Tag: Coburn

Again with the Gangs

Steve Benen reports that the Gang of Six, er, Five, er, Six, er five plus Coburn who left but is back again is claiming to have come to terms on a broad budget agreement:

Coburn … noted the Congressional Budget Office would score the plan as a $1.5 trillion tax cut because it would eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax. It would generate a significant amount of revenue out of tax reform and reduction of tax rates, which authors believe would spur economic growth.

Ah. So we’re going to eliminate the AMT, apparently without paying for it (because when has any gang ever actually paid for something), further cut other tax rates, and then, magically, revenues will just rise and rise. Just like they’ve never done in the past. At least we’re finally getting the serious people together over the kitchen table, as it were. Now if we can just placate the unicorn caucus and raise the ceiling to eleventy trillion billion dollars, we’ll have a deal.

Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York will step down from office amid intense pressure from congressional Democrats following his admission of risque online chats and photo swaps with multiple women and lying about it.

ABC News reports, you decide. What’s remarkable here is the “intense pressure from congressional Democrats” bit. A member of the GOP caucus could strangle somebody to death on the floor of the House and you’d have little more than an annoyed shrug on the part of either leadership. But let a Democrat sext somebody not-his-wife: hell to pay (though, presumably the same faux pearl clutching outrage would have been mustered if he were still single).
Meanwhile, Tom Coburn orchestrated illegal payoffs to Ensign’s cuckolded friend and, well, I’m sure he was working in the best interests of his Personal Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let’s just leave it there. Keep walking. Some things in life are meant to be mysterious.

Annals of the Memory Hole: Anyone Remember that Crazy Housing Bubble?

Tom Coburn: Any honest view of our debt, deficits, size of government and demographic challenges shows we must make major changes if we are going to pass on the American way of life to our children. Each week seems to bring new warning signs: slower-than-expected growth (already as much as 25 to 33 percent every year, some estimate), higher-than-expected unemployment numbers.
Dean Baker: Actually the current period of high unemployment and slow growth has nothing to do with the budget deficit. It is the result of the collapse of the $8 trillion housing bubble. Unfortunately, Federal Reserve Board chairs Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and other policymakers overlooked this enormous bubble as it was growing. Apparently, Mr. Coburn has not noticed the bubble even now that its collapse has wrecked the economy. […] the housing bubble was [also] probably the most predictable economic crisis in history. Unfortunately, almost no one in a policy position was able to predict it. Contrary to Mr. Coburn’s assertion at the beginning of his [article quoted above], any honest view of the debt, deficits, size of government and demographic challenges shows that we have to fix our health care system. If per person health care expenditures were comparable to what they are in Germany, Canada, or any other wealthy country with a longer life expectancy than the United States we would be looking at budget surpluses, not deficits.