TomCADem
TomCADem's JournalPaul Krugman - "The G.O.P.’s Existential Crisis" - Nails It!
Once again, it is refreshing not to have someone in the media who is pushing either the false equivalency narrative or, worse, buying into the Republican/Fox News narrative that President Obama must show "leadership" by offering spending cuts until Republicans deem themselves satisfied.
(T)hese aren’t normal negotiations in which each side presents specific proposals, and horse-trading proceeds until the two sides converge. By all accounts, Republicans have, so far, offered almost no specifics. They claim that they’re willing to raise $800 billion in revenue by closing loopholes, but they refuse to specify which loopholes they would close; they are demanding large cuts in spending, but the specific cuts they have been willing to lay out wouldn’t come close to delivering the savings they demand.
It’s a very peculiar situation. In effect, Republicans are saying to President Obama, “Come up with something that will make us happy.” He is, understandably, not willing to play that game. And so the talks are stuck.
Why won’t the Republicans get specific? Because they don’t know how. The truth is that, when it comes to spending, they’ve been faking it all along — not just in this election, but for decades. Which brings me to the nature of the current G.O.P. crisis.
Since the 1970s, the Republican Party has fallen increasingly under the influence of radical ideologues, whose goal is nothing less than the elimination of the welfare state — that is, the whole legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society. From the beginning, however, these ideologues have had a big problem: The programs they want to kill are very popular. Americans may nod their heads when you attack big government in the abstract, but they strongly support Social Security, Medicare, and even Medicaid. So what’s a radical to do?
Maddowblog - "The hostage McConnell sees as 'worth ransoming'"
The mainstream media repeatedly suggests that Democrats are overreaching by only asking for a slight increase on tax rates for the top 2 percent. Yet, Republicans get a free pass on vocally threatening to hold out Nation's economy hostage to protect such tax cuts and pay for them with cuts to programs that benefit the middle class.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/12/15865305-the-hostage-mcconnell-sees-as-worth-ransoming
A year ago, immediately after the debt-ceiling fiasco was resolved, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) offered a chilling assessment of the crisis he helped create. "What we did learn is this -- it's a hostage that's worth ransoming," he said.
It's one of the more important comments McConnell has ever made. He and his allies had just threatened to crash the economy on purpose, which led to severe consequences, including our first modern downgrade. But the lesson the Republicans' Senate leader learned from the debacle is that he should do all of this all over again.
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McConnell specifically said he sees an "opportunity ... when the debt ceiling issue arrives." He added, "We are going to insist that we have another discussion about the future of our country in connection with the request of us to raise the debt ceiling."
The Senate Republican leader is, to be sure, using the most diplomatic language possible, but there can be no doubt as to his underlying message: McConnell is threatening to hurt Americans on purpose.
If the political world treats this as somehow routine, we're making an important mistake.
GOP’s Latest Fiscal Cliff Offer: Permanent Extension Of Bush Tax Cuts For The Wealthy
Source: Think Progress
CNN’s Dana Bash is reporting that House Republicans have offered an untenable new deal to the White House in the ongoing negotiations to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, demanding, Democratic sources say, that the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent of Americans be made permanent.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) unveiled the GOP position during a “tense” phone call Tuesday night with President Obama. The offer comes as Democrats say that any final deal must include an increase in marginal tax rates for the highest income earners and a growing number of Republicans are pressuring Boehner to give-in on the inscrease.
From Bash’s report on Wednesday morning:
BASH: I talked to a Democratic source who said that a counter offer that House Republicans sent back to the White House late yesterday included a call for a permanent extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for the top 2 percent. Now you know that we’ve been talking constantly about the fact that the biggest divide between the two when it comes to taxes is that tax break for the wealthiest. And so this Democratic source, who I talked to familiar with the proposal, said this was a sign to the White House that the Republicans are either unwilling or not capable of offering something that can pass the House and the Senate and, more importantly, that the president can sign, because he has said he does not want to — he wants to raise tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.
Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/12/12/1323671/republicans-insist-that-bush-tax-cuts-for-wealthiest-americans-be-made-permanent-reports-say/
Boehner's spokesman tried to justify the proposal by arguing that it would become moot anyways, since they would negotiate comprehensive tax reform later. We just need to trust Republicans.
Atlantic - "How Obama Can Prevent Another Debt-Ceiling Crisis" - Good points
Interesting take in this article. Rather than ignoring the debt limit and giving House Republicans an excuse to try to impeach him, which they may do anyways, simply start shutting down parts of the Federal Government Clinton style to turn up the heat on Republican efforts to use the debt limit to extort tax cuts for the rich and cuts to the middle class.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/how-obama-can-prevent-another-debt-ceiling-crisis/266053/
Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that "the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." Its purpose was to prevent Southern Congressmen and Senators from trying to hold payment of the nation's debts hostage in order to get their way on Reconstruction policies. The point of Section 4 was to put this sort of hostage-taking beyond ordinary politics. The framers of the 14th amendment did not want future politicians to threaten to destroy the country's finances by refusing to pay the country's debts in order to win political concessions from their opponents. After all, once politicians did so successfully, they would try it over and over again and it would become a normal feature of politics. That is precisely what we are seeing now.
If Congressional Republicans are threatening to let the nation to default on its debts if Obama doesn't agree to their demands, they are violating the Constitution. And the president should call them out for such an outrageous demand. But does that mean that the president can raise the debt ceiling himself to remedy the violation?
Not so fast. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the authority to borrow on the credit of the United States. Even so, under section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment the president has an independent constitutional obligation not to allow the validity of the debt of the United States to be put into question. That means, at the very least, that the president must make sure that interest payments continue on existing federal bonds and similar obligations. He must assure bondholders that they will continue to get paid even after the debt ceiling is reached.
If the president follows his constitutional obligations, then some government operations will not get funded because payments to the bondholders must come first. That means a partial government shutdown, with more and more of the government closed as the president continues to pay the bondholders.
NY Times Editorial - "The House Makes an ‘Offer’"
I guess we should not be surprised. Republicans are proposing to soak the middle class to save tax cuts for the very rich. Yet, most media outlets are calling Boehner's two page list of talking points a "counter-proposal."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/opinion/speaker-john-boehner-makes-an-offer.html?_r=0
Since last month’s election, Republican leaders in Congress have been demanding that President Obama come up with a detailed plan to cut the deficit and solve the upcoming fiscal deadlines without feeling any need to prepare a plan of their own. On Monday, under pressure from the White House, Republicans finally released their opening position in the negotiations — a remarkably shallow one that demonstrated a lack of seriousness in negotiations, or farsightedness in policy.
* * *
The proposal, which Mr. Bowles quickly disavowed on Monday, purports to raise $800 billion in revenue over a decade by ending deductions and loopholes, while allowing the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich to continue. It would cut $1.2 trillion in spending, half of which would come from Medicare, Medicaid, and other health programs, including an increase in the Medicare eligibility age to 67. Another $600 billion would be cut from other unspecified spending.
Which programs would be cut? The letter doesn’t say, and Republicans don’t seem to care, as long as they blindly achieve their goal of cutting a big chunk out of government. The offer was a transparent attempt to appear responsive to Mr. Obama’s detailed proposal from last week, without doing any actual math or hard work.
If Mr. Boehner had used a calculator, for example, he would have discovered it is impossible to produce $800 billion in revenue from eliminating deductions without severely curtailing the deduction for charitable donations, which is vital to the nonprofit sector. Doing so without limiting the charitable deduction would inevitably raise taxes on the middle class, as nonpartisan analysts have concluded, and would have a much greater effect on the upper middle class than on the very rich.
TPM - "Boehner Declines To Name Specific Entitlement Cuts He Seeks In Deal"
The mainstream media refuses to hold Republicans accountable. They claim that Democrats are not being bipartisan, but they refuse to disclose any proposals. Yet, they get free reign to claim that Democrats are "not serious." Amazing.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/boehner-declines-to-name-specific-entitlement-cuts-he
Asked on Friday what kind of specific entitlement cuts he seeks in a deal with the White House over the so-called fiscal cliff, House Speaker John Boehner pointed reporters to previous GOP budgets, declining to name further demands in a potential counteroffer.
"You could look at our budget from the last two years, and there are plenty of specific proposals, most of which were part of the conversation that the president and I had two years ago, or a year and a half ago," Boehner told reporters at press conference. "There have been discussions about many of those same issues this time. So there's a lot from the conversations that we have had to inform almost anybody of the kind of proposals that we're looking for."
Boehner also added that talks with President Obama had come to a significant stand-still.
“There’s a stalemate," Boehner said. "Let’s not kid ourselves.”
"Intentionally Vague," "Dangerous," "Careless" - The House Budget That The RW Keeps Referring To!
Republicans keep on repeating the talking point that they have been clear about what cuts they are proposing by referring to the budget plan that the House passed earlier this year. However, this so-called budget is merely aspirational in setting forth spending targets without specifying what Republicans were actually proposing to cut. Yet, the corporate media does not call Republicans on this lie, and allows Republicans to simply demand that Democrats make all the proposals. It is the same strategy that Mitt Romney tried to ride to the Presidency. Unfortunately, the House Republicans are currently in the position of having to govern.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/paul-ryans-dangerous-and-intentionally-vague-budget-plan/2012/03/20/gIQASt2MQS_print.html
Paul Ryan’s dangerous, and intentionally vague, budget plan
THERE IS NO credible path to deficit reduction without a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases. This is the fundamental conclusion of every responsible group that has examined the issue, most prominently the Simpson-Bowles commission, and it is the fundamental failure of the budget blueprint released Tuesday by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
Instead, and unfortunately, Mr. Ryan’s plan lunges in the opposite direction. He dangles the carrots of lower income and corporate tax rates. He says he would maintain tax revenue and in fact have it grow to 19 percent of the gross domestic product by 2025. Yet he fails to do the hard, and politically treacherous, work of specifying what deductions and credits he would eliminate in order to make all that happen.
Does Mr. Ryan propose to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction? The preferential tax treatment of employer-sponsored health insurance? The deduction for charitable donations?
Mr. Ryan says he’d leave those pesky details to the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, and no wonder: The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said Mr. Ryan’s plan would reduce revenues by an eye-popping $4.6 trilllion — and that’s on top of the $5.4 trillion cost of making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Moreover, no matter what deductions are curtailed, the benefit of the lower rates would flow overwhelmingly to the wealthiest Americans, while Mr. Ryan would take a machete to programs that help the least fortunate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/opinion/the-careless-house-budget.html
The Careless House Budget
It is one where the rich pay less in taxes than the unfairly low rates they pay now, while programs for the poor — including Medicaid and food stamps — are slashed and thrown to the whims of individual states. Where older Americans no longer have a guarantee that Medicare will pay for their health needs. Where lack of health insurance is rampant, preschool is unaffordable, and environmental and financial regulation are severely weakened.
Mr. Ryan became well known last year as the face of the most extreme budget plan passed by a house of Congress in modern times. His new budget is, if anything, worse, full of bigger, emptier promises. It is largely in agreement with the plans of the Republican presidential candidates.
It vows to balance tax cuts for corporations and the rich by closing loopholes, but never lists the loopholes. It is, however, quite specific about cutting Medicaid by about 45 percent, leaving 19 million people without care, and eliminating plans to provide health insurance for 33 million who lack coverage now.
* * *
It also tries an end run around an agreement Republicans signed last year to reduce the deficit over 10 years with equal $55 billion annual cuts to military and domestic programs after the Congressional supercommittee failed to agree on a plan. Mr. Ryan wants to increase defense spending and shift all the cuts to domestic programs, which will probably include food stamps, the federal payroll and mortgage guarantees. Very little of Mr. Ryan’s plan will get through the Senate, but it sets a disturbing precedent for future agreements.
"McConnell's vision of a 'compromise'" - Or, Who Is Not Being Serious?
The corporate media continues to let Republicans: (1) demand that Democrats make all the proposals; (2) accuse Democrats of not being bipartisan (even though this conflicts with No. 1); and (3) assert without any elaboration that Democrats are not serious about solving issues relating to the debt ceiling, deficit, taxes, and benefit programs. Yet, as this story notes, it is Republicans that have simply walked away from the job of legislating.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/11/30/15578203-mcconnells-vision-of-a-compromise?lite
What I hope the political world -- policymakers, Sunday show participants, etc. -- will consider as we go into the weekend is how truly baffling McConnell's concept of a "compromise" really is.
Despite an election cycle in which Democrats did very well up and down the ballot, the Senate GOP leader envisions an agreement in which Republicans get the Medicare cuts they want, Republicans get the Social Security cuts they want, and Republicans get the tax rates they want. In exchange, McConnell would give Democrats Mitt Romney's revenue plan.
Seriously.
Sure, President Obama's plan isn't exactly an olive branch, but at least it's a serious effort to reach the goal Republicans established, and it includes policies the White House would not otherwise seek on their own. McConnell's approach is based on a model in which Obama was the one who ended up with 206 electoral votes, instead of 332.
Maddowblog - "Boehner invites global economic ruin, on purpose"
House Republicans are once again threaten to plunge the Nation into default unless the rich get their tax cuts, yet the corporate media generally treats this as an acceptable negotiation tactic.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/11/29/15546399-boehner-invites-global-economic-ruin-on-purpose?lite
Almost immediately after being elevated to Speaker, Boehner clearly wanted no part of a debt-ceiling fight. He explained in November 2010, "I've made it pretty clear to [my caucus] that as we get into next year, it's pretty clear that Congress is going to have to deal with [the debt limit]. We're going to have to deal with it as adults. Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations and we have obligations on our part."
By April 2011, under pressure from the far-right, Boehner proclaimed, "There will not be an increase in the debt limit without something really, really big attached to it." He didn't name a price at the time.
As the crisis began in earnest, the Speaker named his "really, really big" price: for every dollar in debt-ceiling increase, Democrats had to give him a matching amount of spending cuts. It was an arbitrary decision -- for nine decades, every increase in the debt limit had passed in clean bills -- but Boehner made up his own standard and stuck to it.
The result was a scandal for the ages. Every congressional Republican -- literally, all of them -- threatened to destroy the economy on purpose and trash the full and faith credit of the United States unless Boehner's made-up standard was met.
And now, as of this morning, the Speaker is creating the same crisis for the same reason, relying on the same arbitrary standard. This profoundly stupid fiasco caused enormous damage to the nation's economy, debt rating, and international standing, and Boehner is making a conscious decision to do all of this to us, again, on purpose.
Congress to make history -- but for the wrong reason
Source: NBC
By passing just 196 bills into law so far, [the 112th Congress (2011-2012)] it is in the running to become the least productive Congress since the 1940s.
In fact, that amount is 710 fewer public laws than was produced by the 80th Congress (from 1947-48), which first earned the moniker "Do-Nothing" Congress.
* * *
The 104th Congress (1995-1996) currently holds the record low for passing the fewest pieces of legislation since 1947 -- just 333 bills were passed into law during that two-year span.
To avoid earning the distinction as the least productive Congress since 1947, 138 bills must move through the House and Senate before the end of this Congress next month.
Read more: http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/28/15518240-congress-to-make-history-but-for-the-wrong-reason?lite
Can we also chalk up Speaker Boehner as the worst Speaker in the history of Congress. He floated the idea of being open to some tax increases, but has since been whipped into shape by Grover Norquist who is acting as a proxy for millions in corporate SuperPAC money. Now, Boehner is once again willing to let taxes increase on 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small businesses in order to protect the top 2 percent.
On the Senate side, you have Republicans breaking new records in the use of the filibuster. It is not both parties' fault. It is the fault of Republicans who have pretty much delegated any leadership to unelected interests like Grover Norquist and the corporations and billionaires that he represents.
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