“A Beginning, Not A Conclusion”: Showing Resolve, President Obama Pushes Republicans Toward Surrender
Watching his Republican adversaries in the House of Representatives tiptoe gingerly away from another destructive confrontation over the debt ceiling just before his second inaugural celebration, President Obama must feel a measure of satisfaction. Yet this is a beginning, not a conclusion. The hopes of the nation that re-elected him depend on whether he understands why he is winning – and how he can continue to prevail.
The formula for success was simple enough: He wouldn’t relinquish fundamental positions on taxes and spending. He stopped pretending that the old bipartisanship is currently possible on Capitol Hill. He refused to negotiate under threat from the Republicans. And he called their bluff on the fiscal cliff and the debt ceiling.
Adopting those firm positions, he persevered despite the usual deluge of complaint from commentators, politicians, editorial boards, and other Beltway sages, who predictably roasted him for behaving as if he meant what he said during last year’s campaign. Not surprisingly, however, the popular majority admires him and ignores his critics.
Of course, there is nothing new here: Americans prefer a political leader who displays a touch of grit, even if they don’t fully agree with that leader’s views or actions. Establishing a determined and principled persona is vital; compromise can come later.
Certainly Obama’s power has been enhanced by his election victory — a victory achieved by stiff resistance to the Republican agenda and willingness to fight back. Except for the second debate, when he reverted to old habits of vacillation and diffidence, the president showed steel during the campaign. And since Election Day, he has remained consistently decisive.
The rewards of steadfastness can be seen in the polls. Gallup shows a 7-point climb in his approval rating since last August, from 46 percent then to more than 53 percent last week. Rasmussen shows a climb of roughly 10 points during the same period, with a corresponding decline in disapproval. In the CNN/Time surveys, the president’s margin of approval has risen from 3 points last August to 12 points today. The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 61 percent regard him as a “strong leader,” 58 percent agreed with his view of the debt ceiling – and 67 percent say that congressional Republicans haven’t done enough to compromise with him on important issues. In all these polls and others, the public voices an exceptionally low opinion of Congress — and especially of congressional Republicans.
The Republicans still mutter threats about the budget, but their slow-motion surrender resulted directly from a growing perception of Obama’s resolve. He should continue to stare them down, unblinking, unless and until they abandon the Tea Party tactics of obstruction and blackmail.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, January 19, 2013
“Highlighting GOP Duplicity And Hypocrisy”: How President Obama Should Open The Debt-Ceiling Negotiations
In the last few days, a number of outlets have started giving serious thought to the “platinum coin” option in the debt ceiling fight. In short, thanks to a loophole, the Treasury could mint a $1 trillion platinum coin to temporarily pay down the national debt until the debt-ceiling standoff has passed.
Defenders of this idea, including Bloomberg’s Josh Barro and my Post colleague Greg Sargent, point out that it is not as absurd as threatening default on the nation’s debts to force policy changes. But they also admit that, fundamentally, this is a gimmick; while the White House might be wise to be ready to mint the coin if absolutely necessary, it would look silly publicly threatening to do so. (And it would hand lovers of “pox on both houses” punditry an easy way out of chiding only Republicans.)
But that doesn’t mean the White House is helpless when it comes to framing the debate — far from it. The best idea remains one that Post columnist Matt Miller proposed last month: Raise the debt ceiling “just by the amount it would take to accommodate the debt Republicans voted for in Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget last year — $6 trillion over the next decade.”
As Miller wrote during the “fiscal cliff” standoff, the idea that Republicans actually care about the deficit is “demonstrably, laughably, even shockingly false.” The party showed absolutely no interest in controlling deficits during its six years in control of Congress and the White House. Several GOP moves since then have only confirmed that Republicans are interested only in using the national debt to try and scare people into adopting their unpopular policies.
After all, the failure of John Boehner’s “Plan B” tax proposal showed House Republicans’ determination to vote down debt solutions that didn’t conform to their tax ideology. The GOP has clung to pushing “chained CPI” as its favorite Social Security reform in this round of negotiations, since it cuts benefits without the politically dangerous headlines of “GOP cuts benefits,” but the Congressional Budget Office has found it’s actually one of the least effective policy options for extending Social Security’s solvency. And on Medicare, Republicans’ (and, unfortunately, some Democrats’) idea of raising the eligibility age would only lead to minimal savings, while hurting minorities hardest.
Given that Republicans’ priorities are their policies first, the debt a distant second and the health of our economy an even more distant third, Miller’s idea should be at the center of the White House’s strategy on the debt ceiling. Remember, the GOP caucus has repeatedly backed Ryan’s budgets, the latest of which, to repeat, adds $6 trillion in debt over 10 years. By continuously highlighting Republican duplicity and hypocrisy, the White House can give itself the most room to make the best deal for the American people.
By: James Downie, The Washington Post, January 8, 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
“Willy Nilly Nonsense”: Mitch McConnell Doesn’t Understand What The Debt Ceiling Is
Now that Republicans have pretty much resigned themselves to the idea that there is going to be some kind of tax increase for the wealthy, they’re comforting themselves with the idea that come early next year, they’ll still be able to re-enact the lovely conflict we had over the debt ceiling in 2011 and hold the American economy hostage to their demands. President Obama has quite sensibly said that we ought to just get rid of the debt ceiling itself, since it serves no purpose and allows a party to engage in just this kind of economic blackmail if it’s desperate and cynical enough. So Republicans are pushing back, none more so than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. But in the process, McConnell has revealed that he has no idea how the debt ceiling actually works.
What McConnell has been saying is that if we eliminate the debt ceiling, it will give the president all kinds of new powers, to spend money willy-nilly however he wants to, run up the debt, and generally become a kind of fiscal dictator. Yesterday he said about the prospect of eliminating the debt ceiling, “I don’t think that there’s any sentiment whatsoever for giving the President perpetual authority without congressional involvement.” And last week in a speech on the Senate floor, he said this:
By demanding the power to raise the debt limit whenever he wants by as much as he wants, he showed what he’s really after is assuming unprecedented power to spend taxpayer dollars without any limit. This isn’t about getting a handle on deficits or debt for him. It’s about spending even more than he already is. Why else would he demand the power to raise the debt limit on his own? And by the way, why on earth would we even consider giving a President who’s brought us four years of trillion dollar deficits unchecked authority to borrow – he’s the last person who should have limitless borrowing power.
Wow, that really would be terrible, if the president had “unprecedented power to spend taxpayer dollars without any limit,” with “unchecked authority to borrow.” The only trouble is that eliminating the debt ceiling does nothing of the sort. In case you’ve forgotten your fourth-grade civics, Congress sets the budget, not the president. The president can’t spend a dollar that Congress doesn’t appropriate. He can’t borrow a dollar that Congress hasn’t said he should borrow. When we reach the debt limit and then go past it, it isn’t because of anything the president has done, it’s because of the budget Congress has written. The reason we take on debt is because federal spending, set by Congress, exceeds federal tax revenues, also set by Congress. The only thing the debt ceiling does is require Congress to have what is in effect an additional vote on their own budget. Eliminating the debt ceiling doesn’t give the president one iota more authority or power. What it does, however, is take away the power the Republicans now have to use blackmail to achieve their policy goals.
OK, so I was kidding when I said Mitch McConnell doesn’t know how the debt ceiling works. He knows exactly how it works. But he also knows that most Americans know next to nothing about it, and he knows that reporters will dutifully pass on whatever he says about it, without adding the appropriate disclaimer that would make their reporting about this topic accurate.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, December 12, 2012
“The Forgotten Millions”: Spending More To Create Jobs Now Would Actually Improve Our Long-Run Fiscal Position
Let’s get one thing straight: America is not facing a fiscal crisis. It is, however, still very much experiencing a job crisis.
It’s easy to get confused about the fiscal thing, since everyone’s talking about the “fiscal cliff.” Indeed, one recent poll suggests that a large plurality of the public believes that the budget deficit will go up if we go off that cliff.
In fact, of course, it’s just the opposite: The danger is that the deficit will come down too much, too fast. And the reasons that might happen are purely political; we may be about to slash spending and raise taxes not because markets demand it, but because Republicans have been using blackmail as a bargaining strategy, and the president seems ready to call their bluff.
Moreover, despite years of warnings from the usual suspects about the dangers of deficits and debt, our government can borrow at incredibly low interest rates — interest rates on inflation-protected U.S. bonds are actually negative, so investors are paying our government to make use of their money. And don’t tell me that markets may suddenly turn on us. Remember, the U.S. government can’t run out of cash (it prints the stuff), so the worst that could happen would be a fall in the dollar, which wouldn’t be a terrible thing and might actually help the economy.
Yet there is a whole industry built around the promotion of deficit panic. Lavishly funded corporate groups keep hyping the danger of government debt and the urgency of deficit reduction now now now — except that these same groups are suddenly warning against too much deficit reduction. No wonder the public is confused.
Meanwhile, there is almost no organized pressure to deal with the terrible thing that is actually happening right now — namely, mass unemployment. Yes, we’ve made progress over the past year. But long-term unemployment remains at levels not seen since the Great Depression: as of October, 4.9 million Americans had been unemployed for more than six months, and 3.6 million had been out of work for more than a year.
When you see numbers like those, bear in mind that we’re looking at millions of human tragedies: at individuals and families whose lives are falling apart because they can’t find work, at savings consumed, homes lost and dreams destroyed. And the longer this goes on, the bigger the tragedy.
There are also huge dollars-and-cents costs to our unmet jobs crisis. When willing workers endure forced idleness society as a whole suffers from the waste of their efforts and talents. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that what we are actually producing falls short of what we could and should be producing by around 6 percent of G.D.P., or $900 billion a year.
Worse yet, there are good reasons to believe that high unemployment is undermining our future growth as well, as the long-term unemployed come to be considered unemployable, as investment falters in the face of inadequate sales.
So what can be done? The panic over the fiscal cliff has been revelatory. It shows that even the deficit scolds are closet Keynesians. That is, they believe that right now spending cuts and tax hikes would destroy jobs; it’s impossible to make that claim while denying that temporary spending increases and tax cuts would create jobs. Yes, our still-depressed economy needs more fiscal stimulus.
And, to his credit, President Obama did include a modest amount of stimulus in his initial budget offer; the White House, at least, hasn’t completely forgotten about the unemployed. Unfortunately, almost nobody expects those stimulus plans to be included in whatever deal is eventually reached.
So why aren’t we helping the unemployed? It’s not because we can’t afford it. Given those ultralow borrowing costs, plus the damage unemployment is doing to our economy and hence to the tax base, you can make a pretty good case that spending more to create jobs now would actually improve our long-run fiscal position.
Nor, I think, is it really ideology. Even Republicans, when opposing cuts in defense spending, immediately start talking about how such cuts would destroy jobs — and I’m sorry, but weaponized Keynesianism, the assertion that government spending creates jobs, but only if it goes to the military, doesn’t make sense.
No, in the end it’s hard to avoid concluding that it’s about class. Influential people in Washington aren’t worried about losing their jobs; by and large they don’t even know anyone who’s unemployed. The plight of the unemployed simply doesn’t loom large in their minds — and, of course, the unemployed don’t hire lobbyists or make big campaign contributions.
So the unemployment crisis goes on and on, even though we have both the knowledge and the means to solve it. It’s a vast tragedy — and it’s also an outrage.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, December 6, 2012
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