Not Hopeful

Unfortunately, this (only presumably, given Twitter pseudonyms) guy Seth McNeil is right:

I look at Elizabeth Warren and see an engaging, brilliant woman. I guess I’m just weird https://t.co/a3bAELZH7B

— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) April 16, 2019

In a far more complex manner, Ezra Klein lays it all out in this cogent analysis with the apt section titles "Hopeful liberals, concerned conservatives;" "Democrats miss Obama;" "Pete Buttigieg's play for the 'hope and change' vote;" and "It's not 2008 anymore" (more on that one later).

Objectively, in the last seven presidential elections- 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004 (arguably), 2000, 1996, and 1992- the more charismatic and engaging presidential nominee emerged victorious.  Additionally, in each of those contests- 2016, 2008, 2000, and 1992- in which there was no incumbent, the less experienced candidate won.

Neither is likely a coincidence.

The more personally appealing and less experienced candidate may prevail because, as McNeil understands, getting elected is not about policy or ideas but about emotion and reflecting "back what we want to see."

That played a major role in the election of Barack Obama, as many Americans sought to prove (as they saw it) that neither they nor their country is racist.  His nomination, aided by opposition as a state senator to the Iraq War that Hillary Clinton voted to give a GOP president authority to conduct, also was boosted by the appeal of the hazy "hope and change."  While once it was "who would you rather have a beer with?" it is now the "it" factor, or who grabs the voter's attention, or a similar factor..

Of course, another obstacle Elizabeth Warren faces is occupation of the ideological "lane" (insofar as the lane concept isn't actually lame) by Bernie Sanders as the one candidate who ran in 2016 and amassed a deep and loyal following. However, if Klein's analysis suggests that the mayor of a mid-sized Midwestern city is inevitable, he warns that it isn't still 2008 and

Another challenge for Buttigieg is that Obama didn’t win just by impressing openness-minded liberals. He won by building a coalition between them and black voters. As of yet, there’s little evidence of Buttigieg breaking through among nonwhite voters — and, notably, nonwhite voters aren’t as sorted by the openness dimension between the parties, so the messages that work for white liberals in New Hampshire often fall flat with black churchgoers in South Carolina.

That of course opens the door for a minority woman (Harris), the loyal servant to Barack Obama (Biden), and a few others to counter the support and experience Senator Sanders picked up the last time around.  If that too is hazy, we do know that if recent history is any guide whatsoever, any combination of brilliance, experience, and thoroughly researched policy prescriptions is not the path to the presidency.

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It's Only Just Begun


Michelle Bernard, as usual, was off-target, remarking Thursday on All In with Chris Hayes

We are supposed to be the greatest democracy in the world, and our democracy is in tatters. We are the laughingstock of the world when a small minority of right-wing zealots can virtually destroy the economic well-being of the country in just a little more than two or three weeks. And they never had a chance of winning.

"Small minority of right-wing zealots" is accurate.  But we've always been a republic, not a democracy and "the laughingstock of the world" is unnecessary hyperbole.  But, more significantly: "they never had a chance of winning?"

The previous evening, Rachel Maddow had gloated

So, to summarize through this process, the Republicans, oh, yes, I think we fit them all on here. The Republicans said that they would shutdown the government, or once they shut it down, they would refuse to open the government unless they got each of these things. Of all the things that they wanted, they got nothing. On the other hand, the Democrats had suggested before this whole process that they would please like to talk about the budget. And now, Republicans will go along with that after refusing for six months.

Maddow, unable to point to anything the Democratic Party got, even displayed this nifty, technically accurate, and yet misleading, graphic:

Even Ezra Klein believes the GOP was roundly defeated.  He notes resolution of the shutdown/debt level dispute clearly funds the federal government; knocked the rocky launch of the Affordable Care Act off the front page; and slashed the popularity of the Republican Party while dividing its members.  It did, he nevertheless acknowledges, maintain the spending levels of sequestration.

That is a major victory for the GOP- Grover Norquist contends "Sequester is the big win. It defines the decade."  And there was was one more advantage to the standoff, if only down the road. Standard & Poors estimates, according to TIME Magazine, "the shutdown, which ended with a deal late Wednesday night after 16 days, took $24 billion out of the U.S. economy, and reduced projected fourth-quarter GDP growth from 3 percent to 2.4 percent."

That is a benefit, not a bug, to the individuals desiring to, as Bernard put it, "destroy the economic well-being of the country."  Nor were those individuals limited to the 30-35 Representatives the media would portray as uniquely "tea party republicans."  Until Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, pressured by the business community, agreed to a deal with Majority Leader Harry Reid, most congressional Repubs had been recklessly toying with the nation's economy, afraid to buck the extreme wing of the extreme party.

The shutdown struck a severe blow at public confidence in government, possibly even at the state and local levels.  And despite their proclivity- when there is a GOP president- to increase spending and the size of government, Republicans are not known as the party of government, but the party suspicious and disdainful of it.  Undermining faith in the public sector undermines faith in the Democratic Party and its solutions.  In the shorter term, the President's party is usually blamed for any downturn in the economy.

So hold the champagne, please.  Harry Reid did a masterful job holding together his caucus and negotiating with Mitch McConnell, thereby pulling Barack Obama's fat out of the fire. But as of now, the bestheadline emerging from resolution of the crisis was this from The Boston Globe:

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Curious Priorities

It's expected to reduce spending by $85.4 billion in 2013 and $109.3 billion a year from 2014 to 2021.    In late February, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke testified

The CBO estimates that deficit-reduction policies in current law will slow the pace of real GDP growth by about 1-1/2 percentage points this year, relative to what it would have been otherwise. A significant portion of this effect is related to the automatic spending sequestration that is scheduled to begin on March 1, which, according to the CBO's estimates, will contribute about 0.6 percentage point to the fiscal drag on economic growth this year. Given the still-moderate underlying pace of economic growth, this additional near-term burden on the recovery is significant. Moreover, besides having adverse effects on jobs and incomes, a slower recovery would lead to less actual deficit reduction in the short run for any given set of fiscal actions.

A few of the cuts engineered by the sequester, which Dylan Matthews compiled from CBO estimates of a few years ago, include

Aircraft purchases by the Air Force and Navy are cut by $3.5 billion.
Military operations across the services are cut by about $13.5 billion.
Military research is cut by $6.3 billion.
The National Institutes of Health get cut by $1.6 billion.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are cut by about $323 million.
Border security is cut by about $581 million.
Immigration enforcement is cut by about $323 million.
Airport security is cut by about $323 million.
Head Start gets cut by $406 million, kicking 70,000 kids out of the program.
FEMA’s disaster relief budget is cut by $375 million.
Public housing support is cut by about $1.94 billion.
The FDA is cut by $206 million.
NASA gets cut by $970 million.
Special education is cut by $840 million.
The Energy Department’s program for securing our nukes is cut by $650 million.
The National Science Foundation gets cut by about $388 million.
The FBI gets cut by $480 million.
The federal prison system gets cut by $355 million.
State Department diplomatic functions are cut by $650 million.
Global health programs are cut by $433 million; the Millenium Challenge Corp. sees a $46 million cut, and USAID a cut of about $291 million.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is cut by $55 million.
The SEC is cut by $75.6 million.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is cut by $2.6 million.
The Library of Congress is cut by $31 million.
The Patent and Trademark office is cut by $156 million.

Law enforcement, food safety inspection, veterans' benefits, airport security disaster relief, special education services, and other luxuries take a hit.  So what does the GOP complain about?  Republican National Committee chairperson Reince Priebus, echoing the statements of other Republicans, has tweeted "Don’t fall for @BarackObama’s spending gimmicks. Re-open the people’s house>"

But what may seem lack of compassion may instead be mere shilling for the political class. Ezra Klein explains

So, these kids come to town, they can’t get the tour they scheduled through their member of Congress, and now they’re not so happy with their member of Congress and the sequester. That means that member of Congress now has a problem with some of their constituents — and with the kinds of constituents who are likely to contact their member of Congress when their kid goes to Washington.

That’s what makes the outrage over White House tours a bit gross. White House tours don’t matter. They really don’t. But the people they upset are the people who are in touch with members of Congress, and so all of a sudden Republicans are running and rushing to do something about it.
But those folks are going to be fine without their White House tour. You know who may not be fine? The jobless, who are seeing their unemployment checks cut by almost 10 percent. The pregnant mothers and young children getting fed through the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates may serve as many as 775,000 fewer people due to the sequester. The 100,000 formerly homeless people that the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates are in emergency shelters or other temporary housing arrangements and might be turned back onto the street. 

This is classic politics-as-usual.  Republicans may shoot their mouths off about deficit reduction but when it comes to protecting incumbents, they're all-in.




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Sequester Disinformation


Syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer, who has a sincere and extraordinary distaste for Barack Obama, gets it wrong at least three times.  Then I stopped counting.

Krauthammer is incensed that President Obama, he charges, is spreading panic over the automatic spending cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011.  He argues

The problem with sequestration, of course, is that the cuts are across the board and do not allow money to move between accounts. It’s dumb because it doesn’t discriminate.

Fine. Then change the law. That’s why we have a Congress. Discriminate. Prioritize. That’s why we have budgets. Except that the Democratic Senate hasn’t passed one in four years. And the White House, which proposed the sequester in the first place, had 18 months to establish rational priorities among accounts — and did nothing.

Congress does not pass a "budget."  Most years, it passes a budget resolution, which the President neither signs nor vetoes because it is not a law but a mere blueprint for the appropriation process.
It is conceivable that Krauthammer doesn't understand this, likely most of his readers don't, and as certain as snow in Buffalo in winter that the vast majority of his viewers on GOP TV don't.

But he probably realizes the disingenuousness of claiming that the President's proposal that spending cuts (which, thus far, have far outstripped revenue increases) be matched by tax increases "demonstrates that, for Obama, this is not about deficit reduction, which interests him not at all. The purpose is purely political: to complete his Election Day victory by breaking the Republican opposition."

Apathy toward deficit reduction is a Republican game, not a Democratic one, as demonstrated by statements of long-time GOP consultant Mike Murphy, who is lionized as a "moderate."  Ezra Klein explains that Murphy on February 13 wrote

in Time that “six magic words can unlock the door to the votes inside the Republican fortress: Some beneficiaries pay more and chained CPI, budgetary code for slightly lowering benefit increases over time.” The only problem? Obama has said all these words, as John Harwood of the New York Times quickly pointed out:

Murphy responded by suggesting that sure, Obama has called for more means-testing in Medicare, but he’s not put chained CPI — CCPI, if you’re hamstrung by Twitter’s 140-character limit — on the board:

Obama never refused chained CPI as part of a cliff deal. In fact, he did the opposite: He endorsed it as part of a cliff deal, and he’s kept endorsing it, as his sequestration plan clearly says, since the cliff deal fell apart. This was quickly pointed out to Murphy on Twitter, at which point, he promptly proved Chait’s thesis correct:

Then Murphy retweeted this:

So let’s back up. Murphy’s initial view was that to unlock GOP votes for a budget deal, Obama just needed to endorse chained CPI and more means-testing in Medicare. Then it was pointed out that Obama has endorsed means-testing in Medicare, so Murphy wondered why he didn’t endorse chained CPI as part of a deal. Then it was pointed out that Obama did endorse chained CPI, at which point Murphy called chained CPI “a gimmick,” and said Obama had to endorse raising the Medicare age, drop his demands for more revenue as part of a deal and earn back the GOP’s trust.

Recall what Chait said would happen if the Republican legislator in my column was forced to react to the fact that Obama has endorsed chained CPI: “He would come up with something – the cuts aren’t real, or the taxes are awful, or they can’t trust Obama to carry them out, or something.” Check, check, and check.

Which is all to say that there’s no deal here. A few tweets later, Murphy gave his bottom-line view, which is that if Obama wants a deal, he needs to drop all of his demands and just agree to what the GOP wants to do:

Technically, Obama did move first on spending. Over the course of 2011, Obama signed into law a set of bills that cut about $1.8 trillion from discretionary spending, and that included no tax increases at all. One of those bills, the Budget Control Act, also gave us the sequester, so you could argue they included closer to $3 trillion in spending cuts — all, again, without a single tax increase. It didn’t seem to build much trust.

Krauthammer doesn't stop with distorting the budgetary process and with charging that  the triangulating President Obama is unconcerned about the deficit. He slams the White House for allegedly failing to "establish rational priorities among accounts," then a few paragraphs later with an "intent to deliberately make the most painful and socially disruptive cuts possible (say, oh, releasing illegal immigrants from detention."

While harmlessly splitting infinitives, Krauthammer pulls a nifty sleight-of-hand.  He blames President Obama for not establishing priorities, then, once the latter does, whines about the priorities he has set.

This could be a metaphor for GOP propaganda the past 35 years on taxes and spending.  Cut income taxes, they've claimed, and revenues magically increase.  Now, it's cut the budget and programs and personnel magically remain unharmed.  The aphorism "there is no such thing as a free lunch" has been turned on its head in Repubthink.  It seems there is, indeed, such a thing as a free lunch.

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The Tough Guy Act, Again


Where have we heard this sort of thing before?   Ezra Klein writes

A few weeks ago, the Obama administration was firm that they wouldn’t budge on tax rates for income above $250,000 and that they wouldn’t budge on the debt ceiling. They’ve since budged on both. Republicans increasingly think the White House will concede more now, and that if they don’t concede more now they’ll definitely give Republicans a better deal if threatened with debt default. Whether or not that’s true, it pulls Republicans — and Boehner — to the right, as it makes it harder for Boehner to argue for a compromise now.

In his first White House speech after Election Day, President Obama had declared

But as I’ve said before, we can’t just cut our way to prosperity.  If we’re serious about reducing the deficit, we have to combine spending cuts with revenue -- and that means asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes.  (Applause.)...  I am not going to ask students and seniors and middle-class families to pay down the entire deficit while people like me, making over $250,000, aren’t asked to pay a dime more in taxes.  I'm not going to do that.  (Applause.)

Apparently, the President wasn't so firm on that $250,000 thing (and that is on taxable, not gross, income and in 2009 dollars).  When Obama met with corporate executives a couple of weeks ago and addressed the threat of debt default, he boasted, testosterone ablaze, "I will not play that game."  Evidently, he wasn't quite so firm on that, either.

We don't have to ancient history to find President Obama playing his macho man act before backing down.    At his first press conference in November, President Bluff asserted

If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham want to go after somebody, they should go after me, I’m happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. Ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi, and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous.

It is outrageous, the President declared, as he protected his gal, challenging his critics to "go after me" instead of her.   How chivalrous.  And how disingenuous.  Dan Rather laid it out (program transcript, here) when he told Rachel Maddow (video, below, from Down With Tyranny!) last Thursday

Well, the most important thing that just happened is that President Obama has once again been backed down and away. Let`s make no mistake.

This is chalk one up for the Republicans. They can hopefully in private smile, even smirk, wink at one another. They have the professional scalp of Susan Rice now hanging on their door. They backed President Obama down and away.

President Obama for whatever reasons -- and I thought Andrea Mitchell laid out, a lot of the potential reasons for it -- chose not to fight it to the end. There will be any number of people, and not all of them Democrats, who say this tells us something about President Obama.  He was not for a friend, a close friend, a long-time supporter, someone who was eminently qualified, Rhodes Scholar, the whole -- public servant. Somebody who made a lot of money on the outside but has dedicated herself to public service.

He indicated in his press conference after the election, he made a tough talk, he didn`t back it up.

The tentative tentative (no typo) deal Klein reported may be only a trial balloon and not form the basis of a deal on the fiscal slope.   More certain, however, is Rather's observation that Barack Obama's decision accepting Rice's withdrawal from consideration suggested "he's not a guy who's going to put up much of a fight, even when he feels strongly about it.  Even when he has a strong emotional and loyalty quotient, won't fight for it."   Republicans believe, Rather observes, "President Obama can be rolled for his wallet and his watch."

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Unless We're Lucky And The Premise Is Faulty


It's not his preference, but Ezra Klein speculates

Talk to smart folks in Washington, and here’s what they think will happen: The final tax deal will raise rates a bit, giving Democrats a win, but not all the way back to 39.6 percent, giving Republicans a win. That won’t raise enough revenue on its own, so it will be combined with some policy to cap tax deductions, perhaps at $25,000 or $50,000, with a substantial phase-in and an exemption for charitable contributions.

The harder question is what Republicans will get on the spending side of the deal. But even that’s not such a mystery. There will be a variety of nips and tucks to Medicare, including more cost-sharing and decreases in provider payments, and the headline Democratic concession is likely to be that the Medicare eligibility age rises from 65 to 67.

The media is on board with a reduction in Medicare benefits (and the Democratic Party with a cut in the program), as demonstrated by Andrea Mitchell's exchange (video, below) with Democratic National Committee chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz:

Digby notes

Mitchell, like so many other wealthy, celebrity pundits sees these "popular" programs as something frivolous that Democratic voters are hanging on to out of immature petulance and they just need a stern Daddy to come along and take away their toys for their own good. The fact that these "toys" are equivalent to Andrea Mitchell's yearly dry cleaning bill doesn't change the fact that they represent the entire hand to mouth existence of millions and millions of elderly people who are too sick and too old to go out and become wealthy TV stars.

Sarah Kliff, when this idea of raising the eligibility age (her chart, from Center and Budget Policy Priorities, way below) in return for a slight raise in upper income tax rates had only begun to materialize, explained

The idea has, however, gained a bit more traction since the Affordable Care Act passed. If the Medicare age were raised, the thinking has gone, the 3.3 million 65- and 66-year-olds  would still be guaranteed access to health coverage through the tax subsidies. The lowest-income seniors — those earning less than 133 percent of the federal poverty line – would qualify for Medicaid.

That’s the upside. Health care economists see a number of downsides, too. For one thing, Medicare tends to be a pretty efficient program. Its costs have grown slower than private health insurance plans. The Center for Budget Priorities and Policy estimates that, while the federal government would save $5.7 billion, the rest of the health care system would end up spending $11.4 billion more to provide those same benefits.

Seniors themselves would end up spending $3.7 billion more as the benefits on the exchange would be less robust than those currently covered through Medicare. Employers would end up footing part of the bill, too, continuing to sponsor an additional two years of coverage.

That $2.5 billion in orange on the chart above comes from increasing the premiums that a lot of other people pay for their health insurance coverage. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that moving these seniors into the health insurance exchanges would increase premiums there by 3 percent, as the larger insurance pool absorbs a patient population that tends to be older and sicker than its younger counterparts.

Medicare premiums likely would go up too. These seniors would be the more expensive enrollees on the exchange. But when it comes to Medicare, they’re the least expensive patients, the younger population with fewer health care needs than, say, the 90-year-old cohort.

There’s also concern that these seniors might not even have an option should the eligibility age get raised as some states do not plan to expand their Medicaid programs. That could leave any senior who earns less than 133 percent of the federal poverty line — about $15,000 for an individual — without any coverage option at all.

Krugman recognizes the harm in what would (inaccurately) be termed a "compromise," maintaining

First, raising the Medicare age is terrible policy. It would be terrible policy even if the Affordable Care Act were going to be there in full force for 65 and 66 year olds, because it would cost the public $2 for every dollar in federal funds saved. And in case you haven’t noticed, Republican governors are still fighting the ACA tooth and nail; if they block the Medicaid expansion, as some will, lower-income seniors will just be pitched into the abyss.

He asks, rhetorically or otherwise

Second, why on earth would Obama be selling Medicare away to raise top tax rates when he gets a big rate rise on January 1 just by doing nothing? And no, vague promises about closing loopholes won’t do it: a rate rise is the real deal, no questions, and should not be traded away for who knows what.

There are plenty of reasons Obama would be selling Medicare away.  He might be doing so in order to curry favor with, as Jonathan Chait terms them (in an otherwise odd column), the "establishment fiscal scolds," because possessing the approval of the mainstream media is generally important to neo-liberals.  Additionally, the President may believe such a deal would buy him credibility with the Establishment for other initiatives it otherwise might not look kindly upon.

Alternatively, President Obama may be attempting to enhance his reputation as the 'transformative President' characterizing one of his heroes, Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6).    Meanwhile, Democratic seekers of congressional seats, themselves unable to gather to themselves the political advantages of transformative, will have to explain to voters why they (and their party) weakened one of America's enormously popular social insurance programs.

Whatever his motive(s), however, Barack Obama must be, in his quiet moments of reflection, contemplating his life after the presidency.   While no one knows for sure where he will land doing whatever he will be doing, one thing is sure:  he won't be hanging out with those too old to write history or too sick to put up much of a fight over the legacy he will have left the old, the sick, and the poor.

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Sorry Sarah



Sarah Palin is sorry- sort of.   Initially dismissive of mildly right-wing Republicans for their comments about debt and taxes, she now says "Well, I guess I shouldn't call politicians names, so I apologize for calling the wobbly ones wusses.  Because that distracts from the point that has to be made, and the point is that we are a bankrupt country."

Calling people "wusses" prompts an apology (or at least a statement that she is making an apology) while lying about the economic status of the nation is quite acceptable. Palin now condemns Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's opening proposal on the deficit talks as "Let the president have free rein on raising the debt ceiling to whatever level he wants it.  That's a very scary thought because Barack Obama is a socialist." 

Bankruptcy is described by Wikipedia as "a legal status of an insolvent person or an organization, that is, one who cannot repay the debts they owe to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor."   Long-term interest rates on Treasury bonds are at near-record lows- and investors the world over still are flocking to buy the instruments.  As a country with its own currency and the ability to print money or borrow, the U.S. has defaulted on no debts- now, in the past, or in the foreseeable future. The interest rate on Treasury bonds is dubbed the "riskless rate of return" because there is no chance of default.

Republicans, balking at raising the debt ceiling in 2011, did attempt to turn into a deadbeat nation the country they claim to love.     Standard and Poor's responded by slamming "the political brinkmanship of recent months" (which was supported by Palin) and lowering the government's credit rating to AA+.    If the debt ceiling were not raised, Ezra Klein wrote at the time

The drop in demand, when coupled with the turmoil in the markets and the general financial uncertainty, would undoubtedly throw the economy back into a recession. Also keep in mind that we have to roll over $500 billion in debt that month, and if there was uncertainty about how we were going to pay our bills, it is not clear we could find buyers for our debt at anything less than an exorbitant rate.

It is not clear that, had Congress chosen this course, the federal government would have been able to pay its debts, which would make it a lot closer to "a bankrupt country" than it is now or ever has been.

Geithner's debt ceiling proposal is more complicated than Palin lets on because details are for suckers- or Democrats- in Palin's world.  According to the New York Times, Gethner has

proposed permanently ending Congressional purview over the federal borrowing limit, Republican aides said. He said that Congress could be allowed to pass a resolution blocking an increase in the debt limit, but that the president would be able to veto that resolution. Congress could block a higher borrowing limit only if two-thirds of lawmakers overrode the veto. 

Barack Obama is no more a socialist than is Sarah Palin, who as governor once bragged "And Alaska—we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs."   Scratch that- Barack Obama is less of a socialist than is the ex-governor of Alaska.  Still, the latter does not understand, as Matt Yglesias explains

Every dollar the federal government spends is spent according to laws Congress has passed. Every dollar of tax revenue that comes in does so because of taxes Congress has enacted. The Treasury Department's borrowing of money to make up the gap between Congress' spending and Congress' taxing isn't any additional authority to spend or do anything.

Corporate and individual tax rates are at a post-war low while corporate profits are at an all-time high and wages at an all-time low.  It's a good thing Sarah Palin doesn't believe she should be calling politicians names.  Otherwise, she would be calling the President proudly presiding over this state of affairs a 'socialist.'





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Opening Salvo

The good news is that I appear- thus far- to have been wrong in assuming that Barack Obama will concede ground even before starting to negotiate.  The bad news is that we're in only the bottom of the first inning.  The worse news is that I continue to use tired, worn sports parallels.

The baseball analogy is apt, though one should beware of someone referring to his own remark as "apt."   Team Obama has put out its opening bid, as summarized by Wonkblog's Suzy Khimm:

STAGE ONE:

Taxes

Immediate increase in both top marginal rates, as well as capital gains and dividends: +$960 Billion
Additional taxes: +$600 Billion
2009-level estate tax
AMT and business tax extenders: -$236 Billion
Payroll tax extension or alternative policy: -$110B
Bonus depreciation extension

Spending/Extras

$50 billion stimulus package in FY13
Mass refi mortgage proposal
Deferral of sequester
Savings from non-entitlement mandatory programs
Extension of unemployment insurance: $30 billion
Medicare SGR Patch: $25 Billion
Increase in the debt limit to avoid requiring Congress to vote to increase

STAGE TWO:

Tax reform consistent with $1.6 trillion tax increase
Entitlement policies from President’s FY13 budget that could total $400 billion in savings

Despite a cut in the Medicare program and nothing about defense, that's a better proposal than we had a right to expect from Obama and may reflect a notion on the part of the President that he ought to stop negotiating with himself.
  
On Thursday, Charles Krauthammer charged on GOP TV

What Geithner offered, what you showed on the screen, Robert E. Lee was offered easier terms at Appomattox, and he lost the Civil War.   There are not only no cuts in this, there's an increase in spending with a new stimulus. I mean, this is almost unheard of. What do they expect? They obviously expect the Republicans will cave on everything. I think the Republicans ought to simply walk away.

Squealing loudest, Rush Limbaugh claims  "Now, as I say, if we ever needed any proof what I've been saying for the last couple days is true, we got it yesterday with this ridiculous opening bid.  Santa Claus wants to take his sleigh over the fiscal cliff. There's no question about it now.  None.  Whatsoever."    

According to Fred Barnes, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (to whom Limbaugh says he spoke) "says he 'burst into laughter' Thursday when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner outlined the administration proposal for averting the fiscal cliff.  He wasn’t trying to embarrass Geithner, McConnell says, only responding candidly to his one-sided plan, explicit on tax increases, vague on spending cuts."

And House Speaker John Weepy Boehner- who is almost as influential as Limbaugh- remarked “Let’s not kid ourselves.   Right now, we’re almost nowhere.”

Unless they're auditioning for an Academy Award, Repubs really do appear annoyed by the President's initial proposal, which is a splendid sign.   Still, it's a little disconcerting to read from the well-connected Ezra Klein

If Republicans want to cut Medicare, let them propose the cuts. If they want to raise revenue through tax reform, let them identify the deductions. If they want deeper cuts in discretionary spending, let them settle on a number. And, above all, if they don’t like the White House’s preferred policies, let them propose their own. That way, if the White House eventually does give in and agree to some of their demands, Republicans will feel like they got one over on the president.

This suggests that Obama primarily wants the GOP to request the debilitating cuts in the social safety net he then would largely accept.   At that point, it would be left to the left to oppose a destructive measure- if it is up to the task.

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Be Very Careful


Robert Reich notes

A half dozen fact-checking organizations and websites have refuted claims by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan that President Obama removed the work requirement from the welfare law and will cut Medicare benefits by $716 billion. The New York Times even reported that Romney has been "falsely charging" Obama with removing the work requirement.

The Romney camp, however, responded "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."   In the world of Randian free-enterprise fantasy, success is proof of virtue, and the GOP's brazenly dishonest campaign reportedly has proven effective among white voters.

Approximately one-third of the nation's children, as well as growing numbers of pregnant women, disabled individuals, and adults in nursing homes receive their health care through Medicaid.  Nevertheless, vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, as reflected in his budget proposal as chairman of the House Budget Committee, and presidential nominee Romney both support converting Medicaid into a block grant program that would provide states a set amount of money to spend annually on health care services for poor.  Ezra Klein explains

Ryan cuts nearly $1.4 trillion from Medicaid over the next 10 years. That’s a 34 percent cut to the program’s expected spending over the next decade. Those cuts, unlike the cuts to Medicare, are specific, and they begin immediately. Estimates from the Urban Institute suggest that if those cuts are made, about 30 million people could lose their health insurance.

Oh, and Ryan repeals the Affordable Care Act. That’s where some of his Medicaid cuts come from, but that also knocks out all the subsidies for lower-income Americans to get health insurance. So that’s another 15 million people without health insurance. So under Ryan’s budget, about 45 million people would lose health insurance they otherwise would’ve gotten.

Ryan’s budget cuts $134 billion from food stamps, which is enough to kick 8-10 million people off the program.

Ryan cuts $166 billion from the portion of the budget that houses our education, training, employment and social services funding. We don’t know exactly how he’d apportion those cuts, but the documents he’s released suggest a big chunk of them are going to hit Pell grants.

Moreover, everything we know suggests Romney’s on the same page as his running mate.It’s important to remember that Romney’s budget is much, much more aggressive than Ryan’s. It’s less specific, so it gets less attention. But it’s much more aggressive. Ryan’s got about $5.3 trillion in cuts. Romney’s looking for $7 trillion. And he’s not keeping Ryan and Obama’s Medicare savings. And he’s increasing spending on defense by much more than Ryan does. So to pay for that defense spending and make up the Medicare cuts, he needs about $1.5 trillion more in cuts from the non-Medicare, non-defense side of the budget than Ryan has.

Last Wednesday, Bill Clinton emphasized the danger posed by the Medicaid plan to the middle class. While noting it is "going to really hurt a lot of poor kids," he added

But that's not all. Lot of folks don't know it, but nearly two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for Medicare seniors -- who are eligible for Medicaid.It's going to end Medicare as we know it. And a lot of that money is also spent to help people with disabilities, including -- a lot of middle-class families whose kids have Down's syndrome or autism or other severe conditions. And honestly, let's think about it, if that happens, I don't know what those families are going to do.

To Newt Gingrich, Obama is "the food stamp president."   To Mitt Romney, Obama is the fellow who wants to hand out welfare to people who don't want to work.   To Rush Limbaugh, his "entire economic program is reparations."

Not surprisingly, then, the evening after Bill Clinton slams the GOP for targeting a program providing health care for poor people (young and old a few in the middle), Barack Obama says this about Medicaid:




Nothing. In over 1300 days in office, a Democratic President refuses to mention the poor, or even his opponents' plan to undermine popular and successful government program serving their needs.  During this election cycle, and in an address to convention delegates touching on a wide range of issues, Medicaid is off-limits.

One does not, in polite company, say:   Barack Obama is black, and he is inadequate as President.   And if you are the first black President, you do not go around and defend Medicaid or the concept of welfare.  He tiptoes around the issue, as he must, and leaves it to a former (Caucasian) President to ask for a little compassion for poor children- but mostly for others.   We've come a long way, baby.



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Hardly Bold



There it was- twice- in Paul Ryan's lecture acceptance speech (transcript, here) last night at the Repub National Convention in Tampa, Florida:   a reference to "responsibility."   Halfway in, Ryan remarked

Ladies and gentlemen, these past four years we have suffered no shortage of words in the White House. What's missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell, forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago— isn't it about time he assumed responsibility?

Near the end, Ryan used the word again, claiming "We will not duck the tough issues, we will lead. We will not spend four years blaming others, we will take responsibility."

After taking apart Mitt Romney as someone who "takes on the really tough issues," as Chris Christie put it the night before, Ezra Klein writes on his Wonkblog

But if you’re looking for a guy who doesn’t duck the tough issues, who never obscures the hard truths, who tells you the unpleasant facts you don’t want to hear, who isn’t deterred by the polls, Romney isn’t your guy. Christie or Ryan may be, but Romney isn’t.

That's being far too kind to the New Jersey Governor (he of the budgetary sleight-of-hand), but  Christie isn't running for anything this year.  Paul Ryan, tragically, is.    The Hill on August 21 reported

Paul Ryan attacked President Obama over looming cuts to the defense budget during a campaign stop at a helicopter museum in Pennsylvania on Tuesday afternoon, saying the president would be responsible for putting at risk "almost 44,000 jobs."

The vice presidential hopeful said "national defense is the first priority of the federal government," framing the sequestration deal as a failing of presidential leadership. The House Budget Committee chairman said Democrats wanted the GOP to choose between "tax hikes on small businesses" and cuts to the Pentagon.

"It's either lose defense related jobs in Pennsylvania or put small businesses further at a competitive disadvantage … I got a good idea – why don’t we take away President Obama’s job and create jobs for everybody no matter what industry they are in?" Ryan said.

In response, Talking Point Memo's Benjy Sarlin noted

Despite Ryan’s new attack, he not only voted for the bill containing the cuts, he went out of his way to tout just how difficult it is to undo them.

“What conservatives like me have been fighting for, for years, are statutory caps on spending, legal caps in law that says government agencies cannot spend over a set amount of money,” Ryan told FOX News’s Sean Hannity shortly after the agreement was reached last August. “And if they breach that amount across the board, sequester comes in to cut that spending, and you can’t turn that off without a super-majority vote. We got that in law.”

Like many Republicans who publicly praised the deal’s passage, Ryan has since joined in condemning the cuts and blaming Democrats for the bill they signed onto.

Even before the final bill, Ryan expressed willingness to put defense cuts on the table in order to bring down government spending.

“You can’t throw $700 billion at a government agency and not expect waste to occur,” Ryan said in January 2011.

It’s not the first time Ryan has attacked his own legislation on the trail in recent weeks. After including $716 billion in Medicare savings in his previous two House budgets, he now routinely condemns the cuts as a devastating blow to seniors in campaign speeches.

If we want someone to tell us unpleasant truths, it isn't Mitt Romney or Chris Christie.  And it surely isn't Paul Ryan, no matter how often he will tell you that is exactly what he's doing.

 


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Did He Really Say That?

No, not Barack Obama, in whom it is difficult to be disappointed anymore, the President long ago having abandoned any modicum of progressive/liberal economic policy. The New York Times informs us

Obama Administration officials are offering to cut tens of billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid in negotiations to reduce the federal budget deficit, but the depth of the cuts depends on whether Republicans are willing to accept any increases in tax revenues....

Before the talks led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.. broke off 12 days ago, negotiators said, they had reached substantial agreement on many cuts in the growth of Medicare, which provides care to people 65 and older, and Medicaid, which covers lower-income people. Those proposals are still on the table when Congress reconvenes this week, aides said, and are serious options that Democrats could accept in exchange for Republican concessions that raise revenues.

In mid-June, some liberals were relieved when the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, New York's Charles Schumer, asserted

We want to make our position on Medicare perfectly clear: No matter what we do in these debt limit talks, we must preserve the program in its current form, and we will not allow cuts to seniors' benefits.

It was at least somewhat reassuring that cuts in Medicare benefits apparently were not being pursued by high-ranking Democratic officials. Now, the Times reports, the changes to the Medicare program being considered by Administration officials and legislators are:

¶ Gradually eliminate Medicare payments to hospitals for bad debts that result when beneficiaries fail to pay deductibles and co-payments. Medicare reimburses hospitals for 70 percent of such debts after the hospitals make reasonable efforts to collect the unpaid amounts.

¶ Reduce Medicare payments to teaching hospitals for the costs of training doctors, caring for sicker patients and providing specialized services like trauma care and organ transplants. Medicare spends $9.5 billion a year for its share of those costs.

¶ Reduce the federal share of payments to health care providers treating low-income people under Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. The administration wants to establish a single “blended rate” for each state. The federal government now reimburses states at different rates for different groups of people and different services in the two programs.

The excuse is starting to become clear. Schumer recently stated "We are very willing to entertain savings in Medicare. Medicare gives very good health care very inefficiently."

Medicare gives very good health care very inefficiently. Yes, compared to Finland, Italy, Ireland, Japan and every other OECD country, health care in the U.S.A. generally is delivered less efficiently, and that probably also applies to government-provided health care (Medicare, Medicaid, VA) .

But compared to private health insurance in this nation, hardly. As the chart below (from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, by way of Ezra Klein) illustrates, Medicare (and Medicaid) spending is lower per capita than that of private insurance and has been growing more slowly over the past 20 years.

There may be no better symbol of the Democratic establishment than Chuck Schumer. The President is focused on the independent vote, which he believes obtainable throught pragmatism untethered to principle; Senate Majority Leader (Reid) is center-right; the Senate Whip (Durbin) is caught between his staunchly liberal instincts and that President. The House Minority Leader (Pelosi) is, well, a Democrat in a party with very few. Schumer, though, is a reliable liberal except when the interests of his major constituent- Wall Street- is involved. And when Charles Schumer advocates "savings in Medicare," citing imaginary inefficiency, that is where the Administration is heading.

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Impact Of Health Care Decision Escapes Limbaugh

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh told his audience

This law, Obamacare, destroys the American health care system, it destroys patient choice, it destroys -- well, significantly harms health care availability, and it destroys whatever is left of the nation's Treasury. That's where we are.

What he did not tell his audience was that ending implementation of the law, as Ezra Klein noted

means the small businesses that are getting tax credits to buy their employees health-care insurance will stop getting those tax credits. It means young adults who went back on their parent's health-care plan after the law allowed kids up to age 26 to qualify as dependents might be kicked back off. It means the rebate checks being sent out to seniors in the Medicare donut hole will stop. It means insurance plans will no longer have to cover preventive care or be barred from rescinding coverage.

One can hardly expect Limbaugh to let his listeners in on those minor details. He continually maintains that Barack Obama is out to destroy the health insurance industry. If even the hard-right conservatives who form the core of his following learned of the benefits which reform has brought, they might welcome destruction of the insurance companies which made these changes necessary.

Nor did Rush inform his followers that, with Judge Roger Vinson's ruling, insurance companies can resume imposing a cap on lifetime benefits. That would punish what The New York Times reports is an estimated 20,000 insured Americans (who) reach the lifetime limits of their coverage each year" and

For example, Hillary St. Pierre, a 28-year-old former registered nurse who has Hodgkin’s lymphoma, had expected to reach her insurance plan’s $2 million limit this year. Under the new law, the cap was eliminated when the policy she gets through her husband’s employer was renewed this year.

Ms. St. Pierre, who has already come close once before to losing her coverage because she had reached the plan’s maximum, says she does not know what she will do if the cap is reinstated. “I will be forced to stop treatment or to alter my treatment,” Ms. St. Pierre, who lives in Charlestown, N.H., with her husband and son, said in an e-mail. “I will find a way to continue and survive, but who is going to pay?"

Memo to conservatives everywhere: You. And Me (They like that part.). And all taxpayers, even the conservatives wringing their hands over the increase of the national debt, though they forgot to notice it during the prior, Republican, administration.

But all those omissions hardly come as a surprise. Rush yesterday devoted to the Federal District Court's decision a considerable portion of his three hours and boasted "I have consulted legal beagles. My dad was a lawyer. I know this stuff now." Still, he failed to mention that the ruling applies only to those 26 states named in the suit. That would be a major omission most places, but in the Limbaugh fact-free zone, it is standard fare.

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A Bit Of A Snag

Asked a few weeks ago at his press conference (transcript here) called to discuss the tax cut deal, President Obama commented:

So this notion that somehow we are willing to compromise too much reminds me of the debate that we had during health care. This is the public option debate all over again. So I pass a signature piece of legislation where we finally get health care for all Americans, something that Democrats had been fighting for for a hundred years, but because there was a provision in there that they didn't get that would have affected maybe a couple of million people, even though we got health insurance for 30 million people and the potential for lower premiums for 100 million people, that somehow that was a sign of weakness and compromise.

Perhaps a less self-absorbed president would not refer to "I pass a signature piece of legislation" but instead one which "we passed" our "Congress passed" or "our party passed." But then that would be one less obsessed with scapegoating those liberal "purists."

Still, it was "a signature piece of legislation." It would help, however, if that "signature" were a little clearer or more decisive. Better still would be a likelihood that it were going to be implemented. Ezra Klein, the Washington Post analyst generally fond of Obama's minimalist approach and supportive of the Affordable Care Act, commented on the Senate's refusal to pass an omnibus spending bill and substituting for it a continuing resolution. He observed:

Here's the problem with funding 2011's government using 2010's budget: When the 2010 budget passed, neither financial regulation nor health-care reform had passed. And so the 2010 budget didn't include the new funds necessary to support their implementation. We're not talking about a lot of money here, of course, but certainly some. And for the health of these bills, it's important money.

But after the collapse of the omnibus spending bill, the Democrats have moved to funding the government using a resolution that simply continues 2010's funding levels. And that means starving some of their signature accomplishments of implementation funds.

In the spirit of the holiday season, and of Christmas Day, here to be diplomatic, even generous: it might have behooved the President, whilst he was giving away the ranch on tax cuts for billionaires, to have demanded that McConnell agree to approval of the continuing resolution. Obama referred, accurately, to "tax cuts" as the GOP's holy grail; then, in return for granting them, failed to secure an agreement that would guarantee funding for his "signature" legislation or financial reform legislation.

He could have, but didn't. Instead, it's "take a tally," something he can claim as a win, whether effective or ephemeral. It is, further, a president who rationalizes his approach by claiming "this country was founded on compromise," which would have come as quite a surprise to the men who fought a revolution to win the nation's independence.



MERRY CHRISTMAS

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Election Season And the U.S. Chamber


Think Progress has asked a lot of (still unanswered) questions about the source of the funding used by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to fund partisan attack ads. This past wee, Ezra Klein of The Washington Post and Chris Matthews of Hardball weighed in on the issue and came up with vastly different conclusions.

On October 11, Ezra Klein tweeted "Real talk: Demanding financial disclosures from the Chamber of Commerce will not help Dems win the election." Well, yes, "demanding financial disclosures from the Chamber of Commerce" is fruitless because the Chamber has demonstrated that it will not admit where the money has come from.

The Center for American Progress already has done the heavy lifting on that, revealing the source of the money the trade organization has received from abroad. What we don't know is where it has gone. Interviewed by Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air, Lee Fang, who writes for CAP's thinkprogress.org, contended

disclose who is paying for these ads; although, the bank account - the campaign account, I should say, that's receiving these foreign funds is comingled with American businesses. It's all combined and then used on the $75 million massive campaign or attack campaign, I should say.

Inasmuch as accepting campaign contributions from foreign nationals or foreign corporations is prohibited by law in the U.S.A., the charge is a serious one, and conspicuously has not been refuted. The Chamber has said it does not comingle the funds but has not said in what manner and given that money is fungible, there must be serious doubt that it has been segregated.

However, in a Post piece appearing October 12, Klein claims "As far as I can tell, no one who has seriously looked into this thinks it's any more than some election-season hardball from the Democrats." He links to a factcheck.org analysis which, not surprisingly, proves nothing of the sort, asserting that the Democrats have made a serious charge and should prove it.... which, of course, is difficult to do without the Chamber explaining how it has kept foreign-derived funds separate from domestic-derived funds.

Klein, though, writing from a far-off planet, argues

I really wish the Democrats' push on this issue was connected to a serious campaign-finance agenda. They're not going to win any races by calling for more financial disclosure from the Chamber of Commerce, but maybe they could at least unite the party around something like the Fair Elections Now Act.

Probably good policy. But as political strategy, this is beyond naive. What, you might ask, is the "Fair Elections Now Act?" We could check it out via Google or perhaps Democratic office-seekers could explain it to the American people, most of whom would understandably not be as catalyzed by the issue as is Ezra Klein. In a larger sense, few individuals care about campaign financing, or campaign financing reform (except possibly in the abstract, in which elections are not held), unless it is connected to an issue that matters to them.

Enter Chris Matthews, who knows less about the economy or health care financing or a lot of other issues than does Klein, but sometimes is singlularly insightful analyzing politics. As it appeared in the conservative blog Newsbusters (which condemned Matthews' remarks), the Hardball host on October 13 commented (video below)

Let me finish tonight by addressing the challenge Bob Schieffer of CBS News issued to the White House this Sunday. Is that the best that you can do?

Bob was challenging David Axelrod on the White House charge that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was using money it raises from overseas to finance Republican political campaigns.

So, why is it so darn important to the average voter out there, that multinational corporations, some of them based outside of the United States, have their fingers in this election?

How about this -- it`s the central economic issue of our times. Look at how the giant corporations get their profit margins up these days. Are they out there selling hot, new products every consumer wants to get their hands on? Or are they doing the job by cost-cutting, cutting down the number of employees for whom they have to pay those tiresome health packages, those costly pensions and 401 plans? Are they doing it through those highly celebrated productivity gains by substituting robotics for people, by outsourcing the cheaper vendors overseas, over where the price of labor is dirt cheap?

No wonder the multinationals want to gift candidates who love to deregulate, love so-called free markets, love tax structures that lead them as free as possible to continue doing what they`re doing -- the kind of free-willing, cost-cutting that meets the quarterly bottom line.

No wonder the U.S. Chamber`s such a popular lobbying body for the multinational operation, in whatever country, it happens to currently find the best haven.

So, the right answer, is this is best that we can do is, is: is this the best America can do? It`s about jobs, and if all of the American people can talk about this election season as this, I say, keep on talking. You`ve finally got your finger on the pulse of this country. It`s about the economy.

There are approximately 4.7 unemployed Americans for every job available. A bill proposed by Senate Democrats to discourage off-shoring jobs is killed by the vigoroous opposition of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the vote of every single Republican in the United States Senate. Now Ezra Klein is talking about the Fair Elections Now Act, whatever that might be. Chris Matthews is talking about jobs for Americans, not Indians or Chinese. And that is- or would be- the way elections in this country are won, circa 2010.

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