Month: July 2011

Reduced to whining about hamburgers

by digby

Oh dear God. They really sank this low, did they?

An American has eaten five hamburgers in public? Burn her! Burn the witch!

Americans are all falling over themselves this week patting each other on the back for not being as petty and nasty as the British press. But this just shows how thoroughly idiotic (and petty and nasty) the mainstream American media has become.

Michelle Obama is doing what mothers the world over have been doing since time began: trying to get kids to eat healthy foods. And like mothers the world over, she indulges once in a while and (gasp) lets the kids indulge once in a while too. There is nothing even remotely controversial about this except for the right wing’s irrational hatred for the first lady. That they have to stoop to criticizing her for encouraging children to eat their vegetables and then eating a hamburger just shows how little they have to work with. So little, in fact, that it’s disgusting that a mainstream paper would even mention it.

Ugh.

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Reforming The Reforms

by digby

Finally, some good news for a change:

Cafeteria Keynesianism

by digby

Eric Cantor is giving Tom Delay and Newt Gingrich a run for their money as slimiest Republican congressional leaders in history. He isn’t quite as aggressive as those two, but he has an even worse quality — a lugubrious sanctimony, which only Mike Pence’s furrowed brow and phony compassion rivals for sheer oiliness.

And hypocrisy, needless to say, is his fundamental characteristic. Take this, for example, from Jonathan Cohn at TNR:

According to the Congressional Budget Office, restoring the “Medicaid discount” for low-income seniors could save more than $100 billion over the course of a decade, depending on the structure of the proposal. And, at one point, many health care reformers had hoped to include that proposal as part of what became the Affordable Care Act. The administration and leaders of the Senate Finance Committee agreed not to include the proposal in the final legislation, as part of their infamous deal with the drug industry lobby. But that was a one-time deal, at least in theory, and congressional negotiators are looking seriously at enacting the proposal now.

The problem is lawmakers like Cantor, who oppose the idea. According to the Politico story, written by Matt Dobias, Cantor is making the same argument that the drug industry lobby does: That the proposal would amount to a form of government price controls, retarding economic growth and discouraging innovation.

I just love this cafeteria Keynesianism. We can’t raise taxes because it would hurt the economy at a time of low demand. But we can slash the hell out of spending (as it doesn’t affect a favored industry) because the economy is dragging due to “expectations” and “confidence” not demand.

Cantor is no tea partier and cares nothing for spending and deficits. He is simply a tool of business who seeks to take your tax dollars and give them to the wealthy.Just like all the Republican leaders. I think that if we understand that, we understand his negotiating position much better.

Read the whole article for the sickening details. Like a bad dream, this deficit kabuki dance has morphed into a writhing orgy of deceit and double dealing.

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The Deal To End All Deals

by digby

So the President explained this morning that the most important thing is to “send signals” that we are serious about spending cuts (he didn’t specify who we are sending them to.) Also, it would be better if millionaires have to “sacrifice” what amounts to tip money so that old and sick people will feel better about living in even worse poverty than they already do. (This would seem to be what’s become of the Grand Bargain) And finally, progressives should support this “deal to end all deals” because if we cut spending to fix the deficit then we’ll be able to start spending again on all the things we really care about. (He didn’t say anything about “birth pangs” of a brave new world, but I did have to step out for minute so I might have missed it.)

Judging from my twitter feed, many liberals are soothed by this message so I’d guess he’s looking at a winning formula. I do have to wonder how the president is going to slip enough Ecstasy into the GOP water cooler to make them cooperate with that wonderful plan.

I’ve been rooting for McConnell for the past couple of days, but it looks like the Democrats have decided to screw that up too. Here’s Greg Sargent:

Larry Kudlow, who’s plugged in with Congressional Republicans, scoops a key new detail about the emerging Mitch McConnell proposal to transfer control of the debt ceiling to the president:

McConnell is negotiating now with Sen. Harry Reid for a large-scale package that will allow the debt ceiling to rise unless overturned by a two-thirds vote. If a White House debt-ceiling deal comes through with $1.5 trillion of spending cuts, that will be part of the package. Right now, it’s not completed because enforceable spending caps have not been determined.

The key part of the new McConnell package is a joint committee to review entitlements in a massive deficit-reduction package. Unlike the Bowles-Simpson commission, this committee will be mandated to have a legislative outcome — an actual vote — that will occur early next year. No White House members. Evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. No outsiders. This will be the first time such a study would have an expedited procedure mandated with no amendments permitted. Also, tax reform could be air-dropped into this committee’s report.

A source with knowledge of the emerging proposal confirms to me that while nothing has been finalized, this is where the discussions are headed.

I’m afraid that the one thing everyone seems to agree on is that grandma must pay, come what may.

And the sad thing is that because Democrats have a right wing opposition party that’s batshit insane it means that they can run as Ronald Reagan and people feel they have no choice but to vote for them anyway. It must be so liberating for politicians not to have to worry about the effects of their policies on real people.

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Do something

by digby

These debt ceiling negotiations are driving all of us crazy. But it might help to take some action. Here’s one thing you can do tomorrow, sponsored by the Social Security Works group:

It can’t hurt.

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“Do you like gladiator movies, Joey?”

by digby

They can’t help it. Remember this?

The analogy between the war on terror and the death struggle of ancient Greece with Persia has not been lost on some high administration officials either, especially Vice President Dick Cheney. (A White House spokesman declined to comment about the film.) In the months after 9/11, a classics scholar named Victor Davis Hanson wrote a series of powerful pieces for the National Review Online, later collected and published as a book, “An Autumn of War.” Moved by Hanson’s evocative essays, Cheney invited Hanson to dine with him and talk about the wars the Greeks waged against the Asian hordes, in defense of justice and reason, two and a half millennia ago.

And this?

The mind set reflected in the reviews of “300” suggest that the reviewers, with their apparent discomfort with the open expression of defiant aggression expressed in the movie, are too sophisticated to partake, even vicariously, in the Spartan heroics. It is unclear whether the pacifist left would ever fight, even to save themselves, let alone to save the civilization that they cannot imagine is under siege. If the sophisticates of Athens had refused to pick up the sword, they would have been dead or enslaved. Our modern day sophisticated Athenians of the MSM who refuse to wield their weapons, their pens and computers, in the service of Western Civilization, have already shown their willingness to live as slaves. After all, what did the Danish cartoon saga tell us except that the members of the elites in Academia, Hollywood, and the MSM are willing to offer up their free speech rights in obeisance to the barbarians at the gates.

“300” resonates because Americans have not yet shown themselves so willing to live as slaves as their “betters” in the effete elites.

They do love their gladiator movies.

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Making the hard choices

by digby

Let that debt ceiling collapse on top of everyone. It’s no biggie. Really.

Three Republican lawmakers on Wednesday introduced a bill urging the White House to prioritize who gets paid first if Washington fails to raise the debt ceiling by the Aug. 2 deadline set by the Obama administration.
[…]
The task of determining what is a luxury and what is an essential payment is a difficult one. The bill introduced Wednesday by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, sets two top-tier priorities — the proposal would mandate the government take care of its debt payments and military salaries before anything else.

“There’s money that comes in, there’s revenue that comes in. … And of that, we want to make sure that we keep our promises,” King said. “We pay our military first because they’re the ones that protect the security and the liberty of the American people. … Their lives are on the line.”

That makes sense to me. What else do Republicans really care about but war and bond holders?

Actually, they assume Social Security payments will go out. And Medicare. And Medicaid and well …

“We’re just calling on the president to assume the role of CEO and prioritize accordingly,” Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR) said at a press conference on the issue. Participants repeatedly accused Obama of trying to “scare seniors” by suggesting Social Security payments might be suspended in the wake of a default crisis.

One reporter shouted a question as to whether things like, say, keeping criminals in federal prisons or securing the border might also be added to the list.

“They’re all priorities,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX). “As our colleagues here have said, we need to keep our promises and the money is there to do that.”

But where will the immediate 44% cut in overall spending needed to avoid default come from instead? Michele Bachmann, who has gone so far as to demand the debt ceiling never be raised, dodged questions on the issue Wednesday by simply repeating her assertion that Social Security and troop pay be left sacrosanct.

Asked by TPM about what areas might need to be cut offset their proposed guarantees, Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) offered a similar response, repeating that Social Security, Medicare, military pay, and veterans’ benefits should all be off limits. Pressed to name any savings — furloughing federal employees, shutting down various agencies — that might be preferable, she said her focus was only on calling out Obama’s threats.

“We’re not targeting any of those things,” she said. “We’re not scheming on the House side to somehow have a menu of things that are going to happen when the inevitable denouement occurs.”

I think they really believe that the government has a bunch of thousand dollar bills in a vault that they can put in envelopes and mail out to the most deserving creditors. And then they can call up one of those credit bureaus and ask them to work out a repayment deal at 50 cents on the dollar for the rest. After all, the government is just like an average American household.

If you want to decide for yourself what should be paid, click here for an interactive tool that let’s you decide which debts the government should honor. It’s exciting fun for the whole family!

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Factoid of the day

by digby

From the latest Quinnipiac poll:

What do you think is more important, reducing the federal budget deficit or reducing unemployment?

Reducing deficit 32
Reducing unemployment 62

I’ll be very anxious to hear the plan for doing that once the deficit (and stimulus) are “off the table.” Maybe we could get Rick Perry to hold one of those prayer sessions.

*Should note that the poll also show more support for the President on the deficit negotiations than the Republicans. That’s means nothing to me since the president’s policy proposals are what I might have expected to come from Newt Gingrich in 1997, but I’m sure the campaign is pleased. It fits quite nicely with their electoral strategy.

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Corrupt reformers

by digby

Supposing you really hate Democrats right now. I know a lot of you do. But if it ever occurs to you to think that Republicans might actually do a better job at “reforming” the system, consider this:

The House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the government commission that was supposed to figure out the cause of the the financial crisis appears to have backfired on the Republicans who lead the committee.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and his investigators had been looking into the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission because, Issa said, it went over budget and commissioners and staffers “may have conflicts of interest created by their previous roles in the public and private sectors.”

Issa said he was troubled by “extensive ties of some of the senior staff at a putatively bipartisan commission to partisan Democrat politics” and said the FCIC “served as nothing more than a cheering section for the Administration and congressional Democrats in their efforts to defend a partisan and ineffective financial regulatory reform bill.”

Instead, the documents reviewed by congressional investigators, according to the Democrats’ report on that matter, reveal that Republican commissioners and staffers were improperly sharing the FCIC’s work with outside parties. Dems also say that emails show that one Republican commissioner was trying to use his position on the commission to bolster the GOP’s chances of repealing financial services reform.

Yes, the Democrats are hardly progressive heroes of principle and integrity, to say the least. But there is nothing more fundamentally bankrupt than the GOP. Only people who are intellectually deficient and/or morally putrid could shamelessly flaunt their corruption the way these people do. It may only be a difference of degree, but it’s an important one.

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John and Barack have drinks in the clubhouse

by digby

Time is featuring an insider “narrative” of the negotiating relationship between Boehner and Obama over deficits. Who knows who is the source here and who it’s serving, but it’s an interesting story if only for the way it evokes cherished Village nostalgia for the day of Tip ‘n Ronnie.(If this keeps up I’m dying my hair blue and getting out the old GoGos LPs. If somebody offers up some Peruvian marching powder, I’m in, even if it gives me a heart attack.)

In April the two men averted a government shutdown with just one hour to spare, crafting a $1 trillion stopgap spending bill for the rest of the year that included $38.5 billion in cuts. Boehner was a skilled and patient negotiator, holding up the White House day after day until he got closer to the deal he wanted. But when it turned out later that there were nearly as many bookkeeping gimmicks as real cuts in the deal, Boehner’s freshman class lost some faith in his ability to deliver on their demands.

The two men kept at it. They had little choice: to do nothing was to risk another financial crisis, brought on by rising interest rates, a possible credit downgrade and a potential run on money-market funds. All along Pennsylvania Avenue there were whisperings about finally getting serious, showing the world that America could get her house in order.

Actually they certainly could have done nothing — or rather just raised the debt ceiling as they’ve done every other time, but it’s pretty clear that they both felt this was an opportunity to get significant spending cuts passed under pressure.

But I digress.

This timeline is instructive:

On April 13, Obama called on Congress to cut $4 trillion from the budget over 12 years. Though this was smaller than a plan to cut $6.2 trillion over 10 years, offered by Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, it was nonetheless an astonishingly large number for a Democrat.

Then Boehner went to Wall Street and gave a fiery speech, saying Congress would raise the debt ceiling through 2012 but only if the White House agreed to offset the increase — to the tune of $2.4 trillion in spending cuts. This was genuine hardball: Republicans would hold the full faith and credit of the U.S. hostage to deeper cuts in federal spending. But it held the kernel of a deal. Instead of knocking down this offer, the White House was noticeably quiet.

The official Let’s Make a Deal competition moved to Blair House, where both parties sent delegations in May to work out a compromise. The goals of this group, run by Vice President Joe Biden, were not modest: they would work out areas of potential agreement, looking at all government spending and tax loopholes. It was easy to get to $1 trillion; $2 trillion was much harder, especially since neither side came to the meetings united. The Democrats were acting like classically disorganized Democrats, one observer remarked later, “and the Republicans were acting like Democrats too.”

But the leaders, meanwhile, were acting like leaders. 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.”

After a round of golf at Andrews Air Force Base in mid-June, they retired to the clubhouse for drinks. Obama asked Boehner how they should get the deal done. They agreed to begin meeting together at the White House, alone, without aides. They would keep the talks private.

The first meeting came four days later, when Obama hosted Boehner on the Truman Balcony. They met again on July 3 on the President’s Patio. The next day, as thousands of military families gathered on the South Lawn to watch the fireworks, Obama slipped away to call Boehner. They were now talking once a day or once every two days. When they spoke again on July 6, they were aiming for a $4.5 trillion down payment on the debt — much bigger than either side was discussing in public. Democrats would have to accept hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to cherished entitlement programs like Medicare; Republicans would agree to close gaping holes in the tax code; both sides would work together to pass a separate measure to flatten tax rates by the end of the year (a plan that meant that taxes on the wealthiest Americans would go up). Obama was willing to consider slowing the rate of cost-of-living increases for Social Security as well. Both parties would have to swallow hard, but it was the grand compromise that had eluded Washington for two decades.

Both parties would have to swallow hard? Closing “loopholes” and agreeing to raise taxes on millionaires later vs cutting the hell out of programs for the poor and the middle class? Wow. That’s quite “painful” compromise. For average Americans anyway.
I had been predicting that JohnNBarack had a meeting of the minds on all this. Seemed pretty obvious. And apparently they did, in a big way.

According to this telling the freshmen Teapartiers balked and insisted on all spending cuts and the liberals balked at cutting Social Security. And so the Grand Bargain unraveled. I’m not so sure. I would think that both Boehner and Obama are a little bit more savvy than that and understood that the rank and file were going to have to have some play. A four trillion dollar backroom deal — forced to pass under the gun — is a bit of a reach even for these egos.

Of course it’s possible that these two “statesmen” really believed they could go to their respective caucuses with a deal to slash spending on entitlements and raise taxes and they’d go along because they all wanted to do something “big.” But let’s just say this narrative is a little self-serving. If I had to guess, they’ve always expected around 2 trillion in cuts and were just hoping for some band-aid they can call revenue to paper over the one-sided nature of the deal. And that’s the sticking point.

One more time, here’s Cantor last January:

“Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) delivered a stern message that the debt ceiling will eventually have to be raised to keep the government from defaulting. But he also promised that Republicans will ‘use the leverage’ they have to enact at least some of their spending-reduction goals. ‘It’s a leverage moment for Republicans,’ Cantor said in an interview Friday. ‘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.'”

Maybe he’s gone completely nuts since then. But maybe not.

The President has been very, very obvious that he wants these cuts and it’s clear that he wants them even more than they do. (That’s such a disorienting thing to write…) But it means they have even more leverage than they had when they were just threatening to default — they are in a position to deny what he sees as a big policy victory. Why wouldn’t they hold out until the very last minute for whatever they can get?

I still think Boehner can provide 75 votes or so for the Democrats to pass these huge cuts in the 1.5 to 2 trillion range. Where the Republicans really screwed up is in failing to take that 4 trillion dollar deal when it was offered. I think Obama and the Dem leadership probably STILL would have been able to strong arm enough Democrats into passing it — it’s not like they’ve ever held tough before. And the GOP would have had the first substantial bipartisan cuts in the safety net ever. Fools. (But hey, maybe they can still pull it off. It ain’t over til it’s over.)

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