“Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back”: Today’s GOP Is Not A Small-Government Party, It’s An Anti-Tax Party
When it comes to striking a bipartisan fiscal deal, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) argued yesterday that the only compromise he’ll consider is one in which Republicans accept no concessions whatsoever. Around the same time, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said the same thing.
Given this, it’s fair to say the prospects for a so-called “Grand Bargain” are finished, right? Almost, but not quite.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Sunday that he believes Republicans would consider adding new tax revenues by closing loopholes if Democrats show a willingness to embrace “true” entitlement reform.
“I think Republicans, if they saw true entitlement reform, would be glad to look at tax reform that generates additional revenues,” Corker said on “Fox News Sunday.” “And that doesn’t mean increasing rates, that means closing loopholes. It also means arranging our tax system so that we have economic growth.”
Corker is clearly part of a very small minority in his party, but it’s worth noting he’s not completely alone — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) made similar remarks shortly before the sequestration deadline about Republicans trading tax-reform revenue for unspecified entitlement “reforms.”
It’s admittedly difficult to read the available tea leaves — for every report that says Republicans will simply never even consider a compromise, there’s another that says the window is not yet closed and a deal is still possible.
But if we’re keeping score, put me down in the “deeply skeptical” category. Putting aside the merits of a “Grand Bargain” — I’m skeptical about the need for such a deal, too — I just don’t see a scenario in which enough congressional Republicans accept concessions to pass an agreement.
In fairness, the optimists have a compelling talking point: Republicans want changes to social-insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security; President Obama is tempting them by putting the “reforms” on the table; and GOP leaders know the only way Democrats would even consider these cuts is if Republicans make concessions on new revenue.
So why is failure probably inevitable anyway? In large part because when weighing the Republican support for entitlement cuts against the Republican opposition to new tax revenue, it’s no contest — today’s GOP is not a small-government party; it’s an anti-tax party. On the list of Republican priorities, there’s a #1 issue, followed by a steep drop-off to every other consideration.
For proof, look no further than Boehner’s and McCarthy’s comments yesterday. Yes, Corker sounded a more constructive note, but I strongly suspect he’s part of an intra-party minority that would be quickly crushed if a deal started to materialize.
But isn’t Obama making them a generous offer intended to garner GOP support? Yes, but let’s also not forget two things. First, the president has already put very conservative measures on the table, but they’re far short of what Republicans generally consider acceptable (the elimination and privatization of entitlement programs). Second, as we’ve seen before, the m.o. for Republicans is to simply pocket Obama’s offers while demanding more, constantly moving the goal posts to new extremes, before the president eventually gives up and the media blames “both sides.”
Indeed, look again at Corker’s specific use of words: he’ll consider revenue if Democrats accept “true” reforms. Who gets to decide what’s “true”? Apparently, Corker and his party do, and chances are, their definition won’t line up well with the Democrats’ definition.
I realize that on a conceptual level, this seems like the sort of agreement that could be reached in an afternoon. Both sides are looking for similar amounts of debt reduction, and have already made significant progress towards their goal. Democrats are open to spending cuts and entitlement changes, and if Republicans met them half-way on tax-reform revenue, they could shake hands and move on to some other issue.
But if I were a betting man, I’d say the smart money is on “never going to happen.” All of the GOP leadership and most of their rank-and-file members not only refuse to consider a compromise, but consider the very idea of meeting the White House half-way to be ridiculous.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, Marh 18, 2013
“Explain That Budget, Please”: Let’s Have Less Sanctimonious Talk About Your Principles And Vision Mr. Ryan
Today’s opening meditation, coinciding with the beginning of that annual speechapaloosa of the Right, CPAC, is from a belligerant remark made by Paul Ryan in an interview with National Review‘s Andrew Stiles, responding to incredulity that he’s back with more or less the same old budget for the third time:
Even some conservatives have questioned the idea of refighting old battles, as opposed to confronting the new reality with new solutions. But Ryan is sticking to his guns. “So just because the election didn’t go our way, that means we’re supposed to change our principles? We’re supposed to just go along to get along? We reject that view,” he tells National Review Online in an interview at his Capitol Hill office. “A budget is supposed to be a display of your vision,” he adds. “Our vision is a world without Obamacare.”
Ryan points out that Obama was not the only one who was returned to power in 2012; House Republicans maintained their majority. “We’re here, and we won our elections based on limited government, economic freedom, and we should not shy away from espousing those views,” he says.
If you’re like me, you’ve heard those words expressed by conservative ideologues so many times you barely register their content anymore: conservative principles, conservative principles, limited government, freedom, bark bark woof woof. Ryan may rely for his reputation in D.C. on a perception that he is some sort of genius-wonk, but the reason “the base” went nuts with joy when Mitt Romney lifted him to the national ticket last year is that right-wing activists believe he’s found a way to reflect their “conservative principles” in a blizzard of numbers.
But if you get out of the trance-state of believing everything Ryan says, and that his fans say about him, do his budgets actually reflect, or disguise, his “principles?”
Let me once again quote a key paragraph of Ryan’s speech last November at the Jack Kemp Foundation dinner wherein he discussed his “vision,” which is a world not only without Obamacare, but without any real public safety net:
Not every problem disappears through the workings of the free market alone. Americans are a compassionate people. And there’s a consensus in this country about our obligations to the most vulnerable. Those obligations are beyond dispute. The real debate is how best we can meet them. It’s whether they are better met by private groups or by government – by voluntary action or by government action.
Think about this approach for a minute. Ryan begins from the premise that the free market will if left alone solve most social and economic problems; you don’t even get into the discussion of a public role until we’re talking about “the most vulnerable.” And once we are there, the conservative side of the argument is to press for “voluntary action” by “private groups”–i.e., public abandonment, perhaps with a tax credit and hearty good wishes, but abandonment all the same.
Is that what you get when you peel back all the numbers and look for Ryan’s “principles?” I guess so, since the numbers themselves are actually pretty opaque. Why won’t Ryan specify the impact his spending assumptions would have on non-defense discretionary spending? Why won’t he address what happens to the Medicare “premium support” payment if all the market magic he’s assuming does not radically reduce health care inflation? If his “vision” is that federal support for and regulation of the program we now call Medicaid is to whither away, why not say so? Why go through the subterfuge of a “block grant” if the idea is that states would eventually liberate the poor from dependence on this program as they compete to cut costs and reduce eligibility?
And why, in the third iteration of his budget, why does Ryan remain unwilling to specify the content of that vast magic asterisk he identifies as “tax reform?”
Sure, all these evasions can be justified on Machiavellian grounds, but I thought we were talking about a bold expression of “conservative principle,” a “vision” here, not some mendacious effort to sneak “principle” through the bedroom window!
But this should come as no surprise after a 2012 campaign in which Ryan outdid Romney in posing as the maximum champion of Medicare because he opposed reductions in provider payments even though he included those same reductions in his own budget, and is doing so again today. What “principles” did that Medagoguery reflect? What “vision” are we supposed to glimpse? A world in which wealthier people over 55–which also happen to be the most pro-Republican group of people in the electorate–are insulated from any budget cuts while mothers with children under the poverty line are asked to make “sacrifices?” Spell it out, Paul Ryan!
It’s not just Ryan, of course. Republican pols generally are reluctant to tell us how they envision the country’s future. This is why when they occasionally let the mask slip and attack the New Deal or “government schools” or the very idea of income taxes or popular election of senators or any limitation on property rights or any concept of reproductive rights or any “entitlement” to public resources among those people–they are greeted with a feral roar of recognition and joy from the activist base for telling it like it is.
That is precisely what Paul Ryan won’t do. So love him or hate it, but let’s have less sanctimonious talk from him and his conservative fans about his “principles” and “vision.” He’s hiding both.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 14, 2013
“Seriously?”: Mitch McConnell’s Vision Of A Compromise
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), not surprisingly, has no use for President Obama’s $4 trillion reduction/economic stimulus plan. Greg Sargent, however, flags the Republican’s vision of what a bipartisan agreement would look like.
In an interview in his Capitol Hill office, Mr. McConnell said if the White House agrees to changes such as higher Medicare premiums for the wealthy, an increase in the Medicare eligibility age and a slowing of cost-of-living increases for programs like Social Security, Republicans would agree to include more tax revenue in the deal, though not from higher tax rates. […]
Mr. McConnell offered his ideas as examples of the structural changes Republicans are looking for. “The nexus for us is: revenue equals genuine entitlement eligibility changes,” Mr. McConnell said.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, there’s a good reason: it’s the blueprint of the plan Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Sunday he could support.
What I hope the political world — policymakers, Sunday show participants, etc. — will consider as we go into the weekend is how truly baffling McConnell’s concept of a “compromise” really is.
Despite an election cycle in which Democrats did very well up and down the ballot, the Senate GOP leader envisions an agreement in which Republicans get the Medicare cuts they want, Republicans get the Social Security cuts they want, and Republicans get the tax rates they want. In exchange, McConnell would give Democrats Mitt Romney’s revenue plan.
Seriously.
Sure, President Obama’s plan isn’t exactly an olive branch, but at least it’s a serious effort to reach the goal Republicans established, and it includes policies the White House would not otherwise seek on their own. McConnell’s approach is based on a model in which Obama was the one who ended up with 206 electoral votes, instead of 332.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said today the talks are at a “stalemate.” I wonder why that is.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 30, 2012
“Setting The Terms”: Foolproof Win-Win Strategy Plan For President Obama
Over the weekend I was mulling both of our crises, the political one (dysfunction, paralysis) and the policy one (looming tax-mageddon, sequestration). Yep, I mull these things on Saturdays. How, I wondered for the 486th time, can Obama get the Republicans to dig their heels out of the mud and get the upper hand politically while also doing some good for the country? Here’s how.
Obama should go to Congress and say: “I offer you the following deal. I will extend all the Bush tax cuts for one year—yes, even for the wealthiest Americans. One year. In exchange, I’d like you to agree to fund the initial, start-up $10 billion for the Kerry-Hutchison infrastructure bank, and the $35 billion I asked of you last September in direct aid for states and localities to rehire laid-off teachers and first responders. Then, after I am reelected, my administration and I will take the first six months of 2013 to write comprehensive tax reform, and Congress will then have six months to pass it, and we’ll have a new tax structure that we’ve both agreed on.
“The business community complains about uncertainty? This is certainty. The Bush rates will stay in place for one more year. We will give corporations our word that the basic corporate rate will be lowered in our package from the current 35 percent. The top marginal rate on the very highest earners will go up—I will continue to insist on that. But not for a year. The rates on middle- and low-income payers will stay the same or go down slightly. We will look at tax expenditures and loopholes and so on and close the ones that aren’t justified. But businesses will now have no reason to doubt what the tax rates will be next January and will have confidence that we’re going to work something out, if you agree to this very reasonable compromise.”
Obama gives some ground, the Republicans give some ground. Nobody gets everything, but everybody gets something. Isn’t that what compromise is? And the “certainty” point is key—it takes away an argument against private-sector investment and job creation that some in the business world have been making, at this moment of record corporate profits.
I’m well aware that liberals may hate this. I’ll get to that. But the politics of this idea seem awfully sound to me. Obama would have the Republicans over a barrel. He will have offered a huge concession on the high-end tax rates, which the media will note. If the Republicans say no, which of course is likely because the infrastructure bank is socialism and no one wants teachers anyway, then it becomes manifestly clear to swing voters that Republicans are the true obstructionists. Voters will get that Obama will have made a major concession here. They’ll see that the GOP fail to respond in kind, and most of them will draw the logical conclusion.
And if the Republicans say yes, then even better: They will have made Obama, at this eleventh hour of his first term, into the bipartisan leader they’ve so successfully prevented him from being. And more important than that, there are the real-world upshots of public investment in infrastructure—a proposal that has the support, by the way, of the left-wing United States Chamber of Commerce—and the rehiring of hundreds of thousands of laid-off workers.
The Republicans will be boxed in. They’ll think up a clever response. They always do. They’ll try to bring in defense spending, perhaps, or insist on two years. They’ll obviously set out immediately on trying to figure out a way to box Obama in and make the Bush rates permanent. They’ll think of nine other things I’m not cynical enough to conjure up. They’ll dismiss it as a gimmick, but I’d wager that Obama can sell the idea that his giving ground on high-income tax rates is serious, not gimmicky. And if Obama stands firm, the lines are simple and clear: “I’m giving up something, and I’m asking you to give up something, for the sake of helping put Americans to work, and of doing the jobs we’re paid to do.”
My idea doesn’t deal directly with budget sequestration, and the huge cuts that are supposed to kick in January 1. Maybe Obama can propose that those be deferred for a while as well. Or maybe he is better off just leaving that to the senators who are allegedly working on it now. It might muddy things up.
Now, liberals. There will be outrage that Obama caved on his one heretofore firm condition on taxes. Under other circumstances, I might be outraged. But these strike me as pretty decent circumstances. Remember, Obama agreed to extend the Bush rates once before, in December 2010, and a fair number of liberals and independent analysts were basically fine with that deal. That time, what did Obama get? His own tax cuts, to the payroll tax, and some unemployment insurance extensions. This time, if the GOP actually agreed, he’d be getting far, far more—Republicans agreeing for the first time in the Obama era to real stimulative spending. Liberals should cheer this outcome—just as they should cheer the idea that, unlike during the December 2010 deal or the debt fiasco of last year, Obama would be looking like the guy who set the terms. He’d look strong, not weak, and he’d be very nicely teed up for reelection.
Which is why the Republicans will say no. Though it’ll be worse for the country, it would be great for Obama politically. Mitt Romney, of course, would dismiss Obama’s offer too, so my ploy would bring the added benefit of making Romney look extreme and unreasonable to centrist voters. Obama could then campaign saying that he tried repeatedly to reason with Republicans and was rebuffed at every turn, even when he offered to lower tax rates for millionaires. Romney and the GOP will campaign saying, “We’ll give you the tax cuts without all this spending.” Obama will then have to make the case that spending—investment—has value. But he has to make that case anyway. In my scenario, he can make it in a context in which he can prove to voters that the other party won’t budge one single inch. He’ll finally look like, to resuscitate a phrase we haven’t heard much of in the last two years, the adult in the room.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, June 12, 2012
“Wealth-Tainted Asides”: Mitt, Michigan And A Couple Of Cadillacs
Mitt Romney just can’t stop wealth allusions from creeping into the conversation.
He did it again on Friday. At the end of a speech about his economic plan before the Detroit Economic Club, when it felt as though he was just winging it, he said: “I love this country. I actually love this state. This feels good being back in Michigan. Um, you know the trees are the right height. The, uh, the streets are just right. I like the fact that most of the cars I see are Detroit-made automobiles. I drive a Mustang and a Chevy pickup truck. Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually.”
Two Cadillacs?
That’s rich, literally.
That’s not what you want to say when you are in Detroit, which, as I pointed out last week, has the highest poverty rate of any big city in America.
That’s not what you want to say in a city where Megan Owens of the Detroit-based advocacy organization Transportation Riders United said on Friday that roughly half of its bus service has been eliminated in the past five or so years.
That’s not what you want to say when discussing a tax-cut plan that, according to models prepared by the Tax Policy Center, would heavily weight the benefits toward the top of the income spectrum.
That’s not what you want to say when, as David Cay Johnston of Reuters pointed out this week, Romney’s plan would:
“Raise taxes on poor families with children at home and those going to college. Romney does this by reducing benefits from the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit and by ending the American Opportunity tax credit for college education.”
That’s probably not the thing to say in Detroit after arguing in a now-famous New York Times Op-Ed article against the auto bailouts, saying: “If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.”
That was probably not the thing to say on the day after Steven Rattner, the lead adviser on the Obama administration’s auto task force in 2009, smacked you down in a New York Times Op-Ed article for suggesting that the government “should have stayed on the sidelines” and allowed the companies to go through “ ‘managed bankruptcies’ financed by private capital.”
As Rattner put it:
“That sounds like a wonderfully sensible approach — except that it’s utter fantasy. In late 2008 and early 2009, when G.M. and Chrysler had exhausted their liquidity, every scrap of private capital had fled to the sidelines. I know this because the administration’s auto task force, for which I was the lead adviser, spoke diligently to all conceivable providers of funds, and not one had the slightest interest in financing those companies on any terms. If Mr. Romney disagrees, he should come forward with specific names of willing investors in place of empty rhetoric. I predict that he won’t be able to, because there aren’t any.”
Ouch. I need to catch my breath after that one.
O.K., carrying on.
The “couple of Cadillacs” comment probably wasn’t the thing to say the day after the Pew Research Center found that most Americans now support the bailouts, with 56 percent saying “the loans the government made to G.M. and Chrysler were mostly good for the economy.”
That probably wasn’t the thing to say in a city where you published an op-ed in The Detroit News on Valentine’s Day continuing to argue against the bailout, saying:
“This was crony capitalism on a grand scale. The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.”
That probably wasn’t the thing to say the week that your campaign felt the need to remove this lovely little passage from The Detroit News’s endorsement of you before sending it to reporters:
“We disagree with Romney on a point vital to Michigan — his opposition to the bailout of the domestic automobile industry. Romney advocated for a more traditional bankruptcy process, while we believe the bridge loans provided by the federal government in the fall of 2008 were absolutely essential to the survival of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler Corp. The issue isn’t a differentiator in the G.O.P. primary, since the entire field opposed the rescue effort.”
The Detroit Free Press’s endorsement this week echoed the complaint about Romney’s opposition on the bailouts, calling him “dead wrong” and saying that in the past year he has been “refashioning himself as something other than what his record suggests. He has made gestures toward economic and social radicalism, and eschewed the common sense of cooperative governing that made him a success in Massachusetts.”
But what is likely more telling about Romney’s ineloquence and continued wealth-tainted asides that draw attention away from his message onto his wallet is this gem from his Friday endorsement by The Arizona Republic:
“There are better orators in American politics. Indeed, the Democrats appear to have one. And certainly there are Republicans who better project the passion for the office they seek. Steady, unflappable Romney would not a ‘passion president’ make.”
So, poor oratory, anemic passion, possessed of “utter fantasy,” and gestures toward radicalism while cruising in a couple of Caddies: That’s probably not the image you want going into a make-or-break primary.
By: Charles Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, February 24, 2012
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