“Loud Kazoos And Angry Threats”: House GOP Clown Car Crashes Again As Fiscal Deal Passes
Observing the Congressional Republicans repeatedly stumble in and out of their caucus clown car, blowing loud kazoos and muttering angry threats, should be painful, embarrassing, and highly instructive to any American voter with the patience to watch. When their latest performance concluded late Tuesday night with a 257 to 187 vote passing the stopgap fiscal deal negotiated by the Senate and the White House, an unavoidable question lingered: What is wrong with those people?
The simple explanation is that the House of Representatives has increasingly been dominated over the past two decades by a coterie of tantrum-prone extremists, who lack the probity and steadiness required for democratic self-government. Their diminished capacity is reflected in the low quality of leadership they have chosen during this long twilight, from Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay to John Boehner and Eric Cantor, even as their politics have grown more and more extreme.
Under the stress of their incoherence, the Republican caucus is unable to escape one humiliating mess after another. The damage they routinely inflict on the country’s economy and future is reaching incalculable levels – and is almost certain to grow worse when they again hold the debt ceiling hostage next month.
By the end of the current episode – which is only an interlude rather than a true resolution – the top Republicans in the House had split, with Boehner casting a rare vote in favor, and House Budget Committee chair and former vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan (R-WI) voting yes, along with 84 fellow Republicans and almost all of the House Democrats, while House Majority Leader and would-be Speaker Eric Cantor (R-VA) voted no. On the floor, House Ways and Means chair Dave Camp (R-MI) tried to claim that this bill is “the largest tax cut in history,” although he might have difficulty explaining why more than 150 Republicans voted against it.
The Republicans’ incompetence in government is inextricably connected with their ideological extremism, as the latest events demonstrate. Hogtied by the craziness of the ultra-right Tea Party faction, the House GOP leadership cannot even cooperate with other Republicans in the Senate – who overwhelmingly voted for the “cliff” deal negotiated with Vice President Joe Biden – let alone conduct serious discussions with the White House.
Having refused to support the leadership’s “Plan B” scheme to raise taxes only on households making $1 million or more annually – despite confident claims by Boehner and Cantor that they had counted the necessary votes — the Republican caucus made both themselves and their leaders look ridiculous. It was a dreadful right-wing plan, but still much too liberal for too many of them. Tacitly acknowledging that he could no longer manage his restless wingnuts, Boehner insisted that the Senate and White House should come up with an emergency measure on their own.
Yet when the Senate leadership, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, offered a bill negotiated with Vice President Joe Biden — just as Boehner had urged — the House Republicans descended into crisis. Their leaders couldn’t endorse the bill, fearing that the GOP caucus crazies would defenestrate them. But they could hardly employ their usual partisan tactics to keep the bill off the House floor, after the Senate had passed it by a vote of 89-8, with only five Republican defections. They might have noticed as well their declining numbers in every public poll, with the latest Republican-leaning Rasmussen survey showing a Democratic lead in the generic congressional contest of 11 points and climbing.
Astonishingly, they nevertheless wasted several hours debating whether to amend the bill with new spending cuts and then send it back to the Senate, where leaders of both parties would have surely and justly rejected such tardy handiwork. Consistent only in their ineptitude, the House Republicans were reportedly unable to agree among themselves on exactly how to change the bill, in any case.
Finally, they folded – or at least their leaders did – and proclaimed that they were girding themselves for the battles to come over the budget and the debt ceiling, which have now been postponed for another month or so.
The deal itself is not a bad one, from the Democratic perspective, raising significant new revenues from the wealthiest taxpayers and excluding any “grand bargain” (or raw deal) to weaken Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. Its specific provisions are still far too generous to the highest-income taxpayers and will not, in the long run, raise enough revenue to sustain decent government, rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, and prepare for the future.
The struggle over what government should do and how to pay for its functions continues, almost immediately. And perhaps soon the president and his party will explain, without hesitation, what this brief tumble over the “cliff” has shown us, and what we may hope they have finally learned: That there is no negotiating partner among the House Republicans, who must be defeated if progress is to be possible.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, January 2, 2013
“What’s A Speaker To Do”: Will The John Boehner-Eric Cantor Rift Blow Up The Fiscal Cliff Deal?
Here is how it was supposed to go –
After failing to get a fiscal cliff deal with the President through his own efforts, Speaker John Boehner turned the entire mess over to the Senate, promising that if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could put together a deal with the White House and Senate Democrats that could nail down a decisive amount of support from both parties, he would put such a bill to a vote before the entire House of Representatives.
With a vote of 89-8 in the Senate, clearly a decisive, non-partisan agreement was achieved meaning the bill produced would get an up or down vote on the floor of the House.
However, in the Speaker’s latest in a long line of political miscalculations, Boehner didn’t figure on Eric Cantor choosing this moment to stab him in the back.
Despite Boehner’s promise, it now appears that the GOP House caucus—led by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor—will force Boehner to break his promise by demanding that any bill put to a full vote of the House of Representatives include amendments to the Senate passed legislation. Should such an amended version pass, the bill would be sent back to the Senate where the amended legislation would have to be adopted by noon on Thursday. After that time, this Congress will have come to an end and all outstanding bills will die.
Not only would it be difficult to reassemble all of the Senators in time to deal with this—as they’ve all scattered to the winds in the belief that their work was done—anyone who knows Majority Leader Harry Reid knows that there is little chance that he would accede to the efforts of the House GOP to scuttle his deal.
How did Boehner not see this coming? Where is all that political acumen one is supposed to have when rising to the level of the Speaker of the House?
This is the same John Boehner who, just days ago, could have closed a deal on “Plan A”—a deal with the President that would have placed the threshold for tax increases at $400,000 (just $50,000 less than what was negotiated by Senate Minority Leader McConnell), delivered some $800 billion in spending cuts and very likely could have gotten into the package the chained CPI that would have lowered Social Security benefits, accomplishing a big entitlement win for Republicans.
Instead of just saying yes, Boehner elected to move forward with his Plan B option, calling for a tax increase on only those who earn in excess of one million dollars a year. The Speaker ended up with a big, fat goose egg when he was unable to gain the support of a majority of House Republicans to bring the measure to a full vote.
As a result of his political fumbling, rather than getting a “Plan A” that would have delivered dramatically more of what the Speaker wanted than what the Senate compromise ultimately provided, Boehner now finds himself fighting Rep. Cantor—ostensibly Boehner’s “number two”—just to be permitted to make good on his promise to bring the Senate version to the floor for an up or down vote—and it appears, at this point, that the Speaker is losing that fight.
So, what is a Speaker to do?
Assuming that the objection to the Senate bill in the GOP caucus is such that there are enough votes to require Boehner to bring the amended version to the floor (a majority of his conference if Boehner is to honor the Hassert Rule requiring that he only take bills to the floor that a “majority of the majority” support) , and knowing that the amended version would likely mean killing the deal and casting the country over the fiscal cliff, Boehner could seek enough of his own party members to join with Democrats in voting against the amended version, effectively stymying his own party’s efforts to pass an amended version of the bill.
Were such a measure to go down to defeat, Boehner could then put the original Senate bill to a vote and likely push it through with Democrats and Republicans voting in favor.
Should Boehner do this, it could very well come at the price of his Speakership which, given his poor display of political savvy these past few weeks, might be an appropriate result.
What is the moral to this story?
The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives is supposed to be able to see the political ramifications of his or her actions and is expected to be able to explain these ramifications to members of his caucus who are less adept at seeing the consequences of their own actions—and we all know who I’m talking about.
Boehner’s failure to see what was coming and his total inability to make sure that the extremist wing of his GOP conference understood what was likely to happen, is an exercise in political malpractice. He should have taken the Plan A deal when he had the chance.
If the Senate bill is rejected by the House Republican caucus, and the cliff deal is allowed to die, you can forget all that leverage the Republicans expect to have when they attempt to hold the nation hostage in February in the next debt ceiling fight in the effort to get significant spending cuts.
In fact, it is highly likely you can forget the Republican party altogether when it comes to the United States Congress as it is difficult to believe that Americans will forget what the GOP put them through, even if the cliff is ultimately resolved in a way that protects most Americans from tax hikes.
If the House GOP screws up this compromise, I certainly wouldn’t want to have to run as a Republican in 2014.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, January 1, 2013
“Leaping Lizards And Other Reptiles”: Senate Showdown Set For Today On Fiscal Cliff
Fiscal talks took a step backwards earlier today when Republicans insisted on including chained CPI in the agreement. A Senate Democratic aide told me this afternoon, “We believed it was mutually understood that chained CPI was off the table for a smaller-scale agreement, and see Republicans’ continued insistence on including it as a major setback.”
Democrats held firm, and soon after, GOP members backed off — at least on this one provision.
Negotiations over a last-ditch agreement to head off large tax increases and sweeping spending cuts in the new year appeared to resume on Sunday afternoon after Republican senators withdrew a demand that any deal must include a new way of calculating inflation that would lower payments to beneficiary programs like Social Security and slow their growth.
Senate Republicans emerged from a closed-door meeting to say they agreed with Democrats that the request — which had temporarily brought talks to a standstill — was not appropriate for a quick deal to avert the tax increases and spending cuts starting Jan. 1.
To hold the line against raising taxes on high-income households while fighting for cuts to Social Security was “not a winning hand,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.
Imagine that. Republicans were, in effect, arguing, “We’ll raise middle class taxes unless Democrats accept Social Security cuts.” It would seem “not a winning hand” is an understatement.
But while the GOP’s shift in posture helped keep the talks from collapsing entirely, the remaining areas of disagreement — estate taxes, the sequester, extending jobless benefits, a debt-ceiling extension — have not been, and may ultimately not be, resolved.
With this in mind, the stage has been set for an interesting Senate showdown tomorrow.
On the one hand, there are the ongoing efforts to reach a compromise. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had nothing more to offer Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), so the Republican has now begun negotiating with Vice President Biden.
If they can work something out — what such an agreement might look like is hard to imagine at this point — the bill would be brought to the Senate sometime after 11 a.m. tomorrow. And if it were to pass, the House would have a half-day, or perhaps a little less, to consider the agreement, bring to the floor, and vote on it.
On the other hand, if no Senate deal emerges, Reid will take President Obama’s advice, bring the White House’s original offer — lower rates on income up to $250,000 and extended unemployment benefits — and dare Senate Republicans to filibuster it.
And what about the House? Leaders in the lower chamber aren’t saying much at this point, in large part because they have no idea what the Senate will do, but the House is already prepared to waive its three-day rule — the measure intended to give members time to read a bill before voting on it — and House Speaker John Boehner has already committed to both sides that he will bring to the floor any bill that passes the Senate.
We’ll know a bit more by morning.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 30, 2012
The One And Only Cause Of “Fiscal Cliff” Economic Crisis: Republicans Fear Of Tea Party Primaries
Often, economic crises are caused by real physical problems – like draught, war, demography, or technological innovation that robs one economy of a competitive advantage over another.
Other times, economic crises result when asset bubbles burst, or financial markets collapse. That was the case of the Great Depression – and more recently the Great Recession.
The economic crisis of the moment – the “fiscal cliff” – does not result from any of these factors. In fact it is not a real “economic crisis” at all, except that it could inflict serious economic hardship on many Americans and could drive the economy back into recession.
The “fiscal cliff” is a politically manufactured crisis. It was original concocted by the Republican Senate Leader, Mitch McConnell as a way to get past the last crisis manufactured by the Republicans – the 2011 standoff over increasing the Federal Debt Ceiling.
Theoretically, “the cliff” – composed of increased taxes and huge, indiscriminant cuts in Federal programs – would be so frightening to policy makers that no one would ever consider allowing the nation to jump.
Now, America is on the brink of diving off the cliff for one and only one reason: many House Republicans are terrified of primary challenges from the Tea Party right.
That’s right, if your tax bill goes up $2,200 a year, or you’re one of the millions who would stop receiving unemployment benefits, the cause of your economic pain is not some a natural disaster, or a major structural flaw in the economy. The cause is Republican fear of being beaten in a primary by people like Sarah Palin, Sharon Angel or Richard Mourdock – funded by far Right Wing oligarchs like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers. It’s that simple.
Most normal Americans will have very little patience with Republicans as they begin to realize that GOP Members of Congress are willing to risk throwing the country back into a recession because they are worried about being beaten in low turn out primaries by people who do a better job than they do appealing to the extreme right fringe of the American electorate – and to the far Right plutocrats that are all too willing to stoke right wing passion and anger.
Nate Silver, of the New York Time’s 538.com, argues in a recent column that one of the reasons for this phenomenon is the increasing polarization of the American electorate. That polarization translates in to fewer truly “swing” Congressional seats and an increasing number where Members are more concerned with primary challenges than they are with losing in a general election. He concludes that at this moment the number of solidly Republican seats is larger the number of solidly Democratic seats.
This, he argues is partially a result of redistricting by Republican legislatures that packed Democrats into a limited number of districts in many states. But he also contends it results from increasing polarization of the electorate in general. And it is due to the fact that solidly Democratic urban areas have very high concentrations of Democrats, where Republican performing areas tend to have relatively lower concentrations of Republicans. These reasons help explain why, even though Democrats got more votes in House races this cycle than Republicans, Republicans still have more seats in the House.
Increased political polarization in the United States is not a result of some accident or act of God. In 2006, political scientists Nolan McCarty, Kevin T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal published a study of political polarization called Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches. Their study found that there is a direct relationship between economic inequality and polarization in American politics.
They measured political polarization in congressional votes over the last century, and found a direct correlation with the percentage of income received by the top 1% of the electorate. It is no accident that the years following the second World War, a period of low political polarization, was also a period that economist Paul Krugman refers to as the “great compression” — with robust economic growth for most Americans and reducing levels of economic inequality. In other words, it turns out that if you want less political polarization, the best medicine is reducing income inequality.
Of course, one of the other major factors feeding the GOP fear of primaries is that, because of the Citizens United decision, far right plutocrats can now inject virtually unlimited amounts of money into primary races. Unlimited independent expenditures have so far been much more successful in unseating incumbent Republican Members of Congress than it has been winning General Elections.
In the end, of course the relatively more diluted presence of Republicans in Republican districts – and the country’s changing demographics — may allow Democrats to win many currently Republican seats. What’s more, Republican near term concern about primary challenges – and the stridency it breeds — may alienate increasing numbers of moderate Republican leading independents. We’ve already seen this effect in the Presidential and Senate races and it would not be surprising that by 2014 many of the primary obsessed Republican incumbents are hoisted on their own petard in the General Election. Just ask Tea Party Members of Congress who were defeated in 2012, like Alan West and Joe Walsh. But in the near term, at least, there is also no question that many occupants of Republican seats appear far more concerned with primary challenges than they are with general elections.
If House Speaker Boehner is to be successful passing any form of compromise to avoid the “fiscal cliff” – either before the end of the year or after – he will need to convince Republican Members of the House that he is doing them a favor by bringing a bill the floor that can pass even with many Republicans voting no. That, of course requires that the deal is good enough to allow many Democrats to vote yes.
Boehner will get political cover for that kind of maneuver if a bill passes out of the Senate with bi-partisan support. But even then, he will certainly weigh whether he risks his otherwise certain re-election as Speaker on January 3rd if he acts before the country goes over the cliff at midnight, December 31.
Of course the many Republicans that will never support any form of tax compromise don’t justify their position by explaining they are more concerned with primaries than they are of general elections. In fact they generally fall back on one of three myths that are themselves utter nonsense.
Myth #1 – You shouldn’t tax the wealthy because they are “job creators”. The plain fact is that no one invests money in any business if they do not think there are customers with money in their pockets to buy the products or services they produce.
Customers with money in their pockets are “job creators” – and the root of our current economic problems can be traced directly to the fact that everyday consumers are receiving a smaller and smaller percentage of the national economic pie and as a result have less ability to to buy the increasing number of products and services our economy can create. In fact, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government started keeping records in 1947. And corporate profits have climbed to their highest levels since the 1960’s.
Over the last two decades, per capita Gross Domestic Product has gone up; productivity per hour of work has gone up; but the median income of ordinary Americans has remained stagnant. That is only possible because all of the growth in our economy has been siphoned off by the top 2% of the population.
And it has meant that everyday people haven’t had the money in their pockets to buy the increased numbers of goods and services that are the consequence of that increased productivity. Stagnation and slow economic growth has been the result.
Henry Ford had this right. For the economy to grow over time, workers need to be paid enough to buy the products they produce.
If you want the economy to grow, the fruits of economic growth must be spread equally throughout the economy – if not consumers won’t have the money to buy and, as a consequence, investors won’t invest.
Higher taxes on the wealthy – including higher estate taxes on fortunes left to the sons and daughters of multi-millionaires – are not “bad” for the economy – just the opposite. They help address the economic inequality that is the core problem in our economy.
Myth #2 – Our biggest problem is the federal deficit. This is just flat wrong. It is the economic equivalent of the medieval view that you should “bleed” patients when they are sick.
We have learned from centuries of economic history, that when an economy is recovering from a recession, the right medicine for sluggish economic demand is more fiscal stimulus – and in the short run that does not mean lower deficits.
More economic stimulus, of the type that the President proposed in the American Jobs Act over a year ago, puts money in people’s pockets who can then spend it on more products and stimulate more investment. Austerity and reducing national debt will yield the same outcome we have recently seen in Europe – another recession. And that is exactly what the deficit hawks are likely to get if America slides of the fiscal cliff and stays there.
Right Wing deficit hawks are fond of warning that if we don’t cut the deficit, the country could turn into Greece – or some other European country that can’t pay it’s bills. They ignore the fact that right now U.S. Treasury Bonds are considered the safest investments in the world, and interest rates are at a record low. They also ignore the fact that, unlike the Europeans, the American Federal Reserve can monetize the federal debt and assure that U.S. bond holders are always paid — unless, of course, the Republicans refuse to pay the debts that we owe, which would be like committing economic Hara-Kiri.
In fact, the quickest way for America to become like Europe is a precipitous reduction of the federal spending. Ask the Brits how that worked out.
Finally, of course, let’s remember that the way to reduce the deficit is not an inscrutable mystery. When Democrat Bill Clinton was President he did it, just a few short years ago. The recipe for success involved two factors: increasing revenue, especially from the wealthy, and growing the economy.
Today we would have to add, the need to control the spiraling increase in health care costs. While ObamaCare will make big steps in that direction, much more will be needed. Shifting costs to seniors and other consumers by cutting Medicare or Medicaid benefits is not controlling health care costs – it is simply shifting them from government to individuals. And what is needed is not more de-regulation of for-profit health care companies. In fact we ultimately need to follow the model of the Canadians – and most of the other industrial nations in the world – and provide a universal Medicare coverage to all Americans. Our system of private health insurance is simply too expensive. Americans, after all, pay 40% more than any other country per capita for health care and have outcomes that rank only 37th in the world.
Myth #3 – Government is always bad and- as Grover Norquist argues – must be shrunk so it can be drowned in a bathtub.
Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that while Republicans talk about small government, they inevitably expand it when they control the White House – mostly in the form of larger military budgets.
Government, as Congressman Barney Frank says, is the name we give to the things we choose to do together–and that includes many of the most important things we do in our economy. From fire and police protection to providing free public education and health care for all, to building public infrastructure, to creating the Internet – government does a better, more efficient, more equitable job in many economic arenas than the private sector.
To hear the Republicans talk you wouldn’t know it, but right now taxes are at their lowest levels since 1958.
Right now in America we need more government – more education, more roads and bridges, more mass transportation, more cancer research, more health care, more nutrition programs, more drug education and treatment – not less. More government shouldn’t mean more regulation of our freedom – it should mean that when we co-operate together we have the ability to achieve more than if everyone is left to sink or swim. Government action is necessary to provide the foundation from which each person can individually excel.
The question of the type of society we want in America was squarely on the ballot in the election last November, and voters overwhelming voted for a society where we have each other’s back – where we’re all in this together, not all in this alone.
Progressives need to make all of these arguments to win the battle for the future. But let’s remember that the unwillingness of most Republicans to compromise to avoid the “fiscal cliff” – or anything else – has less to do with their commitment to their ultra right principles than to the protection of their own political hides.
That being the case, there are only two ways to convince Republicans to compromise. One is to demonstrate that their obsession with primary challenges from the right will ultimately lead them to defeat in General Elections. The second is to defeat them so badly in the next General Election that they no longer have the power to impose the will of an extremist minority on the people of the United States.
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post, December 29, 2012
“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
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