Month: August 2011

Good news: the Raw Deal didn’t actually eliminate congress

by digby

Oh my God this is lame:

Baselines and Balance

Posted by Gene Sperling on August 01, 2011 at 04:07 PM EDT

The budget deal sets the stage for balanced deficit reduction. It immediately makes a down payment on deficit reduction of more than $900 billion by limiting discretionary spending and sets up a new Joint Congressional Committee charged with recommending $1.5 trillion in additional deficit reduction by the end of the year. As the President has said, that deficit reduction should be balanced and cut tax loopholes and expenditures just like it cuts traditional spending.

There are now reports that this Joint Committee won’t be able to raise revenue at all because of the way the budget deal is drafted. That is simply wrong.

The Joint Committee is tasked with deficit reduction, and the Committee can reduce the deficit by cutting spending and getting rid of tax loopholes and expenditures. Everything is on the table, as it should be.

First, the Committee can consider getting rid of tax expenditures like subsidies for oil and gas companies or corporate jet owners. These types of tax changes have been a major part of the recent deficit reduction conversation and would be a smart part of an overall balanced plan. No one on any side can dispute that the Joint Committee could consider them.

Second, the Committee can consider the kind of revenue raising tax reform that has broad and growing bipartisan support.

The argument against this second claim is based on a misrepresentation of what is called “the baseline.” The “baseline” is what deficit reduction is measured against. Reports have suggested that the Committee would have to use a “current law” baseline—a baseline that assumes that all of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire along with relief from the Alternative Minimum tax. That would mean that any tax reform effort that raised less revenue than allowing all those tax cuts to expire would be scored as increasing the deficit. Even conservative Republican proposals for “revenue neutral” tax reform would be scored under this approach as increasing the deficit by more than $3 trillion.

However the claim that the Committee is required to follow this approach is simply false.

The Budget legislation specifically calls for deficit reduction – not simply spending cuts – and does not anywhere require the Committee to work off a current law baseline. Nor does it preclude the Committee from requesting CBO estimates based on alternative baselines and using those estimates for purposes of the certifying the deficit reduction achieved in the Committee.

In fact, Congressional requests to CBO to score proposals off different baselines happen as a matter of course. For example, at the request of members of Congress, CBO scored the deal being considered today using two different baselines. Or, to take another example—Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, requested that CBO score his budget “Roadmap” against an “alternative fiscal scenario,” which assumed extension of the tax cuts described above. As CBO said in response to Chairman Ryan: “As you requested, the analysis in this letter compares the Roadmap with the alternative fiscal scenario.” Relative to that baseline, tax reform—like that proposed by the bipartisan Fiscal Commission and Gang of Six—would reduce the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars.

The bottom line is that the Joint Committee can reduce the deficit through tax reform and eliminating tax expenditures just like it can cut spending. What it ultimately does is up to the members of that Committee. We hope that they seize this an opportunity to come together and build on the down-payment in this deal to put the Nation on a sustainable fiscal course in a balanced way that cuts spending in the tax code as well in the rest of the budget. The President believes that is possible and looks forward to working with both parties to accomplish this.

Yeah, we look forward to that too.

I suppose there must be people out there who are claiming that revenues will not be allowed under the deal even if I haven’t seen them. There are wonkish articles all over the internet saying all kinds of things today. But the real problem for most of us is that revenues aren’t automatically required as part of the fail-safe “trigger” if the debt commission comes up with some hideously regressive deal that only Republicans can love. This spin may be addressing someone’s concern but it sure as hell isn’t addressing the one that most people have.

Yes, you’ll be glad to know that the congress still has the right to raise revenue if it chooses to do so. The deal didn’t actually repeal the constitution, so that’s good. But the idea that they will be able to raise revenue is just a little bit of a long shot don’t you think, considering what we just saw unfold over the past few months? Are they going to be telling the public that the plan is to rely on the good faith negotiators in the GOP? Really?

I think the White House should just chill and stop trying to sell this to liberals. They aren’t all that good at understanding the true nature of the criticism and I think they’re making it worse.

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Goldilocks Realignment

by digby

I’m enjoying watching the cable spokesmodels blaming “the extremes on both sides” for making it so difficult for their parties to do the hard work of governing. The Tea Party and the dirty hippies are both making it impossible for the good people in the center — Real Americans, just like the Villagers — to solve the nation’s problems.

There is some good news in that, believe it or not. This may be the first time I’ve ever seen the right wing extremists not portrayed as the Real Americans too. It’s a baby step but a step. But it also means that Grover Norquist is now positioned exactly in the center of American politics. Here’s what he sent out today:

All political activists must wear bifocals so they can keep an eye on the present battle and also focus on the long run.

The agreement today between President Obama and the Republicans in Congress to allow an increase in the debt ceiling of $2.4 trillion in return for reductions in Obama’s planned spending by $2.417 trillion over the next decade, and no tax increases, is a victory for Reagan Republicans in the present struggle, but an even more important victory over the long run.

Obama wanted a debt ceiling increase without conditions. He got a boatload of conditions.

Obama wanted tax increases (a phrase his handlers never allow him to say out loud; they prefer “revenues” as if they fell from the sky) and the deal has no tax increases at all. The deal does create a bipartisan congressional committee that will look at ways to further decrease our debt. Although it is possible that the committee’s 12 members — six Republicans and six Democrats — will recommend a tax hike, it would require a vote by both the House and the Senate to become law, just like any legislation. There is, however, zero chance the Republican House would pass a tax hike in an election year. Remember, 234 Republican members of the House of Representatives have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge.

Speaker Boehner explained slowly and patiently for six months that any debt ceiling hike of $2.5 trillion would be required to have at least $2.5 trillion in spending reductions in the same bill. There is more spending restraint than debt ceiling increase.

Obama also wanted one vote on raising the debt ceiling between now and the coincidentally chosen date of November 2011. Instead, we will revisit the debt ceiling/budget cut debate in a few months, with the threat of a “default” removed and replaced by the “threat” of across-the-board spending cuts if the committee cannot find cuts that Congress wishes to enact.

All well and good for limited-government conservatives in the present and short run.

But the power of the agreement is in the precedents it sets.

First, never again will we have to listen to all the smart people in the permanent Washington establishment tell us that any “budget deal” has to have both tax hikes and spending restraint. The ghosts of 1982 and 1990 are finally laid to rest. The 1982 and 1990 tax hike and spending cut deals delivered very real and very permanent tax hikes and no spending reduction. Spending actually increased over the baseline after each “agreement.” Why? Because once the Democrats saw the Republicans were stupid enough to put tax hikes on the table, the spending cuts once on the table began to melt away to nothingness.

Second, there is a new rule in town. The Boehner Rule: Any increase in the debt ceiling will require a reduction in federal spending by the same amount of the debt ceiling increase. This new rule will apply to a President Romney or Perry as well as to President Obama. We now have a new tool to keep spending down. One with teeth.

Third, the power of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge signed by 234 GOP congressmen and 40 GOP senators and more generally the Republican brand as the party that will not raise taxes has been tested under real battle conditions and survived and thrived.

Not a bad day’s work.

Indeed.

But lest anyone think that Grover is extreme in his views, we now have this hallucinatory screed from Tea Party Nation leader, Judson Phillips:

Not only does the Tea Party not want any credit for this disaster, we do not want to be a part of it. This plan does nothing to cut spending this year. It does nothing but fund the easy, endless expansion of government. It takes our debt to record crushing levels and it opens the door, through the use of a commission to crushing new taxes.

This is a complete surrender and by early next year, Obama will have his dream of transforming America from a low tax, free market economy, to a high tax, welfare state, socialist economy. And the whole time, the GOP is aiding and abetting the Obama, Pelosi, Reid axis of fiscal evil and committing political suicide at the same time.

We must act.

The Tea Partiers are too hot. The dirty hippies are too cold. And Grover “Goldilocks” Norquist is juuuuust right.

And look who’s going to be drowned in Grover’s bathtub:

President Barack Obama and Republicans sealed a deal Sunday to avoid the nation’s first financial default and raise the debt limit while slashing more than $2 trillion from federal spending over a decade. Obama said that, if enacted, the agreement would mean “the lowest level of domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was president” more than half a century ago.

While the details of the spending cuts to states remain unclear, lawmakers from both parties have discussed the need to cut or impose caps on so-called discretionary spending over the next decade.

That could mean wide-ranging cuts in federal aid to states, affecting everything from the Head Start school readiness program, Meals on Wheels and worker training initiatives to funding for transit agencies and education grants that serve disabled children…

States already have closed nearly $480 billion in budget gaps since the beginning of the recession, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In Connecticut, for example, officials have struggled to cover a $3.3 billion deficit, accounting for more than 16 percent of the state’s main budget account.

About 19 percent of the state’s non-transportation revenue comes from the federal government.

“The timing is lousy in every respect,” said Benjamin Barnes, secretary of the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management. “It will certainly have a recessionary impact on the overall national economy, and that’s the last thing we want right now.”

All in a days work!

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Hangover

by digby

This morning’s hangover is worse than expected so bear with me. The good news is that we can finally stop talking about the debt ceiling and start talking about jobs. There’s nothing we can do about that now, but maybe something will magically happen if we just say the word a lot.

The deal is the deal, not particularly surprising to me, preordained from the moment it was decided to negotiate around the debt ceiling.(Dday has the rundown on the deal.) It’s been my opinion from the beginning that the White House was aware that the Republicans were going to “leverage” the debt ceiling so a better negotiating stance would have been to hold fast to a clean vote, working the public PR angle hard the whole way (and wielding his other options.) At the very least I think the numbers would have been less onerous in the end if they made a last minute deal than the one they got after validating all these big numbers and putting “entitlements” on the table in earlier negotiations. The one thing you know about the Republicans is that if you give them an inch they’ll take a mile.

And who knows? Perhaps a sustained campaign to paint the GOP as obstructionist and dangerous to the economy would have rallied the American people. Certainly, one might have expected somebody somewhere to have made the case that jobs are the priority and these cuts would make thing even worse. But I suspect the decision was made early on on both sides to use the threat of Armageddon as a whipped to get the votes for the Grand Bargain, which makes this comment from last December look a bit different than it did at the time:

Q Mr. President, thank you. How do these negotiations affect negotiations or talks with Republicans about raising the debt limit? Because it would seem that they have a significant amount of leverage over the White House now, going in. Was there ever any attempt by the White House to include raising the debt limit as a part of this package?

THE PRESIDENT: When you say it would seem they’ll have a significant amount of leverage over the White House, what do you mean?

Q Just in the sense that they’ll say essentially we’re not going to raise the — we’re not going to agree to it unless the White House is able to or willing to agree to significant spending cuts across the board that probably go deeper and further than what you’re willing to do. I mean, what leverage would you have –

THE PRESIDENT: Look, here’s my expectation — and I’ll take John Boehner at his word — that nobody, Democrat or Republican, is willing to see the full faith and credit of the United States government collapse, that that would not be a good thing to happen. And so I think that there will be significant discussions about the debt limit vote. That’s something that nobody ever likes to vote on. But once John Boehner is sworn in as Speaker, then he’s going to have responsibilities to govern. You can’t just stand on the sidelines and be a bomb thrower.

And so my expectation is, is that we will have tough negotiations around the budget, but that ultimately we can arrive at a position that is keeping the government open, keeping Social Security checks going out, keeping veterans services being provided, but at the same time is prudent when it comes to taxpayer dollars.

Meanwhile, somebody must take the blame for this debacle and I’m guessing it’s going to be the usual suspects.
Jared Bernstein:

This was an ugly debate where reckless ideologues got the better of the grown-ups in the room who were not willing to risk the economy to protect the government.

But before you go blaming the grown-ups, and I totally agree they’re terrible negotiators, understand that the grown-ups had virtually no-one behind them. Sure, there was me and Jon Cohn and Ezra and a bunch of others who tried to explain the stakes, but as usual, we were marching in front of a parade with few behind us.

If too many Americans don’t believe in or understand what government does to help them, to offset recessions, to protect their security in retirement and in hard times, to maintain the infrastructure, to provide educational opportunities and health care decent enough to offset the disadvantages so many are born with…if those functions are unknown, underfunded, and/or carried out poorly, why should they care about how much this deal or the next one cuts?

Those of us who do care about the above will not defeat those who strive to get rid of it all by becoming better tacticians. We will only find success when a majority of Americans agrees with us that government is something worth fighting for.

I would suggest that the one person who most Americans see and hear speaking on this subject — the President of the United States — might step up on that one but he’s not much of a speaker so it’s probably for the best.

Not that I think Bernstein is saying this, but I have read quite a few emails, tweets and comments this morning explaining that this is really the fault of the left and the progressive movement for failing to rally the people. (Evidently, we devote ourselves to masturbatory blogging instead of organizing the masses, so we have no one to blame but ourselves.)Had “the movement” spent the last two years doing …something … then Obama would have had the backing he needed to get a better deal, but because we are so ineffectual and counterproductive, he simply had no choice but to do what he did. Evidently, the presidency is a powerless office but bloggers can change the world.

There is some merit to the idea that the progressive movement derailed itself for a time in the winter of 2007/2008, but this latest swipe leaves me wondering just how much the Democratic party establishment would like to have a Tea Party of their very own?

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The Murderer’s Muse

by digby

I’ve been so caught up in the debt ceiling crapola that I missed the exposure of Pamela Atlas’ exposure as a muse for the Norweigian terrorist. All the details are in this Alternet article.

But get a load of this:

In a post defending herself yesterday, Geller — who has called Obama “President Jihad” and claimed that Arab language classes are a plot to subvert the United States — reached a new low. Geller justifies Breivik’s attack on the Norwegian Labour Party summer youth camp because she says the camp is part of an anti-Israel “indoctrination training center.” She says the victims would have grown up to become “future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole.”

To get her point across, Geller posts a picture of the youth camp children Breivik targeted. The picture was taken on the Utøya island camp about 24 hours before Breivik killed over 30 children, so it is likely Geller is mocking many of the victims. Under the picture, Geller writes: “Note the faces which are more MIddle [sic] Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian.”

She can scrub her web-site, but not her mind. She’s is truly one of the most horrible people in America, right up there with David Duke and Tim McVeigh for sheer evil. I’m not surprised that she was an inspirational figure to a mass murderer.

Update: Up from the comments:

P. Geller DID NOT WRITE THOSE WORDS. She was posting a post from ANOTHER blog, it was the author of THAT blog, that said those words, not her. It’s not easy to realise, but you WILL notice that she links to the original post. Easy to miss but nonetheless, you’re wrong and should point out the Altnet quote is false, in regard to the “note the faces” point.

Update II: I was wrong to compare Geller to Tim McVeigh and I apologize for doing it. She has personally committed no violence and can’t stand next to him for sheer evil. I do think the genocidal rants on her blog are worthy of condemnation and since she wrote them and featured those of others, she does bear responsibility for them. Trying to go back and change them after the fact, however, shows that she has a conscience so evil is too strong.

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To Fight or Not to Fight
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

This New York Times editorial has the definitive take on the austerity “deal” being forced on the country. The whole thing is worth a read, but perhaps the most salient point is this:

President Obama could have been more adamant in dealing with Republicans, perhaps threatening to use constitutional powers to ignore the debt ceiling if Congress abrogated its responsibility to raise it. But this episode demonstrates the effectiveness of extortion. Reasonable people are forced to give in to those willing to endanger the national interest.

When faced with an opposition willing to use lies, extortion and terrorism to achieve its goals, there are two possible responses. The first is equal and opposite aggression: to give as good as you get. But the second is to remain open-handed and and assume that by being the adult, turning the other cheek and giving way to your opponent even if only temporarily, you will seize the moral high ground and let the opponent’s own momentum carry him over to his own destruction.

That is the essence of what can be loosely characterized as “Eastern” wisdom, a very Taoist or Buddhist approach. In the Christian tradition, this sort of counsel can be found throughout the Book of Matthew. In a more secular vein, it could be called the Atticus Finch approach. Insofar as one gives Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt, he almost surely sees himself as Atticus Finch refusing to punch back even as the villain spits in his face.

The analogy is imperfect at best, of course. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus is the only one in town to stand up to pervasive injustice, and is reviled for his trouble. In today’s political climate, he would best be likened to a Bernie Sanders than a Barack Obama. But that having been said, the key point here is the response to intractable hatred, violence and terrorism. The character of Atticus Finch is celebrated in progressive circles precisely because he does not punch back, even when a man lies in his courtroom, incites racism to defeat him in trial, gets his client killed, and then spits right in his face. We celebrate Atticus for not giving into the temptation of the same righteous anger we all feel in that scene, the desire to do copious physical harm to the transgressor, to give him as good as he gave and then some.

In foreign policy, it is likewise the progressive instinct to prove the superiority of our values by refusing to debase ourselves even in the face of mass terrorism perpetrated by fundamentalist extremists, whether it be Al Qaeda or Anders Breivik. It is our instinct to refuse to be goaded into retaliatory war, or the passive-aggressive crouch of a national security state. It is our instinct, in other words, to react to terrorism by taking reasonable preventive measures and targeted efforts to bring individual perpetrators to justice, but on a broader level to soften anger towards us as a society by proving that we remain undaunted by violent attempts to goad us into an eternal clash of civilizations.

It is not our instinct to take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It is not our instinct to play by the rules of “The Chicago Way”, where an act of aggression by an opponent is responded to with an act of equal or greater retaliation by your own side:

Many on the Left tend to feel deeply uncomfortable with that kind of approach. Ironically, “progressives” tend to idolize not the great 19th and early 20th century firebrands who were the namesake of the movement, but rather advocates of non-violent resistance.
FDR’s great Madison Square Garden speech welcoming the hatred of the forces of big business strikes many self-avowed progressives as jarring and not in keeping with their values: not because they necessarily support big business, but because they instinctively recoil at such a strident, deeply aggressive approach to one’s opposition. Listen to FDR once more, and see if you too do not cringe even ever so slightly at the brazenness of the man’s rhetoric.

It should come as no surprise that modern Democrats lack the will to fight on equal terms with the uncompromising terrorists of the Right. It should come as no surprise that Barack Obama continues to have the support of most of the Democratic base even as he gives away the store.

Go to any convention of progressives, and you’re far likelier to see images of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi than either Teddy or Franklin Delano Roosevelt. To most Democrats and progressives, Barack Obama is simply following along in their tradition of passive resistance and refusal to play by their terms.

The key challenge for the progressive movement is to decide just how far down that road we will travel before enough is enough, before the Eastern Tao gives ground to the Chicago Way, and before even Atticus Finch decides he has no choice but to finally punch back.

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Trigger Happy
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

As the default deadline approaches in two short days, the scrambling in Washington continues. The deal reportedly on the table involves $900 billion in cuts, followed by a Super Committee tasked with figuring out $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction–probably through a mix of mostly cuts but some revenues, at the discretion of the Super Committee.

That general outline seems to be the basis of every plan under discussion. The key negotiating point right now seems to be the so-called “trigger”: namely, what happens if the Super Committee doesn’t come to an agreement on the $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction, and/or Congress refuses to pass the Super Committee’s recommendations. The “trigger” is designed to be very painful to both sides should they not agree to the Super Committee’s suggestions. And what is that trigger as it stands now?

If the committee fails to reach $1.2 trillion, it will trigger an automatic across the board spending cut, half from domestic spending, half from defense spending, of $1.5 trillion. The domestic cuts come from Medicare providers, but Medicaid and Social Security would be exempted. The enforcement mechanism carves out programs that help the poor and veterans as well.

Basically, the trigger is designed to have Democrats wail about Medicare cuts, and Republicans wail about defense cuts. As anyone with an ounce of sense knows, however, Republicans will insist on taking more hostages when it comes time to approve the Super Committee’s recommendations, and they will be just as intransigent against any revenue increases in the Super Committee’s recommendations as they were to the revenue increases in the current fight. That is why Boehner is actively trying to scuttle the defense cuts in the trigger currently on the table.

But keep in mind that the Tea Party types that have given Boehner such headaches aren’t actually all that scared of defense cuts. Many of them believe in cutting all government spending, military spending not excepted. These people hate every government program FDR used to pull us out of the Great Depression, including the massive government spending jobs program that was World War II. Which means that a great portion of Bachmann’s House and Demint’s Senate will happily take Pentagon spending hostage as a way to extract even more tax and spending cuts.

That is why John Kerry said yesterday that revenue increases must be part of the trigger, since taxes are the only thing that scare Republicans enough to actually let a hostage live:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) isn’t saying why both sides aren’t any closer to a debt deal after a day filled with feverish negotiations Saturday, but Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) spelled it out during a floor speech Saturday night. …

“You do not just cut, you also have to have the possibility of revenue,” he said. “Because if you do not have the possibility of revenue, then the side that only wants to cut can wait for nothing to happen and the cuts take place automatically. There is no threat to them. There is no leverage for them to come to agreement on the other things.”

So far, the “or else” has focused on a trigger that would slash spending across the board — including for entitlement programs like Medicare, a near-sacred program for Democrats, as well as to defense spending, which Republicans historically have sought to protect. One of the models for the so-called trigger goes back to the Reagan era when, in 1984, Congress passed the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act in 1984, which included a trigger imposing draconian across-the-board spending cuts unless hard-and-fast deficit reduction goals were met.

Back then, during the Cold War anti-communist fervor, Republicans were dead-set against cuts to defense spending so the threat of an across-the-board cut that included slashing defense spending was the equivalent of “shared pain.” Fast forward to 2011, however, and that threat no longer packs the same punch. Tea Party conservatives are eager to draw down U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and don’t believe that nation-building is helping efforts to combat al-Qaeda or international terrorism.

So Democrats want to ensure real leverage and are demanding that any so-called trigger include revenue raisers.

Within the confines of the already preposterous “deal” in which accepting the deficit recommendations of an unaccountable Gang-of-Six-style Super Committee is the “best” possible outcome, John Kerry is right. Revenues are an essential part of the whatever trigger is put in place.

But today’s reports indicate that whatever backbone Kerry was suggesting Democrats might have, appears to have disappeared. None of the reports mentions anything about revenues as part of the trigger–which is fairly obvious since Boehner appears to believe he can get away with scrapping even the Pentagon cuts.

Or maybe not. Nancy Pelosi is suggesting the current deal may not pass the House:

“We all may not be able to support it,” she said. “And maybe none of us will be able to support it.”

Liberals in her caucus are set to revolt. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), a leader among House progressives, blasted the deal in an official statement earlier Sunday.

“”This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it,” he said.

And the details may become even less palatable for Democrats, as Republicans grit their teeth over potential defense spending cuts in the bill.

But no word on whether the lack of revenue provisions in the trigger have anything to do with House Democrats’ revolt. Hopefully they do. Within the context of a horrible, no-good bill, insisting on such revenue as part of the trigger might be the best salvage Democrats can hope for at the moment. If Dems do stand up for this, the only question then becomes whether Wall St. will force enough of the GOP to the table, or whether we go forward with the 14th Amendment route.

In all likelihood, though, we’ll get neither. The current “deal” already constitutes a series of Democratic caves to GOP hostage-taking, and the details of the trigger will probably be no exception.