We find that enhanced expenditures have been excessive: to be deemed cost-effective in analyses that substantially bias the consideration toward the opposite conclusion, they would have to deter, prevent, foil, or protect against 1,667 otherwise successful Times-Square type attacks per year, or more than four per day.
I think this response is at times weird and at times unfair.
1. You may hate Ryan’s plan. You may agree with Krugman. (Whose criticisms, ironically, can be just as appropriately applied to the Affordable Care Act.) You might think its unserious, or that its ideological. I would agree that its ideological, and that it’s based on some fantasy numbers. But it is a plan and not a speech. Obama has offered a speech. We’d like to see a plan. That’s a fair request of a President who has increased spending to unprecedented levels.
Outline for Obama’s plan. Isn’t legislation but he’s also not the House.
2. The Negro Dialect crack is completely unfair. It has nothing to do with my criticism.
3. Yes, winning office is an achievement. Becoming Senator is an achievement. Neither of these made the world more peaceful. It is wonderful that Obama was able to become the first African-American president. He deserves a lot of credit for this. So does the American electorate, but I wouldn’t give them a Peace prize either.
You specifically stated that the President won his Nobel because of his oratorical gifts. I simply say that this is not significantly different than pointing out that he has “no negro dialect”. Hyperbole to be sure, but not utterly unfair as they are similarly unrelated to the issue at hand: the Nobel Prize. He did not win the Peace Prize because he is a fine orator. Didn’t hurt his chances, but not why he won. Deserved or not, he won it because he had an historically significant election over the more typical “angry old white man who promises endless war if elected” and because he was replacing Bush. I don’t think this is even a particularly debated point outside of more loopy websites. This factors into (8), but we’ll get there.
4. Why are you acting as though I suggested or believe that ACORN rigged the election, or that Obama didn’t win legitimately? Again, that’s completely unfair.
Again, you stated he had no experience whatever. This despite the fact that he previously won an election for a national office. Disregarding that implies that that win was not won fairly or otherwise simply doesn’t count for some reason. I simply inserted a potential motivation for that belief.
5. Obama has not reduced the size of government, […] Federal government employment has grown since Obama took office.
We’ve covered this extensively before. But, by all means, let’s go to the chartsngraphs:
You are simply incorrect by any measure you care to look at. The federal government hired people to conduct the Constitutionally mandated census. Period. The GOP has used this particular hobby horse again and again to create the illusion of massive federal government expansion and “takeover” of everything under the sun that simply does not exist. Period. Repeating this bit of dogma, though, again leads to point (8).
6. George W. Bush, Clinton, and most of their predecessors had a considerably firmer record of actual achievement prior to election than Obama. I find it difficult to imagine how one could make a case to the contrary. But if you can provide a list of Obama’s legislative achievements, I’ll gladly reconsider.
George W. Bush owned the Rangers (primarily and by his own admission he was there as the “showcase” minority owner) and was governor of Texas, also a largely ceremonial position. He had very little achievement politically. Every business he was involved with prior to his political career had failed. He couldn’t even show up regularly for the National Guard. It is an insult to imply that he was more qualified than Obama. Period. I see this level of purposeful ignorance and silliness as on par with birtherism; the previous statements above simply add to that. Thus point (8). Again: hyperbole. But hyperbole in service of a larger point made across a relatively long post.
Just me on my little tumblr. Nothing personal.
[…]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.
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.
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.
Elliot Spitzer (4/6/11): Congressman, thank you so much for joining us tonight….Look, I want to begin with the question that goes to a simple notion of fairness. And here’s how I want to frame it for you. The top one percent of income earners in our nation get 25 percent of the income and control 40 percent of the wealth. Those numbers have gone through the roof over the last decade or two. And yet Paul Ryan’s budget plan imposes two-thirds of its burdens on the poor. Two-thirds! Right after we gave a big tax cut to the rich. Does that violate your sense of fairness in a very basic sense?
Todd Akin, R MO: Well, no.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday morning that he and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, have agreed on a deal to cut about $38 billion from current spending levels, but added that Republican insistence on including a policy rider blocking federal funding for Planned Parenthood, is the only stumbling block.
“We agreed on a number last night,” Reid told reporters in the Senate Press Gallery. He said he is “really upset that this government is going to shut down” because of GOP efforts to limit access to abortion.
A spokesman for Boehner has challenged Reid’s account, saying that continuing differences over spending cuts, not the abortion rider, remains the problem.
On the wager: Planned Parenthood will be the Newt Gingrich bad seat on Air Force One of this shutdown. Simple and easy to understand, and it pushes most of sensible America’s “that’s just rank insanity” button.
Kevin Drum wonders what drives Ryan to produce such a uniquely partisan budget document…
There is this strange notion that Ryan should not have proposed the plan he actually wanted, but that he was supposed to compromise before the Democrats even come to the table. This is insane. You don’t go to the car dealer and figure, “Well, I’d like to pay $22,000 for the Prius, but he’d probably like me to pay more, so I’ll start at $23,000.” Ryan proposed the plan he wanted; the Democrats are now free to counter with any plan of their choosing, and maybe the sides will meet somewhere in the middle.
So what’s the problem here? The problem is that Democrats don’t want to address the debt problem because it means they will either have to sacrifice programs they like or greatly increase taxes on the middle class. There’s nothing fun about that choice, but Paul Ryan didn’t put us into the position where that choice has to be made.
Perhaps I wasn’t sufficiently clear: of course Ryan should swing for the fences. My frustration lies with the traditional Democratic impulse to start from the position of compromise in response to said fence-swinging proposal. They’ve know he was developing this plan, and the outlines of it, for weeks. In response, they’ve been working on marking up the deficit commission’s plan. My contention is that this is bad strategy unless you want a rightward shift in funding priorities.
But, I don’t consider returning to Clintonian tax rates “greatly increasing” taxes on anybody. Let the Bush tax cuts expire. Period. In a stroke, you’ve corrected at least half of the deficit issue. You can legitimately plan to make reasonable cuts and adjustments and but also just grow your way out of the rest of it, as the economy should be in much better shape by the time of that expiry.
Kevin Drum wonders what drives Ryan to produce such a uniquely partisan budget document:
I don’t know what motivates Ryan, but it’s certainly not a genuine search for plausible grounds for negotiation. Instead, he’s produced a document carefully crafted to produce a universally negative reaction from Democrats, presumably because he thinks that will make Democrats look intransigent while the Beltway press is praising Ryan for his courage.
Sorry, but that’s just wrong. Ryan crafted his document to produce a Beltway press that praises him for his courage and demand that The Democrat must now compromise based on that starting point. This is why the Democratic party needs to come out with its own pie-in-the-sky progressive budget. Then you could compromise in a way that would represent a legitimate compromise of opposing ideas and not just yet another rightward lurch at the hands of the ever-triangulating Democrats.
Instead, what seems likely to happen is the Democrats will counter with the deficit commission document and then compromise to the right of that. Which is precisely the outcome Ryan likely considers “worst but acceptable.” The sad reality, of course, will be that in the absence of a GOP President, a GOP Senate, and with only a fractionally lunatic GOP House they will have delivered the biggest far-right reshaping of American budgetary priorities (and politics) ever achieved in anyone living’s lifetime. And the Democrats will have only themselves to blame.
Krugman on Ryan:
Ryan is claiming that unemployment will plunge right away; that by 2015 it will be down to the levels at the peak of the 1990s boom (and far below anything achieved under the sainted Ronald Reagan); and that by 2021 it will be below 3 percent, a level we haven’t seen in more than half a century.
[…]
According to the CBO analysis, a typical senior would end up spending more than twice as much of his or her own income on health care as under current law. As Dean Baker points out, this means that seniors would end up paying most of their income for health care. Again, right.
[…]
Ryan is assuming that everything aside from health and SS can be squeezed from 12 percent of GDP now to 3 ½ percent of GDP. That’s bigger than the assumed cut in health care spending relative to baseline; it accounts for all of the projected deficit reduction, since the alleged health savings are all used to finance tax cuts. And how is this supposed to be accomplished? Not explained.
Now that’s what I call a truly serious and courageous budget proposal. Obviously it won’t pass, but it’s not meant to. It is meant to move the debate rightward. And it already has. Dread Liberal Mouthpiece the Boston Globe has already run a “Where’s the Democrat Version of Destroy Medicare?” editorial. The implicit expectation is, again, that Serious People know the sensible outcome is, by definition, in-between Ryan’s plan and status quo: thus the GOP moves policy ever rightward while The Democrat simply stays in defensive crouch, hoping to scratch out minor concessions along the way. Forever.
How’s that been working out for you?
Lemkin 