Going Both Ways

They really should get their stories straight.

Rush Limbaugh, who has been arguing that the tea party has proven it is powerful and awesome but that the GOP got taken to the cleaners in the debt agreement, is unimpressed by the cuts to the Medicare program if Congress fails to reduce the debt sufficiently and the triggers are pulled. On Thursday, he maintained

any purported Medicare slashing from the across the board $1.2 trillion in cuts if the vaunted super committee deadlocks, which it will, will be born again by providers. Remember I told you this yesterday, Snerdley. A lot of people overlooked this.

People just automatically assume Medicare cuts equals Medicare cuts to recipients. No, it's Medicare cuts to providers who are already facing reimbursements that barely make it worth staying in business. Now, remember this. 'Cause I have to point this out. The Wall Street Journal last week was cheering this deal. The Wall Street Journal last week was cheering this debt deal, and they were attacking conservatives like me and others, we were being called hobbits by the Wall Street Journal for opposing it.

Limbaugh proceeds to laud himself further, maintaining that The Wall Street Journal (only) now has realized that Medicare benefits themselves will not be cut, and that’s such a darn shame.

Over at the Republican National Committee website, however, they're singing a different tune. A blog pithily entitled "For The Record…It Was Obama Who Offered To Cut Hundreds Of Billions In Medicare During The Debt Debate," includes the headings

Obama Agreed To Medicare Cuts In Debt Ceiling Deal

Obama Put "Major Changes" To Medicare On the Table During Debt Ceiling Negotiations

Obama Said He Was Open To Mans Testing Medicare

Obama Admitted That The Democrats’ Do-Nothing Plan On Medicare Will Result In Medicare’s Bankruptcy

White House Senior Advisor David Plouffe Said Cuts In Medicare Are Necessary

Obama And Republicans “Were Not Apart At All On Medicare"

White House Official Claimed That Obama And The Republicans Were “Identical” On Medicare, Agreeing On “Eligibility, Cost-Sharing, Premiums, And Other Facets Of The Program"

"Other General Areas Of Agreement Included Extending The Payroll Tax, Extending Unemployment Benefits And Altering The Consumer Price Index On Social Security"

"Some Of The Figures Being Discussed Would Cut $150 Billion In Healthcare Provider Payments, Raise $150 Billion In Premiums And $125 Billion In Medicaid Reductions"

Top Senate Democrats Oppose Making Any Cuts To Medicare Because It Robs Democrats Opportunity To Demagogue Republicans On The Issue;

Democrats Frustrated With Potential Cuts To Medicare Because “Protecting Medicare And Social Security Was A Defining Democratic Value, And That Agreeing To Cuts Would Be A Gift To Republicans If Not Political Suicide “

This is a time-sensitive post. In moments, Rush Limbaugh's Friday program will begin. By now, the official GOP line probably has been pointed out to Limbaugh, whose Friday program is about to begin. It won't take him long to change his focus from "those evil Democrats are failing to cut those unproductive people on Medicare" to "those evil Democrats are cutting Medicare and killing granny."

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Endangerment

Under terms of the legislation raising the debt ceiling, discretionary spending will be cut $2.0-$2.5 trillion over the next ten years. Two of the vulnerable areas are food safety program and scientific research. A report from the Associated Press demonstrates the importance of these two areas of federal spending:

Meat giant Cargill is recalling 36 million pounds of turkey after a government hunt for the source of a salmonella outbreak that has killed one person in California and sickened dozens more.

The Agriculture Department and the Minnesota-based company announced Wednesday evening that Cargill is recalling fresh and frozen ground turkey products produced at the company's Springdale, Ark., plant from Feb. 20 through Aug. 2 due to possible contamination from the strain of salmonella linked to 76 illnesses and the one death.

Illnesses in the outbreak date back to March and have been reported in 26 states coast to coast. Both the Agriculture Department and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are still working to identify the source. Meanwhile, the Agriculture Department has warned consumers to properly cook ground turkey.

Just before the recall announcement Wednesday, CDC epidemiologist Christopher Braden said he thought health authorities were closing in on the suspect. He said some leftover turkey in a package at a victim's house was confirmed to contain the strain of salmonella linked to the outbreak.

President Obama now has nominated David Barlow, legal advisor to Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), to be next U.S. Attorney for Utah. As the Center for American Progress notes, Barlow's legal philosophy is unknown but hopefully it differs sharply from the freshman Utah Senator, who was nominated with tea party support after defeating incumbent Bob Bennett. Narrowly interpreting the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, Lee opposes child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, Medicare, Social Security- and food safety laws.

Lee specifically cited poverty and food safety as two issues which can be addressed by state governments but not by the federal government. The question arises: what state would by itself, be able to combat a salmonella outbreak? Would it be Minnesota, in which Cargill is located; Arkansas, where the outbreak probably occurred; California, in which an individual already has died; or in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wisconsin, in which illnesses already have been reported?

None. Food-borne illnesses are rude; refusing to confine themselves to one state, they insist on being mobile, moving from state to state. Forty-nine of our states are required to maintain balance in the operational portion of their budget and few of them are going to spare from the ax programs needed to maintain the health of their citizens. And with the Republican war on science, scientific research is not going to receive the highest priority, one of only many casualties of the debt reduction deal.

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Choose One: (Mr. Boehner) (Mr. Obama) Where Are The Jobs?

The day after passage of the bill raising the debt ceiling, Senate Democrats and House Democrats each held a press conference. New Yorker Chuck Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, vowed “With this debt-reduction package completed, the decks are now clear for a single-minded focus on jobs in September. The jobs issue won’t have to play second fiddle to the deficit issue anymore.” Nancy Pelosi- bless her heart- remarked "For the past few months, the American people have wondered, ‘Why are we talking about this debt rather than talking about jobs?’ We had the vote. We don’t like the deal, but it’s a done deal. It’s time for us to completely focus on jobs.”

The previous evening, President Obama spoke to the nation from the Rose Garden. After pledging to cut Medicare, he said that families are

looking for work, and they have been for a while; or they’re making do with fewer hours or fewer customers; or they’re just trying to make ends meet. That ought to compel Washington to cooperate. That ought to compel Washington to compromise, and it ought to compel Washington to act. That ought to be enough to get all of us in this town to do the jobs we were sent here to do. We’ve got to do everything in our power to grow this economy and put America back to work.

This statement, urging compromise and cooperation but doing "everything in our power," presumably is meant to mean whatever the listener wants it to mean. Nevertheless, coupled with statements from congressional leaders such as Schumer and Pelosi, it represents a "pivot" to jobs on behalf of America's center-right party. Politico's Ben Smith identifies six attempts- in February and November of 2009, April, June, and December of 2010, and January of 2011- on the part of the Administration "to pivot formally to jobs."

It is tempting to say that this time will be no different, that expanding employment opportunities will be eclipsed in importance by some other issue. Except this time it is different- it will be harder. Robert Reich explains the President

says he wants to extend tax cuts for middle class families and make sure the jobless get unemployment benefits.

Fine, but the new deal won’t let him. He’ll have to go back to Congress after the recess (five weeks from now) and round up enough votes to override the budget caps that now restrict spending. What are the odds? Maybe a little higher than zero.

He says he wants an “infrastructure bank” that would borrow money from private capital markets to pay private contractors to rebuild our nations roads, bridges, airports, and everything else that’s falling apart.

Fine, but the new deal he just signed may not let him do this either – if the infrastructure bank relies on federal funds or even federal loan guarantees to attract private money. The only way he could create an infrastructure bank without sweetening the pot would be by privatizing all the new infrastructure. That means toll roads and toll bridges, user-fee airports, and entry fees everywhere else.

Maybe the President and his congressional allies should have thought of this before- not only before the deal was consummated but before Barack Obama jumped on the GOP bandwagon and talked deficit, deficit, deficit. Perhaps he should have thought about it before he adopted Republican talking points on the economy, before he proposed cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

But the President wouldn't have done that. When he talks about jobs, he's thinking about the job-killing trade deals his Administration is working on. And when he joins Republicans in promoting "tax reform," he cannot be unaware that the GOP uses the same phrase to refer to an effort to lower taxes on corporations while reducing the number of medium-income Americans who pay no income tax. (That is why they promote "widening the tax base" while complaining that over half of Americans pay no income tax, a statistical anomaly caused by the recession and Obama tax cuts in fiscal 2010.)

Perhaps Barack Obama will move aggressively to create good-paying jobs, as he wants us to believe he is promising. But then, this also is the fellow who pledged to protect whistleblowers, bring a new era of transparency, or to end the war in Iraq.

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Of Course, Republicans Voted For It

Joe Biden made two comments, one unimportant, the other important and its veracity questioned.

The Vice-President met privately with Democratic House members on Monday when Representative Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania exclaimed "we have negotiated with terrorists!" Biden responded in an intemperate manner, contending "they have acted like terrorists."

Or he didn't. Biden says he was misquoted, Jay Carney implies agreement, and although his remarks kicked up a firestorm, we may never know the truth.

It doesn't matter of course, and wouldn't, because the remark (if made) occurred in a private meeting and therefore would have made no impact on the public.

We didn't need Biden's comment/non-comment to have noticed that Democratic politicians and pundits had fanned out in the past month accurately accusing Republicans- or tea party Republicans- of holding up a critical rise in the debt limit in order to impose their perverse spending priorities. Therefore, one would have expected, the Obama/Reid/Pelosi triumvirate could have forced an extension only with a solid majority of Democratic votes while lopping off a few GOP moderates who have common sense.

That almost was the case in the U.S. Senate, in which the deal, with approval of Majority Leader Reid, originated. There, 46 Democrats (including DINO Joe Lieberman) voted in favor of the bill with only 7 opposed. (28 Republicans voted 'aye' and 19 voted 'no.') In the House, however, while 95 Democrats voted in favor and 95 voted against (3 not voting), the corresponding numbers for the GOP were 174 and 69, with even members of the Tea Party Caucus voting in favor by 32 to 28.

So in the House, while 50% of Democrats voting disapproved the measure, only 28.4% of Republicans did so. Republicans yelled, screamed, and beat their breasts- but when it came down to the end, the deal was so good they couldn't resist it. They took it as far as they could, gained as much as possible, and then did as their corporate sponsors directed them.

The legislation requires appointment of three House Democrats, three Senate Democrats, three House Republicans, and three Senate Republicans to a committee which is to report debt-cutting measures of $1.2 trillion by November 23, which would be voted on by Congress by December 23- or trigger across-the-board cuts.

Among his three appointments, Senate Majority Leader Reid likely will select centrist Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Illinois' Dick Durbin, de facto head of the Gang of Six and favorite of President Obama, who favors cuts in "entitlements" (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to those of us who don't want the poor and the elderly to suffer for the sins of Wall Street gamblers). Flexible to a fault, Reid expects to select members "who are willing to make hard choices but aren’t locked in."

While Pelosi's choices are less evident, Boehner and McConnell, each of whom will appoint 3 individuals, already has made it clear what kind of legislator will represent the GOP. McConnell, not quite as open-minded as Reid, promptly revealed

What I can pretty certainly say to the American people, the chances of any kind of tax increase passing with this, with the appointees of John Boehner and I, are going to put in there are pretty low. I'm comfortable we aren't going to raise taxes coming out of this joint committee.

And in case the Senate Minority Leader himself wasn't clear enough, his spokesman added

No one is stronger in his opposition to tax hikes than Sen. McConnell. He will have serious discussions with all those who are interested in serving prior to make any appointments.

No translation necessary. But, it is argued, Democrats had no choice but to vote for this pile of dung in order to avoid a debt default. Uh, no. Jennifer Bendery of The Huffington Post reported

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said Monday that Vice President Joe Biden told the House Democratic Caucus that President Barack Obama was, in fact, prepared to use the Constitution to raise the debt limit.

"We heard in there that the president, if this all had failed, was willing to invoke the 14th Amendment," DeFazio said after the meeting ended.

The news runs counter to what the White House, and even Obama himself, had said for weeks: that option has been off the table because it is unclear whether the president has the legal authority to invoke the 14th amendment to raise the debt ceiling himself.

No, it doesn't. That option was never "off the table" and Barack Obama never said it was. At a town hall meeting, he said "I have talked to my lawyers. They are not persuaded that that is a winning argument."

Not persuaded. Not "persuaded that is a winning argument." And not "not persuaded that is a winning argument and I won't do it, even though it risks a worldwide economic catastrophe."

As Joe Biden made clear, President Obama would have invoked the 14th Amendment if necessary. He was wishin' and hopin' and praying (and now, for something completely off-topic, below) he wouldn't be faced with the decision. However,he needed to imply that he would not act, so that he could get Democratic votes, which at the time it appeared he would need to get the debt ceiling raised.

As it turned out, Republicans voted overwhelmingly in the House, a little less in the Senate, for the bill. They knew a good deal when they saw it and realized that it could get no better- and, as was likely, would get worse if the President decided to avert financial disaster.

In the Senate and the House, Republicans pulled the trigger when they needed to. In the Senate, Democrats were played for fools. They actually believed as the President implied- that he would shirk his responsibilities as the leader of the free world if Congress failed to raise the debt limit. If the entire fiasco was a joke, its butt, as the Vice-President's words inadvertently suggest, was Senate Democrats.

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He Was Not The Fool

The Economic Policy Institute, condemning the economic impact of the debt agreement signed by the President on Monday, has found "Applying conventional multipliers, the reduction of $30.5 billion in calendar year 2012 would reduce GDP by 0.3%, and result in roughly 323,000 fewer jobs."

The likelihood that a deal significantly reducing spending will abort the already anemic recovery probably has been a major theme of Paul Krugman, never a customer of Barack Obama Kool-Aid, the past 6-8 weeks. On Sunday, he noted that cutting spending is unlikely to reduce further interest rates on federal spending, which already are extremely low. Discouraged by the President's apparent fondness for capitulation, Krugman added

In fact, Republicans will surely be emboldened by the way Mr. Obama keeps folding in the face of their threats. He surrendered last December, extending all the Bush tax cuts; he surrendered in the spring when they threatened to shut down the government; and he has now surrendered on a grand scale to raw extortion over the debt ceiling. Maybe it’s just me, but I see a pattern here.

We leave for another time consideration of whether Barack Obama is in fact The Worst Negotiator Ever or intentionally has taken a cleaver to the New Deal, as Glenn Greenwald believes. Brad Friedman (bradblog.com), who approvingly links to Krugman's article, notes that the Obama Style was evident from the actions of Senator Obama, who (as his post at the time described) in early 2007 told the Associated Press

that he believes Senate Democrats will vote to fund the Iraq War without withdrawal timelines if Bush vetoes the currently pending spending bills as he's promised to do.

Presuming he's been accurately quoted by AP (not necessarily always a safe bet), this means Obama was willing to show his hand and, essentially, give permission to Bush to go ahead and veto the bill without consequences. Brilliantly done.

If we ever need to negotiate for anything, remind us to not call on Obama to represent us.

Friedman observes "What was clear to us as long ago as 2007 was that Obama was the worst. negotiator. ever and now "has done almost precisely as he projected he would 4 years ago when we pointed it out, so that we could 'get a sense of how the next president will make decisions,' as Senator Obama then explained.

And appropriately, given all that has since transpired: Mr. Obama's statement to the AP was given on April 1, 2007- April Fool's Day.

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We've Only Just Begun

Katrina vanden Heuvel, lamenting the debt-ceiling fiasco, noted

On National Public Radio last week, Rep. Tom Cole, a Republican deputy whip, was giddy about the potential for calamity. Asked if it was a mistake to try to cut spending by threatening the U.S. economy, Cole replied: “No, I don't think so. Frankly, I think it's one of the good things that's come out of this. We'll never have a debt-ceiling increase again without serious efforts to deal with the long-term spending.”

That was from a GOP leader on the House side. Over on the Senate side, there is similar determination with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, as Think Progress reported at 7:30 p.m. (Eastern), vowing on Monday afternoon

It set the template for the future. In the future, Neil, no president — in the near future, maybe in the distant future — is going to be able to get the debt ceiling increased without a re-ignition of the same discussion of how do we cut spending and get America headed in the right direction. I expect the next president, whoever that is, is going to be asking us to raise the debt ceiling again in 2013, so we'll be doing it all over.

TP continued

Progressives should instead push to repeal it. The debt ceiling was intended to check the growth of federal debt, but it has clearly failed in that endeavor. All spending must already be approved by Congress in the budgeting and appropriations processes, so the debt ceiling serves as nothing more than a redundant yet dangerous roadblock that can be taken hostage by a minority party in Congress.

The Center for American Progress is a little late. Consistently loyal, though not obsequious, to President Obama, it conveniently made its recommendation just after the House approved an Obama-negotiated deal casting the elderly and the needy aside. There were several optionsthe President could have considered to avert the cut-and-paste monstrosity. He probably would have prevailed and any of them would have undermined the practice CAP now has advocated abolishing. This was the perfect time to "push to repeal the debt ceiling." And in fact, half the House Democrats, putting country above fidelity to one man, voted to reject the deal. They understood, presumably, how ludicrous a debt ceiling is when appropriations already have been approved.

House Republicans, who voted overwhelmingly for the deal, can see the future. The congressmen who chose to raise the debt ceiling, though giving political cover to Obama, have emboldened Tom Cole, Mitch McConnell, the tea party. That is a cost the country will be paying long after President Obama's presidency has expired.

Obamie, you're doing a heckuva job.

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Go Away, FAA, They Say

As if there needed to be another reason to vote down the debt extension bill crafted by Republicans Mitch McConnell and Barack Obama.

House Republicans have blocked extension of the Federal Aviation Administration authorization over a provision they have sponsored which would overturn a ruling by the National Mediation Board that nonvoting members not be counted when airline and railroad employees vote on whether to form a union. The House passed a funding bill with the anti-worker authorization but Senate Majority Leader Reid has not posted its own, with the House anti-worker provision deleted, in part because it's understood that the GOP-controlled chamber would reject it.

Stop-work orders have been issued on more than 150 airport construction projects as 4,000 FAA employees and 70,000 construction workers have been idled since operating authority ran out on July 23. The House, having played the lead role in this as well as the debt fiasco, has recessed, with the Senate soon to follow, and resolution of the FAA crisis has to await their return.

It's not just public sector unions anymore. As GOP governors throughout the nation attack public employee unions, national Republicans are doing their part by going after private sector unions. Federal employees and construction workers lose their jobs while the FAA cannot collect approximately $200 million per week in airplane taxes and other fees. (Several airlines have patriotically stepped up and raised their ticket prices to make up the difference, however.) It's the Republican version of a jobs bill, apparently.

Given that GOP members of Congress, including Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, argue that a non-vote should count as a vote against change and for the status quo, perhaps a Democrat should introduce a bill proposing that all registered voters who do not vote in a presidential election be counted as a vote for the incumbent. More realistically, Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon, one of 95 Democrats who voted against the debt ceiling legislation, argued

Minimally, they could have restored funding and taxation that funds the Federal Aviation Administration. That would put 94,000 people back to work. They didn't even do that. There's no investment, no jobs, coming out of this bill.

But as DeFazio knows, the debt negotiators never were concerned about jobs notwithstanding, as The New York Times' Joe Nocera explains

America’s real crisis is not a debt crisis. It’s an unemployment crisis. Yet this agreement not only doesn’t address unemployment, it’s guaranteed to make it worse. (Incredibly, the Democrats even abandoned their demand for extended unemployment benefits as part of the deal.) As Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive of the bond investment firm Pimco, told me, fiscal policy includes both a numerator and a denominator. “The numerator is debt,” he said. “But the denominator is growth.” He added, “What we have done is accelerate forward, in a self-inflicted manner, the numerator. And, in the process, we have undermined the denominator.” Economic growth could have gone a long way toward shrinking the deficit, while helping put people to work. The spending cuts will shrink growth and raise the likelihood of pushing the country back into recession.

Barack Obama has his deal, his kind of deal, which is any kind of deal. The independents presidential adviser David Plouffe wants to pacify may even applaud the agreement and give the President a short-term boost in ratings. But whatever their interest in bipartisanship, those same independents (like the FAA employees crushed by the Repub Party) are not going to be doing much applauding when the economy, rattled by cuts in spending, goes south.

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