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.
Tag: messaging
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.
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.
Shutdown Number One
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.
It’s Courageous To Go Die in the Streets
Today, Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, is scheduled to release the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes….His proposal will set the standard of seriousness for anybody who wants to play in this discussion….This budget tackles just about every politically risky issue with brio and guts….Paul Ryan has grasped reality with both hands. He’s forcing everybody else to do the same.
Kevin Drum responds:
Courageous. Serious. Gutsy. I imagine that within a few days this will be the consensus view of the entire Beltway punditocracy. A plan dedicated almost entirely to slashing social spending in a country that’s already the stingiest spender in the developed world, while simultaneously cutting taxes on the rich in a country with the lowest tax rates in the developed world — well, what could be more serious than that?
I think I’m going to be sick.
He’s right, but it didn’t take a few days and it’s not just Our Punditocracy; here’s the generic Democrat legislator last night on Hardball (sorry, no transcript yet):
[it was] “courageous” [for Paul Ryan to put up a plan to abolish Medicare and other federal social programs]
This is deadly serious. It’s easy to say we drugged bloggers out here are simply another example of the smelly hippies flying off the handle on something. Rest assured: We are not. You are going to be fighting 100% of the GOP caucus, some non-zero percent of the Democratic caucus (exactly 100% of the Democrat caucus), the entire Beltway elite media, and the do-nothing defensive crouch of the President and his administration heading into 2012. Keep in mind where that “sensible compromise” is going to land when the Overton Window has been set far, far to the right. Every possible outcome other than status quo within the current frame of the debate is going to be a major GOP win, far beyond anything that’s happened in recent political history. And that’s with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic President faced with a politically daunting 87% public approval of either continuing or increasing Medicare coverage relative to today’s levels. This is why they fail.
It’s going to be just like the Social Security fight, only worse: once again, Very Serious People will pretend not to notice that the Republican plan is a giant game of bait-and-switch, dismantling a key piece of the social safety net in favor of a privatized system, claiming that this is necessary to save money, but never acknowledging that privatization in itself actually costs money. And we’ll have endless obfuscation, both-sides-have-a-point reporting that misses the key point, which is that the putative savings come entirely from benefit cuts somewhere in the distant future that would, in all likelihood, never actually materialize. (What do you think will happen when retirees in 2025 discover that their Medicare vouchers aren’t enough to buy insurance?)
Paul Krugman, on the coming Medicare privatization fight. Add to that an administration that has shown zero interest in coming out of a defensive crouch on such issues, even when 87% of Americans favor keeping Medicare as is or increasing funding.
And, just to get a sense of where the MSM and its serious people are going to come down on the issue, you might review how that overwhelming majority of Americans favoring the continuation and expansion of Medicare is played. tl;dr: second to last paragraph, after about 17,000 words on how Americans “flunk” the budget test. Newsflash, CNN: your own poll shows they know that Medicare is relatively costly; however, they see the value of not putting folks over 65 out there on a competitive market with a fixed amount of 2010 dollars with which to try and find care. But, by all means, journalistic integrity means playing up that folks overestimate our outlays in foreign aid as a cudgel against their views on (and apparently clear understanding of) Medicare funding. Might those sad rubes out there in the many diners of flyover country be conflating military spending with “foreign aid?” We shall never know.
It aint going to be pretty.
And, just to get a sense of where the MSM and its serious people are going to come down on the issue, you might review how that overwhelming majority of Americans favoring the continuation and expansion of Medicare is played. tl;dr: second to last paragraph, after about 17,000 words on how Americans “flunk” the budget test. Newsflash, CNN: your own poll shows they know that Medicare is relatively costly; however, they see the value of not putting folks over 65 out there on a competitive market with a fixed amount of 2010 dollars with which to try and find care. But, by all means, journalistic integrity means playing up that folks overestimate our outlays in foreign aid as a cudgel against their views on (and apparently clear understanding of) Medicare funding. Might those sad rubes out there in the many diners of flyover country be conflating military spending with “foreign aid?” We shall never know.
It aint going to be pretty.
There Is No Third Thing
Ezra Klein, on the tepid reaction to the President’s energy policy:
This brings up one of the toughest questions in punditry: What is the right thing for the president to do on an issue that’s 1) morally urgent and 2) absolutely dead on arrival in Congress?
He forgets one thing:
3) and which his political opposition will be allowed to argue both sides of?
Libya is only the latest example, but there are many, many others. As soon as the President is for it, the GOP is categorically and irrevocably against it regardless of where they stood in the millisecond before Obama made a decision. This is how Obama went from “dangerously disengaged” or “timid” on Libya and missing his big chance to remake the region to dangerously over-aggressive and missing his big chance for peace in our time in the course of approximately 36 hours.
This is precisely why Obama needs to start inveighing against the perils of windpower, the tyranny of train-based transportation, and making demands that every US citizen above the age of 14 be required to carry at least one gun with its safety off at all times.
I’m only half-joking here. Any rational policy decision will have to be couched in, at best, seeming disinterest on the part of Obama. And this is why many issues are currently hung with the “why isn’t Obama saying anything about…” rubric. Once he takes up a position, even if it is the GOP position, you’re going to face instant and intransigent opposition to whatever Obama says. Even if they were the ones promoting it yesterday. On really sticky issues like Libya, you’ll have the Serious Person dream situation: categorical GOP opposition coupled with strong attacks “from the President’s left.” And just how it’s possible to be “to the left” of a radical socialist community organizer is left as an exercise for the student, as these are questions that the MSM simply will not ask. Shrill.
Progressives angry that their pet issue isn’t receiving enough facetime from Obama should frankly count their lucky stars. Once he weighs in, your issue is over. It is only in the face of Presidential disinterest that even incremental policy progress can actually be made in this environment.
Until such time as the GOP gets significant push-back on this form of rampant and entirely political flip-floppery, it will remain the only game in town. Since such push-back would require research and preparation on the part of the MSM, I wouldn’t hold my breath. That this cycle happens to be a game that is measurably and inexorably killing the country is yet another of those facts that do not matter.
Your Federal Tax Receipt
This should be an automatic part of every single tax return. In fact, tax returns should be so simple that they can be entirely collected by employers with no further action on the part of the vast majority of taxpayers and then said receipt arrives in the form of a post card with your information, where the money is going, and basic information on how to proceed if you think the card’s data is wrong.
Naturally, it is in Congress’ interest to keep tax returns complex (the better to use internecine complexities such that they can make what appear to be juicy carve-outs for all parties) and in the GOP’s interest to maximize both the overall sense of taxpayer outrage at the difficulty and ridiculousness of it all, all the better to play their “ya done got robbed of your money, and for what?” broken record.
…you just need to be really brazen about your flip-flops. Sure, sites like ThinkProgress or Politifact with catch you, and the first few times that happens maybe you’re a little worried about what’s going to happen. But then it dawns on you: nothing is going to happen. Your base doesn’t read ThinkProgress. The media doesn’t really care and is happy to accept whatever obvious nonsense you offer up in explanation. The morning chat shows will continue to book you. It just doesn’t matter.
Kevin Drum, yesterday, on Newt’s ridiculous flip-floppery re: Libya (last week: bomb ‘em into the stone age!; this week: we can’t just go around bombing countries willy nilly!). I thought Drum was being a bit overwrought with this, but then the sad spectacle this morning of NPR doing exactly this…they presented a smorgasbord of GOP talking points about the GOP House not being “consulted” sufficiently pre-bombing.
Of course, these same GOP House members were screaming “bomb! bomb! bomb!” every day of every week leading up to bombs falling, but their opinions were apparently unheeded. As soon as the first bomb fell, though, those opinions did a 180. Now intervention was out of the question. The whole “Obama dithers too much!!!” meme: down the memory hole forever.
NPR uncritically reported this new GOP position, paying zero heed to the old GOP position (of last fucking week), larding it with a “he fools around too much running about in Latin America” and only then stamping the whole moldering package with a fig leaf in the form of a “some say” from an administration flack.
But yes, NPR is clearly a liberal hellspawn that must be destroyed if we’re ever to have any semblance of balance in reportage.
Of course, these same GOP House members were screaming “bomb! bomb! bomb!” every day of every week leading up to bombs falling, but their opinions were apparently unheeded. As soon as the first bomb fell, though, those opinions did a 180. Now intervention was out of the question. The whole “Obama dithers too much!!!” meme: down the memory hole forever.
NPR uncritically reported this new GOP position, paying zero heed to the old GOP position (of last fucking week), larding it with a “he fools around too much running about in Latin America” and only then stamping the whole moldering package with a fig leaf in the form of a “some say” from an administration flack.
But yes, NPR is clearly a liberal hellspawn that must be destroyed if we’re ever to have any semblance of balance in reportage.
Strikers and their families: Go Die in the Streets
one section buried deep within [H.R. 1135] adds a startling new requirement. The bill, if passed, would actually cut off all food stamp benefits to any family where one adult member is engaging in a strike against an employer
No need to talk about this kind of stuff at the national level. Shrill. Just let all those troublemakers and their families starve to death already. Christ, it’s their fault we’re in this mess to begin with. GOP to striking workers and their families: Go die in the streets.
Lemkin 