“That’s Why They’re Called Leaders”: Congressional Republicans Need To Do Their Job
One of the more common Republican criticisms of President Obama, at least in the context of the debt-reduction talks, is that he hasn’t shown enough “leadership.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took to the floor late last week to cry, “Where in the world has the president been for the last month? … He’s the one in charge.”
One of the parts of Obama’s press conference this morning that I especially liked was the president’s pushback against the notion that he’s been a passive observer in this process.
“I’ve got to say, I’m very amused when I start hearing comments about, ‘Well, the president needs to show more leadership on this.’ Let me tell you something. Right after we finished dealing with the government shutdown, averting a government shutdown, I called the leaders here together. I said we’ve got to get this done. I put Vice President Biden in charge of a process — that, by the way, has made real progress — but these guys have met, worked through all of these issues. I met with every single caucus for an hour to an hour and a half each — Republican senators, Democratic senators; Republican House, Democratic House. I’ve met with the leaders multiple times. At a certain point, they need to do their job.
“And so, this thing, which is just not on the level, where we have meetings and discussions, and we’re working through process, and when they decide they’re not happy with the fact that at some point you’ve got to make a choice, they just all step back and say, ‘Well, you know, the president needs to get this done.’ They need to do their job.
“Now is the time to go ahead and make the tough choices. That’s why they’re called leaders…. They’re in one week, they’re out one week. And then they’re saying, ‘Obama has got to step in.’ You need to be here. I’ve been here. I’ve been doing Afghanistan and bin Laden and the Greek crisis. You stay here. Let’s get it done.”
I’m glad the president pressed this, not just because he sounded a bit like Truman slamming the do-nothing Congress, but because many in the media have bought into the notion that lawmakers have dug in on this, and the president hasn’t. That’s nonsense.
Congressional Republicans haven’t been slaving away, trying to strike a credible deal. They’ve been making threats, drawing lines in the sand, and barking orders about what is and is not allowed to be on the negotiating table.
“They need to do their job.” Part of those responsibilities includes working in good faith to find an equitable compromise with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic White House, and then doing what they must do, but what the president cannot do: passing the damn debt-ceiling increase.
Tick tock.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Political Animal, The Washington Monthly, June 29, 2011
The GOP’s CIA Playbook: Destabilize Country To Sweep Back Into Power
Modern Republicans have a simple approach to politics when they are not in the White House: Make America as ungovernable as possible by using almost any means available, from challenging the legitimacy of opponents to spreading lies and disinformation to sabotaging the economy.
Over the past four decades or so, the Republicans have simply not played by the old give-and-take rules of politics. Indeed, if one were to step back and assess this Republican approach, what you would see is something akin to how the CIA has destabilized target countries, especially those that seek to organize themselves in defiance of capitalist orthodoxy.
To stop this spread of “socialism,” nearly anything goes. Take, for example, Chile in the early 1970s when socialist President Salvador Allende won an election and took steps aimed at improving the conditions of the country’s poor.
Under the direction of President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the CIA was dispatched to engage in psychological warfare against Allende’s government and to make the Chilean economy “scream.”
U.S. intelligence agencies secretly sponsored Chilean news outlets, like the influential newspaper El Mercurio, and supported “populist” uprisings of truckers and housewives. On the economic front, the CIA coordinated efforts to starve the Chilean government of funds and to drive unemployment higher.
Worsening joblessness could then be spun by the CIA-financed news outlets as proof that Allende’s policies didn’t work and that the only choice for Chile was to scrap its social programs. When Allende compromised with the Right, that had the additional benefit of causing friction between him and some of his supporters who wanted even more radical change.
As Chile became increasingly ungovernable, the stage was set for the violent overthrow of Allende, the installation of a rightist dictatorship, and the imposition of “free-market” economics that directed more wealth and power to Chile’s rich and their American corporate backers.
Though the Allende case in Chile is perhaps the best known example of this intelligence strategy (because it was investigated by a Senate committee in the mid-1970s), the CIA has employed this approach frequently around the world. Sometimes the target government is removed without violence, although other times a bloody coup d’etat has been part of the mix.
Home to Roost
So, it is perhaps fitting that a comparable approach to politics would eventually come home to roost in the United States, even to the point that some of the propaganda funding comes from outside sources (think of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times and Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.)
Obviously, given the wealth of the American elites, the relative proportion of the propaganda funding is derived more domestically in the United States than it would be in a place like Chile (or some other unfortunate Third World country that has gotten on Washington’s bad side).
But the concept remains the same: Control as much as possible what the population gets to see and hear; create chaos for your opponent’s government, economically and politically; blame if for the mess; and establish in the minds of the voters that their only way out is to submit, that the pain will stop once your side is back in power.
Today’s Republicans have fully embraced this concept of political warfare, whereas the Democrats generally have tried to play by the old rules, acquiescing when Republicans are in office with the goal of “making government work,” even if the Republicans are setting the agenda.
Unlike the Democrats and the Left, the Republicans and the Right have prepared themselves for this battle, almost as if they are following a CIA training manual. They have invested tens of billions of dollars in a propaganda infrastructure that operates 24/7, year-round, to spot and exploit missteps by political enemies.
This vertically integrated media machine allows useful information to move quickly from a right-wing blog to talk radio to Fox News to the Wall Street Journal to conservative magazines and book publishing. Right-wing propagandists are well-trained and well-funded so they can be deployed to all manner of public outlets to hammer home the talking points.
When a Democrat somehow does manage to get into the White House, Republicans in Congress (and even in the Courts) are ready to do their part in the destabilization campaign. Rather than grant traditional “honeymoon” periods of cooperation with the president’s early policies, the battle lines are drawn immediately.
In late 1992, for instance, Bill Clinton complained that his “honeymoon” didn’t even last through the transition, the two-plus months before a new president takes office. He found himself facing especially harsh hazing from the Washington press corps, as the mainstream media – seeking to shed its “liberal” label and goaded by the right-wing media – tried to demonstrate that it would be tougher on a Democrat than any Republican.
The mainstream press hyped minor “scandals” about Clinton’s Whitewater real estate investment and Travel-gate, a flap about some routine firings at the White House travel office. Meanwhile, the Right’s rapidly growing media was spreading false stories implicating Clinton in the death of White House aide Vince Foster and other “mysterious deaths.”
Republicans in Congress did all they could to feed the press hysteria, holding hearings and demanding that special prosecutors be appointed. When the Clinton administration relented, the choice of prosecutors was handed over to right-wing Republican Appeals Court Judge David Sentelle, who consciously picked political enemies of Clinton to oversee zealous investigations.
Finally Winning
The use of scandal-mongering to destabilize the Clinton administration finally peaked in late 1998 and early 1999 when the Republican-controlled House voted impeachment and Clinton had to endure (but survive) a humiliating trial in the Senate.
The Republican strategy, however, continued into Campaign 2000 with Vice President Al Gore facing attacks on his character and integrity. Gore was falsely painted as a delusional braggart, as both right-wing and mainstream media outlets freely misquoted him and subjected him to ridicule (while simultaneously bowing and scraping before Republican candidate George W. Bush).
When Gore managed to win the national popular vote anyway – and would have carried the key state of Florida if all legally cast ballots were counted – the Republicans and the Right rose up in fury demanding that the Florida count be stopped before Bush’s tiny lead completely disappeared. Starting a minor riot in Miami, the Republicans showed how far they would go to claim the White House again.
Five Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court – wanting to ensure that the new president would keep their side in control of the courts and recognizing that their party was prepared to spread disorder if Gore prevailed – stopped the counting of votes and made Bush the “winner.” [For details, see the book, Neck Deep.]
Despite this partisan ruling, Gore and the Democrats stepped back from the political confrontation. The right-wing press cheered and gloated, while the mainstream news media urged the people to accept Bush as “legitimate” for the good of the country.
For most of Bush’s disastrous presidency, this dynamic remained the same. Though barely able to complete a coherent sentence, Bush was treated with great deference, even when he failed to protect the country from the 9/11 attacks and led the nation into an unprovoked war with Iraq. There were no combative investigations of Bush like those that surrounded Clinton.
Even at the end of Bush’s presidency – when his policies of deregulation, tax cuts for the rich and massive budget deficits combined to create the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression – the prevailing message from the Establishment was that it was unfair to lay too much blame on Bush.
Shortly after Barack Obama took office in 2009, a Republican/right-wing talking point was to complain when anyone took note of the mess that Bush had left behind: “There you go again, blaming Bush.”
Getting Obama
Immediately, too, the Republicans and the Right set to work demonizing and destroying Obama’s presidency. Instead of allowing the Democrats to enact legislation aimed at addressing the financial and economic crisis, the Senate Republicans launched filibuster after filibuster.
When Obama and the Democrats did push through emergency legislation, such as the $787 billion stimulus package, they had to water it down to reach the 60-vote super-majority. The Republicans and the Right then quickly laid the blame for high unemployment on the “failed” stimulus.
There also were waves of propaganda pounding Obama’s legitimacy. The Right’s news media pressed bogus accusations that Obama had been born in Kenya and thus was not constitutionally eligible to be president. He was denounced as a socialist, a Muslim, a fascist, an enemy of Israel, and pretty much any other charge that might hit some American hot button.
When Obama welcomed American students back to school in 2009, the Right organized against his simple message – urging young people to work hard – as if it were some form of totalitarian mind control. His attempt to address the growing crisis in American health care was denounced as taking away freedoms and imposing “death panels.”
Soon, billionaires like oil man David Koch and media mogul Murdoch were promoting a “grassroots” rebellion against Obama called the Tea Party. Activists were showing up at presidential speeches with guns and brandishing weapons at rallies near Washington.
The high-decibel disruptions and the “screaming” economy created the impression of political chaos. Largely ignoring the role of the Republicans, the press faulted Obama for failing to live up to his campaign promise to bring greater bipartisanship to Washington.
Hearing the discord framed that way, many average Americans also blamed Obama; many of the President’s supporters grew demoralized; and, as happened with Allende in Chile, some on the Left turned against Obama for not doing more, faster.
By November 2010, the stage was set for a big Republican comeback. The party swept to victory in the House and fell just short in the Senate. But Congress was not the Republicans’ true goal. What they really want is the White House with all its executive powers.
However, following Obama’s success in killing Osama bin Laden on May 2 and with what is widely regarded as a weak Republican presidential field, the Right’s best hope for regaining complete control of the U.S. government in 2012 is to sink the U.S. economy.
Already, the Republican success in limiting the scope of the stimulus package and then labeling it a failure – combined with deep cuts in local, state and federal government spending – have helped push the economy back to the brink where a double-dip recession is now a serious concern.
Despite these worries – and a warning from Moody’s about a possible downgrade on U.S. debt if Congress delays action on raising the debt limit – the Republicans are vowing more brinksmanship over the debt-limit vote. Before acting, they are demanding major reductions in government spending (while refusing to raise taxes on the rich).
A Conundrum
So, Obama and the Democrats face another conundrum. If they slash spending too much, they will further stall the recovery. However, if they refuse to submit to this latest round of Republican blackmail, they risk a debt crisis that could have devastating consequences for the U.S. economy for years – even decades – to come.
Either way, the right-wing media and much of the mainstream press will put the blame on Obama and the Democrats. They will be held accountable for failing to govern.
The Republican propaganda machine will tell the American people that they must throw Obama and the Democrats out of office for stability to return. There will be assurances about how the “magic of the market” will bring back the bright days of prosperity.
Of course, the reality of a new Republican administration, especially with a GOP Congress, would be the return of the old right-wing nostrums: more tax cuts for the rich, less regulation of corporations, more military spending, and more privatization of social programs.
Any budget balancing will come at the expense of labor rights for union employees and shifting the costs for health care onto the backs of the elderly. Yet, all this will be surrounded by intense propaganda explaining the public pain as a hangover from misguided government “social engineering.”
There is, of course, the possibility that the American people will see through today’s Republican CIA-style strategy of “making the economy scream.” Americans might come to recognize the role of the pseudo-populist propagandists on Fox News and talk radio.
Or Republicans might have second thoughts about playing chicken on the debt limit and running the risk of a global depression. Such a gamble could redound against them. And, it’s hard to believe that even their most ardent billionaire-backers would find destruction of their stock portfolios that appealing.
But there can be a momentum to madness. We have seen throughout history that events can get out of hand, that thoroughly propagandized true believers can truly believe. Sometimes, they don’t understand they are simply being manipulated for a lesser goal. Once the chaos starts, it is hard to restore order.
That has been another bloody lesson from the CIA’s operations in countries around the world. These covert actions can have excessive or unintended consequences.
Ousting Allende turned Chile into a fascist dictatorship that sent assassins far and wide, including Washington, D.C. Ousting Mossadegh in Iran led to the tyranny of the Shah and ultimately to an extreme Islamist backlash. Ousting Arbenz in Guatemala led to the butchery of some 200,000 people and the rise of a narco-state. Such examples can go on and on.
However, these CIA-type techniques can be very seductive, both to U.S. presidents looking for a quick fix to some international problem and to a political party trying to gain a decisive edge for winning. These methods can be especially dangerous when the other side doesn’t organize effectively to counter them.
The hard reality in the United States today is that the Republicans and the Right are now fully organized, armed with a potent propaganda machine and possessing an extraordinary political will. They are well-positioned to roll the U.S. economy off the cliff and blame the catastrophe on Obama.
Indeed, that may be their best hope for winning Election 2012.
By: Robert Parry, Consortium News, AlterNet, June 9, 2011
Is Paul Ryan’s Medicare A Voucher System Or Not: Who Is Demagoguing Who?
During the White House meeting this week between President Obama and the Republican leadership, Rep. Paul Ryan took the President to task for demagoguing Ryan’s proposed Medicare changes.
According to the Congressman, the insistence on the part of the President- and his brother and sister Democrats – that the program is a voucher system rather than the ‘premium support’ program Ryan steadfastly claims the idea to be, is grossly misleading Americans, all for the purpose of political gain.
While Ryan’s confrontation with Obama brought cheers from the GOP freshman class who fill the corridors of Congress these days, the question that needs to be asked is, ”Who is demagoguing who?”
In truth, the concepts behind premium support and voucher programs are fairly close, each with a similar objective – the government helping out the beneficiary by paying a portion of a benefit, in this case an insurance premium.
Rep. Ryan likes to point out that his proposed Medicare program is the same as that employed by the Federal Employees Benefits Program and the Medicare Part D benefit that helps seniors pay for their prescription drugs. Both these programs operate using government premium support, whereby the government contributes towards the payment of the premiums charged by the private insurance carrier to the beneficiary, but makes the government’s share of the premium payment directly to the insurance company issuing the policy.
This direct payment is what is often considered the point of distinction between a voucher and premium support. In a voucher program the government gives the financial support directly to the beneficiaries who are then on their own to do what they will with the money, so long as they don’t look to the government to do anything else for them.
Using this standard alone, Rep. Ryan would have a point.
Indeed, his plan proposes seniors going to private insurers for their health care coverage with the government contributing a share of the premium charges and making the payment directly to the insurance company. This is just as the federal government does in the cases of federal employee benefits and Medicare Part D.
However, there is a more important distinction between premium support plans and vouchers.
In the plan that provides heath care benefits for federal employees, on which Ryan relies to make his premium support case, if a government employee’s premium costs go up –and they always do – the government increases the premium support in lockstep with the increased premium.
Not so with RyanCare.
Ryan’s proposal, that would turn Medicare into a private insurance program with the government providing assistance to seniors on their premium payments, limits increases in that support to the cost of living index – an amount wholly insufficient to cover the extra costs as we know that rising costs of health care and premium charges always exceed annual cost of living increases. Thus, if premiums increase (and of course they will) the costs of these increases will be shifted to our senior citizens who, in most instances, would not appear to have the ability to take on these increased costs on their fixed retirement budgets.
This, by anyone’s definition, is a voucher program.
In a recent piece by Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein, Ezra interviewed Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institute and Bob Reischauer of the Urban Institute. Messrs. Aaron and Brookings are the two gentlemen who originally came up with the term “premium support” to describe their idea for a Medicare system where the program is opened up to competition by private insurers but has safeguards built in to protect Medicare beneficiaries from the very cost shifting program the Ryan plan proposes.
While Ryan has largely adopted this model – the two originators make clear that he has done so without the key cost shifting safeguards that they believe are so essential to it working.
According to Aaron-
If one does the arithmetic, income grows a few percentage points faster than prices. Health-care spending grows faster than income by a couple of percentage points. So we’re looking at linking to an index that grows less rapidly than health-care costs by three to four percentage points a year. Piled up over 10 years, and that’s a huge erosion of coverage. It’s vouchers, not premium support.
Clearly, Ryan’s plan bears a far greater resemblance to a voucher program than the premium support programs he looks to as back up for what he is selling.
We can have a debate as to whether we would be better off turning Medicare over to the private markets. While I believe it is an idea fraught with dangerous consequences to our future seniors (those who are not yet 55 years of age), an honest debate to discuss these different ideas cannot hurt.
However, when Ryan and friends continue to play the political game of blaming the President for misleading the public when it is, in fact, Ryan who is attempting to mislead, there will be no honest debate.
It is not the President who is demagoguing on this one – it is Paul Ryan.
By: Rick Ungar, The Policy Page, Forbes, June 5, 2011
Ryan Plan “V” Word: A Voucher By Any Other Name…
When President Obama met with congressional Republicans this week, GOP leaders were particularly incensed about Democrats using the word “voucher” when describing the Republican plan to end Medicare. Paul Ryan and others prefer “premium support,” and consider the Dems’ rhetoric to be “demagoguery.”
There are two main problems with this rhetorical disagreement. The first is that the GOP plan really does rely on vouchers, whether the party cares for the word or not. The second is that plenty of far-right Republicans are inclined to ignore their party’s talking-point instructions.
Here, for example, was Sen. Ron Johnson (R) of Wisconsin, a Tea Party favorite, explaining one of the things he likes most about his party’s Medicare plan.
“What I like about the Paul Ryan plan is it’s trying to bring a little bit of free-market principles back into Medicare.
“If you need subsidized care, we’ll give you vouchers. You figure out how you want to spend. You select what insurance carrier you want to use. It’s a start.”
It’s not just Johnson. Last week, GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain argued, “Nobody’s talking about the fact that the centerpiece of Ryan’s plan is a voucher. Now, a lot of people don’t like to use that term because it has a negative connotation. That is what we need.” Even Fox News has referred to the Republican plan as being built around “vouchers.
If conservative Republicans are using the word, why is it outrageous when Democrats do the same thing? Are Johnson, Cain, and the Republican cable news network all secretly siding with the left?
As for the substance behind the claim, it’s worth noting that this isn’t just about semantics — the GOP claim that their scheme doesn’t include vouchers is just wrong. Paul Krugman explained yesterday:
[T]he ACA is specifically designed to ensure that insurance is affordable, whereas Ryancare just hands out vouchers and washes its hands. Specifically, the ACA subsidy system (pdf) sets a maximum percentage of income that families are expected to pay for insurance, on a sliding scale that rises with income. To the extent that the actual cost of a minimum acceptable policy exceeds that percentage of income, subsidies make up the difference.
Ryancare, by contrast, provides a fixed sum — end of story. And because this fixed sum would not grow with rising health care costs, it’s almost guaranteed to fall far short of the actual cost of insurance.
This is also why Ryancare is NOT premium support; it’s a voucher system. No matter how much they say it isn’t, that’s exactly what it is.
Given this reality, why do Republicans throw such a fit about the use of the “v” word? Because vouchers don’t poll well. For the right, the key is to come up with phrasing, no matter how deceptive, that persuades the public. If GOP leaders throw a big enough tantrum, they’re hoping everyone — Dems, pundits, reporters, even other Republicans — will use the words they like, rather than more accurate words that make the party look bad.
No one should be fooled.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, June 4, 2011
Paul Ryan’s Norquistian-Churchillian Foreign Policy
Last night, Paul Ryan took the highly suggestive step of delivering a foreign policy address and leaking it to the magazine that’s been crusading for him to run for president. There is, however, one ideological snag.
Ryan’s budget is a Grover Norquist fantasy that would so starve the government of revenue that the only way to avoid deep defense cuts would be for the entire non-defense, non-entitlement portion of government to disappear entirely:
Perhaps the single most stunning piece of information that the CBO report reveals is that Ryan’s plan “specifies a path for all other spending” (other than spending on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest payments) to drop “from 12 percent [of GDP] in 2010 to 6 percent in 2022 and 3½ percent by 2050.” These figures are extraordinary. As CBO notes, “spending in this category has exceeded 8 percent of GDP in every year since World War II.”
Defense spending has equaled or exceeded 3 percent of GDP every year since 1940, and the Ryan budget does not envision defense cuts in real terms (although defense could decline a bit as a share of GDP). Assuming defense spending remained level in real terms, most of the rest of the federal government outside of health care, Social Security, and defense would cease to exist.
In reality, Ryan’s budget is unworkable and something would have to give. Many Republicans, and especially the neoconservatives forming the draft-Ryan committee, loath the idea of pressuring the defense budget. Ryan’s forceful endorsement of neoconservative principles, along with his continued opposition to defense spending cuts, reassures his base. In the neoconservative world, mighty declarations of willpower always trump puny arithmetic.
The political angle of Ryan’s foreign policy speech is to pick up the attack line that President Obama denies American exceptionalism. Here’s Ryan:
There are very good people who are uncomfortable with the idea that America is an “exceptional” nation…
Today, some in this country relish the idea of America’s retreat from our role in the world. They say that it’s about time for other nations to take over; that we should turn inward; that we should reduce ourselves to membership on a long list of mediocre has-beens.
This view applies moral relativism on a global scale. Western civilization and its founding moral principles might be good for the West, but who are we to suggest that other systems are any worse? – or so the thinking goes.
Instead of heeding these calls to surrender, we must renew our commitment to the idea that America is the greatest force for human freedom the world has ever seen.
Ryan is referring to, without explicitly saying so, a widespread conservative claim. In April 2009, a reporter asked Obama if he believed in American exceptionalism. Obama began by citing objections to the concept before endorsing it:
I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I’m enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world. If you think about the site of this summit and what it means, I don’t think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrifices of our troops, the enormous amount of resources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe. We should take great pride in that.
And if you think of our current situation, the United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.
An endless parade of conservatives have truncated the quote, ending it after the first sentence, to make it sound like a disavowal of American exceptionalism. In other words, it’s utterly false, and therefore a fitting theme for Ryan’s foreign policy message.
By: Jonathan Chait, The New Republic, June 3, 2011
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