Obama: In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. And I refuse to renew them again.
Kevin Drum:Question: is Obama laying down a marker in hopes of getting a bill that extends only the middle-class cuts? Or is he laying down a marker knowing that Republicans will refuse to budge and therefore the entire Bush tax cut package will expire?
Lemkin: He is putting the onus of middle class tax cut extension or expiration squarely on the GOP House, which is where it should have been all along. We would have had a very different outcome last time around if this had been the shape of the negotiation. There is very real power in pursuing a “do nothing” approach if Obama and the Democrats at large will just deign to use it. Shrill, I know, but following such a path would really punish the GOP and force them to come out squarely against their own stated goals again and again and all in defense of the very richest people on the Earth.
Author: lemkin
Beating a Dead Hobby Horse
[…]Challenged to produce an actual plan, Obama produced rhetoric.
As opposed to Ryan’s plan and its magical unicorns based solutions? Honestly and specifically please detail exactly which programs and federal initiatives Ryan is specifically cutting to get spending to 3% of GDP? Are you aware that current military spending is all on its own consuming about 3% GDP? It’s no coincidence that the only specifics in Ryan’s plans are the tax cuts to the wealthy and the functional elimination of Medicare and Medicaid. That’s all he cares about. Deficits don’t even enter into it; that’s why the plan so brazenly doesn’t even bother to pretend it’s really lowering deficits. Only the math addled beltway media seems to think it will do anything but increase deficits. Instead, Ryan’s plan is all about undoing a social contract that’s been in place for nearly a century. Anything else that happens, any outcome for good or ill is simply window dressing and utterly unintentional. The elder poor will kindly go die in the streets, as the plutocrats need that money.
[…]
Obama is different president than I expected him to be. I expected him to be a pragmatic crusader, but he’s not really that. Were he a crusader, he’d better exploit his bully pulpit.
Clinton, I think, was driven by power. Obama doesn’t seem that interested in power … he’s more interested in importance. Or rather, I think Obama wants to feel important. Wielding power is one way to feel important, but so is talking about wielding power. And lest you think that talk isn’t important, remember that our warmongering President won a Nobel Peace prize as a result of his talking. I think that prize was terrible psychologically for our President, in the same way that our election was terrible for him too. He was elected without actual achievement, and he was given a Nobel Prize without actual achievement … naturally, he’s learned that actual achievement isn’t that important. That’s not a good lesson for a President to learn.
Sorry, but this is simply horseshit. Obama won a Peace Prize because of his talking? I’m fully aware that he has no negro dialect, but Barack Hussein Obama won a Peace Prize because he’s a black man who was elected President of the United States of America, which only 150 years ago fought a war over the “states’ rights” to allow its citizens to own other human beings who just so happen to share an ethnic background with Obama. He furthermore won that election by means of the first non-plurality (e.g. true majority election) that’s occurred in this country in decades. This apparent non-achievement was deemed utterly impossible and was the subject of utter “no Serious Person can believe this is possible” derision as recently as 20 years ago when Jesse Jackson was running regularly. But, yeah, total non-event.
And, oh my stars, a Peace Prize recipient is presiding over killing and wars! To the fainting couch! I’m sure they’ll get around to the W Bush statues in our new and wonderful Peace Spring Eternal Middle East any day now.
All that aside, maybe it’s escaped your memory that Obama was also elected a United States Senator. Now that’s suddenly not an actual achievement? I guess ACORN rigged it up for him then too. But which high national office did George W. Bush hold before being elected President? Clinton? Jimmy Carter? Gerald Ford? I must be forgetting all their reams of national-level elected experience before landing the top job.
Finally, and most importantly, anything Obama proposes as “deficit policy” is actually unnecessary. While his plan includes specifics, why even bother? Leaving aside that the GOP House will simply shitcan his stated preferences as a starting point (even if said stated preferences are/were the GOP priorities of that morning), please do recall that doing nothing at all will largely solve this issue in short order. Thus Obama can sit back, veto extensions of the Bush tax cuts and watch the budget come into balance. Period. Or, using parts of the Bush tax cuts as leverage, he can perhaps shape some sort of policy compromise that suits his desired outcome.
And that’s the key. His desired outcome. If we’ve learned anything about this President, it’s that Obama is interested in outcomes. He could care less about tilting at preferred policy windmills, plaudits, power, and most problematic of all: the credit for any of it. For example, Obama has lowered taxes and reduced the size of government, but seems to be going out of his way not to tell anyone. Most polls show people believe the opposite is true on both counts. Even more importantly, though, his administration managed to pass the ACA, which likely will prove to be the single most important legislative achievement of my lifetime when all is said and done.
But, yeah. He’s not achieved anything.
I’d advise you to get some new hobby horses. These are very tired indeed. Maybe try “where’s the long form!?!” on for size.
Ideal Framework
Ygleisas dares to dream about the “ideal negotiating framework” for the debt ceiling:
White House demands clean debt ceiling increase, House majority demands big spending cuts, Senate majority demands partial repeal of Bush tax cuts, and we all compromise on just doing the damn debt increase.
That would be nice. But it would also require non-feckless Democrats in the Senate. Which, so far as I can tell, do not exist.
But, since the plutocrats and banksters seem to realize they’ve got skin in this game, maybe we can just cut some insanely rich people’s taxes, raise the debt ceiling, start a fourth war (I’m thinking Spain is due), and call it a day.
His Master’s Voice
The people actually in charge of Our One True Plutocracy seem to be getting antsy:
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has had conversations with top Wall Street executives, asking how close Congress could push to the debt limit deadline without sending interests rates soaring and causing stock prices to go lower, people familiar with the matter said.
[…]
The Wall Street executives say even pushing close to the deadline — or talking about it — could have grave consequences in the marketplace.
“[GOP leaders in Congress] don’t seem to understand that you can’t put everything back in the box. Once that fear of default is in the markets, it doesn’t just go away. We’ll be paying the price for years in higher rates,” said one executive.
Nothing some massive tax cuts couldn’t paper over, right?
Mr. Boehner may face just as much risk as Mr. Obama, if not more. He has promised his more conservative members that he will extract significant concessions from the Democrats before he agrees to an increase in the debt limit. A White House that was willing to play hardball could put him to the test, and perhaps cause a substantial loss of face.
[…]
If Mr. Obama is a good poker player, he’ll know not to disregard Mr. Boehner’s earlier rhetoric, which gave away the vulnerability of his hand. And he’ll recognize Mr. Boehner’s more recent and more confident rhetoric for what it is: the oldest “tell” in the poker book, a show of strength betraying the ultimate weakness of his position.
Nate Silver
Mr. Obama is most decidedly not a good poker player.
Mr. Obama is most decidedly not a good poker player.
Did We Secretly Elect McCain?
Softening the administration’s earlier insistence that Congress raise the so-called debt ceiling without conditions, officials now say they won’t rule out linking an increase of the borrowing cap with cuts aimed at reducing the deficit—even though they’d prefer to keep the issues separate.
Honestly, it’s getting hard to tell. Whoever leaked this circular firing squad horseshit should be out before lunch. That they’ll instead be promoted is why the administration fails.
Rightward Lurch
And so it begins:
Obama will not blaze a fresh path when he delivers a much-anticipated speech Wednesday afternoon at George Washington University. Instead, he is expected to offer support for the commission’s work and a related effort underway in the Senate to develop a strategy for curbing borrowing. Obama will frame the approach as a responsible alternative to the 2012 plan unveiled last week by House Republicans, according to people briefed by the White House.
Just as we predicted a few days ago, your choices, the entire extent of the debate will be between a center-right proposal (Simpson-Bowles) and a far-right proposal (Ryan plan). Where do you think the Serious Person “sensible middle ground” will be in that fight? Left unsaid will be any discussion of the true driver of deficits: individual healthcare costs. Left unsaid will be: if we had individual health costs of any other Western democracy we’d be facing surpluses and not deficits. Limit rate of growth in healthcare and you fix everything we’re currently fighting over, and without doing it on the backs of the poorest.
It’s now down to just how much of Medicare we will eliminate (er: “privatize”) and what percent of older Americans still get access to it. Then, a couple of years down the road: fewer. In a few more years: gone, because it only serves the poor and they don’t vote. Legislative inertia is literally the only chance that program has for survival.
The old will kindly go die in the streets.
As Ezra Klein suggests, all economic conversations should begin (and end) with this graph. If we do nothing, the budget comes basically into balance:
But nothing is hard to do. This nothing, for instance, includes three crucial elements: (1) All the Bush tax cuts expire, as they’re currently scheduled to do; (2) The Medicare doc fix is either implemented or its repeal is paid for over the next 70 years; and (3) the Affordable Care Act is implemented, and all of its spending targets are met and all of its taxes are collected.
I’ll wager 1 million dollars that this topic or any discussion even remotely resembling it comes up exactly zero times in Obama’s Wednesday remarks.
It’s short, it’s simple, it’s understandable, and it’s true. All good reasons it won’t be used to bludgeon the GOP in the run-up to 2012.
The producers [of The Spy Who Loved Me] approached Steven Spielberg, who was in post production of Jaws, but ultimately decided to wait to see ‘how the fish picture turns out’.
Wikipedia describes the process of hiring a director.
I don’t think the [Ryan] plan goes too far. I think it’s disingenuous and fraudulent. And the reason I think that is that I have actually done the math.
Paul Krugman, responding to the “those who oppose it think it ‘goes too far’” nonsense the Serious People love to trot out when fellating Ryan and his plan.
Lemkin 