Tag: democrats

Resolution 9

Mark Warner (D-Va.) discusses the early talking points surrounding the financial reform package:

If you haven’t spent time with these issues,“ Warner sighed, "it’s easy to pop off with sound-bite solutions that don’t work.”

Indeed it is. And that’s exactly what the GOP plans to do. And they’re already doing it; they have likely already won the framing war. Compare and contrast these statements from GOP fucktard in chief, Mitch McConnell

“We cannot allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks. And that’s why we must not pass the financial reform bill that’s about to hit the floor.”

-and-

“[The Dodd bill] gives the government a new backdoor mechanism for propping up failing or failed institutions…. We won’t solve this problem until the biggest banks are allowed to fail.”

with these (all from Warner):

“It appears that the Republican leader either doesn’t understand or chooses not to understand the basic underlying premise of what this bill puts in place.”

“Resolution will be so painful for any company. No rational management team would ever choose resolution. It means shareholders wiped out. Management wiped out. Your firm is going away. At least in bankruptcy, there was some chance that some of your equity would’ve been retained and you could come out in some form on the other side of the process. The resolution that [GOP Sen Bob] Corker and I have tried to create means the death of the company. The institution is gone.

Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, refers to the resolution authority as:

a "slush fund”

-and-

“the mere existence of this [slush] fund will make it all too easy to choose a bailout over bankruptcy.”

Warner counters:

“Again, it’s either that they don’t understand or they choose not to understand. There’s nobody in the financial sector who believes this. They’d laugh at the proposition that $50 billion is enough to get you through the resolution process if a couple of firms go down. What we’ve heard time and again is that the challenge in a crisis is to buy enough time to keep the lights on for a few days till you get the FDIC in here. You could make it smaller. Corker and I spoke about $25 billion. But this is funded by the industry.”

“And here’s the hypocrisy of the Republican leader’s comments, I can guarantee you that if there had not been some pre-funding, the critique would’ve been: ‘Look at these guys! They’ve left the taxpayers exposed! What’s going to keep the lights on for these few days? It’s going to be Treasury funds or Federal Reserve funds. The taxpayer will be exposed!’ ”

You are goddamned right they would. But that’s not the point. As usual, the Democrat has a nuanced, sober take on the way forward. The GOP has a short, meaningless slogan that offers no policy insight or suggestion whatever. It’s just "go die in the streets” pointed at their corporate paymasters. Of course, both parties know such an event would never be allowed to transpire, so all’s well.

What the Democrat should be saying:

The GOP wants to help these fatcats to the punchbowl. Again

The GOP is lining the pockets of the bankers and guaranteeing future bailouts

Why is the GOP against prosecuting the worst of the Wall Street offenses? Why do they want to perpetuate the boom/bust cycle that benefits only the richest few?

And etc… Rest assured you’ll hear none of those in the run-up to 2010. Attempts at financial reform will fail. The next economic meltdown will happen sooner rather than later and find an American government that’s financially unable to do anything about it. Depression II will make the current recession seem like the good old days. And will be blamed on Obama. Wait and see.

Repeal, Replace, and Recur

The Onion gives the GOP (and you, the ‘Merican people) a little taste of what running the 2010 campaign on a complete repeal basis will look like:

“Republicans have no greater ally in this fight than leukemia,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who was flanked by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), and the abnormal increase in white blood cells. “Denying insurance to Americans with preexisting conditions and ensuring that low-income Americans stand no chance of receiving quality health care are just a few of the core beliefs that the GOP and leukemia share.”

“And believe me, if anyone is angrier than the Republican Party that children can no longer be denied coverage for having preexisting conditions, it’s leukemia.” DeMint continued. “We’re a match made in heaven.”

[…]

“I look around and I see Sen. Bob Bennett, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, eosinophilic and megakaryoblastic leukemia, and Sen. Pat Roberts, and I think, ‘This is what the Republican Party is all about,’” Sen. McConnell said. “We don’t like this new bill. We don’t like that it will cut the national deficit by $1.3 trillion over the next 20 years. We don’t like that it’s now illegal for insurance companies to suddenly drop a parent for getting deathly ill. That’s why we’re so very proud to be working with leukemia.”

I’d say that about nails it. The Democrat ought to use that line about “what the Republican Party is all about” unedited and in its entirety, read by that scary voice dude, and superimposed on pictures of the sick and dying, lying about in the streets. Where the GOP wants them to go die. That’s how you push back against the right wing noise machine. And it’s the only thing your GOP opponent will really understand. Once that level of pushback happens over anything, John McCain will get his wish: everyone will suddenly sit down and agree to cut out all the shit. Until that day, nothing will change in the GOP. Just like a schoolyard bully, they badly need their nose bloodied.

(h/t jasencomstock)

STARTing to sink in

I suppose this qualifies as PAM; Spencer Ackerman over to the Washington Independent has finally noted that even if you manage to keep Dick Lugar aboard the START train, you still have to find seven other GOPers willing to vote with the President on anything:

that acrimonious tenor is likely to flip some of the [relatively few GOP] yes votes [on arms reduction under W Bush for fuck’s sake] to either no votes or abstentions, however striking the hypocrisy.

Indeed it is. Now, of course, this isn’t considered to be the result of faulty logic or lousy governance on the part of the GOP, mind you. Oh no, definitely not that. They’re just playing the game and trying to win the day, politically. All that matters is what happened five minutes ago, and that’s only for the next 15. What we have here is plainly, plainly a failure on the part of The Democrat:

It’s just not clear yet [if the GOP votes will be there]. If not, it won’t just be an indictment of the Obama administration’s legislative acumen.

I guess we’re supposed to celebrate the “won’t just be” part of that. Strikingly bad construction. Rest assured that we shall never, ever see an article that systematically attacks the GOP’s stunning and repeated hypocrisy and categorizes the brazen lies, all of which is made worse by being lies and hypocrisy in service of nothing; they have no policy ideas to offer that go beyond a four word, rhyming phrase, and they never do. Because they aren’t required to. Nihilism works because it’s allowed to work by the Washington media establishment. At least it is when it’s coming from the GOP. And, in this case, it’s a brazen hypocrisy that threatens us all, directly and existentially. This ain’t kids with dirtbikes, these are actual fucking hydrogen bombs. And it’s a brazen violation of what was supposed to be a long-respected construct that “politics ends at the waters edge” when it comes to granting the President reasonably wide leeway on foreign policy, and especially when it comes to nuclear foreign policy.

START is a dead letter under a Democrat. Period. May not even get out of committee. That’s what the MSM should be looking at, day after day, 24/7: how can the country’s governance be this fundamentally broken? Instead, we’ll get plucky dogs and Clinton’s penis.
The Democrat should be hollering today and every day about the thousands, thousands of potentially loose nukes that are now going to be sitting around, just waiting to find a use. And putting it all on the GOP’s doorstep. We’ll see none of that. Instead, Obama will just stroll into the messaging buzz-saw. Again.

STARTs and stops

Obama notes the recent progress in strategic arms reduction treaty talks with Russia:

“It cuts – by about a third – the nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia will deploy,” Obama said describing the agreement. “It significantly reduces missiles and launchers. It puts in place a strong and effective verification regime. And it maintains the flexibility that we need to protect and advance our national security, and to guarantee our unwavering commitment to the security of our Allies.”

He should have added:

and, despite “frequent communication with lawmakers from both parties” there is no way in hell that this gets 67 votes.

So, in light of this, my friends in the GOP caucus want me to remind everyone to, please, go die in the streets when Our Nuclear Armageddon comes; it will make cleaning out the remaining buildings that much easier and will eliminate any need for an unpleasant government takeover of nuclear-cremains and/or partially incinerated body-parts removal. This is why I’m proud to announce bipartisan agreement today that Halliburton has been selected out of a lengthy, no-bid process to provide for all post ONA nuclear-cremains removal and storage. God bless America. Goodnight.

Seriously, does anyone believe that any move by the President, no matter how important, no matter how useful, no matter how “unrelated” to domestic politics will garner even a single GOP vote, much less eight? Anyone? (Looking at you, Code Brown) And yet lots of pundits and bloggers seem to be rather sure that this time the GOP will set aside its whiny-ass titty baby shtick in favor of actual good governance. As if. They could care less. This will be yet another whirlwind for Obama to inherit. Period. And yet here we go again, walking blithely into the buzzsaw, no pre-messaging, no talk of any kind to inoculate the general public to the shitstorm that will inevitably erupt from this.

Carve it in stone: START is a dead letter if it needs to be ratified under a Democrat. Better plan right now for some sort of executive agreement sidecar, or however it is that one goes about reducing the nuclear weapons census by A THIRD in the face of uniform, unyielding, and certainly unthinking GOP obstructionism:

Maybe these egg-heads in New England “think tanks” and “colleges” who like to do things like “read” think it’s wise to reduce nuke-you-lar weapons by a third in the face of our 47 ongoing wars, but we here at the GOP want to increase them by 89%, which will pay for itself by cutting taxes on the rich. Hell yes we do! Hell yes we can!

And so forth.

On Jan 3rd, 2011, please do eliminate the filibuster using 51 Democratic votes and a ruling by Joe Biden. Don’t “look at it” don’t consider it, don’t reform it, eliminate it. Period. It’s precisely what the GOP plans to do the second they hold the Senate and the Vice Presidency. May as well get some things done in the meantime.

Terrible news for the Democrat

All that back-room, closed-door, no-debate, unconstitutional wrangling has produced this epic fail of an outcome:

CBO has finished its work [scoring the “fix” sidecar and final healthcare reform bill] and will release the official preliminary score later today. But here are the basic numbers: The bill will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years and reduce the deficit by $130 billion during that period. In the second 10 years – so, 2020 to 2029 – it will reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion. The legislation will cover 32 million Americans, or 95 percent of the legal population.

To put this in context, that’s more deficit reduction than either the House or Senate bill, and more coverage than the Senate bill.

But, by all means, let’s talk about the horror of “deem and pass” some more. Likewise, let’s attack and mock folks with Parkinson’s disease who currently can’t get insurance or afford treatment. Why can’t they all just exhibit some ‘Merican can-do attitude and Go Die in the Streets? And, for God’s sake, keep the Guvmint out of my Medicare!

Tax Outrage Sydrome

Tax expert Roberton Williams, interviewed by Derek Thompson at the Atlantic has some notes on the political landscape for reform (as currently proposed via Wyden Gregg, which itself only has life so long as the President disavows any and all knowledge of it):

From a political perspective, you say, “We’ve got to do it because you can’t trust big government.” That’s it. That’s all you can say. That’s the only argument I can see [against radically simplifying the filing process for ~80% of Americans by having the IRS essentially pre-fill your form].

Uh, no. The GOP will allow meaningful reforms over their dead bodies. You can pry said bill from their cold, dead hands. Why? Because they are utterly dependent on the government being perceived as a faceless automaton meant to screw you out of your money with no perceptible civic gain in return. Period.

Making healthcare delivery work, making tax codes simpler, efficient government-run response to disaster, making the trains run on time, or whatever other example of government actually working you want to use: none of them comply with the current GOP vision for government. They are fundamentally opposed to all of it. And will fight any attempt to fix it. To. The. Death.

Witness the various tax pickles that Obama’s nominees found themselves in. This wasn’t because they’re all crooks. It’s because our tax codes are vastly overcomplicated. Did the Democrat fight to make that point? Of course not. The nominees largely just withdrew. Instead of a teachable moment, the administration got a fundamental reduction in the available pool of nominees: those with very, very simple tax histories who also decide each and every interpretive question that may arise in favor of the IRS. I think you’ll find vanishingly few CPAs or tax-preparers out there who decide that way. In fact, this problem is sufficiently prevalent that it comes up in the interview (emphasis original):

a study I think in Alabama where they went to a number of preparers with a fake tax case that legally couldn’t qualify for the earned income tax credit. But this particular tax preparer’s thing was to tell people, “We’ll get you the EITC.” And guess what? In only one case did the tax preparers say, “You don’t qualify for this credit.” You pay people a couple hundred bucks for a tax return, you want a real return. You want a credit. If you don’t get it, there goes the business model.

Precisely. Combine this tendency with a complex, multi-national employment record and you’re simply not likely to survive the confirmation process. And, writ large, the GOP likes it this way. They want government to look as ineffectual, impotent, and its processes as internecine as possible. That is the foundational principle of Grover Norquist’s “Starve the Beast” and really all of Reaganism as practiced today. It’s why Medicare Part D (and many other Bush era spending programs) was passed without funding it: the GOP wants financial meltdown such that the government is forced to eliminate said spending programs.

The GOP as currently constituted is and always will be against good policy until such time as they are forced to change tactics. Period. The existence of good policy (and its outcomes) fundamentally weaken their entire volitional paradigm. Period. Democrats need to message accordingly and queue legislation initiatives (like this tax reforms package) that highlight that. Period.

They never will.

Competiton

The Jane Hamshers of the world really need to sit down and consider this kind of thing in light of their own unyielding demands for some theoretical, perfect-out-of-the-gate plan that they feel could pass if given the chance and, at least, 55 newly minted progressive Senators:

Congressman Alan Grayson, (D-Orlando), today introduced a bill (H.R. 4789) which would give the option to buy into Medicare to every citizen of the United States. The “Public Option Act,” also known as the “Medicare You Can Buy Into Act,” would open up the Medicare network to anyone who can pay for it.

You see, the current iteration of health insurance reform isn’t it. It’s a starting point. To which popular things, like the public option, or a (vastly superior) Medicare buy-in program can be added. And it’s a hell of a lot harder to argue against a buy-in program when it can be presented as legitimate competition to commercial plans as opposed to some cog in a giant death panels machine. That’s also the moment that all the poisonous rhetoric the GOP employed in the run-up to reform bites them squarely in the ass.

Medicare began as a quite limited program you wouldn’t recognize today. Wasn’t even called Medicare; it was the catchily named Kerr-Mills Act that created Medical Assistance for the Aged (MAA). Can’t imagine why they changed that. But I’m sure everyone blogging about it was quite disappointed with it. Just sayin’.

Pass. The. Damned. Bill.

Gravity (and other theories)

Yglesias wants to know:

If Mitch McConnell & co were really so sure that passing health reform would be a political loser for Democrats and that organizing around repeal will be a big winner, then wouldn’t they be making it easier to pass the damn bill?

It’s not that if McConnell believed what he said he’d be voting for the bill. But if your opponents are determined to inflict a wound on themselves, why not just let them, in a procedural sense? Why not stop the bitching and moaning about reconciliation? Why not stop talking about gambits to stick the reconciliation process up?

Because the GOP true-believers know that if anything is potentially more destructive to The Democrat (as party in charge) than either passing or failing to pass something, it’s the spectacle of a slowly unfolding legislative FAIL itself (regardless of outcome; the long process is, in and of itself, a failure).
People hate the process of our government more than anything. The outcome, whether good, bad, or indifferent really is beside the point. The longer ‘Merica is forced to watch Washington in the act of gridlocking itself, the better the GOP thinks it looks. And the GOP is completely an unalterably right about this one thing. As Clinton once said, “It’s better to be strong and wrong, than right and weak”; these slow-rolling legislative fits are, to the polity at large, completely indistinguishable from weakness, both in terms of legislative will and of ideas. And, of course, the beauty is that the GOP is entirely responsible for the slow-roll and will never, ever be made to pay a price. Period. As in: Not in this lifetime. Just how it is. Like gravity.

The Democrat, utterly unaware of any of this for reasons that are beyond unclear, acts as a both implicit and explicit enabler of this sort of behavior. Again and again. And wonders why it gets the same results.

Always Bad for the Democrat

Jamison Foser takes a look back to the most recent legitimately questionable use of the reconciliation process, the Bush tax cuts, to gauge what must have been a veritable torrent of “end of democracy” style editorials and hard-hitting analytical articles and investigations. Right?

The Senate reconciliation vote occurred on May 23, 2003. In the month of May, only one New York Times article so much as mentioned the use of reconciliation for the tax cuts — a May 13, 2003, article that devoted a few paragraphs to wrangling over whether Senate Republicans could assign the bill number they wanted (S.2) to a bill approved via reconciliation. The Times also used the word “reconciliation” in a May 9, 2003, editorial, but gave no indication whatsoever of what it meant.

And that’s more attention than most news outlets gave to the use of reconciliation that month. The Washington Post didn’t run a single article, column, editorial, or letter to the editor that used the words “reconciliation” and “senate.” Not one. USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press were similarly silent.

Cable news didn’t care, either. CNN ran a quote by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley about the substance of the tax cuts in which he used the word “reconciliation” in passing — but that was it. Fox News aired two interviews in which Republican members of Congress referred to the reconciliation process in order to explain why the tax cuts would be temporary, but neither they nor the reporters interviewing them treated reconciliation as a controversial tactic.

And ABC, CBS, NBC? Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Yep. This time around? Well, that’s totally different, of course:

the media are referring to reconciliation as the “nuclear option” and portraying it as an obscure procedural gimmick being considered in an attempt to circumvent Senate rules and “ram” health care legislation through Congress. The conservative media are going so far as to claim that use of reconciliation would be “unprecedented.”

The Democrat has got to work on its messaging. It’s all that matters. The GOP has sewn the earth with salt re: governance and, really, any sense of shared civic concern whatsoever for over two decades. Any chance to poison the perceived relationship between citizen and government has been used to reassure the populace that government never, ever can provide anything to the governed that couldn’t be better provided by the private citizen.
An equally ferocious, equally long-term effort will be required to reacquaint people with the everyday things that evil big government is doing for them. Most of which are directly enabling enraged GOP voters to live the solitary, exurban lifestyles that make up so much of the current GOP base. That the western “Red” states are livable at all: entirely the result of government spending and ostentatiously generous water policy. Period. That no one living in those states seems to realize this: the fault of the Democrat, and dangerous for the country. This (and messaging on a thousand issues just like it), more than anything, needs to be rectified. And soon.