Month: February 2013

The White House’s cynical email to supporters

by David Atkins

Got this in my email today from Organizing for America (OFA):

David —

Brace yourself.

If congressional Republicans don’t act by tomorrow, we’re going to be hit by a series of devastating, automatic budget cuts called the sequester.

It’s a sledgehammer to the budget, our economy, and millions of Americans across the country — and the most frustrating part? It doesn’t have to happen.

The majority of Americans support President Obama’s balanced approach to deficit reduction — add your name if you do, too.

So far, congressional Republicans are refusing to compromise — all because they don’t want to close tax loopholes for millionaires, billionaires, vacation homes, and corporate jets. Seriously.

This has very real consequences.

On the chopping block are 10,000 teaching jobs, more than 70,000 kids’ spots in Head Start, $35 million for local fire departments, $43 million to make sure seniors don’t go hungry, and access to nutrition assistance for 600,000 women and their families. That’s just a few of the things we’ll lose.

President Obama has put forth a balanced deficit reduction plan with smart spending cuts that protect the critical investments needed to strengthen middle-class families and our economy.

Clicking on the link in the “ask” leads to this:

Right now, Republicans in Congress are prioritizing tax loopholes for the wealthy over crucial investments that help the middle class. Starting March 1st, unless the Republicans compromise, we’ll be forced to cut services for seniors, children, our troops, and small business owners, among others. Tens of thousands of Americans will be affected.

The cynicism and couched doublespeak here should amaze. The talking points to the President’s most active volunteers and committed Democrats claim to want “smart spending cuts” and oppose cutting “services for our seniors.” But we all know that the President has been actively seeking cuts to “entitlements,” including to Social Security and Medicare. The President isn’t a fan of the sequester per se–but the sequester itself was designed to be so horrid that Republicans would come to the table and agree to the President’s Grand Bargain, every public version of which has included slashes to America’s most cherished social safety net programs. One of those changes is chained CPI for Social Security, which is only a “smart” cut in the sense that it’s smart for politicians who will have had several intervening elections before Americans start to notice the severity of the cuts.

The Obama Administration knows that while the public does indeed want leaders to compromise in theory, the public also specifically opposes cuts to Medicare and Social Security. So the maneuver here is to accuse the Republicans of failing to compromise while talking about “smart cuts” and a “balanced approach” without specifying what either of those phrases actually means to the White House.

The people who wrote that email know all of this. On some level they have to know that this manipulation of hard-working Democratic activists and volunteers is wrong. It speaks to a quite conservative assumption on the part of the White House that the American public–and the core constituency of Democrats in particular–is too immature to eat their vegetables and learn to love austerity. It’s not just the White House, of course. The Republicans are also doing the same: insisting on sequestration while calling it the President’s fault abdicating their own authority to choose the cuts in the hopes that they can blame the White later.

This is a game theory problem for both sides. If both the White House and the Republicans believed that slashing cherished spending was essential, the best outcome for both sides would be to smile and join together on a Grand Bargain. The President is no longer up for re-election, and Republicans would get good press for accomplishing their legislative agenda without coming across as angry obstructionists. But both sides know that’s not the case. Both sides know The People’s Budget reflects the most popular set of policy proposals, even among registered Republicans. Republicans simply refuse to enact it because it’s against their core principles. And too many Democrats also refuse to stand by it, either because they’re bought off or because they’re true believers in neoliberal economics, or because they believe in a political ethic that only seeks to support what seems to be in the realm of the politically possible. There is no need for either sequestration or a Grand Bargain, particularly in the face of a rapidly shrinking deficit.

The White House’s mobilization and media arms may not have much respect for the Congress, the opposition or the press. But it should at least have some respect for the hard-working activusts who worked so hard to help get them elected.

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Repeal that mess


by digby

It appears that quite a few more people are recognizing that the only way to save the president from himself is to blow up this dangerous runaway train altogether

Today we have Altman and Kingston from Social Security Works calling for repeal:

The “sequester” poses an unnecessary and huge danger, potentially inflicting deep wounds to the economy and to our nation’s communities and families.

The sequester is not a hurricane, a tornado, a flood, or some other natural disaster. It is not the collapse of a bridge (though it could result in that). This potentially devastating, self-imposed wound could be eliminated in less than five minutes! All it would take is the political courage to admit a mistake and then agree to its cancellation.

Senator Jeff Merkley:

“We need to end the sequestration, and once and for all stop lurching from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis. This is no way to run a country… The sequester is a D.C.-created disaster in the making. It’s time to take Congress’s foot off the economic brake, make some smart choices about how we build for the future, and spare Americans from a politician-induced recession.”

Congressman Alan Grayson:

Text of the Cancel the Sequester Act: “Section 251A of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 is repealed.”
— Alan Grayson (@AlanGrayson) February 28, 2013

Since we now know that the sequester was designed to get congress to agree to cut at least 1.2 trillion dollars in some combination of cuts to Social Security and Medicare and tax hikes it will be more important than ever to push for total repeal not a replacement. Since defense cuts are not going to happen and straight up tax hikes will be impossible I think we can see the writing on the wall. It must be repealed.

In the midst of all this sturm und drang, let’s not forget the most salient fact, which is that the deficit is not a crisis in the first place. Here’s a little reminder that’s worth thinking about as we look at this utter nonsense taking place in Washington over projected deficits decades from now:

On the other hand, the CBO is much more accurate at telling us what’s happening in the moment. Think Progress analyzed its latest report earlier this month:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest budget projections today, which show that the U.S. has made substantial progress towards getting its deficit and debt under control. However, the flip side of that reality is that CBO projects economic growth will be sluggish for the next several years, meaning that unemployment will only come down slowly. Here are the four biggest takeaways from the report:

1. The deficit has been reduced by a lot. 

2. The debt is stabilized. Thanks to the fiscal cliff deal and previous budget agreements, most of the country’s debt problem is solved. The CBO’s report shows debt will now peak at 77.7 percent of GDP in 2014, then drop to 73.1 percent in 2018, then rise back to 76 percent in 2022. (See graph below.) According to the Economic Policy Institute, flattening out that second rise from 2018 to 2022 will only require $670 billion in additional deficit reduction — $580 billion in actual policy savings, plus $90 billion in resulting interest savings. That’s less than half the $1.5 trillion in additional deficit reduction President Obama is calling for.

3. Austerity is killing the recovery. The CBO anticipates that economic growth will be slow this year, which “reflects a combination of ongoing improvement in underlying economic factors and fiscal tightening that has already begun or is scheduled to occur — including the expiration of a 2 percentage-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax, an increase in tax rates on income above certain thresholds, and scheduled automatic reductions in federal spending.” Large austerity efforts in Europe have been stifling economic growth and causing continued economic contractions. 

4. Jobs aren’t coming back fast. Due to a pronounced output gap — the gap between what the economy is producing and what it could be producing — unemployment will remain elevated for several years.

Don’t worry, they say that we’re likely to come down to 7.5% unemployment by the end of the year. I’m so old that I remember when 7.5% unemployment was considered a crisis that required all hands on deck.

We are working ourselves into a frenzy over problems that aren’t problems, while millions upon millions of Americans cannot find work and the economy is moribund. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns.

On the other hand, while the president was never explicit about their plan to force entitlement cuts through the sequester, he did warn us just four months ago that it was going to be messy:

Q: Mr. President, we know that John Boehner and the House Republicans have not been easy to work with, and certainly you’ve had some obstacles in the Senate, even though it’s been controlled by the Democrats. At the time, whenever — we talked a lot about, in 2008, hope and change. I’m curious about what you see your role is in terms of changing the tone and the perception that Washington is broken. But particularly, sir, if you were granted a second term, how do you implode this partisan gridlock that has gripped Washington and Congress and basically our entire political structure right now?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, Rick, let me answer you short term and long term. In the short term, the good news is that there’s going to be a forcing mechanism to deal with what is the central ideological argument in Washington right now, and that is: How much government do we have and how do we pay for it?

So when you combine the Bush tax cuts expiring, the sequester in place, the commitment of both myself and my opponent — at least Governor Romney claims that he wants to reduce the deficit — but we’re going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business.

It will probably be messy. It won’t be pleasant. But I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I’ve been offering to the Republicans for a very long time, which is $2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in spending, and work to reduce the costs of our health care programs.

And we can easily meet — “easily” is the wrong word — we can credibly meet the target that the Bowles-Simpson Commission established of $4 trillion in deficit reduction, and even more in the out-years, and we can stabilize our deficit-to-GDP ratio in a way that is really going to be a good foundation for long-term growth. Now, once we get that done, that takes a huge piece of business off the table.

He then said that once he gets that done along with immigration reform, they can tackle the “non-ideological” agenda:

Now we’re in a position where we can start on some things that really historically have not been ideological. We can start looking at a serious corporate tax reform agenda that’s revenue-neutral but lowers rates and broadens the base — something that both Republicans and Democrats have expressed an interest in.

So, once all this messiness is over, never fear, we’ll start lowering tax rates. It’s all good.

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Some in the UK think the severely disabled are no longer affordable

by digby

The United Kingdom has, as you know, doubled down on its austerity program telling the people recently that it will not be back to anything like normality until 2018 at least. What this means in practice is that they are slashing the hell out of their government support systems, those required for the severely disabled among them:

The [Independent Living Fund] was set up in 1988 as a standalone fund which people with severe disabilities could apply to for extra money to pay for added care and support. That additional funding made it possible for people to live independently in their homes, rather than in residential care. For some people, the ILF paid for entire care packages. For others, ILF money was used to top up council funding for care. Most of the people who appear in these videos require round-the-clock care which – unsurprisingly – comes with a price tag.

In 2010, the Independent Living Fund was closed to new applicants.

Then in 2012, the coalition government announced that it would “consult” on the future of the fund for the ILF’s 19,000 existing users. The upshot of this was, towards the end of last year, an extremely unpopular decision to close the fund and devolve it to local authorities.

“In terms of independent living, this is the single most regressive action that the Condems could have taken,” DPAC’s Linda Burnip emailed to say. Indeed.

The money will not be ringfenced. It will be left to already cash-strapped councils to fund care for people with the most complex – and expensive – needs. That makes the whole prospect a complete shambles. Councils can’t meet demand as it is. Many are tightening eligibility criteria for care and have been taken to court for trying to restrict services, or for capping the amounts that they spend on claimants. Last year, as an example, Worcesterchire county council came up with a so-called maximum expenditure policy – meaning that if paying for someone to live at home with carers cost more than residential care, the individual would have to make up the difference themselves, or go into residential care – the sort of idea which would, as Sophie Partridge says in the video below, take everyone back to a time when people were hidden away in homes and made to sit around in incontinence pads.

So, what’s the better answer? Well, some people have an idea:

A CORNWALL councillor has apologised but refused to resign after telling a disability charity that all disabled children “should be put down”.

Collin Brewer, independent councillor Wadebridge East, made the comments to Disability Cornwall at County Hall when the group had an information stand at an event to allow councillors to meet equalities organisations and understand some of the issues they face.

At the event, which took place in October 2011, Mr Brewer approached the stand and was told how the group helps parents of children with special educational needs.

He responded by saying: “Disabled children cost the council too much money and should be put down.”

It reminds me of the cheering Republicans at the presidential primary debate who endorsed the idea that people should just die if they don’t have insurance. It would seem that certain common moral values of western civilization have become quite old fashioned in the age of austerity.

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QOTD: Andrew Sullivan

by digby

On Pope Benedict:

H

e did not just fail; his papacy has been a rolling disaster for the Church in the West.

He lost Ireland, for Pete’s sake, if you’ll pardon the expression. His version of Catholicism entered the public square and has been overwhelmingly refuted, rejected, and spurned by not just those outside the Western church but by so many within it. And in his inability to rise to the occasion of unthinkable evil in the child-rape conspiracy – to clean house by removing every cardinal and every bishop and every priest implicated in any way with it – he has presided over the global destruction of the church’s moral authority. By his refusal to face the fact of huge hypocrisy in the church over homosexuality – indeed to double down on the stigmatization of gay people, reversing previous gradual movement toward acceptance – he has consigned the church to what might well become an institutional tragedy.

Other than that, he was awesome.

Cutting entitlements is “in the DNA” of the sequester

by digby

I agree with everyone in the universe that Bob Woodward is a jerk. But then I have tried to ignore him as much as possible at least since he wrote the hagiographic leak-fest Bush at War, which pretty much sealed Junior’s reelection. So yeah, he’s a purveyor of Village conventional wisdom and a servant of power and has been for many years. What else is new? (And needless to say, the idea that he felt threatened by Gene Sperling is simply laughable.)

But nobody seems to have noticed something very important in the substance of the Sperling emails. He wrote to Woodward:

The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand bar[g]ain with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding — from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations. There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios — but that it was supposed to be replaced by entitlements and revenues of some form is not controversial. (Indeed, the discretionary savings amount from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA [Budget Control Act of 2011]: the sequester was just designed to force all back to table on entitlements and revenues.)

I don’t know that anyone’s ever admitted that in public before or that the president was completely, shall we say, honest when he ran for his second term about that specific definition of “a balanced approach”. I haven’t heard anyone say publicly that the sequester “deal” as far as the White House was concerned was to cut “entitlements” in exchange for new revenues. I wonder how many members of congress were aware of this “deal” when they voted for the sequester? The public certainly wasn’t.

I wish I could understand why it is so important to Barack Obama to cut these vital programs before he leaves office. It seems to be his obsession. But there you have it. It’s not just in the DNA of the sequester, it seems to be in the DNA of this White House.

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Justice Scalia stands up for the oppressed

by digby

It’s nice to see a Supreme Court Justice finally stand up for the little guy:

This Court doesn’t like to get involved in — in racial questions such as this one. It’s something that can be left — left to Congress.

The problem here, however, is suggested by the comment I made earlier, that the initial enactment of this legislation in a — in a time when the need for it was so much more abundantly clear was — in the Senate, there — it was double-digits against it. And that was only a 5-year term.

Then, it is reenacted 5 years later, again for a 5-year term. Double-digits against it in the Senate. Then it was reenacted for 7 years. Single digits against it. Then enacted for 25 years, 8 Senate votes against it. And this last enactment, not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same. Now, I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It’s been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.

I don’t think there is anything to be gained by any Senator to vote against continuation of this act. And I am fairly confident it will be reenacted in perpetuity unless — unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution. You have to show, when you are treating different States differently, that there’s a good reason for it.

That’s the — that’s the concern that those of us who — who have some questions about this statute have. It’s — it’s a concern that this is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress. There are certain districts in the House that are black districts by law just about now. And even the Virginia Senators, they have no interest in voting against this. The State government is not their government, and they are going to lose — they are going to lose votes if they do not reenact the Voting Rights Act.

Even the name of it is wonderful: The Voting Rights Act. Who is going to vote against that in the future?

The little guy in this case is, of course, the poor, put-upon, white supremacists who would really like to end the Voting Rights Act but are being bullied by the “racial entitlement” police into continuing it. Someday they shall overcome.

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The money pit nobody’s talking about

by digby

Your little factoid ‘o the day:

The American-led military coalition in Afghanistan backed off Tuesday from its claim that Taliban attacks dropped off in 2012, tacitly acknowledging a hole in its widely repeated argument that violence is easing and that the insurgency is in steep decline.

In response to Associated Press inquiries about its latest series of statistics on security in Afghanistan, the coalition command in Kabul said it had erred in reporting a 7 percent decline in attacks. In fact there was no decline at all, officials said.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is among the senior officials who had publicly repeated the assertion of an encouraging drop-off in Taliban attacks last year, was disturbed to learn of the error, said his spokesman, George Little.

“This particular set of metrics doesn’t tell the full story of progress against the Taliban, of course, but it’s unhelpful to have inaccurate information in our systems,” Little said.

So the Afghan surge isn’t a rousing success after all? Who knew?

And as we consider all this talk about budgets and cutbacks, perhaps we should take a moment to consider this from Joseph Stiglitz:

The direct costs of the war are already $700bn. The original mission was to root out al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But in 2003, the US shifted nearly all of its attention and resources to Iraq. The Taliban regrouped and strengthened in Afghanistan, making the conflict far more expensive. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda shifted operations into Pakistan, Yemen and Mali, where France this month sent troops.

US forces have struggled in Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain, where getting supplies and munitions has been a complex logistical exercise. Then came the ill-fated “surge” strategy, which put 30,000 more US troops on the ground with little if any military gain. There were 3,000 attacks on US and allied forces in 2012 – a figure little changed from 2009, when President Barack Obama’s administration decided on the change in strategy.

The surge itself was expensive. But the way we conducted the war unnecessarily increased its costs. For instance, the closure of the land route through Pakistan for eight months in reprisal for a US drone attack in November 2011 that inadvertently killed 24 Pakistani soldiers added billions to the transport bill. Another $90bn has been devoted to “reconstruction” aid in Afghanistan – the largest amount spent by the US since the Marshall plan, with little to show for it. Endemic corruption among local contractors and officials has drained money from the budget.

Much of this red ink will dry up once Nato troops withdraw. But the true cost of the war is only just beginning. Indeed, the costs after withdrawal may exceed those during the war. Choices made in the past decade mean high costs for years to come – and will constrain other national security spending.
In 2008, when we wrote The Three Trillion Dollar War , our book on the costs of the Iraq war, we predicted that costs of disability and healthcare benefits for recent war veterans would grow enormously. With nearly one in two returning troops suffering some form of disability – ranging from depression to multiple amputation – the reality far exceeds our estimates. The number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans receiving government medical care has grown to more than 800,000, and most have applied for permanent disability benefits. Yielding to political pressure, the White House and Congress have boosted veteran’s benefits, invested in additional staff and technology, expanded mental health treatments and made it easier to qualify for disability pay. But the number of claims keeps climbing. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs struggles to cope with its backlog.

The VA’s budget is likely to hit $140bn this year from $50bn in 2001…Meanwhile, there is a huge price tag for replacing ordinary equipment that has been consumed during the wars – not least because of our policy of outsourcing maintenance to sometimes dodgy local contractors. There is also the US pledge to help prop up the Afghan police and army for the next decade – expected to run to $5bn-$8bn a year. The legacy of expensive commitments will force the Pentagon to make difficult choices – for example, reducing the size of the army and investing in more unmanned robotic weapons.

The US has already borrowed $2tn to finance the Afghanistan and Iraq wars – a major component of the $9tn debt accrued since 2001, along with those arising from the financial crisis and the tax cuts implemented by President George W. Bush. Today, as the country considers how to improve its balance sheet, it could have been hoped that the ending of the wars would provide a large peace dividend, such as the one resulting from the end of the cold war that helped us to invest more in butter and less in guns. Instead, the legacy of poor decision-making from the expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will live on in a continued drain on our economy – long after the last troop returns to American soil.

With all this soul searching about “what we can afford” and “sacrifice” and all the rest, I haven’t heard much discussion about this. Considering the vast sums involved you’d think someone would at least put it up for debate. Could we at least talk about whether it was worth it?

More on the success/failure of the surge, here.

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The inconvenient fact of the shrinking deficit

by David Atkins

It’s a truism of centrist pundits that we live in a mirrored partisan media world. In this fanciful construction of reality, MSNBC sits on the extreme left and Fox News sits on the extreme right.

The problem with that version of reality, of course, is the inconvenience of fact. MSNBC tends to report fact, while Fox News tends to report fiction.

Case in point, Rachel Maddow’s segment yesterday on the nation’s shrinking deficit:

The fact is that the deficit is shrinking. The fact is that Americans don’t know that the deficit is shrinking. And the fact is that the only major news outlet actually reporting the facts is MSNBC.

When it comes to politics, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But no one is entitled to their own facts. If the facts tend to come down squarely on the left side of the aisle, then the reporting should as well.

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Guess which “extreme” the public agrees with?

by digby

If you want proof that the Villagers are out of touch, get a load of this:

Most Republicans don’t actually support the House Republican plan to avert the spending cuts known as the sequester, according to a new poll conducted for Business Insider by our partner SurveyMonkey.

The poll asked participants to consider the core points of three sequester replacement proposals in Congress, without telling them the partisan affiliation of those plans. It found that in some cases, both Democrats and Republicans actually opposed their own party’s plans and/or backed their adversaries’ proposal.

Here are the three plans we tested:

• The Senate Democratic plan cancels the $85.3 billion in 2013 sequester cuts and replaces them with a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes. The plan saves $27.5 billion by cutting farm subsidies and raises $55 billion by cutting tax deductions for oil companies and by implementing the Buffett Rule, which sets a minimum tax rate for incomes over $1 million. 
• The 2012 House Republican plan would cancel the $55 billion in sequester defense cuts for 2013 and replace them by shrinking funding to food stamp programs, cutting $11.4 billion from the public health fund in the Affordable Care Act, and cutting the Social Services Block Grant program, among others.
• The House Progressive Caucus plan replaces the entire sequester with a new plan with equivalent savings. It accomplishes this by ending subsidies to fossil fuel companies, closing several tax loopholes, cutting the corporate meal and entertainment tax deduction at 25 percent, and enacting a 28 percent limit on certain tax deductions and extensions.

Surveys have found that asking people about just titles of plans or telling people who proposed policy, changes the results, so the point of this poll was to see what people thought of the plans when they were fully explained, but also stripped of partisan labels.

SurveyMonkey’s poll, which surveyed 550 people, focused on congressional proposals exclusively. Here are some interesting findings of the poll:

Surprisingly, the plan that polled the strongest was the House Progressive Caucus plan. More than half of respondents supported it compared to sequestration and just a fifth of respondents were opposed.
A plurality of people — 28 percent — believed the House Progressive Caucus Plan would have the least financial impact on them personally. This makes the most sense, as only 14 percent of respondents reported having income over $150,000.

Shockingly, 47 percent of Republicans preferred the House Progressive plan to the sequester. This means that Republicans supported the House Progressive plan just as much as they supported their own party’s plan.

Support for the Senate Democrat plan was weak, with just fewer than half of respondents preferring that plan compared with the sequester.

Opposition to the House Republican plan was strong, with 57 percent preferring the sequester to that plan.

Twice as many Republicans supported sequestration as Democrats.

One-fifth of Democrats prefer the sequester when compared to the Senate Democrats’ sequestration replacement plan. About one-quarter of Republicans prefer the Senate Democrat plan to the implementation of the sequester.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise to you to know that the Progressive Caucus Plan is also the one that’s considered so kooky and outside the mainstream that Andrea Mitchell and her pals can hardly keep from rolling their eyes when they mention them — on the rare occasions they even bother. And yet, if what you care about is the deficit, the House Progressive caucus plan reduces the deficit just as much as the other plans and doesn’t even put a dent in our status as a global military empire and world’s policeman. And it’s clearly something the people would prefer (although they undoubtedly wouldn’t if they knew the Dirty Hippies were the one’s proposing it.) Yet, it’s literally not even being discussed in any of the non-stop sequester blather-fests on TV.

And I hate to say it, our allegedly progressive White House is equally dismissive. And that’s because it isn’t progressive. It’s “centrist” which means that it’s one of the architects, not victims, of,the deficit brinksmanship we’re now using as an excuse to slash the hell out of government.

This excellent commentary by political scientist Joseph White explains why it’s facile to simply blame the crazy Republicans for the mess we’re in:

Who is to blame for this deficit brinksmanship? It may seem logical to finger Congressional “extremists.” In fact, Tea Party-oriented Republicans have recently shown the most enthusiasm for holding the nation’s credit and economic prospects hostage. Yet fiscal brinksmanship is nothing new, and it has been pursued at least as much by “centrist” budget hawks. Since the 1980s, a large segment of the Washington policy world has acted as if all other concerns are less important than shrinking the deficit, equating budgetary terrorism to “responsible government.”

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is a prime example. Its board includes many former budget officials along with leaders of the House and Senate budget committees. As a leading cheerleader for hostage-taking and brinksmanship, the Committee viewed the 2011 debt ceiling hostage crisis as an “opportunity” not to be wasted. It endorsed the threatened sequester, worrying only that it might not be tough enough. In December 2012, the Committee argued that Congress and the President did not have time to work out a detailed package of big deficit cuts, and called for any deal to include “enforcement mechanisms” such as yet another sequester…

In 2011, the Financial Times editorialized that, “sane governments do not cast doubt on the pledge to honor their debts – which is why, if reason prevailed, the debt ceiling would simply be scrapped.” Yet instead of endorsing this common sense, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has called the debt-ceiling “an effective lever… to require law makers to enact debt reduction legislation.” This promotion of budgetary extremism, however, is nothing new:

 In 1985, two centrists – Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina andRepublican Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire – joined with ultra-conservativeRepublican Phil Gramm of Texas to block a debt ceiling increase until Congress passedthe Gramm/Rudman/Hollings law requiring crude automatic cuts to domestic and defense programs – with no deliberation about which cuts made sense given national needs. 

 In 2009-2010, the centrist Senate Budget Committee Chair, North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad, first blocked sensible budget process reforms and then objected to a debt ceiling increase in order to force appointment of a special Fiscal Responsibility Commission. 

 In November of 2010 former Senator Alan Simpson, co-chair of the deficit commission,boasted that the co-chairs’ recommendations could succeed even though not supported by the required number of commission members. “I can’t wait for the blood bath in April,” declared Simpson, pointing to the next Congressional decision on the debt ceiling. Simpson is a Republican long viewed as very conservative, but he now is considered a centrist by Washington DC reporters (and apparently also by President Obama, who appointed him).

Centrist hawks have systematically exaggerated the economic risks of deficits, predicting high interest rates for the past five years and continually being disproven. They also have promoted a biased and inaccurate view of the causes of budget imbalances. Forecasts show that spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will increase, while taxes at current levels are not projected to cover the costs. Although most American voters are willing to pay for health and retirement programs, budget hawks proclaim the deficit “crisis” is due to excess “entitlements.”  It would be just as logical to say that valuable health care and pension programs need more  funding. The report of the chairs of the Fiscal Responsibility Commission called for an artificial  ceiling on federal spending to be set at 21% of Gross Domestic Product forever. This is an  arbitrary political move – and one that simply encourages right-wing extremists trying to force unpopular cuts in social spending that could not be enacted in normal proceedings. 

That it is an arbitrary political move is proven by the fact that the House progressives have come up with a deficit reduction plan that does not cut the so-called entitlements and reduces the deficit by the same arbitrary number the president and the Republicans agreed upon. And if said deficit must be cut, the public prefers that it be done in this way! And yet, it is dismissed out of hand.  At this point we know that deficit reduction per se is a secondary concern. It’s about cutting government.

This is largely a result of centrist deficit hawks (and the presidents of both parties who bought into their hackery.) Don’t forget that the first item of business the new Democratic president initiated, once he passed the stimulus plan at the beginning of his first term, was to convene a “fiscal responsibility summit” that was to include Pete Peterson as a featured speaker (until the shocked outcry of Democratic allies made them rescind the invitation.) And they have never really wavered from that goal.

Here’s Joan Walsh today:

[I]t’s worth remembering that according to Noam Scheiber and others, Obama himself opened the door to hostage-taking Republicans by agreeing to negotiate over a debt-ceiling hike, which had until that point been a pro-forma ritual: partisans from the out of power party, like Sen. Barack Obama, might cast a symbolic vote against it, but it always went up. In his excellent book “The Escape Artist,” Scheiber reveals that some administration officials knew that would change under the new Tea Party-led House GOP elected in 2010, and they pushed to include a debt-ceiling hike in the December, 2010 deal Obama made to extend the Bush tax cuts. But when Republicans (predictably) balked, it was dropped.

The White House was already looking for a way to craft a big deficit-reduction plan, thanks to the warnings of deficit hawk Peter Orszag, with political advisors like David Plouffe insisting it would make good politics in 2012 after the “shellacking” of 2010. As one administration official told Scheiber, about a crucial deficit-cutting meeting: “Plouffe specifically said, ‘We’re going to need a period of ugliness’—he meant with the left—‘so that people in the center understand that we’re not wasting their tax dollars.” (Funny, Plouffe said the same thing publicly right after Obama’s 2012 victory.)

“Deficit reduction” is becoming to centrist Democrats what “tax cuts” are to Republicans — and all-purpose cure for what ails us.

This powerful centrist faction in the nation’s capitol has been creating a sense of ongoing crisis for decades and its effects on our politics cannot be overstated.  It’s strangled the social safety net and empowered the most extremist members of our government to use it for their own ends. Combined with the nonsensical insistence that adding “revenue” is akin to signing on with Al Qaeda and you have a recipe for the dysfunction we see today. Don’t blame the Tea Party.  They’re just playing their designated role in this.

After all, as everyone in Democratic circles keeps shouting to anyone who will listen:

[T]he federal deficit has fallen faster over the past three years than it has in any such stretch since demobilization from World War II.

In fact, outside of that post-WWII era, the only time the deficit has fallen faster was when the economy relapsed in 1937, turning the Great Depression into a decade-long affair.
If U.S. history offers any guide, we are already testing the speed limits of a fiscal consolidation that doesn’t risk backfiring. That’s why the best way to address the fiscal cliff likely is to postpone it. 

While long-term deficit reduction is important and deficits remain very large by historical standards, the reality is that the government already has its foot on the brakes.

It certainly looks to me as if the deficit hawks are doing very, very well. And they obviously aren’t done yet.

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Huzzah! Congratulations to Tom Tomorrow

by digby

Great news:

WASHINGTON, DC, February 25, 2013 – Dan Perkins, pen name Tom Tomorrow, was named the winner of the 2013 Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning. 

Perkins is the creator of the weekly political cartoon, This Modern World, which appears in approximately 80 papers, mostly altweeklies. He is the editor of the comics section he created in April 2011 on Daily Kos. His cartoons have been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, U.S. News & World Report and The Economist. He lives outside of New Haven, Connecticut with his wife and their son. 

The prize is awarded annually by The Herb Block Foundation for “distinguished examples of editorial cartooning that exemplify the courageous independent standard set by Herblock.” The winner receives a $15,000 after-tax cash prize and a sterling silver Tiffany trophy. Perkins will receive the prize April 25th in a ceremony held at the Library of Congress. 

Jack Ohman, the editorial cartoonist for The Sacramento Bee, was named this year’s finalist and will receive a $5,000 after-tax cash prize. 

Gwen Ifill, moderator and managing editor of “Washington Week” and senior correspondent for “The PBS Newshour,” will deliver the annual Herblock Lecture at the awards ceremony. Previous speakers have included Ben Bradlee, then-Senator Barack Obama, Sandra Day O’Connor, Tom Brokaw, Tim Russert, Ted Koppel, George Stevens Jr., Jim Lehrer and Garry Trudeau. 

Judges for this year’s contest were Matt Bors, a nationally syndicated cartoonist in altweeklies and winner of the 2012 Herblock Prize; Jenny Robb, curator of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University; and Steve Brodner, satirical illustrator who has covered eight national political conventions for Esquire, The Progressive, and others. 

The judges felt there were many strong portfolios in this year’s contest, including several animated-only entries and other alternative multi-panel submissions. 

Bors said Tom Tomorrow’s portfolio included “hands down, some of the smartest political cartoons of the year.” Subjects included “consistently hilarious takedowns of women-bashers, gun culture and the president’s abuse of executive power.”
“Tom Tomorrow is both fearless and funny, two qualities that make him a first-rate editorial cartoonist,” Robb said. “He has developed a unique graphic style that perfectly suits his wry and clever assaults on politicians, political parties, and bad policies while also making his work instantly recognizable.” 

Brodner said, “Dan Perkins’ output for the year was consistently strong, intelligent and witty. The work discussed the most important issues in a way extremely compelling and illuminating. The sequential political cartoon is a vivid and powerful form in his hands.”
The judges also had strong praise for the work of Jack Ohman, the finalist. 

Robb said, “In addition to producing strong traditional editorial cartoons, Jack Ohman has developed a unique and effective multi-panel strip that is part journalism, part memoir and part satire. He courageously used the format and his platform at The Oregonian to effect change in his local community and to focus attention on issues of both local and national importance.” Brodner added that Ohman’s work is “politically brave, formalistically daring and artistically free, while retaining great design and draftsmanship.” 

The Herb Block Foundation seeks to further the recognition and support of editorial cartooning.

This Modern World isn’t just brilliant, it’s indispensable. Seriously. It’s one of the very few political commentaries to which I know I can consistently turn to test whether I’m losing my mind or if what I think I’m seeing truly is what I am seeing. It’s a touchstone — and largely unacknowledged as the precursor to everything we’ve developed as a liberal media counter-culture over the last decade in the blogosphere. Tom Tomorrow was saying it all long before any of the rest of us were.

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