bringing in Social Security is consistent with that slice of the electorate they’re trying to reach.” This person said, “There’s a bit of bass-ackwardness to this; the deficit spending you’d want to focus on right now is the jobs issue.”

And we also know that he came to see this as an opportunity to make his long desired Grand Bargain. How do we know this? Because he told us so, over and over again.

And he and John Boehner worked together for months to get it done:

Only a President, elected to serve all the people, can do certain things — including reach out and lift up a friend or rival into the heady temple of Executive power. “I’m the President of the United States,” Obama told Boehner. “You’re the Speaker of the House. We’re the two most responsible leaders right now.” And so they began to talk about the truly epic possibility of using the threat, the genuine danger of default, to freeze out their respective extremists and make the kind of historic deal that no one really thought possible anymore — bigger than when Reagan and Tip O’Neill overhauled the tax code in 1986 or when Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich passed welfare reform a decade later. It would include deeper cuts in spending, the elimination of all kinds of tax loopholes and lower income tax rates for all. “Come on, you and I,” Boehner admitted telling Obama. “Let’s lock arms, and we’ll jump out of the boat together.”

Perhaps he didn’t originally conceive of the debt ceiling as a good way to force spending cuts, but he sure jumped on the bandwagon with gusto when the other side proposed it. And frankly, considering his early telegraphing of the Grand Bargain as a legacy item and his fetish for big bipartisan compromise, I think it’s fair to speculate that he saw this as the only way to get it done early on.

The White House knew since January that the Republicans were preparing to shake the president down over the debt ceiling. They said it openly. (“It’s a leverage moment for Republicans. The president needs us. There are things we were elected to do. Let’s accomplish those if the president needs us to clean up the old mess.”) If he had truly wanted a clean debt ceiling vote, it wouldn’t have been hard to show that the Republicans were planning to blackmail the country before the President put any of his famous compromises on the table. Just because it didn’t work out the way they planned it doesn’t mean they didn’t want it to.

None of this is to say that the Republicans aren’t completely batshit insane, of course. They’ve proven that they are so batshit insane they won’t take the best deal they’ve ever been offered, and that’s some serious insanity. It’s also true, however, that had the President and the Speaker been allowed to do their backroom deal we might not be facing a global financial meltdown — but the United States would be facing exactly the same policy failure.

.