The Republican Media- No.36

This is certainly good news- or so it would appear. A Politico headline today reads "Paul Ryan: Focus on 'Achievable Goals.'"

He sounds so reasonable.  Ryan, Politico's David Rogers reports, is "clearly signaling he is open to a good-faith bargain in which mandatory savings can be substituted for appropriations to restore more order for both sides."   What could be bad about "good faith" and "order," especially for "both sides?"

But a review of the statements made by the House Budget Committee chairman and 2012 GOP vice-presidential nominee suggests something else.  In the telephone interview with Politico, the Wisconsin Repub argues that if the House-Senate negotiations on the budget "becomes just an excuse to raise taxes, it's not going to be successful. We already have spending cuts coming. We'll take those. If we can have smarter spending cuts, that's better."

Those "smarter" spending cuts, as Ryan sees it, largely exclude defense. He is, Rogers writes, "encouraged by his early talks with Senate Democrats and hopes the two parties can skip past 'grand bargains' and focus on 'achievable' goals such as substituting entitlement reforms for sequestration cuts this winter."

Sequestration requires reduction nearly equal in defense and non-defense spending.  Ryan, though, is particularly interested in slashing Social Security, a fully prepaid annuity that pays earned benefits. Undermine Social Security often enough, and Pompous Paul's dream of privatization becomes achievable.  He has his sights also on Medicare, the other program that cannot be named, and which has lower administrative costs and more effectively controls costs than private insurers, disconcerting to the Very Serious People.

And of course what is a Repub agenda without cutting the corporate tax rate? Of the Republican chairperson of the House Ways and means Committee and the Democratic chairperson of the Senate Finance Committee, Ryan remarked

The encouraging sign is Dave Camp and Max Baucus have had a productive working relationship and that should be encouraged. We should encourage them to produce a pro-growth tax reform, which grows the economy and that grows revenues through economic growth. We should encourage that process to continue.

Whatever their views on foreign policy, defense spending, abortion, or even food stamps, Republicans refuse to admit that lowering the corporate tax rate will not necessarily increase economic growth.  (If you know of any who does, let me know. An apology will be forthcoming. Meanwhile, my breath will not be held.) However, in a report prepared late last year by the Congressional Research Service for Congress, public finance specialist Thomas L. Hungerford concluded in part

The top statutory income tax rates have changed considerably since the end of World War II. Throughout the late-1940s and 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was typically above 90%; today it is 35%. Additionally, the top capital gains tax rate was 25% in the 1950s and 1960s, 35% in the 1970s; today it is 15%. Statutory tax rates affecting taxpayers at the top of the income distribution are currently at their lowest levels since the end of the second World War. Whether or not the top statutory tax rates should be raised at the end of 2012, as scheduled under current law, is currently an issue before Congress. 

The results of the analysis in this report suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth.

We know the mainstream media adores Paul Ryan.  Not being shrill, he seems like such a reasonable, nice young man- and he even works out! But Pompous Paul answers to his corporate benefactors and no one else.... which may be the reason he has been kind of fond of immigration reform and  this man likes him so much.

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Followed By Silence


Sweet. Inaccurate (technically) but sweet.   In a daily Mass last week, Pope Francis stated

In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought… For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.’ The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements. The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?

Addictinginfo.org notes

Pope Francis did not specifically mention Christian right-wing ideology during the Mass, his past remarks suggest he was talking about that ideology most of all.

In September, Pope Francis attacked “savage capitalism” and took up the plight of the unemployed against a system that worships money. Earlier that month, the Pope also criticized conservative Catholics for focusing so much on abortion, same-sex marriage, and contraception. And in July, Pope Francis put the brakes on hating gay people, saying that we shouldn’t judge or marginalize them.

Clearly, Pope Francis isn’t fond of the extreme ideals of the Christian Right. He supports helping the poor. He believes in economic fairness. He denounces hatred of gay people. He thinks the war against abortion and birth control has gone too far. Considering all of these things, it’s pretty obvious that Pope Francis was mostly talking to right-wing Christians on Thursday. Their ideological fanaticism has damaged religion. They have abandoned the true teachings of Jesus to pursue an extremist agenda. 

Pope Francis, the blogger continues, has "just called them out for it. Cue right-wing rage in 3, 2, 1…"

But there has been no expression of right-wing rage.   The Bully Party will attack the most vulnerable- whether by rhetoric or policy- but will not touch His Holiness.  It might, after all, come under criticism for defending itself against a charge that it is suffering from a "serious illness."

In truth, it's not an illness; it's ideological extremism, selfish, cruel, and designed to appeal either to the fanatic popular base or to the donor base or both, whatever the impact upon real people.  But the Pope's music, if not all of his lyrics, is spot-on.  There has been scant criticism the past months of Pope Francis for his criticism of conservative sacred cows. Now that he has condemned the extremists as suffering from an illness, the right again is exposed as intimidated into remaining silent when confronted by the head of the largest religious denomination in the U.S.A.

We have seen this before. When Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC) yelled "you lie" at President Obama during a message of the latter before a joint session of Congress in September, 2009.   As Democrats condemned Wilson, Rush Limbaugh and others hinted of dire consequences if Congress were to censure him. On September 16, the House voted a "resolution of disapproval" and there was little or no reaction from the right.  That is how bullies roll.

Though not all the lyrics were accurate, the music from Pope Francis was picture-perfect.  And it was a reminder that for the GOP, the message matters far less than its source.



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A Threat, Challenge, Or Something

In a speech to the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans on Monday, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka issued a challenge for individuals who try, as it's called, to "reform entitlements." The Huffington Post reports

"No politician … I don’t care the political party … will get away with cutting Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits. Don’t try it...

"This warning goes double for Democrats," he said. "We will never forget. We will never forgive. And we will never stop working to end your career."

As House and Senate negotiators work over the next couple of months to reconcile the budgets the two chambers  have proposed, we may find out whether the labor organization is bluffing.  If not, it may well be taking on major figures in the Democratic Party.

Based on pessimistic economic projections, the Congressional Budget office and the Social Security Trustees expect Social Security benefits to be reduced in 20-25 years to 78% of current levels.  But that didn't stop Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin from repeating on Fox News Sunday the lie fast becoming a classic: "because Social Security is going to run out of money in 20 years. I want to fix it now, before we reach that cliff."

Only slightly less dishonestly, he continued

Medicare may run out of money in 10 years, let's fix it now. And that means addressing the skyrocketing cost of health care. That's what ObamaCare is focused on, and yet, the Republicans want nothing to do with it.

If we don't focus on the health care and dealing with the entitlements, the baby boom generation is going to blow away our future. We don't want to see that happen. We want to make sure that Social Security and Medicare are solid.

Earned benefits, maligned as "entitlements" (which people interpret as  "things others believe they have a right to just because they're breathing") by conservatives, neo-liberals, and the media establishment, is the politically correct way of referring to Social Security, Medicare, and (sometimes) Medicaid.  Though Social Security is distinct and separate from the budget and Medicare is not "going to blow away our future," Dick Durbin is one of only many claiming he wants to cut Social Security benefits so Social Security benefits don't end.

One of the GOP's Senate's conferees, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, has

said he hopes both sides set "sensible and realistic" goals. He laid out three of his aims Tuesday:

Preserving the savings included in a 2011 deal and carried out in the automatic spending cuts known as the "sequester;" allowing new flexibility for those cuts, which have worried both Republicans (because of the impact on defense) and Democrats (because of the impact on domestic programs) (and) shifting some of the cuts to the Government's big "mandatory spending" programs, such as social security, medicare, and medicaid.

"That's something that we absolutely ought to be able to find some common ground on," he said, saying President Obama has proposed changes to those programs in the past.

And so he has, most recently claiming "The challenges we have right now are not short-term deficits; it’s the long-term obligations that we have around things like Medicare and Social Security.  We want to make sure those are there for future generations."

Curbing Medicare and Social Security benefits are critical to debt reduction, the President suggested, immediately after he noted "remember, the deficit is getting smaller, not bigger.  It’s going down faster than it has in the last 50 years." And so with the deficit heading downward, incomes flat, much of the elderly dependent on Medicare for their health and Social Security for their survival, earned benefits must be cut so that the deficit is reduced.  Makes sense in ObamaWorld, apparently.

The President and his allies, including Dick Durbin, really do want to cut entitlements in because of the deficit, though it is cruel to the poor and the elderly, and is an inefficient way to reduce the debt burden.  But Republicans, masters at exploding the deficit when a Repub holds the White House, seek to undermine Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in order to undermine the programs. With the GOP's goal, and the leader of the Free World and allies anxious to alter the debt curve in ways which won't offend Republicans, Richard Trumka has his work cut out for him.



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It's The Private Sector, Stupid


Rush Limbaugh speculates 

Now that the government is legally in charge of health care, what's so bad about it screwing up so bad, so much, that people demand it be simplified?  And what would simplify it?  Get rid of these insurance companies, for God's sakes, that's where all the confusion is. You have this company here and that policy there and this deductible over here. Just get rid of that, let the government do it.

Good idea, Rush!  That, though, is his nightmare scenario.  But he is sure the problem is government and in rambles

Everybody working there wants to impress the boss, but you add the liberal political aspect to this, the true believer, big government's the solution to everything aspect to this, and there's no reason why this shoulda happened except one thing. And that is these people are genuinely incompetent. They haven't the slightest idea what they're doing.  They don't know what to do.  And their arrogance and their condescending view of people outside of government makes it -- they're only gonna hire people who've worked in other governments. You know, they'll use private sector people as props, bring 'em in for photo-ops. Buffett in now and then whenever you need him, get a photo op having lunch with Steve Jobs, but that's as far as it goes...

Nobody in this regime's got any private sector experience because they hate the private sector.  They despise it.  They think it's the problem. Just like the United States is the problem in the world, the private sector is the problem in the US economy.  

If you listened to Limbaugh's entire program- and closely- you probably would realize that private contractors have been in charge of devising the federal government health care website.  But as the preceding indicates, the intent is that the listener hear the music, not the lyrics, and blame government and Barack Obama. And an evil conspiracy of liberals, who are all around:

We sit around and we think that all these media people, they're just on the same page as the Democrats, and they are.  They're all the Democrat Party. They're all hacks.  Just some of them act as journalists.  Others are in the cabinet.  Others in the regime.  Others in think tanks.  They're all Democrats and they're all oriented toward one thing, and that's the advancing of the leftist agenda. 

Evidently, that "leftist agenda" includes the 55 companies handling the coming out rollout of HealthCare.gov. Those would be private companies, the backbone of the free enterprise system.

As expected, government-obsessed Limbaugh does not criticize any of these companies, even the main contractor, CGI Federal, which as of June had received $88 million of the $354 million which had been spent.  Nor does Limbaugh give any indication that, as Ezra Klein observes

The part of Obamacare that's troubled is the part Democrats lifted from Republican policymakers. It's the part that tries to integrate private insurance companies with government systems in order to create a universal insurance system that's subsidized by the state but run by private companies. The part that's working well is Medicaid -- which is to say, the part that's working well is the part that expands an existing, government-run, single-payer system.

Jonathan Schwarz, who explains how his life may have been saved by passage of the Affordable Care Act, summarizes it well:

So we don't have to just beat Ted Cruz so hard he flees back to Alberta. We have to get rid of the parts of Obamacare that may help the private insurance industry keep squeezing us like an anaconda. And we have to keep and improve the good parts, so the Affordable Care Act is just the first step to the only system that's ever worked anywhere on earth: universal, high-quality health insurance and health care for everyone.


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Not Appreciative


Some people- and I'm not talking about Barack Obama- just won't be satisfied.  On Thursday, the President announced "Because Democrats and responsible Republicans came together, the first government shutdown in 17 years is now over."

The President downplayed the political advantage gained by his party in the crisis, warning "let's be clear: There are no winners here."  Both sides, he maintained, were to blame:   "And of course, we know that the American people's frustration with what goes on in this town has never been higher. That's not a surprise that the American people are completely fed up with Washington."  For emphasis, he later added "understand that how business is done in this town has to change."

For the President, it was not Republicans nor the GOP-controlled House to blame because "there's a lot of noise out there, and the pressure from the extremes..."   In that vein, he cautioned "all of us (to) stop focusing on the lobbyists and the bloggers and the talking heads on radio and the professional activists who profit from conflict."

Nor was it just rhetoric.  The President endorsed a prime objective of the GOP when there is a Democratic president, urging "a balanced approach to a responsible budget, a budget that grows our economy faster and shrinks our long-term deficits further."   And he backed the longtime Republican aim to imperil vulnerable elderly people, stressing "the long-term obligations that we have around things like Medicare and Social Security" to "make sure those are here for future generations."  Destroying the village in order to save it:  always a winning formula.

President Obama extended the olive branch (for the 327 time) to the Party which only a few days earlier was threatening to wreck the nation's economy.  The Democratic president, nonetheless, blamed "Washinggon (and) this town (and) extremists," whomever they might be.  And Republican members of Congress responded in typical fashion.

President Obama put in a plug for comprehensive immigration reform in his speech, and Representative Raul Labrador (R-ID) barked "I think it would be crazy for the House leadership to enter into negotiations with him.  He's trying to destroy the Republican Party, not to get good policies. I don't see how he would in good faith negotiate with us on immigration."

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, hailed by the mainstream media as a "moderate Republican" before he went into hiding on immigration reform and then on the government shutdown/debt crisis, was asked on Fox News Sunday about Laborador's claim and, given a chance to express caution, instead remarked

What Congressman Labrador is addressing is something that I hear from opponents of our efforts all the time and I think that's a valid point, and that is this: you have a government and a White House that consistently ignored the law and how to apply it. Look at the health care law. The law is on the books, they decide which parts of it to apply and which parts not to apply. They issue their own waivers without any congressional oversight.

The question, though, had been about immigration reform and when Chris Wallace pressed him on that, Rubio contended

Now, this notion that they're going to get in a room and negotiate a deal with the president on immigration is much more difficult to do for two reasons.  Number one, because of the way that president (sic) has behaved towards his opponents over the last few weeks, as well as the White House and the things that they've said and done. And number two, because of what I outlined to you.

So, I certainly think that immigration reform is a lot harder to achieve today and it was just three weeks ago because of what's happened here.

That is, in technical terms, poppycock. To be generous to Obama, perhaps Rubio is reluctant to negotiate with the President because the GOP appears to have had their posteriors realigned in the recent negotiations over shutting down government and raising the debt limit. But even there, Republicans merely lost a battle in a war they're winning (over budgetary priorities).   Instead, the Florida senator is probably playing a double game, shifting from an apparent supporter of immigration reform to an opponent, and back, as circumstances dictate.

The biggest danger, though, remains that the GOP someday will stop opposing everything Obama and realize that, as someone who wants to cut Medicare and Social Security and prioritize debt reduction over job creation, he only has their interests at heart.




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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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Different, Yes; Better, Probably Not

Rush Limbaugh routinely misinforms his listeners, so we ought not be surprised that he did so with the day's leading issue, the government shutdown/debt showdown.

On Wednesday, hours before a deal was announced, Limbaugh claimed

If members of Congress are gonna get their delay and waiver, why shouldn't you?  You know, why shouldn't we instead make a move legislatively that delays the individual mandate for a year, as well as do the Vitter thing?  That's the only point they were making.  It's fine and dandy if you're gonna throw the Vitter thing in, but you don't have to throw it into this continuing resolution bill.  You can throw that up any time. You could throw it up every day or as often as legislatively permissible. 

 I think it's classic.  I think it's something that you could score a lot of points with: make the Democrats vote against them having to use Obamacare.  By the way, has Obama gone to an exchange yet?  Has Obama gone to the website and signed up?  Well, now, don't laugh. It's his damn bill.  Shouldn't he be the first one in line?  Shouldn't he be the first one showing how wonderful it is, showing how easy it is, showing how wonderful the system works?  He's not gonna go anywhere near it, folks.  A health care bill named after him that he proudly accepts, and he's not gonna be anywhere near it.  So why should we?  Members of Congress, they're gonna get their exemption...

Except they're not.   Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler explains

As a result of an amendment offered by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), the Affordable Care Act includes a provision that would require members of Congress (and their personal staffs) to get their insurance on the Obamacare exchanges. The Heritage Foundation has released a very interesting paper that details the legislative history of this provision, and how efforts to adjust it (including by Grassley) slipped away before final passage.

Thus there was an unexpected wrinkle: the exchanges are intended for people who currently do not get employer-provided insurance, whereas lawmakers and their staffs previously had about 70 percent of their insurance premiums underwritten by the federal government through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. For lawmakers and their staffs, the loss of employer contributions would have amounted to an unintended pay cut of between $5,000 to $10,000.

In ordinary times, technical fixes to complex bills are routinely passed, as there are often drafting errors. The Heritage paper makes clear that this problem was never intended. But as a consequence of the Democrats’ decision to pass such sweeping legislation with no Republican votes, it is all but impossible for such legislation to win support in the House. Politically, lawmakers also did not want to solve their particular problem while leaving other technical fixes untouched.

Under pressure from Congress, the Office of Personnel Management proposed a rule in August, which was finalized in September, saying the federal government could still contribute to health-care premiums.

The final rule would keep the subsidy in place only for members of Congress and affected staff who enroll in a Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) plan available in the District of Columbia. Such plans most commonly will be aimed at employees of businesses with fewer than 50 workers, but perhaps the theory is that each lawmaker and his or her staff constitute a small business. In any case, lawmakers and their staffs are not eligible for the tax credits that other Americans using the exchanges might qualify for.

Members of Congress and their employees are treated differently- except not at all in the manner Limbaugh implies. Patrick Brennan of National Review Online (!) notes

The law thus treats Congress and its staff substantially differently than all other Americans. Many Americans who now get insurance coverage from their employer may end up having to go on the exchanges; but only congressional employees are actually forced onto them, with the option of an employer plan prohibited by law....

Senator David Vitter (R., La.) says that Congress should pass an amendment to do away with this supposed “exemption.” The law would actually layer another regulation onto Congress (and executive-branch appointees, too) that doesn’t apply to any other American, by preventing their employer from contributing to their health insurance.

OPM has decided to contribute to the employee's health care plan the same amount as it has been spending on his/her benefits, in a manner similar to the approach taken by Trader Joe's- which, at last glance, is a private sector employer.

Rush Limbaugh is peddling the distortion that members of Congress and their staff are receiving an exemption from the onerous requirements of Obamacare.  Rather, failure to subsidize the health care plan of members of Congress and their staff would block them from the benefit private sector employees (thankfully) enjoy under the Affordable Care Act. Their net pay would be substantially reduced, in an amount Brennan estimates as between $5,000 and $11,000 annually.

Brennan asks

Do we believe that Congress and its staffers should pay the highest marginal tax rates, regardless of income; that every congressman must have served in the military to vote to declare war; that congressional offices have to carry out any and all reporting requirements and regulations they impose on a particular industry; and so on?

The answer, for most Americans, is "no."  And it probably would be "no" even for most of Rush Limbaugh's listeners, were they not subjected to a pile of dung daily.



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