“Seniors Take Note”: Republicans Effectively Confessed To Having Mislead Conservative Members Who Now Must Be Mollified
I’m not sure House Republicans realized how large an error they made by kidnapping and then releasing the debt limit earlier this year. By admitting their bluff, they effectively confessed to having misled conservative members, and those members needed to be mollified.
That created a new problem: How could they appease conservatives while lacking the power to satisfy any of their substantive demands? So they offered up grandiose symbolism: A raincheck on the brinksmanship (the current fight over the sequester) and a promise to pass a budget that would wipe out the deficit in 10 years if enacted.
But it’s not clear that they counted their votes, or considered the budget math when they made that promise.
“We are saying a 10-year balance — that’s tougher than the last [Paul] Ryan budget,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), a former Budget Committee member told Politico.
“There could be a significant number of Republicans that say, ‘I’m not going there because it would be too dramatic.’ I have said to my constituents, nobody is talking about changing Social Security and Medicare if you’re 55 years or over.’ I’ve been selling it for three or four years that way. So have many other members. Well, to balance in 10, that 55 years is going to move up to 58, 59, 60. It makes us look like we’re going back on what we were telling people when we were trying to sell this.
We haven’t seen Ryan’s latest budget, so we don’t know what precise ratio of funny math and concessions to reality he’ll use to make the numbers work. And until he’s written it he won’t offer many hints.
But we do know a couple things. First, given Republicans’ famous preference for never increasing taxes or cutting defense spending, we know that it’s probably impossible for them to draft a budget that balances in 10 years without eating into entitlement benefits for people older than 55. Second, per above, we know that GOP leaders promised conservatives a budget that balances over 10 years to win their support for increasing the debt limit. So either Ryan will produce a budget that relies on sleight of hand more than his previous budgets did, or he’ll have to admit that the GOP’s pledge to leave retirement programs untouched for people over 55 was neither sincere nor sustainable.
As Simpson’s quote suggests, that’ll make it harder for Republicans to pass a budget at all; and if they do, it’ll come at a potentially enormous cost with their voting base.
By: Brian Beutler, Talking Points Memo, TPM Editor’s Blog, February 15, 2013
“The Audacity Of Freedom”: President Obama Decisively Changes The Direction Of Our Politics
President Obama is a freer man than he has been at any point in his presidency. He is free from the need to save an economy close to collapse, from illusions that Republicans in Congress would work with him readily, from the threat of a rising tea party movement and from the need to win reelection.
This sense of freedom gave his State of the Union address an energy, an ease and a specificity that were lacking in earlier speeches written with an eye toward immediate political needs. It was his most Democratic State of the Union, unapologetic in channeling the love Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson had for placing long lists of initiatives on the nation’s agenda. Obama sees his second term not as a time of consolidation but as an occasion for decisively changing the direction of our politics.
Here was an Obama unafraid to lay out a compelling argument for the urgency of acting on global warming. He was undaunted in challenging the obsession with the federal budget — and in scolding Congress for going from “one manufactured crisis to the next.” By insisting that “we can’t just cut our way to prosperity” and that “deficit reduction alone is not an economic plan,” he brought to mind the great liberal economist John Maynard Keynes. He sought to add another big achievement to near universal health-care coverage, announcing a new goal of making “high-quality preschool available to every single child in America.”
And Obama made clear his determination to shift the center of gravity in the nation’s political conversation away from anti-government conservatism, offering a vision that is the antithesis of the supply-side economics that has dominated conservative thought since the Reagan era.
If supply-siders claim that prosperity depends upon showering financial benefits on wealthy “job creators” at the economy’s commanding heights, Obama argued that economic well-being emanates from the middle and bottom, with help from a government that “works on behalf of the many, and not just the few.”
The “true engine of America’s economic growth,” he said, is a “rising, thriving middle class.” He continued: “It is our unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this country, the idea that if you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead, no matter where you come from, no matter what you look like or who you love.” With that last phrase, he linked gay rights to an older liberalism’s devotion to class solidarity and racial equality.
An Obama no longer worried about reelection was the worst nightmare of conservatives who feared he would veer far to the left if given the chance. In the GOP’s response, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) conjured that liberal bogeyman, declaring that the president’s “solution to virtually every problem we face is for Washington to tax more, borrow more and spend more.”
But Rubio’s rhetoric felt stale, disconnected from the Obama who spoke before him. Obama did speak for liberalism, yes, but it is a tempered liberalism. His preschool proposal, after all, is modeled in part on the success of a program in Oklahoma, one of the nation’s reddest states. Most of the president’s initiatives involve modest new spending and many, including his infrastructure and manufacturing plans, are built on partnerships with private industry.
Even the president’s welcomed call to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour and to index it to inflation was cautious by his own standards. In 2008, Obama had urged a $9.50 minimum wage, and it rightly ought to be set at $10 or above.
Moreover, the president’s words were carefully calibrated to the issue in question. On immigration reform — in deference to cross-party work in which Rubio himself is engaged — Obama kept the rhetorical temperature low, praising “bipartisan groups in both chambers.” But he invoked all of his rhetorical skills on the matter of gun safety, a more complex legislative sell. His gospel-preacher’s variations on the phrase “they deserve a vote” will long echo in the House chamber.
No, the liberated Obama is not some new, leftist tribune. He’s the moderately progressive Obama who started running for president before there was a financial crisis or a tea party. In his 2006 book “The Audacity of Hope,” he proposed to end polarization by organizing a “broad majority of Americans” who would be “re-engaged in the project of national renewal” and would “see their own self-interest as inextricably linked to the interests of others.” On Tuesday night, creating this majority was what he still had in mind.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 13, 2013
“Let’s Compromise, Do It My Way!”: The Republican Fever Has Not Yet Broken
I am grateful for some of the signs emanating from the Right yesterday indicating a willingness to accept the 2012 election results, and/or to stop treating the president of the United States as though he’s some sort of alien usurper of power. But let’s don’t get carried away in suggesting “the fever”–as the president referred to Republican radicalism and obstructionism during the campaign–has indeed broken.
Consider the headlines about Eric Cantor’s effusive expressions of good will and bipartisanship yesterday: “Cantor: Time for Washington to ‘Set Aside” Differences” is how CBS put it. Sounds good. But what, exactly, was Cantor talking about?
House Republicans announced last week their decision to hold a vote to raise the debt ceiling, potentially averting a contentious debate many expected to go down to the wire this February. Cantor said today House Republicans are committed to working on passing a federal budget “so we can begin to see how we’re going to pay off this debt; how we’re going to spend other people’s money, the taxpayers’ money; and begin an earnest discussion about the real issues facing this country.”
“I think times demand as much,” he said. “It’s time that Washington get with it, and that is why I believe, hopefully, the Senate can see clear to doing a budget, putting a spending plan out there for the world to see… So we can begin to unite around the things that bring us together, set aside the differences, and get some results.”
Do you see any change of position here, other than the already-decided House GOP decision to not to stake everything on a debt limit hostage-taking exercise at the end of February? Best way I know to translate what Cantor is saying is: “Let’s see how much agreement we can get on the elements of our agenda,” which are entirely about domestic spending, not defense spending or revenues, and involve direct benefit cuts, not ways to rein in health care costs.
Yes, it’s a good thing that for whatever reason congressional Republicans have decided not to blow up the U.S. economy if they don’t get their way in fiscal negotiations. But for the moment, their way or the highway still seem to be the only options they comprehend.
By; Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 22, 2013
“A Convenient Myth”: Republicans’ Fiscal Restraint Is Mostly In Their Heads
Thanks to an ultraconservative congressional faction, many Americans now view the Republican Party as extremist, petty and irresponsible. You need look no further than the ridiculous, drawn-out drama over the so-called fiscal cliff to see the GOP’s inability to negotiate reality.
But while its brand is badly damaged, the Republican Party has managed to keep alive its mystique as the party of fiscal restraint. Shortly before the election, a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that, by a margin of 51 percent to 43 percent, Americans believed Mitt Romney would do a better job on the deficit than President Obama. That’s in keeping with years’ worth of public opinion that gives Republicans credit for fiscal conservatism.
But it’s flat-out wrong. That’s just a convenient myth that Republicans have sold the taxpayers — a clever bit of marketing that covers a multitude of sins. There is nothing in the GOP’s record over the last two decades showing it to be a party that is sincere about balancing the budget, ferreting out waste or reining in excessive government spending. Indeed, it’s a big lie.
Just look back at the presidency of George W. Bush — eight years of red ink that Republicans would like you to forget. First, Bush pushed through the tax cuts that ruined the balanced budgets Bill Clinton had enacted. Then, he proceeded to prosecute two wars and enact a huge new entitlement: the Medicare prescription drug plan. In response to concerns about spending from then-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, Dick Cheney reportedly said, “You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.”
Here’s what Republicans and their base believe in: cutting spending for programs that benefit the poor, the darker-skinned, the sciences. They want to stop the flow of government funds to the arts. They want to fire bureaucrats who prevent businesses from harming their customers with poisons and bad products.
But the GOP doesn’t really want to end big government, nor does it really care about balancing the budget. If it did, wouldn’t its members be ready to tackle the Pentagon? As we wind down a decade of war, isn’t this an excellent time to cut back on hyper-expensive weaponry? Can’t we stop feeding the military-industrial complex?
Instead, House Republicans have done everything they can think of to protect current rates of military spending. Mitt Romney, for his part, campaigned on a promise to build more warships. Please remember that the Pentagon accounts for about 30 percent of federal spending.
Then there are those pesky retirement programs — Social Security and Medicare. House Republicans supported Paul Ryan’s plan to change Medicare to a voucher program, but they did so knowing that it would never see the light of day. If they were so proud of it, why didn’t Ryan campaign on it when he was Romney’s running mate?
Instead, the Romney-Ryan team denounced Obama for making cuts to Medicare. The party that claims the mantle of fiscal responsibility shamelessly pandered to its aging base by blaming Obama for trying to rein in one of the costliest government programs.
Democrats have their own soul-searching ahead on Social Security and Medicare, which cannot be sustained without tax increases, benefit cuts or a combination of the two. (Let me rush to say here that Social Security is a much easier fix. Just hike the payroll tax for people earning more than $114,000 a year.) Medicare costs, especially, are growing at an alarming rate as baby boomers retire.
Still, Tea Partiers — the core of support for arch-conservatives in Congress — aren’t keen on cutting Medicare, polls show. Many of them seem to believe that cutting spending means only cutting that which goes to other people, not to them. Indeed, political science research shows a sharp racial edge underlying those sentiments, with racially resentful whites likely to favor cuts to programs, such as Head Start, which they associate with the “undeserving” poor.
After winning the gavel as House Speaker again last week, John Boehner said the “American dream is in peril” because of debt and pledged to reduce it. As another budget brawl nears — a debt-ceiling fight will be upon us in a couple of months — you’ll hear Republicans frequently claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility.
There is no reason to believe them.
By: Cynthia Tucker, The National Memo, January 5, 2013
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