Any fiscal deal should do the following:
1) force the Republicans to violate their Norquist pledge.
2) make the Republicans give up their ability to threaten our credit rating by threatening to default on our debts.
3. make the Republicans vote for classic Keynesian stimulus spending.
This is about killing off a fever. If the Class of 2010 is compelled to commit the three aforementioned apostasies, they will be a spent force.
In that context, whether we have Chained CPI or CPI-W or CPI-E is very much a secondary consideration for me. I don’t support Chained CPI. But I want to see these bastards broken up on the rocks of their own deluded ideology. That, for me, is paramount.
Then we have different priorities. I thought your priorities was about beating Republicans. It doesn’t count as beating them when we enact their agenda.
I am about destroying their movement.
I’d rather keep kicking the can down the road until they can’t win elections. Their fever won’t break. The Republican Party has no reason to exist anymore.
The Tea Party is based on three principles:
Making the Republicans vote against all three principle at once is invaluable.
The Democrats have no similar ideological barriers to action. Progressives oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, as they should be. But stacking up Chained CPI against the 3 apostasies is not a fair contest. We can destroy them, and then we can govern, including protecting the vulnerable.
What makes you think we can govern if they “lose” this fight (I don’t think they’d lose, but w/e)? I’m asking honestly, cause I don’t see it. You sound like Andrew Sullivan thinking their fever will break if only this happens. Also, you said previously the president was offering stuff knowing the GOP wouldn’t vote for it. Now you’re hinting that you think they will. What gives?
In fact, from Ezra’s latest, it sounds to me like they’re being emboldened, and want to shirk any deal prior to the cliff because the president has ceded some ground. IE, “Hey, Boner, don’t pass a deal because this weakling will break over the debt ceiling. Let’s wait it out and go over.” (their thinking, not mine).
Let’s go over the cliff, then. What’s the problem?
No problem, indeed. But you’re saying making them violate some stupid “principles” is paramount. So much so that in the recent past you argued in favor of raising the Medicare age if it came down to a good enough deal. I think you’re blinded so much in wanting to beat the Tea Party regardless of what agenda is passed at this point. I think all of this is needless wanking; like both joe’s in the prior thread, I think and have thought we’re going over the cliff. But when I see posts from you approving piece of shit deals just to make the Tea Party violate their “core,” it stops being true to the reason I come here.
The key is to kill the insanity.
It’s not our role to talk the Tea Party off the ledge. They’re not at all receptive to an intervention and we can’t trick them into one.
It is our role to persuade more people not to vote for them. To appear bipartisan and because of his own centrist leanings, Obama has refrained from doing a lot of things that would help us accomplish this.
If we want to kill the insanity, or the power of the insane, we have to marginalize the ideas. Every concession in this context has a huge cost to it that I’m not convinced you fully appreciate.
I understand the cost of making concessions very well. It’s precisely why I want the Republicans to make them on their core pathologies.
I think we’re focused on different things — the base vs the voters. When Republicans make concessions, they’re in trouble with their base but become more in line with a populist agenda. When we make concessions, the effect with our base is the same but we’re going against what the majority want. It’s not like we can settle for raising taxes on only those earning above $400K and say afterwards about Republicans “You see, they raised taxes on the rich.”
If we go over the cliff, they don’t have to violate the Norquist pledge. They can vote FOR a tax decrease (for those below … whatever). They can even propose it. So they save a little face. But it will be better for the country.
They won’t have voted for a tax increase on the wealthy, it would be an automatic fait accompli. But it will be better for the country.
Refusal to raise the debt ceiling — it’s like a suicide bomb. A lot of them are perfectly willing, but Boner isn’t. They won’t use it. Obama said the debt ceiling cannot be part of the negotiations. It can be dealt with later.
I don’t understand how you can get them to vote for stimulus spending. I do understand various moves on the president’s part that would have a stimulus effect.
I would love to see these guys and their whole ideology defeated. But you can’t kill the crazy, these guys will die crazy. It’s going to be a gradual process. If we go over the cliff, there will be less force necessary, but the effect will be the same: Their agenda is not happening and is becoming irrelevant. They are becoming a fringe group.
Agreed. The right wing crazy can never be “broken”; this is a battle of attrition. We’ve got to hold them at bay until enough of them die off such that they’re totally marginalized.
I’ve been mulling this idea over for a few weeks:
And I really can’t see it. It’s a widely circulated assumption, but I don’t see how the TP voters would give the GOP Congressfolk a pass for this “technical non-violation” of their pledge. IMHO, it would be like an accounting scam to them. If brackets for wealthy are up after 6-12 months, I think the TPers will take note.
Of course they will. But there’s nothing they can do about it. And we get the tax increase on the upper incomes.
Voting for tax hikes on the rich to help balance the budget, to pay our obligations because that is only responsible, and for Kenynesian stimulus because it works, makes all Tea Partiers violate every core tenet of their stupid ideology. They basically no longer exist as Tea Partiers. The party is moderated by definition.
How? Articulate how we govern and protect the vulnerable.
Because we can deal with GOP that has been potty-trained and relieved of their duty to never raise taxes or do stimulative spending.
I guess I’m looking for specifics, not generalizations.
Chained CPI means lower social security benefits as I get older: so what do I get to supplement what’s cut? It also mean food stamps take a hit: but every $5.00 in food stamps generates $9.00 in economic activity. What replaces that? What supplements that so people get enough to eat (and remember, food stamp benefits are already insanely low, something like $5.00 a day).
Specifics. That’s what I’m asking for.
In any deal, there will be some specifics. The administration is looking to limit the impact of chained CPI. But I’m not talking about what’s in this particular bill.
I’m talking about the impact of breaking the nutcase conservative lock on the Republican Party and making it safe again to hold sane positions on Keynesian economics, taxation, and our obligations to pay our debts. Make these fuckers own some sanity.
Think about a hypothetical. What if we could free the GOP from the recent embrace of climate change-denialism? What if we could force half of them to vote for a bill that limits carbon emissions, and then also force them to defend that vote against critics?
What is that worth down the line?
I understand the long term impacts of all of that stuff, believe me.
Put it this way: when i wake up with the 3:00 AM worries, it’s rarely about climate change, keynesian economics, or macro-issues. It’s “holy shit, I have no retirement” and “Holy shit I could end up living under a bridge in a box.” And that’s to say nothing of my neighbor, who’s 70, sickly, and is barely getting by.
So when i hear this stuff about CPI and the impact on social security and food stamps, I worry a LOT.
so if the answer to “what’s that worth down the line” means “brendan and others being poorer and hungrier”, I don’t know if that’s worth it. Maybe it is.
Agree with 1-3. Chained CPI shouldn’t be on the table. What SHOULD be on the table is spending for the military. It’s outrageous. If we supported the military in a rational fashion, their budget would be a fraction of what it is, and in line with other countries in the world. But the MIC makes too much money off armaments (domestic and abroad), and won’t relinquish their power without a real battle.
I read a while back we have over 1000 military bases and they cost a minimum of a billion dollars a year each.
Yikes.
I don’t know where you read that, but the math works out to $1 trillion a year. We spend $700-something billion a year on the entire military budget.
If that is what you want .. then you should want no deal .. until middle January 2013
No. I want the Republicans to vote for tax hikes, stimulus spending, and raising the debt ceiling, none of which they will do if we go over the cliff.
They won’t, and it’s not worth messing with. Better to go over the cliff, as I said above.
Maybe they will. If they won’t, no biggie. The fever is still with us.
I just want to make sure that whatever concessions are made by Obama, the Republicans vote in favor of them. If we agree to chained CPI or any other entitlement cuts, a majority of Repubs must vote in favor. My biggest fear is that this will all be put in one grand bill, that will pass the house with minimal Republican support and the Senate will all Dems and no Republicans. If that happens you know the Republicans will run on how the Democrats cut social security, just like they did last year on how they cut medicare.
All the spending changes should be put in one bill, and all the tax cuts in a second bill. The spending cuts pass the house with no dems and the senate with minimal dem support, the tax bill passes the senate with no repubs and the house with minimal repub support. Then the electorate will know who really favored what. Anything else opens up the possibility that we’ll be hoist on our own petard.
Getting rid of the debt ceiling is essential as well.
I meant tax hikes, not tax cuts….
Yes, they ran on us cutting Medicare and lost the presidency, two senate seats and eight house seats. That worked brilliantly for them.
Having them vote for any of the items proposed won’t break them or even slow them down the next week. Congress is full of Republicans who voted for both Bush tax cuts, Medicare D, and the Iraq war, and then ran as “deficit fighters” in 2010 without compunction, and successfully. The class of 2010 can be just as hypocritical, and just as successfully.
Why did we lose the House in 2010? Until we have a solid answer to this question, we can’t decide on an agenda with any confidence.
I think that your agenda is more in line with a contest like Football. You score by making the Republican party violate the Norquist pledge. There’ll be shakeup in management, recruitment will suffer, sponsors will withdraw, and eventually, this all effect what happens on the field. And the fans root for a team based on arbitrary factors: where they’re from, who their fathers and uncles rooted for.
I think the most important factor in any fiscal deal is the extent to which the Democratic party is unambiguously aligned with the priorities of the 99%. Most people don’t follow the finer details of the deal, so they’ll just hear headlines like “Obama agreed to cut Social Security benefits” and “Republicans agreed to raise taxes on the highest income bracket.” In my view of politics, that’s not a win.
Why did we lose the House in 2010?
Because the economy sucked and the incumbent President was a Democrat.
The lesson from the 2010 elections is economic stimulus uber alles, which would be an argument for Obama’s plan, and against going over the fiscal cliff.
I just cannot believe Obama is doing it again. Giving the GOP what they want, negotiating like a weakling. I simply cannot believe it, after the past few weeks. I wanna trust the guy, but Wtf??? It’s not 2010, just crush the motherfuckers already.
Good that you can’t believe it, cause it just ain’t so.
Obama doesn’t crush the motherfuckers. He uses the old briar patch technique. Gets the mofos every time.
http://beforeitsnews.com/politics/2012/12/pritchetts-pen-obama-at-home-in-fiscal-briar-patch-2474768
.html
let us hope you are right. I do not want a replay of last year.
Does “last year” refer to getting the debt ceiling raised and huge defense cuts, while destroying the Republican Congress politically and bringing the Tea Party agenda’s momentum to a screeching halt, without reducing entitlement benefits by a dime?
Because I totally want a replay of last year. That was awesome.
POTUS won re-election. He has a majority of the American people behind him. Steam-roll the Repubs. Be a bully and run ’em over. Being nice has not worked.
Even with all the leverage the President has in this current environment he was never going to be able to steam roll them. They still control the House and will for the foreseeable future. They have a lot of power with little risk of losing it. There will be negotiation and we will not like some of the final outcome. That will be a fact regardless of the skills or strength of the President.
My reluctance to agree with this is that IF you can kill off the fever, the virus will still come back. What’s to prevent the virus from mutating and coming back with self delusion about why they lost and bringing another 2-4 core principles just as destructive as these? These are the folks that voted for Romney. Being consistent with theories, principles or facts is not what they do. Recognizing their own defeated ideas is not within their capabilities.
#1 – I think they’ve lost this. I think many of them are about to violate Norquist pledge anyway. Maybe a deal can happen after Christmas. But if the tax deal gets pushed off until January or later, I don’t think claims they never raised taxes will pass the smell test with a lot of their supporters. Either way I think the rich will be in higher brackets 6-12 months from now and the TPers will have lost.
#2 – I haven’t seen anything about an offer to do away with the debt ceiling permanently – only another delay to revisit it later. Correct me if I’m wrong.
I think if he handles it right and gets consensus from the financial establishment, Obama can either get a better deal or permanently discredit/cripple the debt ceiling hostage taking “strategy”.
#3 – This is the most intriguing to me. Barring severe economic problems with the “cliff” or the debt ceiling, the economy is recovering anyway. Classic Keynesian stimulus spending if done soon might get media recognition long term for fixing the economy.
“Voting for tax hikes on the rich to help balance the budget, to pay our obligations because that is only responsible, and for Kenynesian stimulus because it works, makes all Tea Partiers violate every core tenet of their stupid ideology. They basically no longer exist as Tea Partiers. The party is moderated by definition. “
The tea party is bullshit, and has nothing to do with abiding by some set of principles except opposing Obama. The next gooper that’s POTUS will be able to get the teatards to deficit spend at will, and raise the debt limit as they always have.
So taking a large chunk of my 86 year old Grandma’s 900 bucks a month that she lives on is worth this? I am hard to convince of that.
I thought WH has punted on debt ceiling being in deal and caved on 250K mark that they ran on to 400K.
This is delusional with no basis in history or reality.
4. Would we be done with the debt ceiling or not? Obama had suggested he was determined to remove the debt ceiling as an instrument of legislative extortion; Boehner’s offer, which is getting a serious hearing, would merely postpone the day of reckoning, setting up another fight a year from now. But, to my surprise, plenty of Democratic insiders see a one-year extension, or something like it, as worthwhile. They figure Republicans will be no more likely to crater the economy next year than they would be this year.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/111202/obama-boehner-fiscal-cliff-deal-taxes-spending-cuts-four-ways-t
o-judge#
What makes you think Repubs in high numbers will vote for the final deal? Pelosi thinks she can bring the Dems. That means most Repubs in the House, and all in the Senate, can sit it out and let the Dems own it. They will not have violated their Norquist pledge, nor voted against SS or medicare.
Meanwhile, Obama seems very foolishly to be going along with a temporary fix on the debt ceiling. That should be priority one. Breaking the Repubs is important, but not breaking the country is more important still.
I totally understand, and agree with, your point about the political upside of such a deal, but I can’t get behind giving away something as permanent and important as cutting Social Security benefits, in exchange for a passing political advantage. In six months, there could be some scandal or crisis that completely upends the political scene, but the change to Social Security benefits will be there forever.
The New Deal and Great Society programs are our crown jewels. Obama shouldn’t give away even the smallest of them for something temporary.
Point 1 in ridiculous. If the Republicans violate the Norquest pledge by, say, supporting income tax rate hikes for millionaires, is that supposed to be a win?
What happened to the $250K threshold? Are we supposed to forget about that?
CPI-whatever is not a secondary consideration for me.
Sounds like someone is making excuses for Obama’s current deal offering. Framing the deal as a victory because Republicans get “broken up” makes no sense if there are deep cuts to the safety net.
January will tell whether Democrats realize they won the election. All I know is that Obama is going to sacrifice his own popularity if he keeps voluntarily tossing stuff on the table. Item number 4 on my list (your 1-3 are pretty good) is forcing the Republicans to state what they would cut specifically and what they would tax to balance the budget–and no gimmicks or evasions. That more than anything else will kill the conservative ideology.
Chained CPI violates your item 3. Item 3 would argue for increasing Social Security benefits in a time of high unemployment. Any method of computing the CPI should incorporate the fact that contrary to previous generations more elderly today are paying off mortgages and their kids’ student loans, which makes those inflation items significant. And in the absence of totally free healthcare needs to reflect the inflation of deductibles and co-pays–if not healthcare costs in general.
January will tell whether Democrats realize they won the election.
Is this an acknowledgment that they aren’t really trying to strike a December deal?
All I know is that Obama is going to sacrifice his own popularity if he keeps voluntarily tossing stuff on the table.
In a two-party system, popularity is a zero-sum game. If a plan to crater the Republicans’ popularity costs Obama a point or two, he wins.