“An Effective Ad Man”: Democrats Could Use Their Own Grover Norquist
Here’s the first lesson from the early skirmishing over ways to avoid the fiscal cliff: Democrats and liberals have to stop elevating Grover Norquist, the anti-government crusader who wields his no-tax pledge as a nuclear weapon, into the role of a political Superman.
Pretending that Norquist is more powerful than he is allows Republicans to win acclaim they haven’t earned yet. Without making a single substantive concession, they get loads of praise just for saying they are willing to ignore those old pledges to Grover. You can give him props as a public relations genius. Like Ke$ha or Beyonce, he is widely known in Washington by only one name. But kudos for an openness to compromise should be reserved for Republicans who put forward concrete proposals to raise taxes.
The corollary is that progressives should be unafraid to draw their own red lines. If you doubt that this is a good idea, just look at how effective Norquist has been. Outside pressure from both sides is essential for a balanced deal.
Start by insisting that Social Security and any increase in the retirement age be kept off the table. President Obama’s bargaining hand will be strengthened further if he can tell Republicans that there just aren’t Democratic votes for steep cuts in Medicaid and Medicare. The president’s room for maneuver expands still more if liberals refuse to look at cuts in programs unless Republicans are prepared to raise tax rates on the wealthy.
Already, there are signs that Republicans realize how much leverage the president has. If Congress doesn’t act, all the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year. At that point, the Senate’s Democratic majority has the power to block (or Obama can veto) any restoration of the upper-end Bush tax rates.
One indication that Republicans are aware they’re boxed in came from Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), one of his party’s shrewdest political minds. He suggested that Republicans should take up the president’s invitation to extend the Bush tax cuts for the 98 percent of Americans who earn less than $250,000 a year. Yes, this would amount to throwing in the towel on those upper-bracket levies. But Cole knows that it won’t help the Republican brand if voters come to see the GOP’s one and only objective as protecting wealthier Americans from tax increases.
The next lesson is not about politics or PR. It’s about substance, and this is where the Washington establishment has to get serious. The simple fact is that it’s bunk to claim that “tax reform” alone can produce the revenue we need.
One of the great disservices of the Bowles-Simpson commission was that it fed the impression that tax reform could generate so much cash that it would permit a cut in tax rates.
Grant Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson credit for good intentions — they were desperate to find a way to get Republicans on their commission to acknowledge the need for new revenue. It’s also worth remembering that their proposal assumed the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 a year. Nonetheless, their stress on tax reform with lower rates was more a political deal than wise policy. They sent us down the wrong path.
The only way tax reform might raise enough money to prevent a rate increase, let alone create an opportunity for rate cuts, is to reduce popular deductions (like the one on mortgage interest) so deeply that middle-class Americans would get a tax increase, too. And eliminating or sharply undercutting the deduction for state and local taxes is a bad idea. This only penalizes higher-tax states that try to solve their own social problems — for example, by providing health insurance to their low-income residents.
And all the schemes to eliminate tax expenditures to avoid rate increases have the effect of protecting just one group: Americans with very high incomes. That’s how the math works.
The right thing is to bring back Bill Clinton’s tax rates on the well-off and then have a broad tax reform discussion next year. A similar logic applies to health-care programs, as Jonathan Cohn suggested in the New Republic. Before making big cuts in Medicaid and Medicare, we need to see whether the reforms in the Affordable Care Act can contain medical inflation.
The fiscal cliff creates an enormous opportunity to end an era in which it was never, ever permissible to raise taxes. In the pre-Grover days, conservatives believed passionately in pay-as-you-go government. A tough stand by progressives will make it easier for conservatives to return to the path of fiscal responsibility.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 28, 2012
“Desperate And Delusional”: A Truly Harebrained GOP Scheme To Prevent President Obama’s Second Term
The election is over — but not in the minds of a handful of true-believer conservatives.
A plot has been hatched over the last week to, in a last-ditch effort, deny President Obama a second term and install Mitt Romney as the next president.
Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips argued in a column last week at World Net Daily that states that voted for Romney could simply boycott the Electoral College, thereby depriving it of the two-thirds quorum it needs to elect a president. At that point, the House of Representatives would pick the president. And guess who controls the House? The GOP.
The cause was then taken up by Idaho state Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll (R) this week, with Nuxoll tweeting that the scheme is the GOP’s “last chance” to install Romney as president.
The problem? Even if Phillips’s theory were practical — and getting one-third of states to flout the will of the country would be a neat trick — it’s based on a totally false premise.
Phillips cites the 12th Amendment as proof that the Electoral College needs a two-thirds quorum (i.e. having enough states present to conduct a vote), but in fact, the 12th Amendment only governs quorums in the House. There is nothing in the law, it appears, that prevents the Electoral College from electing a president even if some states don’t participate.
In fact, even World Net Daily, the conservative Web site on which Phillips’s column was posted, has acknowledged this fact, adding an editor’s note that says the entire crux of the column is faulty.
“Since this column was posted it has been discovered that the premise presented about the Electoral College and the Constitution is in error,” the website wrote. “According to the 12th Amendment, a two-thirds quorum is required in the House of Representatives, not the Electoral College.”
The scheme enunciated by Phillips, of course, is just the latest bit of conservative backlash against the Electoral College. When Romney was leading Obama in national polls but trailing in swing-state polling, some conservatives called for a national popular vote.
As of now, Obama is winning the popular vote by just more than four points in the swing states, but by about 3.5 points nationally. So while a national popular vote would have meant a slightly closer race, there really didn’t wind up being that much of a difference.
There may be an Electoral College revolt in the coming years, but this won’t be it.
By: Aaron Blake, The Washington Post, November 28, 2012
“Unicorn’s And Other Fables”: Grover Norquist’s Latest Plot To Drown Government…Monthly Debt Ceiling Fights
There’s two ways to look at Grover Norquist. He’s either the most powerful unelected man in the world or an amazing self-promoter who is about to be proven obsolete. Norquist obviously feels he’s the former. For nearly two decades, he’s held Republicans to a pledge to never raise taxes. Now he wants them to force the president to cede to their wishes on a monthly basis.
The President of Americans for Tax Reform is urging Republicans to use the debt ceiling to exact spending cuts or continue the Bush tax cuts for incomes over $250,000.
“The debt ceiling that Obama’s plans bump into every month or so for the next four years provides plenty of ‘leverage’ for the GOP to trade for spending cuts — as done in 2011 — or continuing the lower rates,” Norquist wrote Wednesday in The Hill.
Nearly 6 out of 10 Americans want to end the Bush tax breaks for the rich. But enough Republicans in the House and Senate have signed Norquist’s American Taxpayer Pledge that he’s certain that the negotiations on the so-called “fiscal cliff” can end without taxes going up.
After an electoral college landslide, many — including the White House — believe that the president has the leverage in negotiations. But the debt ceiling, which we will hit in February, does give Republicans a chance to make demands on the president.
When President Obama asked Speaker Boehner to raise the debt limit, Boehner reportedly said, “There is a price for everything.”
In 2011, Republicans, for the first time ever, used the debt limit to force cuts — something they never asked for in the dozens of times they raised the limit for the last three Republican presidents.
Though senators Lindsey Graham, Saxby Chambliss and other Republicans have said they would break their pledge with Norquist, the lobbyist seems unfazed. He told Slate’s Dave Weigel that he has no concerns that his pledge is about to crumble.
“I’ve talked to Lindsey Graham on the phone after some of his pronouncements, and he’s said, ‘Oh, I would need 10-1 [ratio of cuts to tax hikes], and it would have to include permanent, unalterable entitlement reform.’ I said, ‘Lindsey, if that’s what it’s going to take to get you to raise taxes, I’m not going to worry about you,” Norquist said. “You are not in danger of being offered a silver unicorn, because unicorns don’t exist.”
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent keeps insisting that the GOP is just trying to present an appearance of compromise. Some Republicans are making news with their alleged willingness to buck Norquist — but votes speak louder than words.
Unlike many Republicans, Norquist would be pleased if the so-called sequester goes into effect. He’s a Republican who believes the Department of Defense isn’t sacred when it comes to spending cuts.
The question is, how many Republicans would be willing to risk the cuts to Defense along with responsiblty for a middle-class tax increase by holding out for a deal that honors Norquist’s pledge?
And if the president won’t agree, will they doom the United States’ credit and cause unprecedented “uncertainty,” which Republicans claim to hate, by holding the debt limit hostage on a monthly basis?
Even if Republicans were to go down that path, the president would have to adopt a strategy advocated by former president Bill Clinton often called “the 14th Amendment option.”
The amendment includes the sentence, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payments of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion shall not be questioned.”
In 2011, Clinton said that “without hesitation” he would invoke the 14th Amendment “and force the courts to stop me.”
President Obama nixed that plan, saying his lawyers didn’t see the validity in it. But if Republicans decided to use the debt ceiling to keep him on an “allowance,” it wouldn’t be hard to imagine him deciding that it was worth going to court.
Norquist has never been shy about his disdain for government. He’s often joked,” I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” But he’s never faced a predicament like expiring tax cuts and a president with the political capital to fight to keep some of them expired.
Soon we’ll find out how much power he actually has.
BY: Jason Sattler, The National Memo. November 28, 2012
“An Unpatriotic Strategy”: In Their Baseless Persecution Of Susan Rice, Republican Reputations Are Sinking
With the Republican right persisting in baselesss persecution of Susan Rice, the UN Ambassador who may replace departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, they have left President Obama little choice but to move ahead with her nomination. If he backs away from Rice, in the face of what he has called false accusations against her, that display of weakness would undermine his second term before it begins.
The opposition to Rice is cobbled together from the remnants of a failed “October Surprise” election gambit, which began when Mitt Romney sought to smear the president by using the tragic attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed four Americans including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. In the election’s aftermath, Senate Republicans have fixated on Rice, whom they accuse of misleading the public in television appearances several days after the Sept. 11 incident.
Rice’s supposed offense was to downplay the likelihood that the attack had been perpetrated by al Qaeda terrorists or their local allies, while underlining the idea that it had been inspired by an anti-Muslim video on the Internet. On ABC News’ This Week, she repeated almost precisely the talking points provided to her by the CIA:
Our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated. We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to — or to the consulate, rather, to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo.
And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons, weapons that as you know in — in the wake of the revolution in Libya are — are quite common and accessible. And it then evolved from there. We’ll wait to see exactly what the investigation finally confirms, but that’s the best information we have at present.
In those remarks, Rice clearly warned against drawing any conclusions from the preliminary information then available. Nevertheless, Senate Republicans led by John McCain (R-AZ) have sought to defame her as a liar, a fool, or worse. The latest insult came on Tuesday from Senator Kelly Ayotte, a junior Republican from New Hampshire with no significant national security experience and little evident grasp of the facts. Tagging along with the embittered McCain and his reliable sidekick Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Ayotte made an unprecedented threat to put a “hold” on Rice’s nomination if Obama sends it up to the Hill – the first time in memory that a senator has deployed that privilege against a prospective nominee to head the State Department.
Exactly what the right suspects about Benghazi isn’t clear. Initially, Republicans seem to have hoped that talking up al Qaeda would somehow help Romney and damage Obama. Not the most patriotic strategy, but that was their plan. What they supposedly suspect now remains obscure. Graham mutters darkly that he is “disturbed,” while McCain claims to be “troubled.” The blustering Ayotte has now locked herself in a bunker with these volatile characters, whose motives and behavior are hardly above suspicion.
Whatever their problem, knuckling under to such a puerile challenge would represent an unacceptable defeat for the newly re-elected Obama.
Properly, the Benghazi incident is under investigation by the FBI and the CIA as well as Congressional committees – and what those probes appear to have established so far is that the security arrangements at the consulate never came within the specific purview of the White House. The CIA almost certainly made mistakes and omissions in protecting the consulate, and sadly paid for those errors with the lives of courageous agency officers who died there trying to protect the State Department staff when the compound came under sustained assault from heavily armed jihadi militants.
The notion that Rice or any other administration official intentionally misled the public already has been thoroughly debunked by David Petraeus, the resigned CIA director. Petraeus told a closed-door hearing on Capitol Hill, attended by McCain, that Rice had faithfully followed the declassified talking points provided by US intelligence agencies. (McCain promptly fled from reporters when that hearing ended.) Although the president himself had referred to the Benghazi attack as an “act of terror” in the White House Rose Garden, specific information about potential terrorist suspects remained classified for sound investigative reasons.
It isn’t hard to imagine what McCain would say if Rice had accidentally blurted out classified details of the Benghazi probe prematurely on television. In fact, it isn’t necessary to imagine, because not so long ago, he angrily accused the White House of revealing classified information. But in fact, the only damaging leak in the Benghazi matter emerged from the hyperactive mouth of Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee.
Perhaps McCain, Graham, and Ayotte should instead spew their bile on Issa, who has actually abused his authority and trifled with national security. They would be better off, because their reputations — and not Rice’s — will be irreparably damaged if they continue to pursue this vendetta when the president sends up her nomination.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, November 28, 2012
“They Need Jobs, So Let Them Burn”: Fox Business Host On Bangladeshi Fire Victims, “Let’s Not Victimize Poor Walmart”
Fox Business host and self-evidently despicable person Charles Payne:
It is tragic. I don’t think something like this will happen again. Don’t think that the people in Bangladesh who perished didn’t want or need those jobs, as well. I know we like to victimize everyone in this country, particularly when it comes to for-profit motivation, which is being assaulted. But, you know, it is a tragedy but I think it is a stretch, an amazing stretch, to sort of try to pin this on Walmart but, of course, the unions in this country are desperate.
Let’s take this line by line.
“It is tragic.” Said in an offhanded “let’s get this out of the way so I’m not accused of being heartless” way.
“I don’t think something like this will happen again.” Actually, it happens a lot. Hundreds of garment workers in Bangladesh have been killed in fires in recent years. In fact, at least 10 people were injured in another garment factory fire Monday. It’s true that a fire killing more than 100 people is rare, if that’s what Payne means by “something like this,” but if he just means a fatal fire in a Bangladeshi garment factory, then yeah, it’s going to happen again unless there are big, big changes in labor and workplace safety laws there.
“Don’t think that the people in Bangladesh who perished didn’t want or need those jobs, as well.” Well, Charles, people need jobs. But the thing is, “I need this job” and “I look forward to choosing between burning to death or jumping out of an eight-story building to escape burning to death” are two very different things. “I need this job” should not be a license for exploitation. In fact, garment workers have been fighting to improve working conditions even though by law they are not allowed to unionize, unlike many other workers in Bangladesh. Though the minimum wage for garment workers is now just $38 a month, less than two thirds of the country’s per capita income, that $38 represents a big increase that workers protested and fought for this year. Yes, these workers need jobs, but their fight to make those jobs better, and the large protests they’ve staged in the wake of this fire, show that it’s not as simple as “well, they need jobs, so let them burn.”
“I know we like to victimize everyone in this country, particularly when it comes to for-profit motivation, which is being assaulted.” Victimize? Let’s talk about victims. Like the at least 112 victims of this fire in which there were no fire extinguishers, exits were inadequate or even locked, and one manager reportedly told people to get back to work after a fire alarm sounded. I’m pretty sure they, and not the profit motive, are the victims here.
“But, you know, it is a tragedy but I think it is a stretch, an amazing stretch, to sort of try to pin this on Walmart but, of course, the unions in this country are desperate.” In the wake of this fire, it kind of defies belief how many companies whose clothes were found in the burned factory have said their clothes shouldn’t have been there anymore, that, yes, they’d used that factory in the past but had stopped just in time to deny that their clothes should have been there. Amazing. So no, it’s not just Walmart. It’s also Sears and Dickies and Ikea and who knows what other companies. But as the largest retailer in the world, Walmart does more than any other company to set prices and labor conditions for manufacturers.
Really, Payne might as well have said, “I realize I’m supposed to say this is tragic, but I’m a little confused about why I’m supposed to think the tragedy is the loss of more than 100 lives and not the potential threat to Walmart’s profits.”
By: Laura Clawson, Daily Kos, November 27, 2012
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