Methinks the Tea Party hath jumped the shark

[eno]

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

[jake]

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!
 
 
 

[rbain]

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???

[Boris]

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

[eno]

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

[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!
 

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.

[Mr. Daniel Lumis]

eno, I predict your pole-dance at the 2012 republican convention will be warmly received...

[Ted]

...  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.

[watcher]

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.


source: OMB

[eno]

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.

[eno]

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.


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

[Boris]

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.


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.


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

[Mr. Daniel Lumis]

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.

[Boris]

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

###

...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