There is just a deep, deep strain of crazy that’s developed within the Republican culture. The debate that’s going on among House Republicans right now is so disconnected from reality. They’re debating whether they need to vote for Boehner’s bill because they’re a team and giving a no-confidence vote to Boehner will basically destroy his speakership. My first response to this is, why did you make him the Speaker? He voted to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then voted repeatedly to borrow the money to wage those wars. He voted for the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit and also voted to borrow the money to pay for it. He voted for the TARP program, too, like a good little Bush acolyte. If you want to get technical, he also voted for Bush’s tax cuts in both 2001 and 2003. In other words, Boehner voted to create this deficit at every single point along the way. He is 100% guilty for our debt. Yet, you won the midterm elections after running campaigns about fixing the debt and deficit problem and then made this idiot your leader? WTF?
But that’s kind of ancient history at this point. What’s more important is that every Democratic senator has vowed to vote against Boehner’s bill anyway. The president has promised a veto. What’s the advantage in voting for something you’ve pledged not to vote for if it won’t even matter? All you’ve done is screw yourself, and the Speaker will still be on the hook to produce a bill that can pass the Senate and get the president’s signature. Yet, they seem to be telling themselves that the Democrats don’t really mean it.
What’s totally absent is any sense of concern that this delay is already damaging the economy and the country’s reputation. This compulsion to hold out for ever-more concessions is frankly insane. If the game is to save the taxpayers of this country’s money, you could hardly do worse than causing a downgrade in our credit rating and an increase in all of our interest rates.
The White House long ago conceded that the House of Representatives has the power to compel them to give up on stimulating the economy and focus on cutting down on the debt. In that sense, the budget hawks won. But they don’t want that kind of victory. The idea that they might throw away everything that Boehner has extracted and chew him up and spit him out is astonishing. But also astonishing is that they’re still having that debate about a bill that has no chance of going anywhere. You can’t absolve yourself of responsibility for the coming fiasco by passing the buck now. Pass or fail, Boehner’s bill isn’t the end of the line for the House. A teabagging Republican might as well kill Boehner’s bill in its crib. At least that way, they won’t have to explain why they broke their pledges for a stillborn bill.
Excellent thoughts, especially for a late night bout. I have to share this about freshman teabagger Joe Walsh as he has been sooo all over the shows touting fiscal responsibility.
And it goes without saying that perhaps this crop of Rep’s is having such a difficult time moving forward is that they are chasing the shadows over their shoulders of their alternate lifestyles. That’s certainly the case with Walsh.
Speaking of joe walsh, http://www.suntimes.com/opinions/6716208-474/editorial-joe-walsh-has-a-loud-voice-but-nothing-to-say
.html
LOL, what a grifter! sounds like the witch and a few others. But I’m surprised the Koch bros didn’t spring for his child support to avoid bad publicity like this.
is the Repugs will pass their Bill, and as a result that Bill will be impossible to stop for the simple reason that it will, given the time frame, be the only one that can stop a default.
I think Boehner is closer to winning than people think.
Of course, this fucks everyone else who makes less than 500K a year – but Boehner doesn’t care about that.
If the bill passes the House, the Senate leadership (Reid) takes the bill number, guts the Boehner bill, replaces it with the Reid bill, and the Senate votes on it. Up or down. Republicans are on the spot because McConnell signed on to the bill.
It the restuffed bill passes the Senate, it goes for reconciliation. And goes for an up-or-down vote in each house.
There is no way that Boehner’s bill becomes law. And likely little way that the GOP can keep their fingerprints off failing to pass the debt ceiling.
This is funny. Please don’t throw me in that briar patch.
This breakdown of our governmental process unfortunately has a self-perpetuating aspect. Who the hell would want to run for national office to go to DC and work in that asylum? You couldn’t pay me enough to be a congressman.
Crippling the government with debt has always been their aim, anyway.
Coupled with low taxes for the rich and higher taxes for the others, massive debt sucks money from everyone else upward to them.
And it makes a wonderful weapon against anything resembling redistributive spending from entitlement programs to public libraries, schools, fire departments, and even police.
Police?
People who can afford Nozick’s private protective agencies as well as private schools don’t need public police any more than they need public schools.
According to the right only slightly more extreme than those neo-Birchers in the House, the police department is socialism, just like the fire department.
Too many people have failed to take Grover N’s remark seriously.
He didn’t want to just shrink government.
He wanted to drown it, he said.
Remember?
At least metaphorically, these guys all read Nozick and rejected even the libertarian minimal or “Night Watchman” state.
That way lies the sort of corporate feudalism normally found only in science fiction.
But that’s the way these neoliberal maniacs are taking us.
We have redistributive spending. It’s the $300 billion interest payment on the national debt. It redistributes probably $200 billion of wealth upward from ordinary citizens to mostly affluent individual or corporate holders of T-bills.
It’s also found in Mexico
From your mouth to God’s ears huh? This is an open prayer from you because you know the headlines that will follow the now certain passage of Boehner’s bill. 3,2,1…”Boehner delivers!” “Boehner got their asses in line.” “Is Boehner the new Reagan?” “Unlike Boehner, Barack Obama can’t get Democratic asses in line.” “Can Democrats put their extreme ideaology aside to save the economy?” Democratic tools of Joe Scarborough will look dazed and confused as Joe Scarborough, the reformed partisan who really wants Democrats to succeed, asks them why they are willing to tank the economy, unwilling to meet Boehner and mcConnell halfway. They’ll wonder what happened to the sympathetic ear that listened so patiently to them bitchin about the President.
That’s because it’s easy to herd elephants.
and just a quick reminder: any “deal” is a needlessly cruel and destructive response to an artificial crisis. whatever bill passes, it will not help our jobless, it will not create jobs, and it will not help the economy.
It is an artificial crisis in one sense, but we shouldn’t overplay that argument. The credit rating agencies have decided it’s real enough that we need to do substantial deficit cutting, regardless of how we do it.
right.
those would be the same credit ratings that missed the housing bubble. covered themselves inglory there.
say, who elected the credit ratings agencies? when did they become arbiters of US public policy, dictating how much we have to cut our deficit?
cus they’re saying, whether we pay our bills or not, they’re downgrading us. Reich had a good bit on this yesterday on NPR. Who the fuck are the credit agencies to tell us how much we have to cut? as long as we pay our bills, they should STFU.
Look, it doesn’t matter how perfidious the ratings agencies are, if the markets decide that US debt isn’t so good, interest rates go up across the board, it’s harder to borrow and buy and hire and invest, and the economy gets even more fucked than it is now.
Also, I know it’s nice to pretend otherwise, but the deficit is absolutely sucking all the air out the debate around the jobless. The Reid bill is a shit sandwich in a bunch of ways, but as much as the Denocratice leadership has been talking a pretty good game on austerity, they’ve been staying pretty Keynesian in their attempts to backload all the cuts, and for that matter, all the tax increases. Yes, raising taxe on the rich isn’t going to hurt the economy, but raising taxes on everybody else—which was the other option in the fight over the cuts last winter—would have screwed things up.
I don’t know if agree with that last statement, about raising taxes on everyone.
clinton raised taxes too. The economy prospered. Now, granted times were a biot different then, but tax increases in and of themselves are not necessarily bad for the economy.
Look, if you want to take the view that austerity is bad in this economic climate, it’s really hard to argue in favor of broad-based tax increases. When Clinton raised taxes, we were on an upswing out of a much shallower recession, not teetering on the edge of a second dip with unemployment holding steady at ~9%. Raising taxes on the not-so-wealthy would mean less spending, less consumption, and less hiring.
On top of that, it would have meant giving up the extension of unemployment benefits, which would have been a real disaster.
Exactly. You can’t argue both for Keynesian stimulus and that tax hikes for the middle class don’t hurt the economy in this environment. It’s all about creating demand.
And you can’t argue for tax hikes as stimulus knowing that the Republicans will cut more than the tax cuts will provide, especially when spending is better than tax cuts.
Grrr. tax cuts*
There is a tax hike argument in economics that says that taxing the wealthy decreases the marginal value of additional income and as a result it incentivizes a less unequal income distribution.
And higher taxes on capital gains would encourage shifting the investment out of paper shuffling and into real longer-term investment.
So the argument that raising taxes is inherently contractionary has a big “it depends” by it.
And given the economy right now, a lot of the people who received tax cuts would now have not taxes at all or qualify for earned income tax credits.
Demand is made up of consumption, business investment, government spending, and balance of trade. It would contract aggregate consumption by the aggregate amount of the tax. It might shake loose cash into growing the economy, it would make government spending contract less, and the balance of trade is likely a wash.
If Democrats no longer espouse FDR´s ideas, why should Republicans stop endlessly attacking them?Democrats have forgotten that liberty from economic oppression was not one of FDR´s causes, but THE cause.Talk about the environment, gay rights, justice, etc is worthless if people don’t have a decent job, can’t afford a home, or can’t pay for healthcare or college.The Tea Party probably sees Democrats on the last inch of completely renouncing the New Deal, so they will strike as hard as they can, even if it means taking down the economy for a few days or weeks while the White House and Senate “moderates” capitulate. Their base will tolerate this, just as the Democratic base tolerates so many traitors or visionless politicians amongst the congressional leadership.
For Democrats, Obama is pretty much it. There probably won’t be a primary opponent, and even if there were, he probably wouldn’t get anyplace. But does that mean I’m alienated from the outrage, fear and sadness of Bernie Sanders, Robert Reich, Paul Krugman and others, or that I don’t often think the President is turning himself into a crypto-Herbert Hoover in order to appeal to economic illiterates and conservative-leaning independents?
The size of the electorate to Roosevelt’s left and the fear of social disruption made liberty from economic oppression FDR’s cause. Eleanor, however, was different.
No, this is a strategy that the Republicans get right, and I wish Democrats would start doing more of it themselves.
There are 3 reasons to push a bill through debate and to a vote. The first, obviously, is to get the legislation passed. The second, is to establish your party’s position on the issue. The third is to set the stage for it to pass in the future. Republicans have used this strategy to successfully establish their legislative positions as the basis for all deals in Congress.
So when Democrats got a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, they passed a bill that looked remarkably like the Republican counter to Clinton’s health care plan from 1993. Single payer was off the table. Medicare for all was off the table. Mandates to buy insurance from private companies was in. Republicans likely would have preferred no plan at all. But they like what they got much better than a Democratic alternative.
And now in the current debate on the debt. Obama starts his negotiating position with ideas that Boehner has supported in the past. Then tacks right as Boehner moves the goal posts. Republicans may end up overplaying their hand, but they haven’t done so yet, and they’re winning the long game.
“So when Democrats got a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate,”
When the heck was that? because I certainly cant remember it.
They had CLOSE TO a filibuster proof majority in the 2010 congress, but close to is not the same as having one.
July 7th 2009 to February 3rd 2010.
Oh, you’re including Joe “If you tell me it pisses off the Democratic Leadership and President Obama I’ll vote for it, no matter what I said yesterday” Lieberman. How cute.
In fact, by your standards, the Dems only had a filibuster proof majority from April 30 2009 to September 25th, 2009. By mine, it only lasted one day, September 9th 2009, when the republicans only had 39 votes including Lieberman. And thats not including Blanche Linchon et al. Remember her?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress
You might have noticed that period, its when Lieberman was changing his mind the whole time and pissing everyone off. Which is why the dems had to go cap in hand looking for any republicans to break ranks to pass anything at all.
Good grief people have short memories
Because of the infirmities of Kennedy and Byrd, the Democrats only had 60 votes while Senator Kirk was serving as the second senator from Massachusetts, and even then, only when Byrd was available.
Kirk served from September 24th to February 3rd. By providing the 60th vote, Kirk enabled the passage of the main part of the health care bill on Christmas Eve, but he was unavailable to vote on the reconciliation part of it.
See, you’re illustrating my point perfectly.
Republicans look for any means possible to achieve their aims. Democrats look for excuses to explain why they can’t get anything done.
So in 2006, when Democrats won majorities in both houses of Congress, they told us they couldn’t get anything done because the president had a veto. They sent an Iraq war funding bill to George Bush that he didn’t like. Pelosi and Reid declared that Congress would no longer give him a blank check. Bush vetoed the bill. Then they gave him his blank check.
And in 2008, when Democrats won the presidency as well, Harry Reid immediately told everyone that he couldn’t pass legislation without 60 votes. Gone were the days of “up-or-down” votes and “nuclear options”. The recently routed Republicans forced auto workers to agree to pay cuts, required that the stimulus to consist of a large percentage of tax cuts, all while protecting the earnings of hedge fund managers and the CEOs of bailed out banks.
Then Arlen Specter switched parties and Democrats finally had their 60 vote super majority. And now you want to say ‘Lieberman doesn’t count’.
Republicans have had a filibuster proof majority exactly never. Still they manage perfectly well getting laws passed. They had had no problems passing legislation with a mere 50 votes + Dick Cheney. They managed to dictate terms on the health care bill with 39 Senators and a minority share of the House. They’ve successfully protected Wall Street from regulation and millionaires from higher taxes.
And now, with a majority in a single house of Congress against a Democratic Senate and Executive, they’re on the verge of dictating trillions of dollars of spending cuts and cuts to previously untouchable social programs.
This isn’t a stalemate. Republicans know that they don’t need both houses of Congress plus the presidency plus a supermajority in the Senate to exert power. They’re getting things done.
Stop making excuses for your team and start thinking harder about how to win the game.
You are forgetting that Teddy Kennedy was too ill to vote and that his replacement did not arrive until late September. We did not have 60 votes even with Franken and Specter in the caucus. Plus, Byrd only voted a small handful of times because he, too, was ailing.
And you’re doing it again. You’re making an argument that Democrats can’t get anything done unless they have the Presidency, the House and 60 votes in the Senate.
Republicans have never had that. Still we passed a Republican health care bill, exclusively with Democratic votes. And having made the effort and paid the costs of doing that, Democrats nearly threw the whole thing away when Scott Brown won Kennedy’s seat.
Compare that attitude to the 6 month battle for Al Franken’s seat, during which the Republicans took every advantage of his absence. Or the accelerated legislative schedule in Wisconsin as the Republicans try to pass their agenda before Democrats can win back the chamber.
So put aside Health Care if you like. Tell me where the Democrats are dictating the political conversation these days. We’re talking about the debt on Republican terms. Tax increases will not be a part of the solution. Medicare and Social Security cuts probably will be. We could close the long term gap in SS simply by increasing the maximum taxable earnings subject to withholding. But we won’t. We’ll raise the retirement age or cut benefits. And, win or lose, Obama will most likely find a reason to extend Bush’s budget busting tax cuts again in December 2012.
Meanwhile, we’re not talking about unemployment at all. We’re not trying to revive the economy. Climate legislation is dead. Immigration reform is dead. Guantanamo remains open…
One of these teams is in this to win the game. Wouldn’t it be nice if yours was too?
Wow. Just, wow.
Stone Kettle Station’s Jim Wright tells a long, horrifying, magnificently written story of destruction and death that shouldn’t have happened, and yes, the looming disaster over the debt ceiling is exactly what he’s talking about:
http://www.stonekettle.com/2011/07/inexorable-white-whale.html
Thanks for the link. It touched a lot of old emotions (I was naval aviation too) as well as being an eerily accurate assessment of the current Village atmosphere.
Boehner’s consistent position has been he doesn’t want introduce a bill that passes with the support of the majority of Democrats and a few moderate Republicans. Presumably that would be bad for his job security. So he has to introduce an alternative and get it passed; he’s telling Republicans the Senate will fold “like a cheap suit” if they do it. What happens when they don’t? Will he face reality? More and more, it seems House Republicans are living in a fantasy, and it’s all about gaining some great victory to them. Jennifer Rubin’s fantasy of what would happen if Boehner’s bill passed the house was pretty amazing. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/ten-things-that-happen-if-the-boehner-bill-gets-
through/2011/03/29/gIQA1nLLdI_blog.html
I really hope he can’t get his bill passed. August 2 is less than a week away; we don’t have time for this.
In the sense that by the Constitution money bills originate in the House, and the House is in the hands of the other party, I guess you could say the White House conceded….
It’s not like you lose a midterm, on a 70-seat swing in the House, without dire consequences.
Rule #1 — don’t lose elections.
Maybe you could explain the Republican successes of 2009 and 2010?
Because at that point, they’d lost 51 seats in the House (2006 and 2008), 14 Senators and the presidency. So if “elections have consequences” 2009 and 2010 should have been a liberal’s dream. Right?