Orange Meltdown, Con't

As Republicans in Congress have failed to pass a COVID-19 relief deal leaving tens of millions of Americans stranded as one in three renters are now expected to miss their August rent payments entirely, Donald Trump has decided that he can now do whatever he wants to through executive order and Congress and the Supreme Court be damned.

President Trump on Saturday attempted to bypass Congress and make dramatic changes to tax and spending policy, signing executive actions that challenge the boundaries of power that separate the White House and Capitol Hill.

At a news event in Bedminster, N.J., Trump said the actions would provide economic relief to millions of Americans by deferring taxes and, he said, providing temporary unemployment benefits. The measures would attempt to wrest away some of Congress’s most fundamental, constitutionally mandated powers — tax and spending policy. Trump acknowledged that some of the actions could be challenged in court but indicated he would persevere.
Trump bemoaned how Democrats had refused to accept his demands during the recent negotiations but attempted to brush it aside, saying four measures he signed Saturday “will take care of pretty much this entire situation.”

But there were instant questions about whether Trump’s actions were as ironclad as he made them out to be. A leading national expert on unemployment benefits said one of the actions would not increase federal unemployment benefits at all. Instead, the expert said it would instead create a new program that could take “months” to set up. And Trump’s directive to halt evictions primarily calls for federal agencies to “consider” if they should be stopped.

Trump also mischaracterized the legal stature of the measures, referring to them as “bills.” Congress writes and votes on bills, not the White House. The documents Trump signed on Saturday were a combination of memorandums and an executive order.

The White House and Democrats have clashed for weeks about what to do with the $600 enhanced weekly unemployment benefit that expired at the end of July.

One of the measures Trump signed on Saturday aims to provide $400 in weekly unemployment aid for millions of Americans. Trump said 25 percent of this money would be paid by states, many of which are already dealing with major budget shortfalls. The federal contribution would be redirected from disaster relief money at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Those funds are not likely to last more than two months, and Trump would not say when the benefits would kick in.

Another document signed by Trump on Saturday attempts to defer payroll tax payments from September through December for people who earn less than $100,000. The impact of this measure could depend on whether companies decide to comply, as they could be responsible for withdrawing large amounts of money from their employees’ paychecks in a few months when the taxes are due.

The president said that if he wins reelection, he would seek to extend the deferral and somehow “terminate” the taxes that are owed. He also dared presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to try to recoup those tax dollars if elected in November. The payroll tax funds Social Security and Medicare benefits, and it’s unclear where those programs will get funding if the taxes are deferred.

Trump is now fully behind doing whatever he wants to keep Trump in power. He promised he would simply eliminate the payroll tax completely, meaning there would be no tax revenue for Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid and he's now daring Joe Biden and the Democrats to do anything about it.

Even worse, he did all this as performative nonsense at his Bedminster resort in New Jersey on a Saturday.

It's ridiculous, and we have months of this ahead, and politically Trump can actually win here because he once again refuses to play by anyone's rules but his own. There's a 99.9% chance he gets away with this and eliminates Biden's lead. Your Trump friends on Facebook will gladly tell you in a couple of weeks how he "saved" us even though it's his fault we're in this mess.  He creates a disaster and then takes the credit for a minimal cleanup effort while Dems scream and point and by the time anyone pays attention, he's on to the next disaster.

The one issue here is that Trump has officially jettisoned any need for Mitch McConnell anymore. It's not Republicans running away from Trump, it's now Trump running away from McConnell. I predict this is going to blow up in his face very quickly, because if there's anything old white Republican senators will not stand for, it's being made irrelevant by the guy in the Oval Office.

Already Pelosi and Mnuchin want to restart talks. But nothing matters unless the Senate GOP plays ball.

We'll see how this goes.

The Rough Beast Slouches Towards Wisconsin

Wisconsin talk radio host Charlie Sykes is blessedly hanging up his microphone after 25 years, in which he fully admits he helped Paul Ryan, Reince Priebus and Scott Walker come to power. Normally I'd note his retirement gleefully and yell "good riddance, asshole" but before the door hits him where the good Lord split him, in a NY Times mea culpa, Sykes at least admits that he helped bring about Trump as well.

How had we gotten here? 

One staple of every radio talk show was, of course, the bias of the mainstream media. This was, indeed, a target-rich environment. But as we learned this year, we had succeeded in persuading our audiences to ignore and discount any information from the mainstream media. Over time, we’d succeeded in delegitimizing the media altogether — all the normal guideposts were down, the referees discredited. 

That left a void that we conservatives failed to fill. For years, we ignored the birthers, the racists, the truthers and other conspiracy theorists who indulged fantasies of Mr. Obama’s secret Muslim plot to subvert Christendom, or who peddled baseless tales of Mrs. Clinton’s murder victims. Rather than confront the purveyors of such disinformation, we changed the channel because, after all, they were our allies, whose quirks could be allowed or at least ignored. 

We destroyed our own immunity to fake news, while empowering the worst and most reckless voices on the right. 

This was not mere naïveté. It was also a moral failure, one that now lies at the heart of the conservative movement even in its moment of apparent electoral triumph. Now that the election is over, don’t expect any profiles in courage from the Republican Party pushing back against those trends; the gravitational pull of our binary politics is too strong.

I’m only glad I’m not going to be a part of it anymore.

Good to know Sykes admits the right has destroyed the country.  But hey, he's retiring, and most of the "Never Trump" GOP he'll suffer very little from Trump's American nightmare, nor do I expect him to lose too much sleep over it.

But hey Charlie, thanks for playing the game, and thanks especially for Paul Ryan, the guy who's going to ruin the retirements of all those hard working folks in Wisconsin that you care about so much, with Trump and Priebus's help.

You're a good soldier, Chuckles.

Time To Cut The Nets

Republicans aren't stupid enough to cut Social Security, are they?  After all, the average Trump voter is on the older end of the scale of the American electorate and the oldest Boomers will be 72 starting next year, with millions retiring over the next four years of the Trump administration.  The famous Tip O'Neill political adage that "Social Security is the third rail of American politics, you touch it and die" still has to apply in the Trump era, right?

Funny story about Republicans, to "save" things they like to burn them down.

Amid all the hand-wringing over Republican plans to eviscerate Medicare and Medicaid and repeal the Affordable Care Act, it shouldn’t be overlooked that the GOP has the knives out for Social Security too. 

The latest reminder comes from Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Tex., chairman of the Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee. Johnson on Thursday uncorked what he termed a “plan to permanently save Social Security.”

Followers of GOP habits won’t be surprised to learn that it achieves this goal entirely through benefit cuts, without a dime of new revenues such as higher payroll taxes on the wealthy. in fact, Johnson’s plan reduces the resources coming into the program by eliminating a key tax --another way that he absolves richer Americans of paying their fair share, while increasing the burdens of retirement for almost everyone else.

Predictably, this plan has already been hailed by the Committee for a Responsible Budget, a billionaire’s front group that likes to portray itself as a neutral budget watchdog. (The foundation of hedge fund billionaire Peter G. Peterson, whose hostility to Social Security is well-documented, provided $3.3 million in funding for the committee in 2015; that’s the equivalent of about half the group’s revenue of $7.1 million in 2014)

Johnson's bill is a disaster, and while it does cut benefits modestly for the wealthiest Americans, the massive SS payroll tax cuts on top earners would more than make up for it.  The people who get screwed the most? Gen Xers and older Millennials like myself as the plan would push the retirement age up to 69 for anyone under 50 right now, and we would receive significantly fewer benefits due to cost-of-living adjustments.

Johnson's bill also makes it easier to work for more than 35 years and accrue benefits up to 72 (The Wal-Mart greeter clause!) but harshly cuts benefits for people who haven't put in 35 years of taxable work (you know, like women who have left the work force to have families, grad/post-grad students who may not get started working until their 30's etc.) when they retire.

The big giveaway is the bait-and-switch on the benefit cuts for the richest Americans.  Instead, they'll make a boatload on lower taxes, particularly the wealthiest folks.  They'll try to sell this as "means-testing" to make sure "people who don't need benefits aren't getting the most" but it's a complete scam: the tax savings the richest Americans will get out of this guarantees they'll be the ones winning.

Oh and one more thing: current Social Security beneficiaries?  They'd get immediately hit by the COLA adjustments and other cuts. In fact the only people who aren't getting screwed right off the bat are Boomers between 50 and 67.

You know, the bulk of the Boomers.  Trump voters, even.

And let's remember, this plan has zero new revenue for Social Security....only big benefit cuts, and even bigger tax cuts for the rich.  Dems need to beat the GOP over the head on this scam on an hourly basis until it dies screaming...then introduce their own plan.

Last Call For Huckleberry's Hat In The Ring

It's pretty impressive to see a 2016 candidate so brickheaded that he loses the presidency in his announcement speech.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) not only became the latest Republican to jump into the 2016 presidential race, he also became the latest Republican to signal strong support for deep Social Security cuts.

"Washington's failure to do the hard but right thing has put Social Security and Medicare in jeopardy," Graham said during his speech on Monday. "As my generation retires both programs are on track to go bust. We're living longer and fewer workers are supporting more retirees. That's unsustainable, everybody knows it, but not everybody will admit it. We have to fix entitlement programs to make sure people who need the benefits the most receive them. That's going to require determined presidential leadership."

Because what America really, really wants is somebody who will screw everybody under 60 out of the couple hundred bucks they get a month and everybody under 40 out of ever seeing a dime in retirement benefits.

Graham specifically described how he and his sister Darlene benefited on Social Security while growing up. 

"I know from personal experience how important these programs are to the lives of millions of Americans. As Darlene mentioned, we lost our parents when I was a young man and she was in middle school. We depended on Social Security benefits to survive. I've been fortunate," Graham continued. "I've done better than I've ever dreamed. If I and others like me have to take a little bit less and pay a little more to help those who need it most, so be it. And younger people, you may just have to work a little bit longer. As president I'll gladly do what it takes to save a program that once saved my family."

To save it of course he'll have to cut billions from it and raise the retirement age to 72 or higher, which is pretty awesome when the plan is to keep Social Security's retirement age above the average black life expectancy.

Last Call For Meet The New Austerity Guy

Same as the old austerity guy.  Georgia Republican Tom Price is taking over for Paul Ryan as chair of the House Budget Committee, and where Ryan was good at lying about wanting to wreck Social Security and Medicare, Price really doesn't give a damn.

"What I’m hopeful is what the Budget Committee will be able do is to is begin to normalize the discussion and debate about Social Security. This is a program that right now on its current course will not be able to provide 75 or 80 percent of the benefits that individuals have paid into in a relatively short period of time," he said at a Heritage Action for America event in Washington, D.C., according to AJC. "That’s not a responsible position to say, ‘You don’t need to do anything to do it.’"

Price, whose predecessor Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) never put forward major reform proposals in his otherwise ambitious budgets, offered means-testing and increasing the eligibility age as possibilities. He also hinted at privatizing Social Security.

"All those things ought to be on the table and discussed," he said.

Somehow I think means testing will vanish very quickly from Price's repertoire of "what's on the table".   That leaves raising the eligibility age into the 70's and of course the big one, privatization.  The key here is that Ryan was smart enough to not try to force a government shutdown over Social Security by putting it in the budget talks (and smarter still not to get involved in the clown car mess).  Price apparently is looking for that fight as soon as possible.

We'll see if Democrats can stand up to him, and what can get through the Senate.

New tag: Tom Price.  He's a pretty important guy these days.

The Unkindest Cuts Begin

So a GOP Congress means a lot of things for America, and pretty much none of them good.  One of those "not good" things is the return of the Catfood Commission, as House Republicans are going to force a fight on Social Security disability benefits.

Buried in new rules that will govern the House for the next two years is a provision that could force an explosive battle over Social Security's finances on the eve of the 2016 presidential election. 

Social Security's disability program has been swamped by aging baby boomers, and unless Congress acts, the trust fund that supports it is projected to run dry in late 2016. At that point, the program will collect only enough payroll taxes to pay 81 percent of benefits, according to the trustees who oversee Social Security. 

To shore up the disability program, Congress could redirect payroll taxes from Social Security's much larger retirement fund — as it has done in the past. However, the House adopted a rule Tuesday blocking such a move, unless it is part of a larger plan to improve Social Security's finances, by either cutting benefits or raising taxes. 

Long the third rail of American politics, tinkering with Social Security has never been easy. Throw in election-year politics and finding votes in Congress to cut benefits or raise taxes could be especially difficult. 

But if Congress doesn't act, benefits for 11 million disabled workers, spouses and children would be automatically cut by 19 percent. The average monthly payment for a disabled worker is $1,146, or a little less than $14,000 a year.

And yes, disability benefits are different from old age benefits.  Technically, those are two separate funds, and the disability fund is definitely running out of money.  But House Republicans are blocking the usual move to tap old age benefits to fund the disability account (and the old age account is doing just fine, thanks.)

That means the fight over Social Security cuts is now one of the big issues in 2016, and Republicans are going to try to find a way to force President Obama to accept them, then blame Democrats for the cuts in perpetuity.

We'll see how this fight plays out this year and next, but keep an eye on the news.  Republicans have been waiting to gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for years now, and this is the best chance they've got.  (What, did you think they were going to wait until a Republican president was in the White House to do it?  Can't blame the Democrats then, can they?)

Shifty bastards.

Shoot The Messenger

As Martin Longman points out, if you thought the Democrats were serious about trying to win the Senate back in 2016 with Sen. Elizabeth Warren in charge of strategy, all that ended Friday when the Dems placed Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia in charge of the party's messaging machine.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia was almost bounced out of Congress, primarily because he and the Democratic Party were criminally overconfident about beating tomato can, Ed Gillespie. It was a humbling experience because Warner was seen as immensely popular in his home state, and just the kind of vice-presidential candidate who could put some Electoral College delegates firmly in the hands of Hillary Clinton, or any other Democratic nominee. Warner's comeuppance didn't last too long, however. Despite leaking that he had voted against Harry Reid to remain the leader of the Senate Democrats, he was just awarded a similar kind of leadership position to Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said that Warner will be "taking on the role of policy development advisor at the Democratic Policy and Communications Center."

Mmm, a healthy diet of debt nonsense and "entitlement reform" for all the poors.  The Catfood Commission is back, kids, and this time there's just one man running the whole show.

The split is particularly apparent on fiscal matters, as could be seen on the campaign trail in Virginia where Warner won an unexpectedly close re-election campaign against former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie. Warner held campaign events touting fiscal responsibility, even telling a room full of Democrats that some of them might be better off voting for Republicans if they would support a debt and deficit deal that includes revenue increases.

Looking forward to that GOP Congress for the next, oh, forever.  Just need to blow it badly enough to stick Jebbie or Rand in the Oval Office and we'll fiscally responsible our way right into total oblivion.

Brat Attack

The more we find out about David Brat, the man who dethroned House GOP majority leader Eric Cantor, the more it becomes clear the Tea Party inmates have taken over the GOP asylum.

A quick review of his public statements reveals a fellow who is about as tea party as can be. He appears to endorse slashing Social Security payouts to seniors by two-thirds. He wants to dissolve the IRS. And he has called for drastic cuts to education funding, explaining, "My hero Socrates trained in Plato on a rock. How much did that cost? So the greatest minds in history became the greatest minds in history without spending a lot of money."

An economics professor at Randolph-Macon College in central Virginia, Brat frequently has repeated the conservative canard that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae brought down the housing market by handling the vast majority of subprime mortgages. That is, he absolves Big Finance and the banks of responsibility for the financial crisis that triggered the recession, which hammered middle-class and low-income families across the country. (In fact, as the housing bubble grew, Freddie and Fannie shed their subprime holdings, while banks grabbed more.)

In his campaign speeches, Brat has pointed out that he isn't worried about climate change because "rich countries solve their problems".

In other words, this guy is your standard Tea Party whackjob, not a populist, unless you think "populist" means cutting Social Security payments to Grandma.

I'll give you my general answer. And my general answer is you have to do what's fair. Right. So you put together a graph or a chart and you go out to the American people, you go to the podium, and you say, this is what you put in on average, this is what you get out on average. Currently, seniors are getting about three dollars out of all of the programs for every dollar they put in. So, in general, you've got to go to the American people and just be honest with them and say, "Here's what fairness would look like." Right. So, maybe the next ten years we have to grandfather some folks in, but basically we're going to move them in a direct line toward fairness and we have to live within our means.

And of course he hates the United Nations.

 "Common-" anything I'm against. United Nations. Common everything. If you say common, by definition you're saying it's top-down. I'm going to force this on you. That's what dictators do.

And by "dictators", he means President Obama.

The left does not believe in diversity. They believe in top-down, I'm going to force my way onto you. Obama is forcing un-diversity onto everybody. It's not diversity. It's top down, central planning, on everything.

Yep, a college economics professor who thinks liberalism is socialism.  I'm so shocked by the existence of someone so ignorant headed for Congress to make laws.

This guy's just another Randian glibertarian jackass who Republican voters figure won't actually vote to take anything away from them, just from those people who don't deserve it, I mean those people aren't even human, right?

Moving Those Goalposts

Greg Sargent points out that the goalposts on deficit reduction in Very Serious Washington just got yanked hard to the right in the new revised Simpson-Bowles Punish The Proles Plan.  The amount of new revenues in the plan is drastically lower, and spending cuts, drastically higher.

In other words, the plan roughly represents the ideological midpoint between the Obama and Boehner fiscal cliff blueprints — which is why the plan is so heavily tilted towards cuts. As Kevin Drum notes, this is particularly odd, given that spending cuts have already been “75 percent of the deficit reduction we’ve done so far.” Drum adds: “this sure makes it hard to take Simpson-Bowles 2.0 seriously as a plan.”

That’s true, but it also provides a useful window into the arbitrariness of Beltway conceptions of what constitutes the ideological “center.” After all, the Boehner fiscal cliff plan raised taxes only on income over $1 million; the Obama offer raised taxes only on income over $400,000. Both of these are to the right of the balance Obama just won an election on: The expiration of the Bush tax cuts for income over $250,000. Yet these were designated the two ideological outer poles for the purposes of defining the debate.

Of course, there is actually a liberal position in this debate, and it isn’t the one held by Obama. As you may recall, House progressives recently released their own blueprint for Round 3 of deficit reduction; it proposed some $948 billion in new revenues, derived entirely from closing loopholes and deductions enjoyed by the rich. The result of this plan, if enacted, would be that overall, our short term fiscal problems would have been resolved through roughly equivalent spending cuts and tax hikes — which is to say, through roughly equivalent concessions by both sides.

But of course, such a notion of balance is so obviously a nonstarter in Washington that it doesn’t even factor into the discussion in any way, shape, or form. The left outer pole of the debate, then, is to the right of the position that helped decisively reelect Obama.

Punish The Proles 2.0 is about selling the Ryan Plan, plain and simple.  The little people have to be weaned off Medicare and Social Security, and more and more of our Village elders are moving past the "if it needs to happen" part to "when it needs to happen", and that's apparently going to be Obama's second term legacy, whether or not Obama actually wants to do it (which he's repeatedly said he won't.)

But the Simpson-Bowles plan is now calling for at least $5 trillion in deficit reduction, and basically all of the additional cuts from the $4 trillion or so plan from last time is coming from the social safety net.  Tinkering around the edges like Obama has already done will affect people down the road (and in some cases substantially), but the changes these guys are now demanding will turn the scalpel into an orbital particle cannon.

I'm hoping Obama can hold out.  I don't think the rest of Democrats in Congress will give him much of a choice.

You Don't Speak For Me This Time, Ma'am

I can no longer say that I don't regularly expect posts like this from Digby.  Every single time President Obama butts heads with the GOP, she screams NOW IS WHEN OBAMA WILL SELL US OUT ON SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE except he hasn't.  But it's always this time, this time she swears that the rotten crypto-conservative bastard is going to leave everyone under 60 in the streets with rags and dying by the thousands once they're too old to work anymore, forced to eat catfood and scrape by on fumes or just dead on the streets like vermin.  It's been the same song since 2009.

This battle is no different.

I'm sure the White House believes this and it's possible they will stare down the GOP this time on the debt ceiling and the GOP will back down. But after all that's come before the GOP has every reason to believe it will be the White House that blinks. We all do. It's almost impossible for me to believe that they will allow Armageddon (for real, this time, honest) to happen on their watch.

No.  Not all of us think the White House is going to blink, Digby.  Some of us have seen the President come out of battle after battle with the GOP having actually accomplished something, and we think the President will win again this time.

But as I wrote earlier, the truth is they're being very cute about all this and I don't think this is the play at all. It's not a coincidence that the sequester can was kicked down the road to ripen right after the debt ceiling. It means that while we are all watching the debt-ceiling showdown at the OK Corral, it's entirely possible the real negotiation will be happening on the separate sequester track. And that's unlikely to end well for the people. These wingnuts are hungry --- they feel they got robbed in the last go-round and they believe they were promised some major spending cuts in the next one. 

They always feel they were robbed.  They've felt robbed since November 2008.  Hell, some of us have felt robbed since much earlier in 2008, frankly.  The funny thing is, Digby never seems to think the President is intelligent enough to see the completely obvious GOP play here, and yet every time the President gets the better of John Boehner and his nihilistic friends.

Giving the President credit, well, that would be silly.  She can't do that, she has a narrative to cover.

It's a good thing for the country if the White House is able to stop this ongoing debt ceiling hostage situation. And maybe the Republicans want to stop it too, who knows? For all we know, Biden and McConnell prayed at the portraits of Tip 'n Ronnie and worked it all out in advance. Certainly it can't have entirely escaped the GOP leadership that they are playing with fire. But my read on the House crackpots is that they really want to make the President cry Uncle after that last one. Whether they have the nerve to cause an economic earthquake in order to do that is another question but I honestly don't know that they care whether anyone "blames" them. Their voters will support their actions. 

Gosh, if only the same could be said of our side.  Because like it or not, the results of voting in America these days is a binary outcome in a world full of grey.  Either the Democrat wins, or the Republican wins.  Choose.  Because if you haven't noticed, the President won in November.  We're acting like there's nothing we can do about the GOP in Congress.  There is, that would require us going after them at the local, state, and national level.

But it's much easier to blame Obama than to work for it.

You don't speak for me, Digby.  And I doubt in the future you ever will.

Last Call

What?  You didn’t think you were going to get through the DNC without unsolicited advice for President Obama from The Centrist Concern Troll Twins in the Wall Street Journal, did you?  Oh, you silly dears.  Roll the tape, Claude!

What voters are looking for—and particularly what swing voters, independents, and disillusioned Obama voters are looking for—is a new direction for America based on fiscal discipline, a balanced budget, and economic growth and leadership. 

More than anyone else in this race, Paul Ryan has spoken of the need for fiscal discipline and economic growth—two themes that have been largely absent from the Obama-Biden campaign—which explains a large part of the Ryan-inspired Romney bump.

That bump is like 0.75 points, but who cares.  Dorka Schoen and Give ‘Em Caddell need not your facts.  Centrist Daleks will Tri-ang-u-laaaaate!  And hey, Paul Ryan is a Centrist too!  You should listen to his Very Serious Centrist Positions on tesseract marathon running and the joys of children conceived through coercion and force.

For his part, President Obama needs to change direction—immediately and decisively. His campaign strategy has been to divide the country on the basis of class, demonize the wealthy, call for higher taxes and unceasingly attack Mr. Romney. Yet poll after poll has shown that while voters embrace the idea of higher taxes on the rich, it does not translate into votes. 

In 2008, Mr. Obama promised to help unite America in a “post-partisan” Washington. But the 2012 campaign has been one of the most negative in memory. What he needs to do is acknowledge that he’s made mistakes and that he wants to pursue a substantive approach to governance. Put another way, he needs to bring back “hope and change” and abandon his divide-and-conquer strategy.

Should he do this before or after he announces he’s not running in November because it’s really tragically unfair of him to have broken such a historic streak of white men running the place, you know.  It’s the right thing to do.

It has been said before, but only because it’s so true: Mr. Obama should follow the lead of President Bill Clinton, who emphasized in both his terms in office the need for unity and consensus to achieve fiscal restraint. Inviting Mr. Clinton to speak at the convention Wednesday night is a sure sign that the Obama campaign understands the need to move to the center, if not in substance then in style. 

Yet nothing would appeal to independents and swing voters more than if the president were to embrace the findings of the 2010 Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction commission and make it clear that he too has a plan to revitalize the U.S. economy, reduce the deficit, reform entitlements and spur economic growth through a fairer and leaner tax system.

So President Obama has the unique opportunity to be the adult in the room by handing control of the country over to the nice folks who aren’t all that sure about evolution because the open-minded scientist must question the theory, but they believe tax cuts magically create additional tax revenues because rich people will spring forth from the nothingness like Orks from Warhammer 40K (and reach a collective critical mass of entrepreneurs, a WAAAAGH! of small business owners who will run around franchising at everything, paint their businesses red because they’ll create jobs faster, and leave nothing but career opportunities in their wake of mass construction.  Sure).

Yeah, I’ll buy that.  President Obama should totally listen to these guys.  (Also, Centrist Daleks versus Small Business Orks.  Somebody make that happen.)

If You Walk Down The Middle Of The Road...

...eventually you get run over.  That is the reality of our political system:  it no longer rewards compromise, cooperation, or comity.  It rewards fighting for your base.

David Brooks bemoans this of Paul Ryan:

Ryan’s fantasy happens to be the No. 1 political fantasy in America today, which has inebriated both parties. It is the fantasy that the other party will not exist. It is the fantasy that you are about to win a 1932-style victory that will render your opponents powerless. 

Every single speech in this election campaign is based on this fantasy. There hasn’t been a speech this year that grapples with the real world — that we live in a highly polarized, evenly divided nation and the next president is going to have to try to pass laws in that context. 

It’s obvious why candidates talk about the glorious programs they’ll create if elected. It fires up crowds and defines values. But we shouldn’t forget that it’s almost entirely make-believe. 

In the real world, there are almost never ultimate victories, and it is almost never the case (even if you control the White House and Congress) that you get to do what you want. 

While Andrew Sullivan bemoans this of Barack Obama.

The paradigm can still be shifted. Obama can say he didn't embrace the original commission because the necessary majority in the Congressional committee couldn't be rustled up. He can openly and rightly blame Ryan for torpedoing the sanest, most practical debt reduction we have on the table. He can tell his own party that they have to tackle entitlement spending and using the Mediscare tactic is not worthy of the constructive change Obama promised four years ago. He can even say he regretted not going out on a limb - but he thought a grand bargain could be reached through negotiation instead. GOP fanaticism stopped it.

The reason - incredibly - that Obama has not done this is a dislike of the big defense cuts and queasiness over muddying the Medicare issue against Romney. This shouldn't matter. What matters is that Obama should declare his first priority on being re-elected would be a grand bargain on the lines of Bowles-Simpson. Force Romney to say no. Isolate him on his tax extremism and defense spending boom. Show you're more serious on entitlement reform than Ryan's ideological fantasies - because you're backing the most credible, practical option available. Re-capture that sliver of the middle that wants to know what Obama wants to do in his second term. 

Both men argue their candidate can win by embracing the horrible Simpson-Bowles plan that would put the burden of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security squarely on the shoulders of the poorest Americans through sharply regressive taxes and draconian social program cuts.  Ryan won't raise taxes, he'd rather cut them on the rich.  The middle-class would lose.  Obama won't make those cuts, but he'll raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.  The wealthy would lose.

But Simpson-Bowles is "everybody loses, enjoy your austerity instead".  The real losers would in fact be the poorest Americans, socked with gas and VAT taxes on food and clothing so they "pay their share" while the middle class would get that, plus losing all the tax deductions they're used to.  The net result would be the wealthy would indeed get that tax cut and come out ahead, although not as much as they would under Ryan.  But the rest of the country would get reamed.

Funny how that's the only way out for our Village Centrists.

Last Call

Republicans are concern trolling about the payroll tax cut, saying that if we keep it, Social Security will suffer.  It's a complete sack of garbage, of course.  But the Republicans are eager to push it.

That argument, which has been adopted by members of both parties and perpetuated by news outlets like NPR, has one problem: it’s not true. Each of the plans under consideration is fully paid for, replacing revenue the Social Security Trust Fund would have lost from lower payroll tax receipts with money made up from either alternative revenue sources or spending cuts. The earlier payroll tax holiday, set to expire this month, was also fully-funded, and the program has thus far “been held harmless” from the holiday, as Reuters noted today.

And while the opposition from Republicans may seem like an impassioned defense of a vital and popular program, a look at their history with the program shows it is not. DeMint has supported privatizing the program while Paul is a proponent of means testing — “solutions” that are both bad policy and unnecessary. Despite Paul’s $6 trillion assertion, Social Security actually has a $2.6 trillion surplus and is solvent through at least 2037.

And if Republicans truly want to use the payroll tax to shore up its long-term viability, there is an easy way to do that. The payroll tax is currently collected only on the first $106,800 in income; raising or eliminating that cap would make the program fully solvent for the next 75 years.

Ahh, but the Republicans aren't the only ones pushing this lie.  There are plenty of folks on the  Professional Left that have screamed that the payroll tax cut was Obama selling out Social Security when it was implemented last year.  Now they are silent, and the President has the Republicans over a huge barrel.  It's like he knew what he was doing all along.

Funny how that works.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Gold continues its march towards $1,500 an ounce, silver has crossed the $40 resistance point, and oil is $111 and rising.  Asariel notes the UN's world food price index was up 2.2% in February.  That was really before the mess in MENA.

Meanwhile on the way into work this morning I'm listening to an interview with Social Security trustee and former Bush econ adviser Chuck Blahous on Sirius/XM POTUS.  Chuckles there basically said the because the President hasn't fully backed the Catfood Commission's report, that the Ryan Unicorn Plan 2012 is the only game in town, and that if Democrats want to have any say in this, they'd better get behind their own plan to cut taxes on the rich and declare war on the middle class, and destroy the poor, or they might forfeit their right to be at the Big Boy's Table.

Oh, and today's shutdown drama continues.  The Dems have offered up more billions in cuts, but the Tea Party is now in control over Orange Julius and is basically going to shut the government down over Planned Parenthood.  Amazingly enough, Amanda Marcotte called this exact scenario six weeks ago over at Alternet.

This time around, anti-choicers have quite the laundry list of Democratic concerns they can hold hostage. On top of defunding Title X, the continuing resolution also zeroes out the funding for health care reform and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as cutting the EPA’s budget by a third. Considering how Democrats gave in to severe restrictions of reproductive rights before to save health-care reform, the obvious play from Republicans here is to secure the cuts to family planning in exchange for funding health care reform, and most importantly, not shutting down the government in the midst of a terrible economy, which would send the already mind-boggling 10 percent unemployment rate up even further. If Republicans use the economy, the government, and health-care reform as blackmail to get rid of Planned Parenthood, it’s not hard to see Democrats accepting the compromise. Especially if you consider how easy it would be for Democrats to convince themselves that expanded insurance coverage would negate the need for Planned Parenthood, though it very likely wouldn’t. But most importantly, it’s hard to hardball an opponent who is practically begging you to do your worst. And there's a long list of Republicans who’ve indicated they welcome this idea of taking the fight to a government shutdown.

It's getting mildly scary out there.  Just saying.

But The Catfood Commission Came Back, The Very Next Day, Part 6

Former Clinton official Erskine Bowles is confident the Catfood Commission will soon have its way in Washington and tells the Dirty F'ckin Hippies to go screw themselves (and I am really, really getting sick of writing posts that involve Former Clinton Officials and Hippie Punching.) 

Mr. Bowles had harsh words for fellow Democrats. He dismissed the idea that raising taxes alone might help erase the deficit, saying "raising taxes doesn't do a dern thing" to address health care costs that are projected to be a big driver of future fiscal problems.

He also said the White House, and House and Senate leadership would have to step in and help drive the process forward. "We're going to have to have leadership...to get to the promised land," he said.

Luckily, Jon Chait is there to beat him with a math stick.

The Affordable Care Act has a wide-ranging series of reforms to transform the incentive structure of insurers, hospitals and physicians, so as to control the long-term rise in costs. Bowles-Simpson just says, we're only going to pay so much and no more, without doing anything to ensure that the cost of the care actually stays within those bounds.

The problem is, if health care costs continue to skyrocket, we're in trouble no matter what. Simply shifting more of the cost onto people will replace public debt with private debt. Moreover, setting a cap in perpetuity isn't a terribly effective way to bind future policymakers. You can say they can only spend so much, but if the caps are hard to meet, they'll go around them. You need mechanisms to make the caps effective, but Bowles-Simpson has little of that.

The one step that actually would reduce the deficit substantially and in the correct time frame is letting the Bush tax cuts expire. I can't think of a good fiscal rationale for Bowles to dismiss that, though the political logic of doing so is clear enough.

The bottom line is the biggest single deficit creator over the next ten years is the Bush tax cuts.  These need to go away for the wealthiest Americans at the very least.  But nobody is talking about that, not Erskine Bowles and certainly not Republicans, whose solutions to the deficit include trying to deal with trillions by cutting $60 million from Public Broadcasting and saying the Democrats aren't serious about deficit reduction, then saying we should bomb Libya.

The people talking seriously about the deficit are few and far between, and none of them have "Former Clinton official" on their job resume.

But The Catfood Commission Came Back, The Very Next Day Part 5

What, you thought that Democrats weren't going to get suckered into cutting Social Security and Medicare during the worst economy in generations?  Just need to brand it better, as Digby explains.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. Calling Social Security cuts "welfare reform" is just brilliant. Gloria Borger will have to be taken to the hospital when she hears it. What could be better than "Welfare Reform Part II: The Greedy Geezers"? And it looks like Democrats have joined the cast:

At the same time, Democrats admit their own frustration that the president has not been more forthcoming in addressing the debt issue.

For example, “The Easy Cuts Are Behind Us” was the headline for a weekend op-ed by White House Budget Director Jack Lew promising that Obama’s 2012 budget will “look beyond the obvious” in cutting spending. But Lew is already months behind his fellow Democrats on one of his prime examples — cuts from the Great Lakes restoration initiative.

Lew listed other more significant new cuts –totaling $650 million--from community development and community service block grants. But none of these comes close to the desperate tone of last week’s 81-17 Senate vote on the small-business amendment, in which panic-driven Democrats virtually turned over the keys to the White House to cut whatever it wanted from unobligated appropriations, as long as they met the $44 billion target.

The article goes on to discuss how Republicans are facing some of the same issues. But let's face it. It's always going to be easier for the GOP to sign on to spending cuts. If the Democrats lead the way, I suspect they'll be able to set aside their differences. Where they fall out is on tax hikes, but from what I can tell that's not on the table. So it looks like Welfare Reform for the old and sick is on.

Americans who depend on Social Security and Medicare?  Welfare.  Ergo, the solution is bipartisan, Clinton-style centrist "welfare reform"!

Today, a decade after implementation, the Clinton-Republican “bipartisan” welfare law is a failure. As unemployment has doubled since 2007 and the number of people receiving food stamps has skyrocketed by 40%, the welfare caseload has risen only 10% — a clear indication that the nation’s poorest families are not receiving welfare grants due to the restrictive time limits imposed by the 1996 law.

Ask yourself: if the federal government allowed states to put time limits on food stamps, would those numbers have gone up 40%? Or would we have even more kids on the streets begging for alms?

And when that comes to Social Security and Medicare, it'll be "Obama's death panels" and Republicans will run against the President on this the day after Obama signs it into law.  Democrats will get pillaged on this because Republicans will lie and say they never wanted to cut anything but taxes.  Bush's response to reforming Medicare was the multi-trillion dollar prescription drug benefit, remember?  Republicans in 2012 will run on "restoring dignity to America's seniors" and the Dems will be left hanging out to dry.

And yes, the Democrats in Washington are this stupid.

Watch.

But The Catfood Commission Came Back, The Very Next Day Part 4

President Obama and Republican leaders may be trying to lie low on the Catfood Commission's report to gut Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid in order to cut taxes for the rich even more, but there will always be Centrist Daleks who will happily push that shiny red button and work to make the Commission's report into law.

Enter Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, and Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, who are looking to build a "bipartisan" group of senators who will stab America in the back and the front.

Like the deficit commission, Chambliss's and Warner's group is also mulling tax reform as a "byproduct" of their spending discussions. Warner noted that the two men agree on the general idea of broadening the tax base by eliminating many existing deductions, while at the same time lowering personal and corporate tax rates. 

While the recent tax-cut deal certainly added to the debt, both men differentiated between that short-term measure to stimulate the economy and long-term efforts to address spiraling deficits - efforts that would take effect after the economy has recovered.

"The term I've used is that we've got to show we can walk and chew gum" at the same time, Warner said.


The group may get an opportunity to do that soon. Before next summer, Congress will have to take a painful vote to raise the federal debt ceiling to allow the country to borrow more money.

"If we can use that as a leverage" to get the ball rolling on a deficit-reduction plan, Chambliss said, "that's an ideal scenario." 

It's those two bolded sentences that should be raising the alarm bells.  Tying the Catfood Commission recommendations to the debt ceiling vote would be problematic at best.  There's no way the banksters are going to let the Republicans wreck the financial industry by blowing up that vote, but if we're really talking about the Centrists holding this hostage in order to get tax cuts for the rich, well that's a different story.

It's one thing if Jim DeMint or Tom Coburn wants a hostage.  it's entirely another thing if Mark Warner does it, and that's definitely something you're going to want to keep an eye on.

But The Catfood Commission Came Back, The Very Next Day Part 3

If you thought the Catfood Commission's miserable "Let's cut social programs for tax breaks for the rich!" idiocy was over with, you thought wrong.  It's time for the Sensible Centrist All-Stars to talk you into tightening your belts, America...and they are disappointed in you for not wanting to take your cuts like an adult.  Don't you want to do your part to help America's precious millionaires?

The final vote on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Commission's report serves as a concrete example of the disconnect between main street and Washington as well as the dysfunctional state of our current political system.


The Commission's report makes a clear and compelling case that the federal government faces large and growing structural deficits that must be addressed. In fact, the Commission's report was the third fiscal report in the past month alone to come to the same conclusion.

All three also noted that the size of the problem is so great that entitlement reforms, defense and other spending cuts, and additional revenues will be necessary in order to put our nation on a more prudent and sustainable fiscal path.

The American people have also expressed their concern with the country's fiscal state in public opinion polls and at the ballot box in the midterm elections. As a result, 5 of the 6 public members of the Commission and 5 of the 6 Senate members of the Commission voted for the report. They seemed to get the message from mainstream America and were willing to vote to have the report and its recommendations considered by Congress despite serious concerns regarding some of its recommendations.

Mainstream America wants higher taxes and Social Security and Medicare cuts so that the top tax rate can be dropped to 23%.  It has to be true, because Evan Bayh and Christie Todd Whitman would never lie to you.  Won't you help our poor millionaires?  After all, they'll move to the Cayman Islands or something if we don't, and without America's most precious resource, rich people, why the rest of us would be in a recession or something.

Maybe if you're really nice, they'll start hiring people again.  After all, "No Labels" is a lot catchier than "Rich Beltway Centrists Who Think The Wealthiest 20% of America Having 83% of the Country's Wealth Is Unfairly Low."

Now get back to work.  You've got Centrists who need tax breaks to help.

Triangulation Nation: Taxing My Patience Edition

All the serious problems facing this country right now and Barack Obama wants to use the fierce advocacy of the bully pulpit to...simplify the tax code?!?

President Obama is considering whether to push early next year for an overhaul of the income tax code to lower rates and raise revenues in what would be his first major effort to begin addressing the long-term growth of the national debt.


While administration officials cautioned on Thursday that no decisions have been made and that any debate in Congress could take years, Mr. Obama has directed his economic team and Treasury Department analysts to review options for closing loopholes and simplifying income taxes for corporations and individuals, though the study of the corporate tax system is farther along, officials said.

The objective is to rid the code of its complex buildup of deductions, credits and exemptions, thereby broadening the base of taxes collected and allowing for lower rates — much like a bipartisan majority on Mr. Obama’s debt-reduction commission recommended last week in its final blueprint for reducing the debt through 2020.

Doing so would offer not only an opportunity to begin confronting the growth in the national debt but also a way to address warnings by American business that corporate tax rates and the costs of complying with the tax code are cutting into their global competitiveness.

Mr. Obama signaled his inclination in off-the-cuff remarks on Wednesday as he was defending the tax cuts deal negotiated with Congressional Republicans this week. “We’ve got to have tax reform,” he said.

Economic and political advisers say the process is in its early stages, and Mr. Obama ultimately could decide against such action, given the pitfalls, both political and substantive. In the past, any effort to alter the tax code has provoked powerful opposition among interest groups, and the picking of winners and losers.

Yet proponents within the administration and among some outside advisers say that Mr. Obama, by putting tax reform atop the national agenda, could seize an opportunity to take the offensive in dealing with the newly empowered Republicans in Congress, repair his strained relations with business and embrace a potentially powerful theme heading into his re-election campaign. 

I have to admit, the Times' Jackie Calmes does a laudably efficient job of packing in all the Villager tropes on this story in the first 300 words or so:  Bipartisanship Village style (giving into Republican demands),  the Catfood Commission are the smartest people on Earth,  it'll be good for his re-election campaign and my personal favorite, Obama needs to give businesses more because they are being crushed under taxation despite the fact that last quarter resulted in record nominal profits for them.

I'm not sure where the whole tax simplification thing came from as far as Obama's concerned, but you notice the Catfood Commission tax scheme (lowering taxes on the rich more than makes up for the deductions they'd lose, but the middle class would pay more due to lost deductions despite the lower rates, and the poor would pay more due to a higher rate) seems perfectly okay with Obama, at least in theory.  Thay may not be what he means, of course we have no numbers, but I don't hold it as a good sign.

The larger problem is the fact we have larger problems than simplifying the tax code right now.

Last Call

The Catfood Commission may have not gotten 14 of 18 votes, but as I said yesterday, that was never the goal.. That 14 is not the group of 14 that matters.

Fourteen Democratic Senators have asked Harry Reid for action on reining in the budget deficit, on the same day that the Catfood Commission failed to reach the threshold to deliver an official report.

The number – 14 – is incredibly significant. Democrats will have 53 members next year. 13 of the 14 members who signed this letter will be back next year, and the letter didn’t include Dick Durbin or Kent Conrad, who voted for the Catfood Commission plan. That would mean that, if every Republican wanted a deficit reduction plan, there would be a filibuster-proof majority to do something. There may not be such a majority on the specifics, but in a general sense, there will be some kind of deficit reduction action next year.

It never really mattered what the full commission thought or even did. Once Alan Simpson shot his wad and gave away the plan, this was inevitable.

The 14 signatories were: Mark Warner, Evan Bayh, Mark Begich, Michael Bennet, Tom Carper, Dianne Feinstein, Kay Hagan, Amy Klobuchar, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Claire McCaskill, Jeanne Shaheen, Jon Tester and Mark Udall.

I think it’s clear that the Catfood Commission, while “failing” in the technical sense, did its job. It created a report that people can label “bipartisan” moving forward, and it put deficit reduction – when there are 15 million Americans out of work – at the top of the agenda.

And that's the rub. They have successfully framed the argument as "how much deficit reduction and how painful to make it" as the only discussion, not whether or not we should be cutting spending during a prolonged recession.

And now if all the Republicans join in on piling on the pain, there will be enough votes to send this to Obama's desk.

Given his record, what do you think the result of that would be?