“Government Is The Solution”: Healing The Economy For The Common Good
Why don’t Democrats just say it? They really believe in active government and think it does good and valuable things. One of those valuable things is that government creates jobs — yes, really — and also the conditions under which more jobs can be created.
You probably read that and thought: But don’t Democrats and liberals say this all the time? Actually, the answer is no. It’s Republicans and conservatives who usually say that Democrats and liberals believe in government. Progressive politicians often respond by apologizing for their view of government, or qualifying it, or shifting as fast as the speed of light from mumbled support for government to robust affirmations of their faith in the private sector.
This is beginning to change, but not fast enough. And the events of recent weeks suggest that if progressives do not speak out plainly on behalf of government, they will be disadvantaged throughout the election-year debate. Gov. Scott Walker’s victory in the Wisconsin recall election owed to many factors, including his overwhelming financial edge. But he was also helped by the continuing power of the conservative anti-government idea in our discourse. An energetic argument on one side will be defeated only by an energetic argument on the other.
The case for government’s role in our country’s growth and financial success goes back to the very beginning. One of the reasons I wrote my book “Our Divided Political Heart” was to show that, from Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay forward, farsighted American leaders understood that action by the federal government was essential to ensuring the country’s prosperity, developing our economy, promoting the arts and sciences and building large projects: the roads and canals, and later, under Abraham Lincoln, the institutions of higher learning, that bound a growing nation together.
Both Clay and Lincoln battled those who used states’ rights slogans to crimp federal authority and who tried to use the Constitution to handcuff anyone who would use the federal government creatively. Both read the Constitution’s commerce clause as Franklin Roosevelt and progressives who followed him did, as permitting federal action to serve the common good. A belief in government’s constructive capacities is not some recent ultra-liberal invention.
Decades of anti-government rhetoric have made liberals wary of claiming their legacy as supporters of the state’s positive role. That’s why they have had so much trouble making the case for President Obama’s stimulus program passed by Congress in 2009. It ought to be perfectly obvious: When the private sector is no longer investing, the economy will spin downward unless the government takes on the task of investing. And such investments — in transportation and clean energy, refurbished schools and the education of the next generation — can prime future growth.
Yet the drumbeat of propaganda against government has made it impossible for the plain truth about the stimulus to break through. It was thus salutary that Douglas Elmendorf, the widely respected director of the Congressional Budget Office, told a congressional hearing last week that 80 percent of economic experts surveyed by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business agreed that the stimulus got the unemployment rate lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been otherwise. Only 4 percent disagreed. The stimulus, CBO concluded, added as many as 3.3 million jobs during the second quarter of 2010, and it may have kept us from lapsing back into recession.
So when conservatives say, as they regularly do, that “government doesn’t create jobs,” the riposte should be quick and emphatic: “Yes it has, and yes, it does!”
Indeed, our unemployment rate is higher today than it should be because conservatives blocked additional federal spending to prevent layoffs by state and local governments — and because progressives, including Obama, took too long to propose more federal help. Obama’s jobs program would be a step in the right direction, and he’s right to tout it now. But he should have pushed for a bigger stimulus from the beginning. The anti-government disposition has so much power that Democrats and moderate Republicans allowed themselves to be intimidated into keeping it too small.
Let’s turn Ronald Reagan’s declaration on its head: Opposition to government isn’t the solution. Opposition to government was and remains the problem. It is past time that we affirm government’s ability to heal the economy, and its responsibility for doing so.
By: E’ J’ Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, June 10, 2012
“Wave Of Unlimited Contributions”: GOP Right Wing Raises Mega-Cash For Hypocritical Attack Ads
Sixty million dollars sure sounds like a lot of money. That’s how much the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee raised in the month of May. Michele Bachmann figures it’s such a huge number that she can scare conservatives into giving her Congressional re-election campaign money by citing it. “Our victories this week have the Democrats on the run, but $60 million dollars in one month will help them fight back hard and I’m concerned they are preparing to dump their piles of cash on me and other Constitutional conservative candidates,” reads her latest fundraising e-mail.
There’s only one problem, for Bachmann and the Democrats alike. Republicans out-raised them by a comfortable margin. The Romney campaign and Republican National Committee together brought in $76.8 million in May.
Democrats are gamely trying to spin this by arguing that it is cyclical: Obama and the DNC were way ahead of Romney and the RNC because the Republicans had not settled on a candidate. Now that they have, a flood of donations will come in on their side, but in the end it will even out.
That’s true, but Obama has to vastly out-raise Romney if he is to compete on the airwaves this fall. That’s because the wave of unlimited contributions from corporations and eccentric billionaires unleashed by the Supreme Court is going much more to the right than the left. Last week Politico reported that right-wing groups are planning to spend $1 billion on the election. “Just the spending linked to the Koch network is more than the $370 million that John McCain raised for his entire presidential campaign four years ago,” noted Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen. “And the $1 billion total surpasses the $750 million that Barack Obama, one of the most successful fundraisers ever, collected for his 2008 campaign.”
What is that money going to? Some of it, including much of the $400 million being spent by the Koch-related groups, will go to grassroots field operations. But most will go to advertisements.
And what will the advertisements consist of? Intellectually dishonest attacks on Obama’s record. Consider this hit job from Crossroads GPS, one of the two groups run by Karl Rove that together will raise and spend $300 million on the campaign. The commercial, which is being distributed with a $7 million ad buy, features a ticking debt clock and a narrator complaining that Obama is “adding $4 billion in debt each day” and “borrowing from China to pay for his spending.”
Coming from Karl Rove, this is more than a little hypocritical and misleading. Rove, of course, was the political mastermind of the Bush administration. The national debt nearly doubled under Bush–who inherited surpluses and left office running a massive deficit—from $5.7 trillion to $10.6 trillion. That’s because he passed tax cuts and increased spending. Bush’s first Treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, blamed the political operation in the White House—in other words, Rove—for being irresponsible and ideological rather than serious about governance.
While it is technically true that the debt has continued to rise under Obama, this is hardly his fault. According to the Congressional Budget Office, roughly half of current deficits are due to the tax cuts Bush signed and the two wars Bush started. Meanwhile, Obama inherited a recession caused in part by Bush’s reckless mismanagement. During recessions governments run deficits because tax revenues decline even if rates stay the same, and automatic spending on programs such as food stamps and Medicaid increases as more people become eligible. Moreover, anyone with a basic understanding of macroeconomics knows that tax cuts and stimulative spending are often required during a recession to boost demand and help generate economic growth. In light of all this, Rove is more responsible for the current deficit than Obama is. But Rove blames Obama for it anyway.
Crossroads GPS actually proposes to make the deficits worse. As Jonathan Salant points out at Bloomberg News: “For all the talk about the debt, Rove’s group wants to continue all of the Bush tax cuts, as well as eliminate the estate tax on multimillionaires. Crossroads GPS doesn’t offer any specific spending cuts to pay for these policies.”
Republicans hope to convince the public to blame Obama for the debt they created, and to vote for more of the same policies that created it. And with an enormous spending advantage, they may be able to.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, June 7, 2012
“Warped Moral Universe”: Why The GOP Want’s To Raise Taxes On The Poor
Citing the widely-repeated meme on the right that 47 percent of Americans pay no federal income tax (not to be confused with taxes in general), James Kwak has two theories:
The first is that the modern Republican Party is funded by the very rich… The result is that the parties’ platforms now reflect the wishes of their major funders, not their median voters. This is why Republican presidential candidates spent the primary season competing to offer the most generous tax breaks to the rich—while Paul Ryan’s budget slashes Medicare, a program supported by the Tea Party rank and file. For the rich people who call the shots, it’s simply in their interest to lower taxes on the rich and raise them on the poor. End of story…
The other, even-more-disturbing explanation, is that Republicans see the rich as worthy members of society (the “producers”) and the poor as a drain on society (the “takers”). In this warped moral universe, it isn’t enough that someone with a gross income of $10 million takes home $8.1 million while someone with a gross income of $20,000 takes home $19,000.* That’s called “punishing success,” so we should really increase taxes on the poor person so we can “reward success” by letting the rich person take home even more. This is why today’s conservatives have gone beyond the typical libertarian and supply-side arguments for lower taxes on the rich, and the campaign to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich has taken on such self-righteous tones.
The most trafficked post ever on my own site continues to be this Graph of Doom look at the Newt Gingrich’s tax plan back when he was still running. It was stunning then and now how much the Republican primary candidates were tripping over each other to demonstrate how much they would give back to the ultra-rich. (See here for a full comparison of all the candidates.)
But, as Kwak says, they really seem to be invested in this Randian stuff. It should also be a reminder how badly Republicans are likely to govern. There on the ups now not because of any actual argument, but because of 1) the continuing unemployment crisis and 2) their skill at organizing. Their actual policy ideas would be laughable if they didn’t have an actual chance of becoming law.
There’s a halfway plausible argument that Romney would prefer to go big on Keynesian stimulus, like Nixon did, but when it comes to domestic policy, a determined Congress holds the whip hand. Be warned.
By: Ryan Cooper, Washington Monthly Political Animal, June 6, 2012
“The End Of 5-4”: The Consequences Of The 2012 Election For The Supreme Court
Of all the things we talk about during a presidential campaign, the Supreme Court probably has the lowest discussion-to-importance ratio. Appointing justices to the Court is one of the most consequential privileges of the presidency, one that has become more important in the last couple of decades since the Court has become more politicized. But there isn’t a great deal to say about it during the campaign, beyond, “If we lose the election, we’ll lose the Court.” The candidates aren’t going to say much of anything about whom they’d appoint other than a bunch of disingenuous bromides (“I’ll appoint justices who will interpret the law, not make law!”), and we don’t actually know who’s going to retire in the next few years, so in the campaign context there isn’t much to be said .
But if there’s anything that ought to make you afraid of a Mitt Romney presidency, it’s this. First of all, if Romney wins he will be under enormous pressure to make sure that anyone he appoints will be not just conservative, but extremely conservative. Remember what happened when George W. Bush tried to appoint Harriet Miers: the right wing had a category 5 freak-out, not because they thought Miers was going to be a liberal, but because they couldn’t be absolutely, positively sure that she wouldn’t be a down-the-line Republican ideologue forever more. Unlike Romney, Bush had no particular need to prove to them that he was a real conservative, but the pressure was great enough that he eventually withdrew her nomination and nominated Samuel Alito, who was exactly what they wanted.
And that will be a shadow of the pressure exerted on a President Romney. So when he gets his chance to make an appointment, there is just no way he will do anything other than select someone pre-approved by the Republican base. And what kind of chance will he get? Well let’s take a look at the ages of the current Court. I’ve arranged them from oldest to youngest:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 79
Antonin Scalia: 76
Anthony Kennedy: 75
Stephen Breyer: 73
Clarence Thomas: 63
Samuel Alito: 62
John Roberts: 57
Sonia Sotomayor: 57
Elena Kagan: 52
Of course, it isn’t necessarily the case that the oldest justices will be the first to retire. A relatively young justice might become ill, or just get bored, and decide to go. And ideological considerations would probably affect that decision; if you were Ginsburg and Mitt Romney was president, you’d know that retiring would dramatically change the makeup of the Court, in a way you wouldn’t like. But all else being equal, one would expect the older ones to be more likely to step down first. And health considerations might leave a justice with no choice.
So if Mitt Romney were president and one of the four liberal justices stepped down, it would be the end of 5-4 decisions. It would also be the end of all the “What will Anthony Kennedy do?” discussions, since Kennedy won’t matter much anymore. There would be five highly partisan, ideologically ambitious justices who would have the majority on every question that came before them. If Kennedy retired during a Romney presidency, we’d be left with many 5-4 decisions, but they’d all be decided in the conservatives’ favor, and the effect would be the same.
The Court hasn’t had an ideological 180 since George H.W. Bush appointed Clarence Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall in 1991 (though you might count Alito replacing Sandra Day O’Connor ). But there’s a fair chance that we’ll see one such shift in the next four years. If it happens when Romney is president, it could be the most consequential one in decades.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, June 6, 2012
“A Half Hearted Attempt”: Mitt Romney Pretends To Court Hispanic Voters
Before 2008, there was a story I used to tell about how presidential campaigns have been waged over the last few decades. It goes like this: The Democrat comes before the voters and says, “If you examine my ten-point plan, I believe you will agree that my ten-point plan is superior to my opponent’s ten-point plan.” Then the Republican comes before the voters, points to the Democrat, and says, “That guy hates you and everything you stand for.” It may not have applied to every election in our lifetimes (Bill Clinton was pretty good at running for president, you may remember), but it rang true enough that when I said it, liberals tended to chuckle and nod their heads.
That changed in 2008, when Barack Obama ran a campaign in both the primaries and general election that reflected a profound understanding that politics is much more about identity than issues. His opponent understood it too, but the statement of identity that a vote for McCain represented just couldn’t garner a majority of the public at that moment in history.
So what kind of a statement of identity does a vote for Mitt Romney represent? That’s a complex question, and it’s one to which I’ll return in the coming months. But I just wanted to highlight one thing, the way the Romney campaign is making a half-hearted attempt to reach out to Latino voters. According to the 2008 exit polls, Obama beat McCain by 36 points among Latinos, which is right about where polls show the current race between Obama and Romney. So what kind of advice is he getting from people in his party? Here’s an article today in POLITICO:
“If you’re looking at an electoral strategy, my sense is that we have got to be able to talk to women and minorities in ways they identify,” [Eric] Cantor told POLITICO on Monday. “When you’re looking at the independent voter, it is, in very kitchen table terms, … about jobs and the economy. It’s about whether there is going to be health care there, whether they’re going to be able to make it through the month, in terms of their limited income in a very practical, results-oriented way.”
He said Romney – and Republicans broadly – need to talk more about the opportunity that their party can give immigrants and minorities. “It is the message of opportunity, of actually chasing the American dream that appeals to everybody across demographic lines,” Cantor said. “Because it’s about the classic entrepreneurship of the country.”
Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), a Mormon and conservative Hispanic lawmaker, said Romney needs to confront the issue of how he’ll improve the economy head-on.
“What Romney needs to do is start talking about the economy and how it’s affecting all Americans, including Hispanic Americans, African Americans and other ethnic minorities. Under Obama, more people are in poverty, more people are taking food stamps, more people are losing their jobs, more women are unemployed. If you look at every ethnic and gender group, people are suffering more than they did in other times in recent history. What Romney needs to do is go out there and make the case that Republican conservative policies are more fair for individuals, regardless of ethnicity or gender.”
Mitt Romney and his Republican primary opponents just spent a year arguing over which one of them would crack down the hardest on undocumented immigrants, sending a clear message of antagonism to Latino voters everywhere, but now he should just tell them that Republican ideas will help the economy? In other words, the way to counteract those clearly hostile messages that were sent about identity is to just talk about issues. The Romney campaign itself is taking the same approach: http://youtu.be/3VC8McJTdTs
This isn’t going to work. It’s not that the message itself is problematic, but it’s the same message Romney sends to everyone else: elect me because the economy is bad. Saying “the economy is bad for Hispanics” isn’t anything different from saying the economy is bad for everybody. In fairness, I’m not sure what kind of identity message Romney could send at this point that would overcome the last few years of him and his party sending such relentless messages of hostility. But it’s like they’re barely trying. Which leads me to think that this is more about being able to say they’re reaching out to Latino voters than about actually winning Latino votes.
Maybe they should have gone with the animated sombrero-wearing parrot.
By: Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, June 5, 2012
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