Bill O'Reilly on last night's Talking Points Memo (his show segment, not the web site) is tracking closer to center and actually said that the tax loopholes should be closed, so as to "hold the wealthy more accountable". He also said that people "should set aside the ideology" after saying that he completely disagrees with Michelle Bachmann, as a shot across the bow to the Tea Partiers.
http://www.hulu.com/embed/Vn7tCRdFxR3HvnWLTItFNA"%20type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
The Republicans are acting in a cowardly fashion. They don't want to vote YES to increase the debt ceiling yet they are willing to abdicate their Congressional responsibility to the President to increase the debt ceiling.
Quote from: Ted on July 16, 2011, 06:04:13 AM
The Republicans are acting in a cowardly fashion. They don't want to vote YES to increase the debt ceiling yet they are willing to abdicate their Congressional responsibility to the President to increase the debt ceiling.
I agree with you only inasmuch as the McConnell proposal is cowardly; many Republicans/Libertarians are very upset that McConnell has provided a face-saving out for Obama. Any concession Republicans may make will be used by Democrats to accelerate spending, and hang around the neck of Republicans in future campaign ads.
The true "coward" in all of this
is, and will turn out to be the president (and the previous Democrat House) who abdicated his responsibility; the Democrats controlled both houses and the presidency for two years, and failed to pass a budget! Since Nov. 2010, however, the Republican house
has passed a budget.
Can you or anyone here provide me with any specific proposals Obama has submitted in these negotiations? As with everything Obamaesque, it is all political smoke-n-mirrors...a truly infantile, incompetent, and destructive presidency.
infantile?
Damn, using Republican descriptors for Obama is quite the measure of adoration by you, eno. Careful, one might think you actually like the guy or something!
Funny how worried about the debt they are NOW, after 8 years of unchallenged debt-ceiling bills while starting TWO wars (off the books...) and a huge unfunded Medicare expansion...
IOKIYAR...
Quote from: eno on July 16, 2011, 08:46:01 AM
.. The true "coward" in all of this is, and will turn out to be the president ...
Wrong answer - the true "coward" in all this will be the Republicans playing footsy with the nation's bond ratings.
I don't think Standard & Poors and Moody are kidding around yet the Michelle Bachmanns and tea baggers of the world seem to think its some kind of joke that the President is playing on the American people.
Quote from: Ted on July 17, 2011, 07:01:22 AM
Quote from: eno on July 16, 2011, 08:46:01 AM
.. The true "coward" in all of this is, and will turn out to be the president ...
Wrong answer - the true "coward" in all this will be the Republicans playing footsy with the nation's bond ratings.
I don't think Standard & Poors and Moody are kidding around yet the Michelle Bachmanns and tea baggers of the world seem to think its some kind of joke that the President is playing on the American people.
You're defending a fool!
Obama is holding the nation's bond ratings hostage to a tax increase (which will produce less, not more revenues, while killing more jobs). The tax increases would do nothing to solve any debt problems, and Obama and the Democrats do not intend on using any dubious increase in revenue to mitigate any debt anyway; they intend on spending the money NOW and borrowing more and more as we go on.
Obama is the one holding the nation's bond ratings hostage to this tax increase merely to appease his extreme, far Left-wing base; a group of envious, economically maleducated people who (like Obama) see taxes as a form of punishment, "fairness", "shared sacrifice," and "balance" instead of a source of revenues.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rn7kdu2Y7k (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rn7kdu2Y7k)
Quote from: eno on July 16, 2011, 08:46:01 AM
The true "coward" in all of this is, and will turn out to be the president (and the previous Democrat House) who abdicated his responsibility; the Democrats controlled both houses and the presidency for two years, and failed to pass a budget! Since Nov. 2010, however, the Republican house has passed a budget.
Can you or anyone here provide me with any specific proposals Obama has submitted in these negotiations? As with everything Obamaesque, it is all political smoke-n-mirrors...a truly infantile, incompetent, and destructive presidency.
+1
Well said!
So much for transparency!
Obama is the imperial president. War Powers Act, Medicare proposals, Budgets...eh. As always, POLITICS ABOVE POLICY!
Quote from: eno on July 17, 2011, 09:01:21 AM
Obama is holding the nation's bond ratings hostage to a tax increase (which will produce less, not more revenues, while killing more jobs).
Nonsense. The Republicans are the hostage takers. Both parties in Congress authorized all that debt. Now we have to pay those bills. Simple as that.
The Republicans would rather endanger "the full faith and credit" of the whole country than give up the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
How did Clinton manage to balance the budget?
Quote from: OakParkSpartan on July 17, 2011, 10:32:27 PM
How did Clinton manage to balance the budget?
Slight tax increase in 1993 along with a dot net boom in the 1990s bringing in more revenue. Plus, the Republican Congress in 1995 instituted a plan where, for any increase in the budget in some area, there had to a plan put in place (either cuts in other areas or a revenue increase) to pay for it.
But, I think the biggest factor was the dot com boom in the 1990s.
Quote from: buzz on July 17, 2011, 08:37:30 PM
The Republicans would rather endanger "the full faith and credit" of the whole country than give up the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
The "Bush" tax cuts expired last year! It was pretty big news. I am surprised you missed it.
Quote from: OakParkSpartan on July 17, 2011, 10:32:27 PM
How did Clinton manage to balance the budget?
He didn't!
______________________________________________________________________________________
No, Bill Clinton Didn't Balance the Budget- by Stephen Moore [published:10/8/1998]
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5656 (http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5656)
Let us establish one point definitively: Bill Clinton didn't balance the budget. Yes, he was there when it happened. But the record shows that was about the extent of his contribution.
Many in the media have flubbed this story. The New York Times on October 1st said, "Clinton balances the budget." Others have praised George Bush. Political analyst Bill Schneider declared on CNN that Bush is one of "the real heroes" for his willingness to raise taxes -- and never mind read my lips. (Once upon a time, lying was something that was considered wrong in Washington, but under the last two presidents our standards have dropped.) In any case, crediting George Bush for the end of the deficit requires some nifty logical somersaults, since the deficit hit its Mount Everest peak of $290 billion in St. George's last year in office.
And 1993 -- the year of the giant Clinton tax hike -- was not the turning point in the deficit wars, either. In fact, in 1995, two years after that tax hike, the budget baseline submitted by the president's own Office of Management and Budget and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted $200 billion deficits for as far as the eye could see. The figure shows the Clinton deficit baseline. What changed this bleak outlook?
Newt Gingrich and company -- for all their faults -- have received virtually no credit for balancing the budget. Yet today's surplus is, in part, a byproduct of the GOP's single-minded crusade to end 30 years of red ink. Arguably, Gingrich's finest hour as Speaker came in March 1995 when he rallied the entire Republican House caucus behind the idea of eliminating the deficit within seven years.
Skeptics said it could not be done in seven years. The GOP did it in four.
Now let us contrast this with the Clinton fiscal record. Recall that it was the Clinton White House that fought Republicans every inch of the way in balancing the budget in 1995. When Republicans proposed their own balanced-budget plan, the White House waged a shameless Mediscare campaign to torpedo the plan -- a campaign that the Washington Post slammed as "pure demagoguery." It was Bill Clinton who, during the big budget fight in 1995, had to submit not one, not two, but five budgets until he begrudgingly matched the GOP's balanced-budget plan. In fact, during the height of the budget wars in the summer of 1995, the Clinton administration admitted that "balancing the budget is not one of our top priorities."
And lest we forget, it was Bill Clinton and his wife who tried to engineer a federal takeover of the health care system -- a plan that would have sent the government's finances into the stratosphere. Tom Delay was right: for Clinton to take credit for the balanced budget is like Chicago Cubs pitcher Steve Trachsel taking credit for delivering the pitch to Mark McGuire that he hit out of the park for his 62nd home run.
The figure shows that the actual cumulative budget deficit from 1994 to 1998 was almost $600 billion below the Clintonomics baseline. Part of the explanation for the balanced budget is that Republicans in Congress had the common sense to reject the most reckless features of Clintonomics. Just this year, Bill Clinton's budget proposed more than $100 billion in new social spending -- proposals that were mostly tossed overboard. It's funny, but back in January the White House didn't seem too concerned about saving the surplus for "shoring up Social Security."
Now for the bad news for GOP partisans. The federal budget has not been balanced by any Republican spending reductions. Uncle Sam now spends $150 billion more than in 1995. Over the past 10 years, the defense budget, adjusted for inflation, has been cut $100 billion, but domestic spending has risen by $300 billion.
We have a balanced budget today that is mostly a result of 1) an exceptionally strong economy that is creating gobs of new tax revenues and 2) a shrinking military budget. Social spending is still soaring and now costs more than $1 trillion. Is this the kind of balanced budget that fiscal conservatives want? A budget with no deficit, but that funds the biggest government ever?
So the budget is balanced, but now comes the harder part: cutting the budget. Bill Clinton has laid down a marker in the political debate with his "save Social Security first," gambit. That theme should be turned against him and his government expansionist agenda. Congress should respond: No new government programs until we have fixed Social Security. This means no IMF bailouts. No new day care subsidies. No extending Medicare coverage to 55-year-olds. (Honestly, if Clinton has his way, it won't be long till teenagers are eligible for Medicare.)
The budget surpluses over the next five years could easily exceed $500 billion. Leaving all of that extra money lying around within the grasp of vote-buying politicians is an invitation to financial mischief. If Congress and the president use the surpluses to fund a new spending spree, we may find that surpluses are more a curse than a blessing. _________________________________________________________________________________________
If Obama caves to the Tea Party in the next few weeks and agrees to real spending cuts, no tax increases, and a frame-work for passing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, the economy will bottom out and rebound, private-sector cash will flood into the economy, jobs will be created, Obama will be re-elected, and in a decade, Democrats can once again revise history and claim that Obama (like Clinton before him) balanced the budget!
eno
Quote from: Ted on July 16, 2011, 06:04:13 AM
The Republicans are acting in a cowardly fashion. They don't want to vote YES to increase the debt ceiling yet they are willing to abdicate their Congressional responsibility to the President to increase the debt ceiling.
The Republicans will not vote to increase the debt ceiling until the Democrats agree to make some major spending cuts. Once the sizable cuts are made they"ll get the debt ceiling increased. "Give and Take"... "Checks and Balances". We've talked about this before. The problem is that Obama wants it all. He promised to cut the deficit in half, remember? Well he has quadrupled the deficit since he took office and not one budget was passed since he's been in. Even in 2010 when he had the full Democrat control.
I don't see the Republicans acting in a cowardly fashion Ted. If you have a hard time paying your bills, do you just keep asking your credit card company to keep increasing your limit or do you try to cut back on what you're spending? Obama is spending more and increasing debt.
Obama has not one clue about financing.
Quote from: mailman7 on July 18, 2011, 03:25:51 PM
Quote from: Ted on July 16, 2011, 06:04:13 AM
The Republicans are acting in a cowardly fashion. They don't want to vote YES to increase the debt ceiling yet they are willing to abdicate their Congressional responsibility to the President to increase the debt ceiling.
The Republicans will not vote to increase the debt ceiling until the Democrats agree to make some major spending cuts. Once the sizable cuts are made they"ll get the debt ceiling increased. "Give and Take"... "Checks and Balances". We've talked about this before. The problem is that Obama wants it all. He promised to cut the deficit in half, remember? Well he has quadrupled the deficit since he took office and not one budget was passed since he's been in. Even in 2010 when he had the full Democrat control.
I don't see the Republicans acting in a cowardly fashion Ted. If you have a hard time paying your bills, do you just keep asking your credit card company to keep increasing your limit or do you try to cut back on what you're spending? Obama is spending more and increasing debt.
Obama has not one clue about financing.
These nut jobs are willing to screw the economy over and millions of people so they can gain political power. As disgusting as the Democrats behave, this is worse.
It's A Trap!
The Hidden Pitfalls Of GOP's 'Cut, Cap, And Balance' Plan
Brian Beutler | July 18, 2011, 1:24PM
Tuesday, the House of Representatives will vote on, and likely pass, a conservative Republican plan called "Cut, Cap, and Balance." The package will include some immediate, as-yet unspecified spending cuts, a statutory cap to keep spending below 18 percent of GDP, and a promised separate vote on a Constitutional amendment that requires Congress to maintain a balanced budget, but essentially forbids any future tax increases.
It would also raise the debt ceiling through 2012 -- an ancillary benefit for Republicans who are looking for any way to pin the consequences of a debt default, should one happen, on Democrats. Indeed, the GOP feigned shock and anger Monday when the White House, as expected, issued an official veto threat -- turns out President Obama's the one threatening to wreak havoc on the country.
Of course, later in the week, the Senate will follow suit, and there Cut, Cap, and Balance is expected to fail.
For Republicans, it's the perfect alignment of popular sounding policies -- "spending cuts" a "balanced budget" and, finally, an end to this debt limit brinksmanship -- minus the a scintilla of accountability or transparency. And for Republicans trying to make nice with conservative activists, it will give them cover to later vote for a much more modest plan to cut some spending, raise the debt limit, avoid default. But the details have been intentionally obscured by most conservatives, and they reveal the plan to be the most radical fiscal policy the GOP has aligned behind in years -- one that makes the Republican's current budget proposal to phase out Medicare appear moderate by comparison.
Indeed, it's likely that Republican leaders would never push for such a package if they thought it stood a chance of becoming law, or of changing the Constitution. But it doesn't. So this week's efforts come with great political upside for the GOP and none of the peril that would entail actually complying with Cut, Cap, and Balance. It gives them an opening to sucker punch vulnerable Democrats seeking re-election in 2012, who've articulated support for a balanced budget amendment in the past but will oppose this one.
Monday morning, NRSC communications director Brian Walsh explained the strategy. "Interesting - Today Show anchor called the House vote on a [balanced budget] amendment a 'tea party backed plan,'" he said in the first of a series of tweets. "Really? Its not just the tea party. Every single Senate Republican - moderate and conservative alike, is cosponsoring a Balanced Budget Amendment. And Dems like Brown, Nelson, Stabenow, Tester etc. all campaigned on a BBA in '06. Now they're flip flopping. Will have to explain."
The ads write themselves, but will require bamboozling the public into believing that all things called Balanced Budget Amendments are identical.
As conservative anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist acknowledged on MSNBC Monday, "That's why the present Republican Senate, every Republican Senator has agreed to a Constitutional amendment that requires a two-thirds vote to raise taxes and doesn't simply allow you to get around the balanced budget amendment, because there's an emergency. . This is -- this has teeth."
Even a simpler Constitutional requirement that the government maintain a balanced budget would be fraught with risk. What happens in an economic or foreign policy emergency? What happens if Congress recognizes the need to spend more money, but lacks the will to raise the revenue needed to pay for it.
The version of the BBA Republicans are pushing now goes much further. It would impose supermajority requirements -- two-thirds of both the House and Senate -- to raise taxes. That means it's really a formula for slashing spending at an epic clip, and, invariably, for devastating key safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It just doesn't say so explicitly.
And to meet a spending cap frozen at 18 percent of GDP, the government would have to shrink itself to the size it was in 1966, one year after the creation of Medicare, when life expectancy was lower, health care was cheaper, and the country was younger, and smaller in just about every way.
Democratic leaders have explained Cut, Cap, and Balance as a Trojan Horse to end Medicare, and that's basically fair. But their vulnerable incumbents will have to be vigilant about explaining that they weren't simply "for a balanced budget amendment before they were against it."
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/its-a-trap-the-hidden-pitfalls-of-gops-cut-cap-and-balance-plan.php?ref=fpa
Bruce Bartlett:
"If Republicans were really serious about putting a balanced budget amendment into the Constitution they would not have written an entirely new one that is radically and conceptually different from those debated in the past, with new language that constitutional scholars have not even begun to analyze. Republicans would have held weeks of hearings with such experts and planned many more weeks of floor debate. GOP think tanks would have been urged to hold conferences and publish studies of the proposed amendment.
None of this was done, of course, leaving the inescapable conclusion that this is nothing but a political ploy designed solely to appeal to the GOP's Tea Party wing. The time wasted debating a balanced budget amendment would be better spent taking care of the House's long list of unfinished business, such as passing appropriations bills."
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/2312/phony-balanced-budget-amendment-debate?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CapitalGainsAndGames+%28Capital+Gains+and+Games+-+Wall+Street%2C+Washington%2C+and+Everything+in+Between%29
Robert Greenstein at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
"Adding to the extreme nature of the measure, the legislation also reverses a feature of every law of the past quarter-century that has contained a fiscal target or standard enforced by across-the-board cuts. Since the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law of 1985, all such laws have exempted the core basic assistance programs for the poorest Americans from such across-the-board cuts. "Cut, Cap, and Balance," by contrast, specifically subjects all such programs to across-the-board cuts if its spending caps would be exceeded.
It does so even as it seeks to erect a constitutional firewall to safeguard tax cuts and tax breaks for the most well-off Americans. Thus, an impoverished elderly widow living on Supplemental Security Income — which provides benefits that lift people to just 75 percent of the poverty line — could have her assistance cut back under the measure's across-the-board budget cuts even as millionaire hedge-fund managers retained their lucrative carried-interest tax breaks."
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3537
###
Now, going back to where I started this thread, you have another faction (formerly known as "the base") of the GOP lead by Bill O'Reilly calling for an end to the loopholes benefitting the wealthiest Americans. Fun times under the big tent.
I just hope the country wises up and boots these traitors out of office.
I am happy I do not have children, because IMHO the future does not bode well for them.
Quote from: OakParkSpartan on July 18, 2011, 03:40:03 PM
These nut jobs are willing to screw the economy over and millions of people so they can gain political power. As disgusting as the Democrats behave, this is worse.
Surely you are joking. Obama has not taken this issue seriously since the process began. The president has the duty to submit a budget in February, the CBO scores it, and congressional budget committees weigh in.
Obama submitted a joke of a budget.
Not a single democrat in the senate voted to back his budget; the vote was 97-0 to reject it! Obama has since distanced himself from the Obama budget.Now the "transparent" president is working behind closed doors. There is no scrutiny of any of his proposals and negotiations. He has the pulpit of the presidency to make claims about what he is willing to "give" but there is no way to verify and validate any of those claims because he refuses to put forth specifics.
Sorry, OPS, but it is president Obama that is all about politics over policy.
NYT Today (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/opinion/19tue1.html?_r=1&hp):
EDITORIAL
Signing Away the Right to Govern
Published: July 18, 2011
It used to be that a sworn oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution was the only promise required to become president. But that no longer seems to be enough for a growing number of Republican interest groups, who are demanding that presidential candidates sign pledges shackling them to the corners of conservative ideology. Many candidates are going along, and each pledge they sign undermines the basic principle of democratic government built on compromise and negotiation.
Related
Both parties have long had litmus tests on issues — abortion, taxation, the environment, the social safety net. The hope was that the candidates would keep their promises, and, when they didn't, voters who cared deeply about those issues could always pick someone else next time. Human beings, after all, do not come with warranties.
But iron-clad promises were just what the most rigid Republican ideologues wanted. They had seen too many presidents — specifically Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush — bend when confronted by a complex national reality. Both those presidents agreed to new taxes and some Republicans said they did not fight hard enough to outlaw abortion or cut spending to the point where government was unrecognizable. In other words, they compromised a bit, to keep divided government from destroying itself. Washington, the ideologues decided, corrupted true conservatives into moderates.
More was needed to keep them in line, which gave birth to the signed pledge — no more enforceable than a spoken promise, but a politician's actual signature was seen as more binding. The oldest and most pernicious of these modern oaths was dreamed up by Grover Norquist, the leader of Americans for Tax Reform, who has managed to get 95 percent of all Republicans in Congress to pledge never to raise taxes for any reason. If they end tax deductions, Mr. Norquist's pledge-takers say they will match the increase in revenue with further tax cuts.
That pledge is the single biggest reason the federal government is now on the edge of default. Its signers will not allow revenues in a deal to raise the debt ceiling.
Its success has now spawned dangerous offspring. There is the Susan B. Anthony (http://www.sba-list.org/2012pledge) pledge, in which candidates promise to appoint antiabortion cabinet officers and cut off federal financing to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. It has been signed by Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum. There is the cut, cap and balance pledge (http://www.cutcapandbalanceact.com/) to gut the federal government by cutting and capping spending, and enacting a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. It has been signed by all of the above candidates, plus Mitt Romney and Herman Cain.
And there is the particularly bizarre Marriage Vow (http://www.scribd.com/doc/59632577/THE-MARRIAGE-VOW-document), in which candidates agree to oppose same-sex marriage, reject Shariah law and pledge personal fidelity to their spouse. Until it was changed after a public outcry, it also contained a line saying that a black child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by a two-parent family than a similar child raised in the Obama era. It was signed by Mr. Santorum and Mrs. Bachmann.
Only one candidate, Jon Huntsman Jr., has refused to sign any pledge, saying he owes allegiance to his flag and his wife. It is refreshing in a field of candidates who have forgotten the true source of political power in America.
Well, there's a surprise; the NYT pushing for more taxes, and siding with its party of choice!
These bone-heads at the NYT make the same fallacious assumption all Democrats make, nowadays: that nobody can remember history, and that everyone is stupid. The NYT gives a hint of this when they laud Reagan and Bush I (whom they reviled as presidents); this is the same rope-a-dope game the Democrats and NYT (reduntant, I know) played with Reagan and Bush I, 28 and 20 years ago respectively when they promised each president spending cuts for tax increases.
The fact is, the Democrats never kept their word re: spending cuts; taxes were raised, and debts and the deficit continued to grow. The cherry on the cake? Democrats subsequently (at election time) clubbed both Reagan and Bush over the head with their willingness to compromise, and to this day, erroneously blame those two men for the deficits which ballooned as a direct result of (a) tax increases, which resulted in: (b) more (not less) spending.
This time, Obama and the Democrats are being a tad more honest, having made it clear that they don't want to apply any paltry, tax-increase revenues towards paying-off the debt, but rather would spend the money. Has the NYT published an editorial chastising Obama and/or its fellow Democrats for not putting forth a single, specific proposal to reduce spending & the size of government? I'll give markberwyn a gold star (and a pat on the head) as soon as he posts a link to a piece which is similarly critical of Obama and the Democrats.
NYT? Wrap a nice fresh sea-bass in it; that's all it's good for!
eno
A few random thoughts related to the op-ed Boris posted today:
While I am not taking a position on the tax pledge referenced in the op-ed, that op-ed is a joke. Contrary to what the piece claims, the pledge does allow revenues! It merely seeks to cap tax rates and stop reductions in deductions, credits, etc for the American individuals and businesses. So the claim that the "signers will not allow revenues" is just plain false. Policies that increase income for Americans would generate more revenue at the same rates and thus not violate the pledge. The pledge also allows for increased revenue on foreign tariffs, etc.
We did not even have an income tax during this country's first century, and America did not default on its debt back then. So the claim that this "pledge is the single biggest reason the federal government is now on the edge of default" is also false. The biggest reason is spending!
As to the heart of the article regarding the "shackling" of politicians who take oaths, we need to look no further than our current president to see how toothless those pledges can be. Obama pledged to close Gitmo within a year of taking office. He even signed an executive order on the subject during his first week in office. That EO was singed back in January 2009; Gitmo is still open today!
Quote from: eno on July 19, 2011, 07:55:36 AM
Well, there's a surprise; the NYT pushing for more taxes, and siding with its party of choice...
eno
Hilarious. You bash the NYT as partisan after supporting your position with the f-ing CATO INSTITUTE???
July 4, 2011
The Mother of All No-Brainers
By DAVID BROOKS
The Republicans have changed American politics since they took control of the House of Representatives. They have put spending restraint and debt reduction at the top of the national agenda. They have sparked a discussion on entitlement reform. They have turned a bill to raise the debt limit into an opportunity to put the U.S. on a stable fiscal course.
Republican leaders have also proved to be effective negotiators. They have been tough and inflexible and forced the Democrats to come to them. The Democrats have agreed to tie budget cuts to the debt ceiling bill. They have agreed not to raise tax rates. They have agreed to a roughly 3-to-1 rate of spending cuts to revenue increases, an astonishing concession.
Moreover, many important Democrats are open to a truly large budget deal. President Obama has a strong incentive to reach a deal so he can campaign in 2012 as a moderate. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, has talked about supporting a debt reduction measure of $3 trillion or even $4 trillion if the Republicans meet him part way. There are Democrats in the White House and elsewhere who would be willing to accept Medicare cuts if the Republicans would be willing to increase revenues.
If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases.
A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth.
The party is not being asked to raise marginal tax rates in a way that might pervert incentives. On the contrary, Republicans are merely being asked to close loopholes and eliminate tax expenditures that are themselves distortionary.
This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers.
But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That's because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.
The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.
The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them that a default on the debt would have calamitous effects, far worse than raising tax revenues a bit. But the members of this movement refuse to believe it.
The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation's honor.
The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name. Economists have identified many factors that contribute to economic growth, ranging from the productivity of the work force to the share of private savings that is available for private investment. Tax levels matter, but they are far from the only or even the most important factor.
But to members of this movement, tax levels are everything. Members of this tendency have taken a small piece of economic policy and turned it into a sacred fixation. They are willing to cut education and research to preserve tax expenditures. Manufacturing employment is cratering even as output rises, but members of this movement somehow believe such problems can be addressed so long as they continue to worship their idol.
Over the past week, Democrats have stopped making concessions. They are coming to the conclusion that if the Republicans are fanatics then they better be fanatics, too.
The struggles of the next few weeks are about what sort of party the G.O.P. is — a normal conservative party or an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation.
If the debt ceiling talks fail, independent voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don't take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.
And they will be right.
###
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/opinion/05brooks.html?_r=3&hp
Quote from: rbain on July 19, 2011, 10:05:06 AM
Quote from: eno on July 19, 2011, 07:55:36 AM
Well, there's a surprise; the NYT pushing for more taxes, and siding with its party of choice...
eno
Hilarious. You bash the NYT as partisan after supporting your position with the f-ing CATO INSTITUTE???
The CATO Institute doesn't hold itself out as being unbiased and objective, nor does it purport to be a main-stream, news-outlet merely adhering to fair, journalistic principles; CATO is clearly and proudly a conservative, small-government advocating think-tank. In fairness to the NYT, however, the piece I critiqued was an op-ed column.
eno
Quote from: jake on July 19, 2011, 09:27:41 AM
A few random thoughts related to the op-ed Boris posted today:
While I am not taking a position on the tax pledge referenced in the op-ed, that op-ed is a joke. Contrary to what the piece claims, the pledge does allow revenues! It merely seeks to cap tax rates and stop reductions in deductions, credits, etc for the American individuals and businesses. So the claim that the "signers will not allow revenues" is just plain false. Policies that increase income for Americans would generate more revenue at the same rates and thus not violate the pledge. The pledge also allows for increased revenue on foreign tariffs, etc.
We did not even have an income tax during this country's first century, and America did not default on its debt back then. So the claim that this "pledge is the single biggest reason the federal government is now on the edge of default" is also false. The biggest reason is spending!
As to the heart of the article regarding the "shackling" of politicians who take oaths, we need to look no further than our current president to see how toothless those pledges can be. Obama pledged to close Gitmo within a year of taking office. He even signed an executive order on the subject during his first week in office. That EO was singed back in January 2009; Gitmo is still open today!
Jake:
Didn't Obama also make a pledge to "Pay-Go"?
eno
P.S. I give Obama credit for not closing Gitmo and going back on that pledge.
eno, I predict your pole-dance at the 2012 republican convention will be warmly received...
Quote from: eno on July 19, 2011, 03:04:51 PM
... CATO is clearly and proudly a conservative, small-government advocating think-tank. ...
I thought the CATO institute was a libertarian organization, not a conservative organization.
Quote from: eno on July 19, 2011, 07:55:36 AM
Well, there's a surprise; the NYT pushing for more taxes, and siding with its party of choice!
These bone-heads at the NYT make the same fallacious assumption all Democrats make, nowadays: that nobody can remember history, and that everyone is stupid.
You are entitled to your own opinion. NOT your own facts.
(http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/rev_outs2.png)
source: OMB
Quote from: Mr. Daniel Lumis on July 19, 2011, 04:46:39 PM
eno, I predict your pole-dance at the 2012 republican convention will be warmly received...
You wouldn't want to see me on a pole, Saul! Keep drinking the hope & change Kool-aid.
Quote from: watcher on July 19, 2011, 05:51:44 PM
Quote from: eno on July 19, 2011, 07:55:36 AM
Well, there's a surprise; the NYT pushing for more taxes, and siding with its party of choice!
These bone-heads at the NYT make the same fallacious assumption all Democrats make, nowadays: that nobody can remember history, and that everyone is stupid.
You are entitled to your own opinion. NOT your own facts.
(http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/rev_outs2.png)
source: OMB
watcher:
My opinion is that following TEFRA (where Reagan agreed to tax increases in exchange for the Democrat's broken promise to cut spending) and when Bush I was hoodwinked to abandon his no new taxes pledge, debts & deficits increased; i.e. higher taxes didn't work, but made things worse, 'cause government just spent the $$$. Instead of accepting the fact that higher taxes made things worse, Democrats blamed Reagan & Bush for the ensuing increased deficits.
Your chart doesn't refute that fact; it doesn't seem to illustrate or correlate to debt or deficits at all.
eno
Funny thing is...we're spending about the same as we have for the past 10 years (and more) on all the things that the Tea Partiers want to "eliminate" (except they don't...because there's no WAY they'd let their social security or medicaid checks stop coming)...
...EXCEPT DEFENSE SPENDING.
Our current predicament is pretty much 100% attributable to our folly in the Middle East (and of course, due to the ultra rich having shitloads of loopholes, revenue is down).
CHART OF THE DAY: 'Out Of Control Spending' Not Really Out Of Control At All
Brian Beutler | July 4, 2011, 11:25AM
It's taken as an article of faith in D.C. that government has gotten too big, spending is out of control, and Washington has to tighten its belt, just like everybody else. Even President Obama takes this view.
This has meant no small consequences for the federal budget. In the spring, Republicans launched an effort to slash tens of billions of dollars from non-defense discretionary programs -- money the government approves every year to pay for social services and other programs -- from the federal budget. That campaign almost ended in a government shutdown.
That same sliver of the budget is again under attack in the fight over whether to raise the national debt limit. Republicans want to reduce overall domestic spending and cap it for years going forward, so it can't exceed a set level. That means as time goes on, the population grows, and the cost of goods and services increases, the government will be spending less and less on the people who rely on these programs over time.
But a close look at the numbers reveals a few important, and frequently overlooked facts. Domestic discretionary spending is a small sliver of the budget. Our deficit and debts can be traced to the fact that spending on entitlement programs and defense has shot up, and tax revenues have plummeted to their lowest level in decades. But spending on domestic discretionary programs has grown much more slowly. And, if you correct for inflation, and for growing population, it turns out we're spending exactly the same amount on these programs as we were a full decade ago.
These numbers come from Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, who are doing their best to guard this turf.
"Although non-defense discretionary spending in nominal dollars has increased, when taking inflation and population growth into account the amount contained in the [2011 budget] represents no increase over what we spent in 2001, a year in which we generated a surplus of $128 billion," said chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI) in a prepared statement. "So the right question to ask is: Are we really spending too much on non-defense programs? The answer is clearly no."
Committee staff put together the below table to emphasize the point.
(http://talkingpointsmemo.com/images/AppropsTable.jpg) (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/images/AppropsTable.jpg)
click to enlarge
In the wake of the Bush tax cuts, and the Great Recession, tax revenue has fallen through the floor to near-historic lows. As a percentage of GDP, it's fallen 24 percent since 2001, and if you correct for inflation, the government is collecting nearly 20 percent less per person than it was a decade ago. At the same time, the population-adjusted costs of mandatory spending programs -- driven by Medicare, including its new prescription drug benefit, and Medicaid -- have increased by over 30 percent. And, of course, defense spending has skyrocketed. But if you isolate domestic discretionary programs, a decade later we're spending no more on a per-person basis than we were back then.
The idea here is that since this money is largely devoted to education, health care, and other services that benefit broad swaths of the population, the amount of it should grow roughly with population size. This stands in contrast to defense spending, which is why the committee did not correct defense spending for population growth. We took the numbers and put them in a slightly different context, so you can see by what percentage spending and revenues have risen and fallen on a population adjusted basis over the last decade. Makes it pretty clear what is and is not the culprit of deficits and our supposedly out-of-control spending.
(http://talkingpointsmemo.com/images/graph-images-edit1.jpg)
(http://talkingpointsmemo.com/images/graph-images-edit1.jpg)click to enlarge
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/chart-of-the-day-out-of-control-spending-not-really-out-of-control-at-all.php?ref=fpblg
Quote from: eno on July 19, 2011, 08:04:17 PM
Quote from: Mr. Daniel Lumis on July 19, 2011, 04:46:39 PM
eno, I predict your pole-dance at the 2012 republican convention will be warmly received...
You wouldn't want to see me on a pole, Saul! Keep drinking the hope & change Kool-aid.
Kool-aid? Hah. Scotch.
Out from under the anti-tax pledge
By Editorial, Published: July 20
WITH A HANDFUL of exceptions, every Republican member of Congress has signed a pledge against increasing taxes. Would allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire as scheduled in 2012 violate this vow? We posed this question to Grover Norquist, its author and enforcer, and his answer was both surprising and encouraging: No.
In other words, according to Mr. Norquist's interpretation of the Americans for Tax Reform pledge, lawmakers have the technical leeway to bring in as much as $4 trillion in new tax revenue — the cost of extending President George W. Bush's tax cuts for another decade — without being accused of breaking their promise. "Not continuing a tax cut is not technically a tax increase," Mr. Norquist told us. So it doesn't violate the pledge? "We wouldn't hold it that way," he said.
Of course, letting the tax cuts expire is decidedly not Mr. Norquist's preference. Indeed, as a matter of policy, he is passionately opposed to a single dime in new tax revenue. But the fact that Mr. Norquist interprets his own pledge to permit such conduct suggests that Republican lawmakers who have been browbeaten into abjuring any tax increase, at any time, for any reason, may not be as boxed in as they believe. The official Republican line has been that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, even for those earning more than $250,000, would be a job-killing tax increase. The fact that the godfather of the pledge does not interpret the lapse as an increase is significant.
Mr. Norquist's comments come at a moment of remarkable and welcome fluidity in what had seemed to be a solid wall of Republican opposition to raising any tax revenue at any time for any reason. The surprising reemergence and expansion of the Senate Gang of Six this week was accompanied by a flurry of statements from Republican senators endorsing a proposal that included $1 trillion in new tax revenue. "This is a serious, bipartisan proposal that will help stop Washington from spending money that we don't have, and I support it," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the GOP conference chair. "A fair compromise," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.). There may not be time to translate the gang plan into law as the debt ceiling looms, but these reactions suggest that future negotiations could be conducted from a base line of reality.
Too often in recent years, the tax debate has resembled a one-way ratchet: Taxes can go down but never back up, except if a booming economy produces additional revenue. It is important to remember that the Bush tax cuts were passed at a moment when, hard as it may be to believe, enormous surpluses were in sight and a big worry among economic poobahs was whether the debt was being paid off too quickly. There is no policy basis for insisting that these tax rates are graven in stone and immune to change given the changed circumstances. And the Norquist pledge, it turns out, is not a suicide pact preventing such a sober reassessment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/out-from-under-the-anti-tax-pledge/2011/07/20/gIQAoudbQI_print.html
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...ahhh, but it seems that lil Grover got taken to the woodshed by his Wall Street and Saudi masters. Here's a follow-up where he contradicts corrects himself. I'm sure he simply "mis-spoke", right?
http://www.youtube.com/v/FfWsRyysGVQ?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0