“Intent On Dismantling The Government”: The Sequester And The Tea Party Plot
Imagine a plot to undermine the government of the United States, to destroy much of its capacity to do the public’s business, and to sow distrust among the population.
Imagine further that the plotters infiltrate Congress and state governments, reshape their districts to give them disproportionate influence in Washington, and use the media to spread big lies about the government.
Finally, imagine they not only paralyze the government but are on the verge of dismantling pieces of it.
Far-fetched? Perhaps. But take a look at what’s been happening in Washington and many state capitals since Tea Party fanatics gained effective control of the Republican Party, and you’d be forgiven if you see parallels.
Tea Party Republicans are crowing about the “sequestration” cuts beginning today (Friday). “This will be the first significant tea party victory in that we got what we set out to do in changing Washington,” says Rep. Tim Huelskamp (Kan.), a Tea Partier who was first elected in 2010.
Sequestration is only the start. What they set out to do was not simply change Washington but eviscerate the U.S. government — “drown it in the bathtub,” in the words of their guru Grover Norquist – slashing Social Security and Medicare, ending worker protections we’ve had since the 1930s, eroding civil rights and voting rights, terminating programs that have helped the poor for generations, and making it impossible for the government to invest in our future.
Sequestration grew out of a strategy hatched soon after they took over the House in 2011, to achieve their goals by holding hostage the full faith and credit of the United States – notwithstanding the Constitution’s instruction that the public debt of the United States “not be questioned.”
To avoid default on the public debt, the White House and House Republicans agreed to harsh and arbitrary “sequestered” spending cuts if they couldn’t come up with a more reasonable deal in the interim. But the Tea Partiers had no intention of agreeing to anything more reasonable. They knew the only way to dismember the federal government was through large spending cuts without tax increases.
Nor do they seem to mind the higher unemployment their strategy will almost certainly bring about. Sequestration combined with January’s fiscal cliff deal is expected to slow economic growth by 1.5 percentage points this year – dangerous for an economy now crawling at about 2 percent. It will be even worse if the Tea Partiers refuse to extend the government’s spending authority, which expires March 27.
A conspiracy theorist might think they welcome more joblessness because they want Americans to be even more fearful and angry. Tea Partiers use fear and anger in their war against the government – blaming the anemic recovery on government deficits and the government’s size, and selling a poisonous snake-oil of austerity economics and trickle-down economics as the remedy.
They likewise use the disruption and paralysis they’ve sown in Washington to persuade Americans government is necessarily dysfunctional, and politics inherently bad. Their continuing showdowns and standoffs are, in this sense, part of the plot.
What is the President’s response? He still wants a so-called “grand bargain” of “balanced” spending cuts (including cuts in the projected growth of Social Security and Medicare) combined with tax increases on the wealthy. So far, though, he has agreed to a gross imbalance — $1.5 trillion in cuts to Republicans’ $600 billion in tax increases on the rich.
The President apparently believes Republicans are serious about deficit reduction, when in fact the Tea Partiers now running the GOP are serious only about dismembering the government.
And he seems to accept that the budget deficit is the largest economic problem facing the nation, when in reality the largest problem is continuing high unemployment (some 20 million Americans unemployed or under-employed), declining real wages, and widening inequality. Deficit reduction now or in the near-term will only make these worse.
Besides, the deficit is now down to about 5 percent of GDP – where it was when Bill Clinton took office. It is projected to mushroom in later years mainly because healthcare costs are expected to rise faster than the economy is expected to grow, and the American population is aging. These trends have little or nothing to do with government programs. In fact, Medicare is far more efficient than private health insurance.
I suggest the President forget about a “grand bargain.” In fact, he should stop talking about the budget deficit and start talking about jobs and wages, and widening inequality – as he did in the campaign. And he should give up all hope of making a deal with the Tea Partiers who now run the Republican Party.
Instead, the President should let the public see the Tea Partiers for who they are — a small, radical minority intent on dismantling the government of the United States. As long as they are allowed to dictate the terms of public debate they will continue to hold the rest of us hostage to their extremism.
By: Robert Reich, The Robert Reich Blog, February 28, 2013
“Every Game Is A Shutout”: How Much Of A Market Is There On The Right For Real Reporting?
Four years ago, Tucker Carlson went before the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and told them that instead of creating more media forums to talk to each other about what a bunch of jerks liberals are, they ought to nurture outlets that actually report news, with a commitment to accuracy. For his trouble he was booed vigorously, and I guess he learned his lesson about what conservatives are interested in, because instead of creating a newsgathering organization he created the Daily Caller. I’m sure it’s doing quite well with it’s target audience, and I couldn’t help but think about Carlson upon seeing that Erick Erickson, proprietor of RedState.com and CNN talking mouth, issued a plea to conservatives to come work for him and actually do journalism. First though, he identified the problem:
I think conservative media is failing to advance ideas and stories. Certainly part of that is because the general media has an ideological bias against conservatives, which makes it harder for the media to take our views seriously. But many conservatives are, instead of working doubly hard to overcome that bias, just yelling louder about the same things. The echo in the chamber has gotten so loud it is not well understood outside the echo chamber in the mainstream press and in the public. It translates only as anger and noise, neither of which are conducive to the art of persuasion.
You think? It’s a bit of a surprise to see this coming from Erickson, who in the past has had, shall we say, a taste for bombast and insults (he called David Souter a “goat-fucking child molester” and Michelle Obama a “Marxist harpy”; see here for more). But hey, people change. I completely understand how somebody can spend some time playing the role of shouting partisan, then decide it really isn’t accomplishing much and there might be a better way of accomplishing your ideological goals. Erickson went on:
Educating conservatives is a critical component of our mission. We have never viewed RedState as a site engaged in reporting, but as a site engaged in activism. Though occasionally we do break news, it has not been central to our existence. But, an honest accounting of facts and news is important and mission critical. Consequently, I would like to hire some reporters who can help educate conservative activists — who will not be focused on the outrage du jour, but focused on the daily grind of Washington and how the sausage being ground out in Washington will affect the conservative movement and the nation. Over time, I would like to expand this to covering governmental sausage making in the states too.
Good for him, I suppose, though I’ll admit I’m skeptical. There are certainly conservative reporters out there—heck, there are even some real reporters at Fox News—but the question is just how much of an audience there is for what they produce. The problem isn’t just that the really successful conservatives are bloviators like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, it’s that the entire movement seems content to treat their constituents like they’re a bunch of idiots who want only to nod their heads and mutter about how Barack Obama is a socialist and liberals are evil.
Consider the recent case of Jeff Sessions’ GAO report. The Alabama Republican senator asked the GAO to give him a report on how much Obamacare would add to the deficit if all the spending stayed in, but all the ways to pay for the bill, from cost savings from innovation, to reduced payments to providers, to tax increases, were taken out. The GAO has to respond to these kinds of requests, so it did. And then Sessions went in front of the cameras proclaiming that the GAO says Obamacare will increase the deficit by eleventy bazillion dollars, and one conservative news organization after another (here‘s an example) picked it up, saying, “See! See! See!” As Steve Benen said, the whole exercise was “roughly the equivalent of the Boston Celtics’ coach asking someone on his staff, ‘Figure out what our record would be if our opponents’ points didn’t count.’ Then, soon after, the coach called a press conference to declare, ‘Good news everyone! We’re undefeated! And every game was a shutout!'”
My point is, this is not how serious people who respect their constituents act. But Sessions knew that conservative media outlets would run with his ridiculousness, and they in turn knew that their audiences would eat it up. In the end, the whole thing did nothing but make conservatives a little dumber on the issue of health care. And you know what? They don’t care. Oh sure, there are some conservatives who are embarrassed by that kind of thing, but they’re the quiet ones, and they’re outnumbered.
And that’s what Erick Erickson will be confronting if he really wants to hire real reporters to do real reporting: there just aren’t enough people on his side who want it.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, February 28, 2013
“Portrait Of A Powerless Man”: The Tracks Of John Boehner’s Tears
Why does John Boehner subject himself to this?
Not for the first time this year, and probably not for the last, the speaker allowed to the floor on Thursday a major piece of legislation that a solid majority of the Republican Conference voted against, that passed mainly on the strength of Democratic votes, and that the Obama White House will now trumpet as a major achievement. The bill at hand was the Violence Against Women Act, which had easily passed the Senate only to meet with fierce resistance from conservatives in the House. In the end, 138 House Republicans went on the record against it, while 87 backed it. Among Democrats, meanwhile, there wasn’t a single “no” vote.
We saw this same dynamic at the start of the year, when the fiscal cliff deal passed with just 85 Republicans voting “yes” – and 151 voting “no.” And we saw it a few weeks after that, when a $50.5 billion Sandy aid package cleared the chamber with only 49 Republicans supporting it, and 179 opposing it.
The common thread in all of these instances is that true-believer conservatives imposed politically toxic positions on the GOP conference and Boehner had embarrassingly little ability to put a stop to the madness. It was only when the power of public outrage, poll numbers and pressure from members in marginal districts grew just strong enough that Boehner had the ability to allow floor votes and resolve the issues without losing his speakership to a coup of angry conservatives.
Really, this has been the story of Boehner’s entire tenure as speaker. In the 112thCongress, Boehner famously negotiated to the brink of a deficit reduction “grand bargain” with President Obama, one that would have exchanged modest revenue increases for serious cuts to safety net programs. But even that was giving away too much in the eyes of the Tea Party crowd, forcing Boehner to walk away from the table. Back then, Boehner could mostly settle for not striking deals with the administration and leaving most issues to fester. In the minds of most Republicans, the lousy economy would knock Obama out of office in 2012 and deliver the Senate to the GOP too, empowering the party to impose a true-believer agenda in 2013.
But then Obama won a resounding reelection victory, Democrats added to their Senate majority, and the GOP lost seats in the House. This has created a new dynamic in the 113thCongress, with an emboldened second-term president more confidently pushing his agenda and ratcheting up public pressure on Republicans to meet him halfway. It’s also helped that Obama has had public opinion on his side, and that in the case of the fiscal cliff, Republicans were facing the prospect of being blamed for automatic across-the-board tax hikes if they failed to compromise. So in this Congress, unlike the last one, there is serious pressure on Boehner, for the overall good of his party, to make some deals.
But he’s hamstrung by the fact that what’s good for the GOP’s overall image isn’t necessarily good politics for individual Republican members. Many of them represent deeply Republican districts, where there’s no such thing as a serious general election challenge. That moves all of the action to the GOP primary, which has two effects: 1) It increases the likelihood that a Tea Party-type will win the seat; 2) it forces Republicans who aren’t truly Tea Party-types to behave like Tea Party-types so that they can win primaries. This pressure exists in non-safe districts too, but there’s a little more tension for these Republican members, who have to worry about potential primary challenges along with the general election. And then there’s Boehner, who is deeply distrusted by the conservative movement, thus forcing him to consider the possibility of a revolt by restive conservatives before making any major decisions.
Thus, the only real option for Boehner is what we keep seeing this year. When there’s a major piece of legislation where public opinion is on the Democrats’ side, Boehner has to wait until enough pressure and outrage has built that a healthy number of Republicans from marginal districts who value their seats and Republicans from safe districts who value having the majority decide it’s in their interests to resolve the issue. Only then can Boehner move the bill to the floor. And even then, the majority of Republicans will feel compelled – either by their genuine ideological views or by fear of a primary challenge – to vote against it.
Which brings us to the sequester that’s now kicking in. This is hardly a surprising development. Obama has made his negotiating position clear: He wants to get rid of it and enact a “balanced” fix that includes entitlement cuts and increased revenue from tax deductions and loopholes. There is absolutely no way that Boehner could sell anything along these lines to his conference right now. Conservatives in the House and across the country are still smarting from the fiscal cliff deal, so anything involving more revenue – even if it’s not actually from tax rate increases – is a non-starter. For now.
But what happens as the sequester is implemented and Americans begin to see the impact? And as the defense industry, which still has real clout within the GOP, even if it’s not nearly as much as it once did, begins to feel the impact? And what happens as the prospect of an ever worse situation – a government shutdown triggered by the March 27 expiration of the continuing resolution that now funds the government – approaches? What if polls show voters breaking hard against the GOP?
That’s the kind of political toxicity that Boehner needs to sell any kind of a deal to his fellow Republicans – one that would give some ground on revenue, incur the wrath of the right, pass mainly with Democratic votes and (ideally for Boehner) allow the speaker to hold onto his title. In fact, as best anyone can tell, this basically is Boehner’s strategy right now. As Politico reported earlier this week, he seems to be “aiming for a hefty dose of spending cuts and reforms like a change to calculating government benefits called chained CPI and closing a few tax loopholes.”
Chained CPI or some other serious cut to the safety net could prompt anger on the left that could complicate the new Boehner strategy of passing big bills with Democratic support. But that’s not his worry right now. For whatever reason, he likes being speaker, even though he’s an unusually powerless one, and he wants to keep the job. So he’ll take the sequester and wait.
By: Steve Kornacki, Salon, March 1, 2013
“Both Sides Are Not To Be Blamed”: John Boehner Will Accept Only A 100%-0% “Compromise” Deal
President Obama met with congressional leaders from both parties and both chambers at the White House this morning about the latest in a series of self-inflicted, easily-avoided wounds. There were no realistic hopes that the policymakers would somehow reach an agreement to replace the sequestration cuts, and expectations were met: the group spoke for about an hour and then quit, resolving nothing.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) left the meeting and spoke for about a minute to reporters without taking questions. For those who can’t watch clips online, he argued:
“Let’s make it clear, the president got his tax hike on January 1st. The discussion about revenue, in my view, is over. It’s about taking on the spending problem here in Washington.”
I’m trying to think of a way to explain this in a way Boehner will understand. As the Speaker sees it, the very idea of a balanced compromise is ridiculous — a compromise would necessarily include revenue, Democrats already got new revenue, so it’s outrageous for anyone to even raise the possibility.
Let’s put this as plainly as possible: in the summer of 2011, both sides accepted a debt-reduction deal that cut spending by over $1.2 trillion without any additional revenue — a win for Republicans. In late 2012, both sides accepted another deal that raised about $600 billion in revenue without any additional cuts — a win for Democrats.
Now it’s time to add another piece to the puzzle, and the Speaker of the House only remembers part of the very recent past.
This sentence…
“Let’s make it clear, the president got his tax hike on January 1st. The discussion about revenue, in my view, is over.”
…makes exactly as much sense as this sentence:
“Let’s make it clear, Republicans got their spending cuts in 2011. The discussion about spending cuts, in my view, is over.”
Substantively, there is no difference between the two arguments. Both represent extremes. Except right now, Republicans think the first sentence makes perfect sense and no one is even bothering with the second sentence.
Indeed, if Boehner were to accept Obama’s compromise, Boehner would still come out on top since the spending-cut totals would still easily outweigh the revenue totals. The president’s offer, at face value, is already a win for the GOP.
But Republicans won’t accept a win; they’ll accept a rout. According to Boehner, the only available solution to a problem he helped create is one in which his side gets 100% of what it wants, predicated on the assumption that the massive spending cuts agreed to in 2011 have escaped Republicans’ memories altogether.
At this point, most Americans want a compromise. Most Democrats want and have already proposed a compromise. But Boehner wants everyone to know there will be no compromise, and there’s nothing the president can say or do to change his mind.
I’ll now look forward to pundits everywhere telling me how “both sides” are to blame.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 1, 2013
“100 Years Of Women’s Rights”: Today’s War On Women Carries Profound Implications For The Future
Sunday, March 3 will mark the 100-year anniversary of the Woman Suffrage March on Washington by brave women demanding the right to vote. The fight for women’s rights didn’t begin in 1913; in fact, the movement had over 50 years of history prior to this momentous event led by the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
Two prominent women in American history—Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton—were introduced by abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and George Thompson in 1851 during an anti-slavery gathering in Seneca Falls, and from there they began their friendship and partnership. At the Seneca Falls Conference in 1848, Stanton wrote in The Declaration of Sentiments, “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice…”
In letters between Stanton and Anthony, Stanton described the challenges she faced in her personal life. Women’s suffrage weighed on these women; the political issue affected their everyday lives, and family and friends began opposing the movement. Nothing would stop them from moving ahead two decades to the founding of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, aimed at promoting amendments to the Constitution that would ultimately give women the right to vote.
On March 3, 1913, led by American suffragist activists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, men and women from across the country met in Washington, D.C. to march down Pennsylvania Avenue in support of women’s rights. Taking place the day before President Wilson’s inauguration, this historic march and subsequent demonstrations across the country succeeded in bringing national publicity to the issue through protests and speeches, proving that women deserved an equal place in politics. But they faced angry opposition from a faction of Americans – mostly but not all male — who resisted social progress for women. What came of this opposition was an all-out war on feminism.
Women marching in the Washington parade were physically assaulted, spit on, hit, and heckled by spectators. Accounts detailed police ignoring edicts from Major Richard Sylvester, D.C.’s Chief of Police, who gave orders to protect those marching. Men who supported the movement were targeted as well. A report from Major General Anson Mills, who marched with some of his men, said in a New York Times article, “Crowds of hoodlums sneered at my division in the parade and made insulting remarks. The police made no effort to rebuke them. They were ruffians whom I had never seen before and who seemed to be strangers. I think they were Baltimore hoodlums. They charged us with being henpecked. They indicated their determination to send us home by breaking up the parade. The crowd was lolous [sic] and made vicious attempts to break up the ranks of the marchers, with practically no interference from the police.”
A separate article featured in the Times from March 4, 1913 details, “At times fighting its way, the suffrage procession passed through a narrow channel with walls of spectators on either side. They effect of the parade was spoiled, the marchers were greatly inconvenienced, and at times were subjected to insult and indignity. Many persons were injured. The leaders of the suffragists are very indignant, and their sentiments are shared by many members of Congress. Many men here who do not believe in the suffrage cause say that the treatment given to those who marched yesterday was an insult to American womanhood and a disgrace to the Capital City of the Nation.”
From groups who resisted the movement came unrelenting assaults on women’s femininity—painting them as either lesbians or unattractive, lonely women incapable of finding husbands. Such misogynist propaganda infiltrated the news, portraying suffragists completely unfairly. Opponents claimed that women should remain out of politics and find a man to speak for them, since allowing women into the political process would be detrimental to the state.
Despite the fear-mongering, proponents of woman’s suffrage were able to draw the attention of members of Congress, and with the support of President Wilson gained momentum. Susan B. Anthony would never see the result of her efforts, but the Nineteenth Amendment, drafted by her and Stanton, was finally ratified in 1920.
From Seneca Falls to the first National Women’s Rights Convention in Worcester, MA, to the founding of the National American Woman Suffrage Association by Anthony and Stanton, women’s rights have come a long way. Yet today women’s issues are still hotly debated—abortion, access to birth control, the Violence Against Women Act (which finally passed in the House on Thursday)—with profound implications for the future of women in the United States.
By: Allison Brito, The National Memo, February 28, 2013
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