Tag: GOP

Ryan directed the Congressional Budget Office to score his budget plans back in 2012. The score of his plan showed the non-Social Security, non-Medicare portion of the federal budget shrinking to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2050 (page 16).

This number is roughly equal to current spending on the military. Ryan has indicated that he does not want to see the military budget cut to any substantial degree. That leaves no money for the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, The Justice Department, infrastructure spending or anything else. Following Ryan’s plan, in 35 years we would have nothing left over after paying for the military.

Just to be clear, this was not some offhanded gaffe where Ryan might have misspoke. He supervised the CBO analysis. CBO doesn’t write-down numbers in a dark corner and then throw them up on their website to embarrass powerful members of Congress. As the document makes clear, they consulted with Ryan in writing the analysis to make sure that they were accurately capturing his program.

Dean Baker, writing for the Center for Economic Progress. This is exactly right and cannot be repeated frequently enough. The fact that it isn’t even said, much less repeated ad infinitum is why The Democrat fails and but also is why this nonsense within the GOP led House is allowed to continue. Democrats, when people are showing up outside the doors of the House with pitchforks, torches, and large logs you’ll know you’ve repeated it frequently enough. Please start now. It’s going to take decades.

I said that when I ran four years ago [and I’m saying it again now]— the first thing I’d do is abolish the State Department and start all over [… If the only] tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Every problem that the State Department has, the answer is diplomacy. Why? Because if it’s not diplomacy, they don’t have a job.

Rick “Don’t Google My Name” Santorum brandishing the sort of crystalline logic that powered him to a second place finish last go-round and but thus far in the 2016 cycle has left him seated at the kiddy table.
When do we get to peak abolish-on-day-one? Who will be the first GOP candidate to come out for abolishing our entire system of government ON DAY ONE? I suspect we’re closer than we think to just such a pronouncement.

How long has [the VA] been a problem? Decades. How long have politicians been talking about it? Decades.” Fiorina said she would gather 10 or 12 veterans in a room, including the gentleman from the third row, and ask what they want. Fiorina would then vet this plan via telephone poll, asking Americans to “press one for yes on your smartphone, two for no. You know how to solve these problems, so I’m going to ask you.

Carly Fiorina, wowing us with The Leadership. Rising star, everyone. Deepest GOP bench in a generation or more. To lower taxes, press one!

…modern Republican politicians can’t be serious — not if they want to win primaries and have any future within the party. Crank economics, crank science, crank foreign policy are all necessary parts of a candidate’s resume.

Until now, however, leading Republicans have generally tried to preserve a facade of respectability, helping the news media to maintain the pretense that it was dealing with a normal political party. What distinguishes Mr. Trump is not so much his positions as it is his lack of interest in maintaining appearances. And it turns out that the party’s base, which demands extremist positions, also prefers those positions delivered straight. Why is anyone surprised?

Paul Krugman, laying bare the sad realities of the modern GOP. That last night’s debate is greeted as anything but a sad portent for the forseable future of representative democracy in America is indicative of the depth of our problem.

There may be no more iconic image for the sorry state of America in the waning days of Our Glorious Conservative “revolution.” A crumbling bridge partially shut down dead center in what’s supposedly the glittering capitol of the most wealthy, most powerful nation in the world today. If only we’d faced historically low employment and historically low interest rates for the past decade or so such that we might actually invest in our country. Come get a big cup of Your Freedoms, everyone.

[T]he Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.’ My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who will be chairing the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. Thankfully we can all rest assured that the Adults are in charge of the GOP. There might be one or two show votes, but then they’re going to buckle down and get to the hard work of governing by consensus. Certainly that’s what the Commentariat is telling me. So it must be true. Cannot wait for my pony.

Remember how Howard Dean put together a 50-state strategy and everybody laughed at him, and then when the wave election hit in 2006, all the credit went to Rahm Emanuel because so many of our elite pundits admire unapologetic dickheads most of all?
Anyway, I was thinking of that last night when I realized that Eric Cantor had lost his primary to a religio-Randian economics prof and the Democratic alternative was a place-holder named Jack Trammell, who […] this morning finds himself in a more winnable race than existed at six o’clock last night. Why, I thought, hasn’t Trammell, or someone like him – or a couple of someones like him – been out there for six months beating more hell out of Cantor than Dave Brat was? Why did his website look like it was designed by Jukt Micronics?
The Republicans never shied away from going after Tom Daschle, or Tom Foley before him. Why were national Democrats caught flat-footed by last night’s results? It’s their job not to be surprised by this kind of thing. The primary benefit of Dean’s approach was that it presumed that progressive ideas could sell anywhere, and that it was part of the mandate of a national party not to concede any race anywhere.

Charlie Pierce is exactly right. You run in 50 states. All the time. Every race. Worst case scenario, somebody is out there talking about your issues, day in and day out. Best case scenario, an unexpectedly competitive race falls in your lap. Nothing summarizes the consummate failure of The Democrat to affect policy even (or especially) when they hold the White House more than the simple inability to tell the general public clearly and succinctly what they stand for as a party, how that differs from what the GOP is offering, and then to clearly and consistently run on that in all races.
Instead, they stay in the defensive crouch, hand the GOP legislative victory after legislative victory, and then when the GOP still demands more, they say “well, okay, but can we at least slow the systematic dismantlement of government down just a bit?” and call it a ringing bipartisan victory.

This has to stop. In fact, it had to stop a couple of decades ago but still hasn’t been addressed save for that one Dean-lead cycle Pierce mentions. It’s a simple fact that you have to be running candidates in every race and are out there every day talking about a few key facets of Your Plan for America. Preferably the ones that are polling about 80% in your favor and that your local Tea Klan candidate is required to be most vociferously against. Like allowing women to drive. That sort of thing. It certainly helps that the major issues of the day are polling in your favor, sometimes dramatically so, but a political operation still needs to let people know about that.

So why support negotiations? First: They just might work. I haven’t met many experts who put the chance of success at zero. Second: If the U.S. decides one day that it must destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, it must do so with broad international support. The only way to build that support is to absolutely exhaust all other options. Which means pursuing, in a time-limited, sober-minded, but earnest and assiduous way, a peaceful settlement.

Jeffrey Goldberg, self-described “Iran Hawk” on the need for real negotiations and not more (and more, and more) sanctions.

And: I basically agree. Except for all that stuff about “Second.” There is no “Second” choice available; unless, that is, you support a nuclear Iran. Our only tenable option is “First:” negotiate in good faith and hope it works. Otherwise you get a nuclear Iran. In fact, the fastest way to a nuclear Iran is if “the U.S. decides one day that it must destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.” Doing so, even assuming we temporarily succeeded at it (a prospect that is itself is vanishingly unlikely unless we choose to do so by exterminating all human life in Iran) will only cause them to First re-double, triple, or quadruple their weaponized nuclear efforts, and furthermore do so in sufficiently distributed, fortified, and or completely secret facilities as to obviate any attempt at said facilities’ destruction without resorting to “destroy all human life in Iran” methods.

So, that’s it. Negotiate. Period. The end. Our only choice also happens to be the best choice. It is not a sign of weakness, it is not a capitulation. It is quite literally the only option remaining that does not include the words “results in a nuclear Iran.” Only the GOP seems incapable of seeing this.

[…] 4. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that in FY 2014 (which runs from October 2013 through September 2014), total federal income will be $3,042 billion and total spending will be $3,602 billion, a difference of $560 billion.

5. This is the amount of debt we need to issue to pay for everything in the budget, which means that if the debt limit isn’t raised, we need to immediately cut spending by $560 billion, or $46 billion per month.

6. That’s roughly the equivalent of wiping out the entire Defense Department; or wiping out two-thirds of Social Security; or wiping out all of Medicaid + all unemployment insurance + all food assistance + all veterans’ benefits.

Kevin Drum, excerpted from a longer “10 sentences about” piece on the debt ceiling breach.

He’s right, of course, but I think he also touches on exactly the sort of messaging that’s required here by the Democrats. Out there, every day, saying “why does the GOP want to eliminate the Defense Department?” until people just can’t stand to hear it anymore. Then you say it 10,000,000 more times. Then, when the lunatic wing of the GOP relents or is bypassed by some less pure version of democracy in the House than “the majority of the majority party rule,” you continue to say “why did they want to eliminate the Defense Department? Can we trust a party that would take away all veterans benefits over some sort of party ideological purity test?” You continue saying something like that for at least 20 years, after which it might start to sink in.

This doesn’t seem so hard to understand, but The Democrat still doesn’t seem to get it.