As I predicted, Speaker Boehner has to go crawling to Steny Hoyer for votes. Meanwhile, Boehner is sneaking in and out of the White House begging for some way out of the trap he set for himself. As one of the commenters at The Hill said, “To the Republican House…If you need Steny and Nancys votes..we do not want that stinking deal.” Which is true. They don’t want that deal, but that’s the only deal available because too many Republicans are irresponsible lunatics who believe their own bullshit and make promises they can’t possibly keep. Meanwhile, Eric Cantor tries to walk back his absolutist stance on tax loopholes by trying to make them conditional on offsetting tax cuts elsewhere. In other words, he’ll consent to eliminating some tax subsidies if it doesn’t raise us any money. Isn’t that brilliant?
Then there’s Kent Conrad’s budget proposal, which has no chance of passing the Senate but might become a symbolic vote to let people know where these politicians stand. It has a 50-50 split of cuts and tax hikes, it doesn’t touch Social Security, and it trims about $30 billion from Medicaid over the next decade. I don’t know much more about it than that.
I think it’s finally occurring to the Republicans that they’ve run out of time to win any major concessions because there isn’t any time to write the legislation, and they’re begging for an short extension. They’re not going to rewrite the U.S. tax code in the next two weeks.
It sucks to be in the Republican leadership.
It sucks even more to be in the American citizenry.
That said, I like your optimism.
Conrad’s bill gets its tax increase from letting the Bush tax cuts expire on couples with $1 million income or more.
Not a concession. You can get that by doing nothing.
Yeah, just like how we got that by doing nothing last time it came up.
I didn’t say that doing nothing would happen, but that it’s a phoney tax concession.
Although, I keep hoping for enough of a stalemate that nothing happens.
I still shake my head at your framing the expiration of the tax cuts for millionaires above as a ‘tax increase’.
Hard to convince the nutz we’re right when we’re using their framing for our arguments….
It’s Conrad’s framing, if I understand what he’s up to.
I think it passes a 50-vote-plus-Biden Senate like shit through a goose.
A 60-vote senate? Not so much.
So the difference between Conrad and Obama is that Obama would like to get as much tax revenue now IN ADDITION TO the expiration of tax cuts for the rich once he hopefully wins that battle in the run-up to the 2012 elections. And, Obama’s approach would probably get us more revenue increase (all of these “loophole” increases, plus the expiration of tax breaks for the rich). In this context, the fact that Republicans vote down Conrad’s bill provides yet more proof to the American people that the GOP is for the rich at all costs. That is, Conrad’s sure-to-fail attempt helps Obama’s longer-term plan (as I perceive it) of turning the tax extensions for the rich into a full-throated election campaign issue.
Errrrr…..no.
What you get when you do ‘nothing’ is ALL the tax cuts expire, including the ones on the middle class. That is what Obama has said he is going to do. He said he will not sign another extension of the ‘Bush tax cuts’.
In order to let only the cuts for any particular group expire but leave others in place you would need to rewrite the law. That is not doing ‘nothing’. It also would have ZERO chance of passing either the House (crazy people) or the Senate (a$$holes).
.
I’m OK with the middle-class tax cuts expiring.
He tried to rewrite the law last year and wound up giving away the store.
Conrad is unserious about revenues. He is gunning for entitlements and has been since he extorted the deficit commission out of Obama in exchange for his vote for the ACA.
I am also OK with all tax cuts expiring, including mine.
But ‘doing nothing’ is not what you wrote it was.
.
Yeah. me too with the tax cut expiration. I’d be willing to pay a premium to see those idiots go apoplectic & hold their breath til they turn blue like the selfish, tantrum prone children they frequently emulate.
your comments about Orange Julius crack me up. I have the image of him swilling the Jack Daniels while scurrying from the Town Car to the back door at the WH.
BWA HA HA HA HA AHAH
what, exactly, are the terms of any deal? or do we not know yet?
Ask Steny. He’s the one with the votes.
It sucks to be in the Republican leadership.
Yeah, but it’s sure been a fun six months for them, hasn’t it? They all got to hang out in the green room at all major networks week after week and munch on free snacks and sodas while they waited to go on all the Sunday shows and rant about the islamocommunifascist in the White House. Scream about how he was destroying the country. Not to mention all the free coffee mugs, t-shirts and network tote bags they get to give to all their friends and relatives.
Never in their wildest dreams did they every think it would come to this……..they actually might have to govern!!! Horror of horrors!!! No one told them about that!!!
Why?
They will almost certainly get the vast majority of what they want, and it’ll take about 15 minutes for them to refocus any anger of their rabid base back at the “socialist” Dems. Who will also be blamed –not entirely without reason — for the insane cuts they capitulated on, and for the continued tanking of the economy for the non-wealthy.
Yeah, sucks to be the Republican leadership. Winning is such a harsh thing to deal with.
Who is “they” in this scenario?
Because McConnell and Boehner never wanted to drown the government in a bathtub. With a dead government, there’s nothing left to loot. They raised expectations and can’t deliver.
And the Tea Party expects a balanced budget amendment, a budget with no tax increases, and no concessions of any kind.
The GOP is going to get some significant cuts in the budget, but they won’t get any credit for it. They’ll get primaried for it.
Stupid bastards are cornered.
I think you’re dreaming.
Oh sure, there might be a few clumsy challenges, and one or two of the House ones might even succeed, but the baggers have been pretty thoroughly co-opted at this point. They’re great for the theater of it, for shifting the window of what’s acceptable even further to the right, but their true influence on anything other than talking points is pretty limited.
True, baggers have more influence on the Repub leadership than the Left has on the Dem leadership, but obviously that’s not saying much.
Is this even a rebuttal?
The republicans win because the media, and even the president, take on the republicans arguments on these issues. There is no ‘budget crises’, yet that is all everyone talks about. THAT is the real problem facing America, not whether anybody in particular gets primaried. The republicans won this round, decisively. The country has been jerked hard to the right, with Obama’s help. The problem I have is I have no idea if it is a place Obama wants to be, or if he has been forced there.
He is openly discussing cuts in Medicare. The republicans WANT that, because it removes the weapon they gave Obama with the Ryan vote. Proper use of that weapon might prevent a republican take over of the senate, artistic use retakes the House.
BIG win for the republicans.
.
Please release this as a sane alternative would be nice. Past experience teaches us that $30 billion in tax increases and a trillion in spending cuts is an Obama “compromise”. I’d like to see Conrad’s budget out there. I’m very interested to see how he will increase tax receipts. Payroll taxes do not reflect how the rich make their money. Financial transaction taxes are miniscule but add up big time (FDR had one). Tax dividends and capital gains the same percent as payroll taxes. There are a million ways to get tax money without hurting the economy.
My guess is that the deal is going to have about the same effect as the last deal. Obama will make it look like the Republicans got a victory, and then it’ll come out that nothing much really changed, even though it first looked like it. He’ll praise bi-partisanship again. He doesn’t want Boehner out of there as speaker, at least as a Republican speaker. Obama will help him get out of the box he’s in, will protect him, because he’s probably a whole lot easier to deal with than other possible people who might be speaker. Same with McConnell. Imagine if it were DeMint instead of McConnell. Obama wants to protect them both right now and keep the whole thing moving forward.
Any plan is going to do nothing much in the near term. Might even include some stimulus like continuation of reduction in withholding taxes, or even employers share. They all know you have to keep money circulating. Fix some roads; build some bridges. And the cuts are going to be down the road.
As the economy improves, it’s obvious that the government will have more revenue and less deficit. So it’s a waiting game. How do you let things look good while you wait for the cycle to change?
What’s interesting is that the idea of a “clean” debt ceiling bill has sort of gone out the window … at least in public. To make any link with deficit and debt reduction/tax increases etc. is perhaps a win for the Republicans which they can get to tout. It might also be a win for the republic. There will probably be an agreement to agree … raise the debt ceiling now, promise to reach other targets later, and so on.
“Any plan is going to do nothing much in the near term.” “How do you let things look good while you wait for the cycle to change?”
Sadly, I think the Administration and many of the Democrats in Congress are thinking the way you are. They’re just going to give up and hope that things get better somehow, miraculously, before the next election. They actually believe that they can’t do anything — that we’re just in another ordinary business cycle; that unemployment is structural; that the problem is too much debt, not too little demand. They’re prisoners of learned helplessness, and I truly doubt they can break out of it.
If this is true, then we should all be thinking of a ‘figleaf’ to provide the GOP to lessen the stink of capitulating sooner than later. Then, negotiation done.
How about a pledge from Obama to sign a balanced budget amendment if one crosses his desk (with ‘black swan event’ exceptions).
Won’t ever get to him, so… Figleaf provided.
..or fear of the Fourteenth Amendment will suffice nicely.
I’m pretty sure my dog could cut $3B/yr from Medicaid.
At some point, these fuckers are either gonna have to admit that they’re completely full of it about the “runaway entitlement costs that must be dealt with yesterday!” or they need to start practicing what they preach and start cutting into provider side profits.
If you want to reform medicaid, actually reform medicaid. If you want to reform medicare, actually reform medicare. If you want to reform social security, actually reform social security. Put a real plan on the table. Own it, and be straight. Stop dangling a sword above these programs’ heads for public consumption.
Whatever. It doesn’t even matter.
And if I’m the GOP, I don’t budge on taxes. I tell the President to knock himself out with the fourteenth amendment defense, and I have a fun little August calling him a profligate tyrant who can’t create any jobs. That’s the kind of red meat the teabaggers can’t help but love, and it’d keep the caucus together while deeply damaging the president with independents. Not that it matters come 2012, since Obama will get reelected unless the hellmouth opens up and the antichrist rides forth to rule the world or whatever the jesus freaks think will happen…
I didn’t know that Medicaid covers dogs or that your dog had so many problems.
You want to cut $3 billion a year from Medicaid. Take the average nursing home annual cost, divide it into $3 billion. Then kick that number of folks out of nursing homes. The a lot of middle class, even upper middle class families will get a surprise visit from Grams or Gramps.
The GOP can’t do anything in August without the complicit media.
The 14th amendment doesn’t allow the President to keep spending. It requires him not to put the US into default. But it also allows blowing past the arbitrary debt ceiling and working off of the funds that Congress has already authorized. And likely he can get away with reprogramming funds, within reason, to pay for the important and defer the less important. And draw up a list of recissions for the fiscal year that begins October 1. In other words, instead of being bound by where Congress wants to cut, he can make those decisions. If he makes them well, he can outlast the GOP obstruction.
But he does not want to go there himself. They have the debt ceiling; he has the backup of the 14th amendment. The kabuki will continue until someone blinks or the clock strikes.
I think the idea that he will act to damage himself with independents misunderstands what the practical unenforceability of the debt limit will mean.
Put the fear of God into him some time late last week. Told him play time was over. Get the deal made. Sure giving red meat to the tea party crazies is fun and all but time to remember who your real owner is or the well dries up.
It happening pretty much like I predicted. June was kabuki time and July is getting the deal done tome
Not sure what to make of this: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/us/politics/07fiscal.html?hp
Doesn’t sound good. 11 dimensional chess, perhaps?
Actually, as is the norm these days, it appears that it sucks to be a progressive:
Let’s hope this is just kabuki. I, however, am worried that the WH will cave and not the other way round.