“The Duck That Roared”: Obama Has Demonstrated That The Term “Lame Duck” Has Its Limits
Politics in a democracy is a team sport that leans heavily on individual high performers. This explains the paradoxical closing of President Obama’s most difficult year in office.
He ends 2014 in surprisingly buoyant spirits, having proved that he still has the power to push policy in new directions in foreign affairs and on issues ranging from immigration to climate change.
But his underlying political position is weaker, meaning that Obama and his aides are aware that changing the trajectory of the nation’s debate and the fortunes of his party are among his primary obligations over the next two years. Just as Ronald Reagan’s legacy was secured by the presidential victory of George H. W. Bush in 1988, so does Obama need a Democrat — at the moment, this would seem to be Hillary Clinton — to win in 2016.
In the short run, Obama has demonstrated that the term “lame duck” has its limits. Over the seven weeks since the Democrats’ pummeling in November’s midterm elections, the president has moved forcefully to show he will use all the power he still has.
He used executive action to legalize the situations of up to 5 million undocumented immigrants and in doing so created a political problem for Republicans. They are split on the immigration question and will greatly weaken their ability to appeal to Latino voters in 2016 if they are too aggressive in trying to reverse what Obama has done.
He reached an agreement with China setting ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gases. It was a signal, his senior aides say, that acting on climate change will be a central focus of Obama’s final two years in office.
And last week, he upended 53 years of American policy by opening diplomatic relations with Cuba. Republican opposition was fierce. Yet, as on immigration, Obama’s opponents will have difficulty altering the course he has set unless they win the presidency in 2016. And by then, both initiatives may be too widely accepted to uproot.
In the meantime, Obama continued with negotiations to stop Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, even as some of his older bets were paying off. The Russian economy is reeling from sanctions imposed in response to its invasion of Ukraine (and from low oil prices). An approach seen by its critics as not tough enough is beginning to show its teeth.
The health care website, whose crash was an enormous political and practical problem for Obama and his party in 2013, is working smoothly. The fact that so many Americans are interested in obtaining health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, his aides argue, is a vindication of the effort Obama put in to passing it. And the economy continues to hum with the unemployment rate at its lowest in six years while gas prices are also sharply down. This year is set to produce the largest increase in payrolls since the late 1990s.
Thus did Obama’s good mood at his news conference on Friday defy the political obituaries that proliferated after the election. “My presidency is entering the fourth quarter,” he said brightly. “Interesting things happen in the fourth quarter.”
But in that quarter, Republicans will control both houses of Congress, and Obama will have to work with them just to keep the government running. He will also have to pick his fights. A senior administration official said the president would lay out bottom lines — one imagines especially on health care and financial reform — where he cannot compromise with the GOP and will count on congressional Democrats to uphold potential vetoes.
On the economy, Obama will try to square a circle that flummoxed Democrats in the midterms. His aides say he wants to highlight what’s working in the economy while also making clear that ending wage stagnation will require government to invest in variety of areas, including infrastructure, education and economic development. Democrats can also be expected to press fights on issues related to employee rights, including overtime rules, the minimum wage and family leave.
The irony is that while Republicans can certainly make life more difficult for Obama, the president and his party can also make life more difficult for the newly empowered GOP by casting them as obstructing broadly popular measures.
Obama has shown he can still accomplish a lot on his own. The harder test will be whether he can advance ideas and arguments that strengthen the ability of his allies to sustain his policies beyond the life of his presidency.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 22, 2014
“The Facts Aren’t On Mitch McConnell’s Side”: Sorry, GOP, Tax Cuts Don’t Pay For Themselves
As they prepare to take control of Congress, Republicans are looking to change the rules of the game. To lend budget-busting tax cuts the illusion of fiscal responsibility, conservatives would codify the notion that these cuts pay for themselves into congressional accounting rules.
Democrats should not allow this to happen. But if conservatives insist on fudging the numbers, liberals shouldn’t shy away from making creative budgetary arguments of their own.
The accounting device promoted by the right is known as “dynamic scoring,” and it’s politically significant because of the basic policy positions of the two parties. Conservatives tend to favor tax cuts, which come at the expense of social services. Liberals tend to support increasing social services, which come at the cost of higher taxation.
But conservatives have an end-run around this dynamic. They point to the Laffer curve, an economic theory proposing that we can cut tax rates without sacrificing tax revenue, thus avoiding cuts to social services. This is because tax policy has dynamic effects on the macro-economy — that is, cutting tax rates incentivizes people (and particularly high-earners, who gain the most from tax cuts) to work harder, invest more, and generate more economic growth. As the economic pie grows larger, tax revenue can remain constant even as tax rates fall.
Though logical in theory, this idea hasn’t really been borne out in practice. The Bush administration repeatedly predicted that tax cuts would boost overall revenue, but they assuredly did not. And they still don’t, as Kansans have learned during Gov. Sam Brownback’s “real live experiment” in conservative economics, which has only blown a hole in the state budget.
This is because any potential dynamic effects of tax cuts take a long time to materialize, which makes these future benefits extremely difficult to quantify today. And as Congress’ authoritative accountant, the CBO is in the business of attaching hard numbers to would-be laws.
Understandably, the CBO has resisted the uncertain and speculative math of dynamic scoring. But the underlying argument still infuses and skews our political debate. Republicans feel less constrained when proposing tax cuts, while Democrats struggle to shore up revenue sources for government service proposals.
Ostensible fiscal conservatives like Sens. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and John Kyl (Ariz.) argue that tax cuts need not be paid for at all because they are inherently good for the economy. “[T]here’s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue,” McConnell contends, in spite of overwhelming evidence that these cuts diminished revenue at historic rates.
Yet these same Republican leaders still insist that spending on unemployment benefits be accounted for by cuts or tax increases elsewhere, even though there’s little compelling economic reason to treat tax cuts and social insurance transfers like unemployment benefits differently. Both policies promote economic growth by increasing disposable income and thereby boosting consumption.
Liberals have largely failed to point this out and haven’t effectively countered conservative attacks on these transfer programs. Contrary to what Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) says, there’s no evidence that unemployment benefits reduce work ethic. And other transfer programs can be carefully structured to minimize any potential work disincentives.
Liberals can do more than play defense in these debates. They, too, can conjure creative arguments for how targeted spending programs can “pay for themselves.”
Take liberal proposals for new or expanded transfer programs like refundable tax credits, child allowances, and other income subsidies. These relieve some of the strain on the budgets of low-income and middle-class Americans. More disposable income means more consumption, which generates higher economic growth and higher overall income, producing more tax revenue. By this logic, transfer programs could pay for themselves, too.
In fact, targeted transfers to the poor and middle class would likely give a stronger immediate jolt to the economy than would tax cuts for the wealthy. Compared with the wealthy, the poor spend a much higher share of each additional dollar of disposable income that they receive, providing greater stimulus to the economy. Policy measures that alleviate inequality are thus a boon for economic growth.
This isn’t to say that liberals should sit back and let dynamic effects fund their policy priorities. Any responsible party must provide revenue sources for new tax or spending programs. But drawing on this rhetoric would level the playing field of our skewed politics. The parameters of our current debate — where liberal proposals must be paid for while conservative ones don’t — are stacked against the interests of average Americans in favor of the wealthy.
Conservatives want to muddy the numbers for our lawmaking process. For the sake of a fair debate, liberals can and must show that two can play at that game.
By: Joel Dodge, The Week, December 19, 2014
“The ‘Obama Refuses To Lead’ Crowd Falls Silent”: It’s Striking To Realize What The President Has Done Just Since The Midterms
Kevin Drum pauses today to take stock of the recent actions from President Lame Duck.
So how have things been going for our bored, exhausted, and disengaged president? He’s been acting pretty enthusiastic, energized, and absorbed with his job, I’d say.
It’s funny, in a way, to think about how long ago the midterm elections seem. Seven weeks ago, President Obama was apparently supposed to be a defeated man, crushed by an electoral rebuke, pushed into irrelevancy by an ascendant far-right majority in Congress. It was up to the White House, the Beltway said, to start looking for new ways to make Republicans happy.
There’s a script that lame-duck presidents are supposed to follow, and gosh darn it, Obama would be expected to play by the rules, slipping further and further out of frame.
But given today’s developments, it’s striking to realize what the president has done over the 58 days since the midterms.
Obviously, there’s today’s historic announcement about U.S. policy towards Cuba. There’s also Obama’s breakthrough climate agreement with China, the successful secret mission that freed American prisoners in North Korea, and the sharp reduction of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
And that’s just foreign policy. Closer to home, the president has unveiled a major new immigration policy that will bring new hope to 5 million immigrants; he’s taken the lead on net neutrality; and he’s scored a series of confirmation victories in the closing days of the Senate.
All of this comes against the backdrop of an improving job market, a highly successful ACA open-enrollment period, falling gas prices, a Russian crisis that arguably benefits the United States, and the number of Ebola cases in the United States falling to zero.
The White House’s many critics don’t want to hear this, but if Obama were a Republican, it’s likely we’d be inundated with coverage about how “President Comeback just got his mojo back.”
Indeed, I continue to think about Dana Milbank’s column from two weeks ago today.
…Obama has demonstrated a preference to mull rather than to act. Former Obama Pentagon chief Leon Panetta, in his memoir, wrote that Obama too often “relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader.”
Today’s historic agreement with Cuba belies such criticism – plenty of presidents have talked about a more sensible course on Cuba, but this president actually did something about it. This required some bold leadership and a willingness to take a risk on a contentious issue, and Obama delivered.
To be sure, we can and should argue about the merits of the president’s decisions. Maybe this dramatic foreign policy shift is a major step forward, maybe not. Perhaps Obama’s post-midterm moves will advance the nation’s interests, perhaps not.
But the point is, for all the chatter about a disengaged president who’s reluctant to act, the last seven weeks prove those assumptions wrong. Obama has clearly taken charge, pursuing an ambitious agenda with striking vigor.
Every pundit who carelessly throws around the “why won’t Obama lead more?” cliches clearly needs to rethink the thesis.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 17, 2014
“Another ‘Price’ To Pay”: New Budget Committee Chief; Time For A New Debt-Ceiling Standoff
Almost immediately after the 2014 elections, the conventional wisdom among much of the Beltway media was that power would change Republicans for the better. By taking control of both chambers of Congress, the argument went, GOP lawmakers would have no choice but to become a responsible governing party. They would prove, at long last, that they’re capable of acting like grown-ups.
Just one month later, there’s already ample evidence that those assumptions about Republican maturity were completely wrong.
Republican Tom Price, the incoming House Budget Committee chairman, said his party could demand steep spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling next year, the most provocative comments by a senior GOP member to date on how negotiations could play out.
The Georgia congressman, during an hour-long briefing with reporters Friday, said the expected mid-2015 debate over whether to raise or suspend the debt ceiling offered Republicans an opportunity to make a sizable imprint on government policy.
The far-right Georgian added that he wants to see Republicans bring back the so-called “Boehner rule” – an arbitrary policy that demands a dollar in cuts for every dollar increase in the debt limit – that even Republicans recognized as ridiculous a couple of years ago.
“I prefer to think about it as opportunities and pinch points,” Price said, apparently using “pinch points” as a euphemism for “causing deliberate national harm.”
It’s worth emphasizing that Price isn’t some random, fringe figure, shouting from the sidelines – the Georgia Republican next month will fill Paul Ryan’s shoes as chairman of the House Budget Committee.
In other words, it matters that Price envisions a strategy in which Republicans threaten to hurt Americans on purpose unless Democrats meet the GOP’s demands.
That said, Price would be wise to start lowering expectations – his intention to create a deliberate crisis will almost certainly fail.
The gist of the plan is effectively identical to the scheme hated by House Republicans in 2011. Next year, the Treasury Department will alert Congress to the fact that it’s time to borrow the funds necessary to pay for the things Congress has already bought. As Price sees it, the GOP-led Congress will tell the Obama administration, “We’ll cooperate, but only if you slash public investments. If not, we’ll default on our debts, crash the economy, and destroy the full faith and credit of the United States.”
Why Price or anyone else would want to slash public investments right now – hurting the economy, just as the recovery gains steam – is a bit of a mystery.
Regardless, the problem with this ridiculously dangerous and politically violent scheme is that President Obama has already said he won’t play the GOP’s game. Indeed, earlier this year, Republican leaders suggested they would once again hold the debt ceiling hostage, but the White House called their bluff and refused to pay any ransom.
Soon after, Republicans backed down, and a new precedent was set.
Hostage crises only work when there’s a credible threat. In this case, Democrats have to actually believe that Republicans would do deliberate harm to the country unless Dems paid a ransom. But once Obama realized that GOP leaders had no intention of crashing the economy on purpose, the fear disappeared and the incentive to hold the nation hostage again vanished with it.
On Friday, Tom Price said in effect, “Maybe we can go back to the way things were in 2011?” And the polite response from the Oval Office and sensible adults everywhere will be, simply, “No.”
Let’s not forget that incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recently explained, “There will be no government shutdown or default on the national debt.” And with those simple words, it became quite obvious that attempts to exploit the debt ceiling won’t work because Republicans won’t follow through on their threats to harm the hostage.
Someone probably ought to explain all of this to the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 15, 2014
“Enhanced Interviewing”: Five Questions Chuck Todd Should Ask Dick Cheney On Sunday
This Sunday, Dick Cheney will be interviewed by Chuck Todd on Meet the Press. If the former vice president’s previous appearances on that program and others are any indication, he will likely say things that are untrue, and say them with that quiet yet firm Cheneyesque confidence that makes it clear that anyone who disagrees with him is either a fool or a traitor, if not both.
So I thought it would be worthwhile to offer Todd some suggestions on questions he might ask Cheney, in order to elicit the most revealing answers as we have this vital debate on our recent past.
You have long insisted that techniques like waterboarding, stress positions, and sleep deprivation are not torture. In order to come to that conclusion, you must have a definition of torture that those techniques do not meet. So what is your definition of torture?
This may seem like a matter of semantics, but it is an absolutely central question to this entire debate, and one that neither Cheney nor any of the other Bush administration defenders of the torture program have ever answered. When asked, Cheney has always simply insisted that we didn’t torture, and that the “enhanced” techniques we used aren’t torture Why? Because they aren’t. Unlike most sane Americans, I’ve actually read Cheney’s turgid memoir, “In My Time,” and there too he simply states flatly that “The program was safe, legal, and effective,” but not torture.
There is a common definition of torture — the infliction of extreme physical or mental suffering in order to obtain information or a confession — that is reflected in U.S. law, the UN Convention Against Torture, and in the minds of pretty much everyone around the world. Under no reasonable interpretation of the term would something like stress positions, which are designed to produce excruciating pain and which have been used as a torture technique for centuries, not qualify. But Cheney doesn’t agree. So he really ought to tell us what he thinks does constitute torture.
We’ll have a new president in two years. Would you advise him or her to restart the torture program?
Two days after taking office in 2009, Barack Obama signed an executive order banning the use of cruel and degrading techniques, and declaring that all U.S. personnel, whether in the CIA or any other agency, would have to abide by the interrogation guidelines set out in the Army Field Manual. It also revoked a 2007 order signed by President Bush, which had declared that “members of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces” were outside the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
What I asked yesterday applies here: Since Cheney is an enthusiastic defender of the torture program in place during the Bush years, and since there are still terrorists in the world, one might presume that he believes not only that it was right to torture suspects in the past, but that we should continue to torture suspects in the future. He should have the chance to make clear whether that is in fact what he believes, and what his advice to the next president would be.
If things like waterboarding, stress positions, and sleep deprivation are “safe, legal, and effective,” but are not torture, would you recommend that other countries also use them on prisoners they hold?
Some liberals have noted that Cheney’s implicit position is that these techniques are not torture if we perform them, but would be torture if someone else did. Since this is obviously not something anyone would admit to believing, Cheney should be asked directly if he thinks other countries should also start using these techniques. That would apply to our allies, but it could also apply to less friendly countries like China or Russia. And of course, the natural follow-up is: If an American is captured in some conflict and is subjected to things like waterboarding and stress positions, would Cheney tell that person that not only hadn’t he been tortured, but he had been treated in a safe and legal manner?
During the run-up to the Iraq War and in its early days, you told the American people many things that were false. I know you still believe that all things considered, the war was the right thing to do. But do you think that if you and other members of the Bush administration had argued only from what you actually knew to be true, the public would have supported the war?
The Iraq War’s defenders furiously resist the idea that it was sold on false premises. Some of the things administration representatives said, like “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” were misleading bits of fear-mongering, but were technically hypothetical. However, many of the other things they said were provably false. That’s why, if and when Todd asks such a question, he should have some specifics at hand to keep Cheney from simply asserting that it was all a matter of interpretation and our judgment based on what we thought at the time. What distinguished Cheney’s remarks from those of some of his colleagues was that they were spoken without any qualification or hedging, but were stated as undeniable facts.
For instance, in an August 26, 2002, speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Cheney said: “We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.” That was false. He also said: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” Not only was this not true, the idea that there was “no doubt” about it was also not true — it was a matter of vigorous debate within the intelligence community, a fact of which Cheney was surely aware.
In an appearance a week later on Meet the Press, Cheney said, “we do know, with absolute certainty, that [Saddam Hussein] is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.” Tim Russert then asked: “He does not have a nuclear weapon now?” And Cheney replied, “I can’t say that. I can say that I know for sure that he’s trying to acquire the capability.”
Or there’s his statement that “it’s been pretty well confirmed” that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta traveled to Prague to meet with Iraqi intelligence officials, an utterly bogus story that was nothing like “pretty well confirmed” when Cheney made the claim. I could go on, but it’s worth probing whether Cheney thinks that deceiving the public in the manner they did was necessary to achieve what he sees as a greater good.
Since the end of the recession, the economy has created over 10 million new jobs. Even if we count from the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency when hundreds of thousands of jobs were being shedded every month, he has still overseen the creation of a net of six million jobs. In its eight years in office, the Bush administration created a net of 1.3 million jobs. Why has Barack Obama done better than your administration did on job creation?
This is a non-torture-related bonus question. Perhaps Cheney would respond, as many conservatives would, that Barack Obama deserves no credit for anything good that happens with the American economy. But the follow-up would then be, does that mean George W. Bush had no effect on the economy either? The Bush administration enacted huge tax cuts which, all the administration’s representatives assured the public, would result in an explosion of job growth. That never happened. How would Cheney explain it?
One thing we should be able to agree on is that Todd shouldn’t waste his time with Cheney doing things like handicapping the 2016 presidential race. Cheney doesn’t answer questions very often, so when he does, the interviewer ought to make the most of the opportunity.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect; The Plum Line, The Washington Post, December 11, 2014
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