super committee

Most Americans, the 99 percent, feel the pressure of indebtedness. When they owe a friend a buck, their conscience bothers them until they’re square. They pay their bills, working second jobs if necessary. They meet mortgage obligations even when underwater.

That’s why there was a deficit Super Committee. Americans don’t like debt, including bills owed by their government. more »

More »»

I just wanted to say a few quick things about deficits and the "super committee." more »

More »»

Days after the tents were ripped out of Zucotti Park in New York, hundreds of Americans brought the fight for the 99% to the nation’s capital on Thursday with a “Wake-Up Congress” rally calling for the Super Committee to support “Jobs, Not Cuts” to key social programs. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) fittingly called it “#OccupyThe SuperCommittee.”

More »»

Ezra Klein's "Wonkbook" is invaluable for anyone trying to follow the Washington policymaking process. Each day it offers its readers everything from the latest CBO analyses to the newest latest adorable animal videos. Since I'm both an obsessive reader of reports and a watcher of cute animal videos (I personally posted this clip of a baby kitten being hugged by its mother when it was having a nightmare), I'm glad it's around.

In the contentious and confused world of political debate, the data informs us and the videos humanize us. (Although I have to say the Corgi riding a playground swing in this morning's Wonkbook video doesn't look too thrilled with the experience.) But that doesn't mean we'll always react to the same information in the same way.

Take the bipartisan Congressional "supercommittee"[1] tasked with cutting the Federal deficit. This morning's Wonkbook tells us that Republicans on the Committee aren't just resisting a deal. They're also working to undercut the defense spending part of the "triggers" - those automatic cuts that were to take effect if no compromise was reached.

More »»

This holiday season, let's spare a kind thought for the decent people who toil inside Washington's legislative machinery. These good folk must live and work inside the dreamlike bubble that is today's policy and media world. Each day they strain to see reality through the reflected light of the false but colorful narratives projected against the bubble's surface.

Or would it be a better metaphor to say they're prisoners in some cold underground cell? No matter how many polls are conducted, no matter how many economic analyses are performed, no matter how many bitter lessons are taught and re-taught, there are those who hope to deny them even a glimpse of reality.

Instead these good people are forced to stare into the harsh glare of synthetic reality, hour after hour, as if were a naked lightbulb in windowless room. Only a few precious slivers of genuine sunlight penetrate the dank basement of illusion that imprisons them.

Well-intentioned staffers in Washington need good information to do their jobs well. Instead they're being inundated with confusing pseudo-facts and empty fear-mongering. This week's case in point? The Congressional "Super Committee." Did you know that unless they come up with their cuts there will be no Christmas this year? You didn't? Then you haven't been reading the Wall Street Journal.

More »»

Two new reports suggest that the President and Congressional Democrats are about to betray everything Democrats once stood for. Under pressure from Barack Obama, Democrats on the "Super Committee" have sketched out an appalling "compromise" proposal that would almost certainly doom both their 2012 electoral chances and his own.

They'd have it coming. Their draft plan that literally takes crutches away from poor people to protect tax breaks for the wealthy.

Unfortunately, middle class and impoverished Americans would suffer much more than they would. Career politicians can always look forward to comfortable sinecures from the wealthy interests who will benefit from their proposal. But the rest of us would once again be punished for the excesses of the rich, then left to the untender mercies of our new Republican leaders.

That, and not the fate of a President or a party, would be the real tragedy. more »

More »»

The 12-member Super Committee is down to its final two weeks to produce a plan to cut at least $1.2 trillion from the federal budget. more »

More »»

Voting doesn’t work anymore. If it did, Americans would get what they want -- or at least some of it -- from Washington.

But they don’t. more »

More »»

Some Democrats have come under a lot of criticism lately, much of it deserved, for abandoning popular and important programs that were historically associated with their party. But some of the other Democrats -- the ones who are trying to act in the country's best interests -- are genuinely concerned about what will happen to the economy if the Super Committee fails to come up with a plan.

This message is for them -- and anyone else who has the same concern. You need to know that the evidence is clear: A Super Committee failure won't hurt the economy at all.

But its "success" almost certainly would.

Economic Y2K

Every month it seems as if there's another "bipartisan" process designed to impose austerity on the American people. And every month we're told there will be terrible consequences in the world's markets if it doesn't succeed. These predictions are the economic equivalent of "Y2K" -- always apocalyptic, never true, and all too frequently believed.

Democratic officials and staffers are being bombarded by these predictions, delivered by think-tank operatives from their own party who have been steeped in the cult of austerity. It doesn't matter how many times they're refuted by impeccably constructed papers, or by the observations of Nobel Prize winners. And it doesn't matter how many times these predictions are proven wrong.

More »»

This week was a sharp reminder that the ancient ideal of democracy is just as threatened - and to some, just as threatening - as it's ever been. In government offices in Athens, G20 meeting rooms in Cannes, and "Super Committee" chambers in Washington, we learned that there are still places where the will of the people can be overruled by the whims of the powerful.

From the Parthenon to the Potomac, it was the same story: Elites still hold veto power over the democratic process, and they're not afraid to use it.

Democracy: 'Radical,' 'Irrational,' 'Dangerous'

Ironically, this week's ferment began in the country that's usually credited with creating democracy. In many ways the Greek economy couldn't be more different from our own. The government's fiscal problems there are due in large part to widespread corruption and massive tax evasion - not tax breaks, tax evasion - which are very different from our own problems. The government's finances dramatically worse than our own - almost like night and day - and a default could create the next major financial crisis.

More »»