Since it’s Krugman day here at Hullabaloo, I thought I’d share this little graph which he calls “a tale of two presidencies.” It illustrates perfectly for every average Joe (except Sam the plumber) why they should put their hands over their ears and start chanting “shut up, shut up, shut up” whenever they see Republicans with the chutzpah to even raise a peep about what to do about the economy:
They have no credibility on anything and they should not be driving this debate, most of all. In fact, they should not even have the nerve to say a word, but rather slink back into their corners and contemplate why every single thing they touch turns to garbage.
They have the right to make their case, of course, but there is absolutely no necessity that the press gives them not just equal, but more air time, to further brainwash the public and there’s certainly no reason why the “centrist” Goldilocks faction should have the final word by pretending that the other side isn’t behaving as if it’s completely insane.
And watching John McCain, the man who said “the fundamentals of the economy are strong” just a few months ago, being equally ignorant today in sanctimoniously proclaiming today that the bill is a “spending bill, not a stimulus bill,” makes me want to go all Elvis and shoot out the TV screen. That was the man they chose to lead the country during this crisis. Imagine what would have happened if they had succeeded. It’s enough to keep you up at night.
Update: After listening to Alex Castellanos speak some gibberish about how George Bush’s tax cuts were a huge success, Paul Begala just said that the Republicans couldn’t lead, they refuse to follow, so they should get out of the way. At this point, I agree. They aren’t debating in good faith, they are following their leader in trying to make the president (and by extension the country) fail.
Update II: Just in case Krugman’s chart didn’t indicate just how bad this is, get a load of this one, (via Swampland)
This chart compares the job loss so far in this recession to job losses in the 1990-1991 recession and the 2001 recession — showing how dramatic and unprecedented the job loss over the last 13 months has been. Over the last 13 months, our economy has lost a total of 3.6 million jobs – and continuing job losses in the next few months are predicted.
By comparison, we lost a total of 1.6 million jobs in the 1990-1991 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing; and we lost a total of 2.7 million jobs in the 2001 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing.
It’s only a few hours away from the premiere of my evening-long celebration of Charles Darwin’s work and life; The Origin, for chorus, orchestra, vocal soloists, and Balkan music ensemble. We’ve had more rehearsals than I can remember. There were several with the entire ensemble (I think there’s at least 150, if not 200 performers, but I’m not counting!) and numerous scheduled rehearsals with smaller groups. Also, since we’re all staying at the same hotel in town, I’ve had dozens of impromptu rehearsals with our terrific mezzo, Jacqui Horner and the eight amazing singers who make up KITKA, the Balkan music ensemble I’m using to represent Charles Darwin the man. The dedication of all the players, as well as conductor Julie Pretzat and filmmaker Bill Morrison has been nothing short of phenomenal. I’m both deeply touched and honored. I can’t count the number of times we’ve met for lunch or just a coffee and they – not me – have brought up some detail they wanted to perfect, or simply shoot the breeze about Darwin. I’ve also spent what must amount to eight or more hours being interviewed by the local television and radio stations, the AP, the Syracuse press, and at least 4 student journalists from the college. I’m not going to mention all the seminars, classes, and lectures I’ve given!
Fortunately, my health is holding up. This kind of schedule is typical for any large event, especially a major premiere. It’s both grueling and exhilarating. I can’t say you fall into a rhythm after a while, it’s too hectic for that, but you do learn to marshal your energy, falling asleep at the drop of a hat between events and politely, but firmly, turning aside invites to hang out with those other than other people directly involved in staging the event. I feel I’m living in Spinal Tap, only with a lot less hair…
Tonight, the audience will get to hear the incredible artistry of these performers and maybe get a view of Darwin they didn’t expect. I certain didn’t. I started this project thinking I’d write a serious piece about science. But a lot of it ended up being simply joyous, if not downright comical. I realized a lot about Darwin’s personality and his science, a side which is given short shrift in the oh-so-serious biographies of him, as good as many of them are. Darwin was simply a man who was not so much endowed with genius as he was filled with an enormous sense of wonder and curiousity, and enough wit to find the whole thing, ie, Nature, utterly delightful. That’s why the death of his 11-year old daughter came as a particularly cruel loss. He not only lost a treasured child, but also his last illusions of a beneficent, if impersonal universe. After Annie’s death, Darwin understood the universe is just impersonal, but even with her death, he managed, somehow, to regain his sense of awe and humor at it all.
If you read this blog and come to the performances, do say hello and introduce yourselves.
A couple years ago at what was then Yearly Kos, I was quoted in the Washington Post saying that Joe Lieberman was more harmful to progressive policies than, say, Ben Nelson, because Nelson didn’t undermine Democrats in the media or borrow Republican talking points.
Let me say that I was wrong, and that Nelson is trying his best to become the new Village darling with a package of cuts to the recovery bill that would negate all of the positive benefits it could possibly offer.
Total Reductions: $80 billion
Eliminations:
Head Start, Education for the Disadvantaged, School improvement, Child Nutrition, Firefighters, Transportation Security Administration, Coast Guard, Prisons, COPS Hiring, Violence Against Women, NASA, NSF, Western Area Power Administration, CDC, Food Stamps
*****************************
Reductions:
Public Transit $3.4 billion, School Construction $60 billion
*****************************
Increases:
Defense operations and procurement, STAG Grants, Brownfields, Additional transportation funding
By Thursday evening, aides said the group had drafted a list of nearly $90 billion in cuts, including $40 billion in aid for states, more than $14 billion for various education programs, $4.1 billion to make federal buildings energy efficient and $1.5 billion for broadband Internet service in rural areas. But they remained short of a deal.
I’m sorry, but anyone who proposes cutting funding to state and local governments at this point is a complete moron. The fastest stimulus is government purchasing. The jobs most in need of saving are at the state level. With slashed aid to states, millions of teachers, firefighters, and cops will be out of work. And cutting food stamps is just as dumb, considering that poor people are most likely to spend just on their own basic necessities, increasing demand. The money they don’t have to spend on food will go elsewhere in the economy.
Good to see as well that funding for the military, which we spend more on that every other country on Earth combined, is getting increases in the plan. That seems fair and balanced.
Harry Reid is trying to hold the line on this nonsense, but I’m sure Nelson and his axis will go lovingly into the arms of their media cohorts and decry all the “wasteful spending” on poor people that just has to go. Sen. Jeff Merkley, who can’t get on the teevee because of all that patchouli oil and tie-dye, makes the obvious point: there’s nothing wasteful about creating a job. That would be a unique perspective!
One project they’re attacking hit close to home. They’re calling funding to restore forest health and prevent wildfires in National Forests wasteful. Coming from Southern Oregon, I can tell you firsthand they are dead wrong.
I grew up in Southern Oregon. My father was a sawmill worker and a logger and his job put food on the table. Right now Douglas County, where I was born, has an unemployment rate of 12.8 percent. That’s the highest it’s been in decades and well above the current national average. Douglas County is home to many of Oregon’s timber workers and they need the stability of a good paying job. The money that would be allocated to counties like Douglas to restore forest health and prevent forest fires would put these folks back to work.
Let me explain. Due to federal mismanagement, there are millions of acres of choked and overgrown second-growth forests. These forests are a complete menace. They are diseased and are very little use for strong ecosystems. Moreover, they are a huge fire hazard. Thinning these neglected forests is essential for restoring forest health and generating thousands of rural jobs.
Let me emphasize this: this provision will create thousands of rural jobs. This is a win-win for our rural economies and our ecosystems.
Preventing wildfires is something that desperately needs to be done in any economic condition and now has the added benefit of providing jobs in areas that need them most. How Republicans can call job creation for hardworking millworkers like my dad “wasteful spending” is a mystery to me.
If Nelson and his centrists are choking on the price tag of the bill, they can get rid of the tax cuts they all inserted that will do nothing for anyone.
Sen. Olympia Snowe (ME), one of the four Republicans considered genuinely open to cooperation with Democrats on a workable economic recovery bill, just released a statement saying she was approached by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to come up with a list of trims from the $275 billion-plus tax section of the stimulus.
Pruning the tax section of the stimulus is an idea that could hold promise for liberals, many of whom are concerned about the hits that education and transit would take in the centrist senators’ package of cuts. The portion Snowe is looking at contains plenty of cuts, for both businesses and individuals — some of them added in the hopes of winning GOP support — but also a number of tax credits that could take money out of government coffers in the short term while increasing economic growth in the long term.
If it suits you to make a bunch of phone calls, if there’s anything to go to the mats over, it’s this: defeating the Nelson-Collins amendment and preserving at least the good parts of the bill. Not to mention making David Broder cry. At least the bulk of the Republicans are honest neo-Hooverists; I respect them more. Ben Nelson and his “very serious” friends deserve to go down.
Which raises the obvious question: shouldn’t Obama have made a much bigger plan, say $1.3 trillion, his opening gambit? If he had, he could have conceded to the centrists by cutting it to $1.2 trillion, and still have had a plan with a good chance of really controlling this slump. Instead he made preemptive concessions, only to find the centrists demanding another pound of flesh as proof of their centrist power.
Obama negotiated with himself, and this is the result. We can only speculate on what might have been if he didn’t pre-compromise the bill.
Paul Krugman delivered some upside the head slaps on Morning Joe today. Pat Buchanan actually tried to argue in favor of the WARREN HARDING TAX CUTS that led to expansion – never mind the Republican Great Depression afterwards. Joe Scarborough tried the fool’s game of disowning Bush, saying he was a big spender and not a classic conservative – never mind the fact that Reagan and both Bushes increased the deficit more than every other President combined. Krugman was having none of it. It’s worth watching from about the 4:30 mark on. Here’s one sample bite.
KRUGMAN: Look at what just happened, we had a proposal I think it was McCain’s proposal for an economic recover package, his version of it which was all tax cuts, a complete, let’s do exactly what Bush did, have another round of Bush-style policies. After eight years which that didn’t work and we got 36 out of 41 Republican senators voting for that which is completely crazy. So how much bipartisan outreach can you have when 36 out of 41 republican senators take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh?
Unfortunately, there aren’t 150 Paul Krugmans to deploy to every news outlet in America. There are, however, 150 liberal Democrats in Congress, maybe even more! I know there’s a substantial faction of Democrats who are moles, essentially, and committed more to having Beltway chatterers smile at them in the hallways than anything else. But there really are enough actual Democrats to defend the concept of a stimulus. Here is someone who is decidedly NOT a Democrat, Steven Pearlstein, saying what shouldn’t need to be said, but definitely is, because Democrats have been cowtowed by Republican B.S. for so many years.
Let’s review some of the more silly arguments about the stimulus bill, starting with the notion that “only” 75 percent of the money can be spent in the next two years, and the rest is therefore “wasted.”
As any economist will tell you, the economy tends to be forward-looking and emotional. So if businesses and households can see immediate benefits from a program while knowing that a bit more stimulus is on the way, they are likely to feel more confident that the recovery will be sustained. That confidence, in turn, will make them more likely to take the risk of buying big-ticket items now and investing in stocks or future ventures.
Moreover, much of the money that can’t be spent right away is for capital improvements such as building and maintaining schools, roads, bridges and sewer systems, or replacing equipment — stuff we’d have to do eventually. So another way to think of this kind of spending is that we’ve simply moved it up to a time, to a point when doing it has important economic benefits and when the price will be less.
Equally specious is the oft-heard complaint that even some of the immediate spending is not stimulative.
“This is not a stimulus plan, it’s a spending plan,” Nebraska’s freshman senator, Mike Johanns (R), said Wednesday in a maiden floor speech full of budget-balancing orthodoxy that would have made Herbert Hoover proud. The stimulus bill, he declared, “won’t create the promised jobs. It won’t activate our economy.”
Johanns was too busy yesterday to explain this radical departure from standard theory and practice. Where does the senator think the $800 billion will go? Down a rabbit hole? Even if the entire sum were to be stolen by federal employees and spent entirely on fast cars, fancy homes, gambling junkets and fancy clothes, it would still be an $800 billion increase in the demand for goods and services — a pretty good working definition for economic stimulus. The only question is whether spending it on other things would create more long-term value, which it almost certainly would.
All spending is stimulus. It’s four words that have been absent from the debate. Democratic lawmakers have been banned from the teevee, I know, but when they do manage to get on, they could do worse than uttering those four words. All spending is stimulus. And if you want to talk about speed, the fastest stimulus is government purchases, either local, state or federal. This is exactly what the axis of centrism and the far right are trying to remove from the bill.
I think Obama’s speech to House Democrats last night was intended for a very particular audience. They are being outworked and they need to pull their weight.
(Just to be clear, the bill has too many tax cuts, and if the Axis of Centrism can’t swallow the price tag, they can get rid of the $70 billion AMT patch and the $35 billion home-buying credit and the auto-buying credit, cuts which won’t help anyone who can’t afford a home or a car and will just give away free money to people who would have bought those items anyway. There’s your $100 billion in cuts.)
At the insistence of semi-insane GOP senator Kit Bond, Panetta just retracted his statement from yesterday that the United States’ extraordinary rendition program had kidnapped terrorists suspects and transferred them to other countries to be tortured. He wasforced to say that they had been transferred to be “questioned,” and had to promise that he would never say such a thing again and would make sure that nobody who worked for him ever said anything else.
We’re still in the up is down, black is white, “you can believe me or you can believe your lyin’ eyes” era. In Washington, credibility is determined by how well you deny reality.
Obama, speaking to about 200 House Democrats at their annual retreat at the Kingsmill Resort and Spa, dismissed Republican attacks against the massive spending in the stimulus.
“What do you think a stimulus is?” Obama asked incredulously. “It’s spending — that’s the whole point! Seriously.”
Stabbing hard at Republicans who once aligned themselves with his predecessor, Obama made it clear that the problems he seeks to address with his recovery plan weren’t ones of his making.
“When you start hearing arguments, on the cable chatter, just understand a couple of things,” he said. “No. 1, when they say, ‘Well, why are we spending $800 billion [when] we’ve got this huge deficit?’ – first of all, I found this deficit when I showed up, No. 1.
“I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.”
Obama went on to contrast the kind words of House and Senate Republican leaders with their increasingly strident opposition to the stimulus package.
“We were complimented by Republicans saying, ‘This is a balanced package . . . we’re pleasantly surprised,’” he said. “Suddenly, what was a ‘balanced package’ is suddenly out of balance.”
Hopefully, he will never, ever take fatous Republican assurances of support at face value again.
I can’t help but be reminded of this post by Theda Skopkol from a couple of weeks ago:
The idea that “elites” will “get serious about repairing the safety net” if they are FIRST given billions of dollars of payoffs to shareholders who made bad decisions is the height of naivete. There are no corporatist institutions in U.S. politics that can enforce this kind of bargain, that can corral all the interests and get them to carry through on mutual promises. That is why Obama and the Democrats will get for the people in general exactly what they push through right now and will squander opportunities if they give money and leverage to “elites” first!
This is what Ira Magaziner imagined with health care back in 1992 — that he could get up front understandings with powerful interests by giving them concessions in the Health Security proposals, and they would let it get through Congress later. (I remember sitting in his office as I took notes for BOOMERANG and having him complain to me that he could not understand why the business roundtable types “lied” to him about what they would do!) Of course, they turned on him the moment Congress got ahold of things. Same thing will happen here.
I noticed in passing that David Gergen is nearly in tears that Obama has betrayed the promise of bipartisanship tonight. He’s heartbroken that Obama decided that it was more important to save the economy than kiss GOP hems and bow and scrape before the villagers. No word on the parade of GOP jackasses who’ve been all over TV laying down the law that the only stimulus they can possibly sign on to is one that would have been written by Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich. It’s not as if they’ve been acting in good faith. (In fact, Huckleberry Graham’s multiple tirades today were pretty much a throwdown to Obama’s manhood, which is quite a spectacle coming from him.)
At least the spell is broken and the white house will be suffering no further delusions that the Republicans are going to play nice. If they sell out to them, it’s because they have decided to do so on the merits. (Now all we have to worry about is the administration playing some kind of equally delusional byzantine inside game with the Blue Dogs…)
From John Cole after watching Joe The Plumber, Michelle Malkin and Instapundit on PJTV:
I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.
The gasbags have finally decided that Obama needs to explain to the American people what a stimulus is and what he intends to accomplish with this recovery bill. I have thought from the beginning that that was necessary and I had hoped he would do it when he sent the bill down to the congress. Average people just don’t understand what this thing is — all they’ve been told for the past 30 years is that tax cuts will solve all economic problems and government spending is pork. They need to hear from the president why that isn’t true, how this kind of stimulus works and why it’s necessary.
So, to that end, I would offer this post by Robert Reich (which I have excerpted in its entirety against all blogging rules of etiquette) as an excellent starting point for such a speech.
Senate Republicans and the Stimulus: Playing Politics When the Economy Burns
Tomorrow’s job report is likely to be awful. January’s job losses could easily top half a million. We’re deep into the most vicious of economic cycles: Consumers are slashing their spending because they’re perilously in debt and worried about keeping their jobs. But as a result, businesses are facing shrinking sales of goods and services, so they’re slashing payrolls, which of course makes consumers even more anxious and further reduces their spending power. Meanwhile, businesses are cutting way back on new investments in equipment, which hurts upstream suppliers, who are now slashing their payrolls. And so it goes, downward. The gap between what the economy could produce if it were running near full capacity and what it’s now producing continues to widen. The shortfall is projected to be over a trillion dollars this year.
How do we get out of this downward plunge? Regardless of your ideological stripe, you’ve got to see that when consumers and businesses stop spending and investing, there’s only entity left to step into the breach. It’s government. Major increases in government spending are necessary, and the spending must be on a very large scale. In the last several weeks the President has put forward the outlines of a stimulus plan, and has left it to the House and Senate to fill in the details. A tiny portion of the details that made it into the House version should be stripped away because they seem like old-fashioned pork. But most spending in the bill is absolutely appropriate. My worry is there’s not nearly enough of spending to fill the shortfall in overall demand.
Yet at this very moment, Senate Republicans are seeking to strip the President’s stimulus package of many of its spending provisions and substitute tax cuts. Part of this is pure pander: They know tax cuts are more popular with the public than government spending, even though spending is a far more effective way to stimulate the economy (more on this in a moment). Another part is pure partisan politics: Republicans are emboldened by Obama’s willingness to court Republicans (taking three Republicans into his cabinet, bringing Republican leaders into the White House for consultations, putting all those business tax cuts into the stimulus bill in order to gain Republican favor) without getting anything at all back from the GOP. House Republicans snubbed the bill entirely. So, Senate Republicans say to themselves, what’s to lose?
Plenty. Millions more jobs and a full-fledged Depression, for example.
Can we get real for a moment? Take a look at this chart, which comes from calculations by Mark Zandy and his colleagues at economy.com. You see that each dollar of spending has much more impact than each dollar of tax cut. There are three reasons for this. First, most people who receive a tax cut don’t spend all of it. They use part of it to pay down their debts or they save it. Most of us did one or the other last spring with that tax rebate. From the standpoint of any particular individual, paying down debts or saving may be smart behavior — even commendable. But what’s intelligent for an individual does not necessarily translate into what’s good for the economy as a whole. The only way to get businesses to create or preserve jobs is through additional spending. And unlike tax cuts used to pay down personal debt or add to savings, every dollar of government spending flows directly into the economy and adds to overall demand. Second, even that portion of a tax cut we might actually spend doesn’t necessarily go into the American economy. It goes all over the world. I have nothing against creating or preserving the jobs of Asians who assemble those flat-panel TVs you see at the mall, for example, but right now we’re trying to create or preserve jobs here in America. Sure, the retail workers at the mall who sell the flat-panel TV’s might benefit, but remember we’re talking about how to get the biggest bang for every dollar. When government spends to repair a highway or build a school or help pay for medical services, the money and the jobs stay here in America. Finally, those who say cutting taxes on businesses is the best way to create or preserve jobs forget about the demand side. Even with a tax cut, businesses won’t hire workers unless there are customers to buy what those workers produce. A government stimulus that creates jobs is a necessary precondition. This isn’t a matter of more or less government, however much Republicans and conservatives would like to wedge it in that old ideological box. The issue is how to revive the economy. When consumers and businesses can’t or won’t spend enough to keep the economy going, government has to be the spender of last resort. Period.
I think if people heard that, in those kinds of words, they would support the president. Most Americans feel that it’s counterintuitive for the government to be spending while it’s in debt and losing revenue, just as it is for them personally. Obama needs to explain why government has to do the opposite in a recession (potentially a depression)and tell people that his legislation is a necessity to keep things from getting worse — and beginning the turn-around.
The Republicans have been shoveling so much nonsense (recently aided and abetted by the Blue Dogs and the usual Democratic suspects in the senate) that I don’t think most Americans know which way is up. They are scared and I think they will happily back the president if they just understand what he’s trying to do. At this point, he’s the only one with the credibility and trust to set their minds at ease.
*I would also suggest they consult with Bill Clinton. I always thought his best gift was his ability to speak to average Americans about complicated issues in simple terms. It wouldn’t hurt to reach out to him on this.
Update: Ooops. Just found out that he’s speaking tonight. Hopefully, he will do some ‘splainin’ along Reich’s lines.
Call For The Smelling Salts by digbyHuckleberry Graham’s working himself into a full-on case of the vapors:
President Obama has been “AWOL” in negotiations over the economic stimulus package, Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday in a scathing rebuke of the new president. The South Carolina Republican told FOX News that Obama has not been providing leadership, and he criticized the president for giving TV interviews and writing an editorial touting the package, rather than addressing the complaints of lawmakers. “This process stinks,” Graham told FOX News, before repeating a lot of his criticisms on the Senate floor. “We’re making this up as we go and it is a waste of money. It is a broken process, and the president, as far as I’m concerned, has been AWOL on providing leadership on something as important as this.” Republican senators and congressmen have been reluctant to direct any criticism at the president since his inauguration. They mostly have fired shots at Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, saying they have obstructed the bipartisan process Obama sought. But Graham broke that practice after Obama granted a round of interviews defending his plan Tuesday and wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post Thursday in which he warned of disastrous consequences if Congress does not pass the stimulus bill. “Scaring people is not leadership. Writing an editorial that if you don’t pass this bad bill we’re going to have disaster — we’ve had enough presidents trying to scare people to make bad decisions,” Graham said. “I like President Obama, but he is not leading. Having lunch is not leading … and doing TV interviews is not leading.”
Graham just said on Hardball that the public hates this bill and he will not be intimidated by this president, the process is broken and he is very disappointed. And then he explained that he is the real bipartisan. (Oh my. Do we have a contender for 2012?)He was whining and fulminating and pretty much working himself into a frenzy. Which means this is an orchestrated hissy fit. Oddly, with all the media analysis about how Democrats blew it by putting contraceptives in the bill and how Obama screwed up the debate, nobody seems to think there’s a thing wrong with the Republicans being willing to destroy the economy for political gain.If you haven’t called your Reps, you know what to do.
The leadership of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of conservative Democrats concerned about the federal deficit, sent an open letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) Thursday complaining about the size of the House bill and supporting a Senate effort to toss out much of the spending.“We believe that’s a highly worthwhile goal, and that there are additional provisions that would be better left for consideration in regular order,” said the letter, signed by Blue Dog leader Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) and the rest of the Blue Dog leadership.Eleven Democrats voted against the stimulus package in the House, most of them Blue Dogs from conservative districts bothered by the spending. The letter said that many others voted for it because they expected it to be trimmed back in the Senate or in the conference committee that will hammer out the final package.The letter came as Obama, along with Pelosi, stressed the urgency of passing the package. In an appearance at Energy Department headquarters, Obama said, “The time for talk is over, the time for action is now.”Congressional leaders had hoped to send the package to Obama before the Presidents Day holiday weekend, a deadline that appears increasingly unlikely in the face of growing opposition.
