conservative failure

Game on: Obama Draws the Line

Robert Borosage — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 06:44:59 -0400

Game on. President Obama delivered a fierce speech yesterday, calling out the radical nonsense of the Republican budget, and defining the themes of the choice Americans will face in the Fall. The speech was long, detailed, and unrelenting. I recommend taking the time to read it in full.

This is the Obama that progressives have been calling for. No more temporizing. No more backroom “grand bargain” negotiations with extremists intent on cutting taxes on the rich even if that requires gutting the investments vital to our future. Obama finally calls them out. Exposes their dishonesty. Reveals the zaniness of their ideological zealotry.

Obama makes himself the champion of working people, and what he calls the “defining issue of our time:” restoring the sense of economic security while giving everyone a fair shot, rather than catering to the very few, the 1% who captured a staggering 93% of all income growth in 2010.

He scorns the Republican's “laughable” claim that they are forced to radical cuts by the need to reduce the deficit, given that they call for another $4.6 trillion in new tax cuts, largely for the wealthiest Americans. The Republican plan – passed by the House Republicans and embraced as “marvelous” by Mitt Romney – is, in the president’s words, “really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It is thinly veiled social Darwinism. It is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everybody who is willing to work for it. A place where prosperity doesn’t trickle down from the top but grows outward from the heart of middle class. And by gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that’s built to last. Education and training, research and development, our infrastructure, it is a prescription for decline.” (Emphasis added)

No one who cares about America’s future, no patriot, could stand with a budget that would so weaken America. Progressives of all stripes will rally to stand with the president in this fight.

But

Yes, Martha, there is a but. I have no desire to distract from the force of the speech, but it is worth marking how far the debate has moved to the right.

Obama does what every candidate does: before marking the differences, he seeks to establish his claim on the “center.” So at the beginning of the speech that is a defense of public purpose, he shows that he is no big government, tax and spend liberal.

“Keep in mind, I have never been somebody who believes that government can or should try to solve every problem….

As president, I have eliminated dozens of programs that weren’t working and announced over 500 regulatory reforms that will save businesses and taxpayers billions.

And put annual domestic spending on a path to become the smallest share of the economy since Dwight Eisenhower held this office.

Since before I was born. I know that the true engine of job creation in this country is the private sector not Washington, which is why I’ve cut taxes for small business owners 17 times over the last three years.”

In establishing his credibility as a candidate of the center, he embraces conservative shibboleths: America is over-regulated, spends too much, and taxes too much.

The reality is exactly the reverse. Our economy was savaged because markets have too little regulation. Our health is endangered because of too little capacity to police companies.

Spending at the levels of Ike is a travesty. We are starving vital investments in our future. Our infrastructure is decrepit, costly to our economy and dangerous to our health. We’re not providing even the basics in public education – from pre-K to affordable college. We denigrate teachers rather than paying them adequately. Our investments in new energy are trivial in comparison to the Chinese intent on capturing what will be the markets of the future. Our training and employment programs don’t come close to providing workers what they need to navigate today’s economic currents. This list could go on.

And tax cuts for “small business” are mostly a waste. Corporations pay a decreasing share of the national tax burden. The wealthy, as the president says and Romney illustrates, pay lower rates than their secretaries.

The president goes on to make many of these same arguments in his speech, defending sensible regulation, vital investments and tax hikes on the top. But the fact that he and his pollsters feel the need to pay tribute to the conservative gospel is a marker of how constrained the current debate is.

Why Judges Matter

Robert Borosage — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:46:25 -0500

Republicans have obstructed the confirmation of unprecedented numbers of Obama judicial nominees. Vacancies have grown so bad that even Justice Roberts, the partisan Chief Justice, urged the Senate to act, since the undermanned courts were getting overwhelmed.

But the ruling yesterday by a Federal District Court Judge in Florida, declaring the entire health care reform unconstitutional shows just why Republicans obstruct nominees.

Judge Roger Vinson is a 71 year old, ultra conservative, Reagan appointee, semi retired in "senior status." He would have been very unlikely to hear the case if there weren't a vacancy in the 11th circuit.

Republicans want to turn the constitutional clock back. They want not simply to overturn the Warren Court legacy, particularly on the right to privacy and on equal rights. They want to overturn the jurisprudence of the Roosevelt Court, and go back to the days of the robber barons where even the existence of unions was deemed an unconstitutional restraint of trade.

They can't roll back popular reforms legislatively. Their hope is to capture the courts with Federalist Society trained and vetted ideologues, and use judicial activism to attack basic guarantees. At risk are basic bread and butter concerns that all Americans have: affordable health care, the right to organize, the right to equal pay, the right to clean air. The decisions of the gang of 5 on the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, and in Citizen's United suggest even our democracy is at risk from right-wing judicial extremism. So Republicans hope to run out the clock, block as many Obama nominees as possible, hoping that a Republican takes back the White House in 2012, when they'll push to stack the courts with right-wing zealots.

That is why the fight of nominees is so important. And why Republican obstruction should be confronted -- by the President, by the Senate leadership and by progressive groups no matter what their primary issue or concern. Vinson's lawless decision shows what is at stake.

Top Ten Ways The Right Will Wreck The Recovery

Isaiah J. Poole — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 09:03:35 -0500

Conservatives have a legislative agenda for 2011 that will hurt your ability to get or keep a job, your neighborhood's ability to recover from the recession and this country's ability to regain its footing in the global economy.

To keep conservatives from enacting policies that will kill a nascent economic recovery, progressives will have to organize against these top 10 economy killers.

1. Repeal of health-care reform.

Republicans have placed "repealing Obamacare" at the top of their legislative agenda for 2011. If they succeed, the economy is going to come down with multiple serious illnesses—at least 24, according to a report released this month by Rep. Peter Stark of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Among them: a $143 billion increase in the deficit by losing the savings the reforms created, an increase the number of uninsured by 30 million people, an end to free preventative care services and the loss of the requirement that insurance companies devote the bulk of premium payments to health care costs rather than expensive advertising and executive perks. While a Virginia judge is a conservative hero for blocking health-care reform's requirement that people buy private insurance, conservatives are silent on the fact that if that requirement goes, the reform's mandate that insurance companies cover preexisting conditions is unsustainable.

We'll be back to uncontrolled cost increases in private insurance. But, as the state of our health compared to other leading nations continues to decline, conservatives will at least be able to say that they maintained the United States' global leadership as the nation that spends the most on health care and gets the least.

2. Diminish the federal government's ability to support job-creation.

Conservatives are poised to execute a strikingly broad assault against federal sending, particularly programs that help jump-start and steer the nation's job-creation engine. It includes the expected targets—such proven programs as Community Development Block Grants—as well as some new ones, such as the Small Business Administration (there goes all that Republican fealty to "small business") and even the requirement that the Federal Reserve take employment impact into account when it sets monetary policy.

That latest addition to the target list goes after the Humphrey-Hawkins full employment law, named after Rep. Augustus Hawkins, an early leader of the Congressional Black Caucus in the 1970s, and Sen. Hubert Humphrey. The law was passed in reaction to the Nixon-Ford inflation-fighting era, when the Fed ratcheted up interest rates to cool the economy, without regard to unemployment rates that were then approaching the scandalous levels of 9 percent. The right never liked this bill, but now with the election of people such as Rand Paul in the Senate and cheerleading from The Wall Street Journal editorial page, repeal has moved from right-wing think-tank wish lists to serious legislative agenda item.

Since the right can't complain about inflation—there is none—the enemy is "quantitative easing," the Fed's bid to pour liquidity into the economy in hopes that fuels investment and jobs. Take away quantitative easing and there's literally nothing left in the economic policy playbook to keep the economy from slipping back into recession.

3. Slash federal infrastructure spending.

The departing chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. James Oberstar, offered some rare frank talk earlier this year when he said the country's transportation network "was once the envy of the world" but has now "slipped into decline." And it's not just transportation: The systems that deliver clean water to our taps were given a grade of "D-" in 2009 by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Engaging in a catch-up campaign to restore our infrastructure should be a no-brainer, because of many hundreds of thousands of jobs created by the restoration work as well as the long-term impact on economic growth. But instead, while countries such as China race ahead on infrastructure investment, conservative governors are being heralded as heroes for rejecting high-speed rail money and killing a rail tunnel on the nation's busiest rail corridor leading into New York City. Conservative ideologues are once again proposing to end most federal transportation spending. And even those on the right willing to maintain some federal transportation spending won't consider such simple common-sense moves as an increase in the gasoline tax, which has not increased since 1993.

Other major industrial powers put a premium on moving people and goods through their countries efficiently. Under conservative dominance, the United States increasingly doesn't. Guess how the U.S. will fare in global economic competition if this keeps up.

4. Dismantle Medicare (and give seniors "vouchers")

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who is successfully positioning himself as a thought leader among conservatives, is pushing a plan that would end the Medicare program for seniors and replace it with vouchers that seniors would use toward the cost of private insurance. We don't have to speculate about how well this would work: Just look at Medicare Advantage, says Austin Frakt, assistant professor of health policy at Boston University’s School of Public Health, in an article for Kaiser Health News. "The private Medicare Advantage plans are a (voluntary) voucher system. When covering a beneficiary, an Advantage plan receives a fixed monthly payment from Medicare that depends on the beneficiary's county of residence and health status. That fixed monthly payment is tantamount to a voucher."

And as Frakt and the Obama administration point out, Medicare Advantage costs more than regular Medicare services. Ryan's voucherization of Medicare, however, would control costs not by restraining insurance companies or health-care corporations but by keeping the value of the voucher below the increase in health care costs, thus shifting increasing out-of-pocket costs onto seniors themselves. Conservatives say this means government won't be rationing care to seniors. With vouchers, seniors will forced to ration care on their own.

5. Undo financial reform, and let the predators run.

Rep. Spencer Baucus, the Republican who will take over the House Financial Services Committee, has said that the primary function of government financial regulation is not to protect the consumer but to "serve the banks." On that score, conservatives are already off to a good start.

First, Republicans killed the omnibus spending bill that would have funded the operations of government for the next year. Now they’ve made it clear that they won’t approve any bill that provides funding for the financial reforms in this year’s bill.

What will happen if they get their way? The agency that will make sure credit ratings aren’t rigged by the banks, the way they were in the run-up to the economic collapse: Gone. The budgets that will allow the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission monitor reckless and/or illegal bank activity: Gone. Even the office that would protect investors – that is, people who buy stocks – would be eliminated. And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and ts aggressive chief, Elizabeth Warren, is the next target in their sights.

That's the formula: put fewer cops on the beat, make sure the cops are docile, and harass the ones who aren't. Cut the garlic budget just as the vampires prepare for their midnight run. That makes it safe for the Wall Street casino to reopen as if nothing ever happened—and put us at greater risk for another financial collapse.

6. Support Big Oil and kill green jobs.

Shortly after Congress adjourned The White House moved forward with plans to have the Environmental Protection Agency enforce tougher limits on greenhouse gases from power plants. The right has mounted a full-court assault against this since President Obama took office, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose state's utilities are responsible for 11 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Energy Information Administration, has been leading an all-out legal war with the EPA. (Contrast that to California, which this month launched its own version of a cap-and-trade program.)

The right's mantra is that the EPA regulations will increase utility bills and kill jobs. The truth is that the regulations will create new jobs in clean-energy industries and, most importantly, save the planet. Just as Rep. Spencer Bachus thinks government should "serve the banks," conservatives would seem to be fine with EPA serving the polluters.

7. Don't just cut government waste; cripple government.

From the beginning of the Reagan Revolution the plan was to create deficits to cripple government, not to cut “waste.” Reagan said the idea was to “cut the government’s allowance.” George W. Bush said turning Clinton’s surpluses into huge deficits was "incredibly positive news" because it would put government in "a fiscal straitjacket."

Now, House Republicans want to cut government spending to 2008 level. They'd exclude defense and homeland security spending, so what that really means is a 20 percent cut in everything else, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. That would lead to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, with recession-worsening effects in every state. And how is government supposed to make a program work such as the stepped-up food safety enforcement approved this month by Congress if it can't hire more staff?

One of the right's proposed tools is the creation of an "anti-appropriations committee" that would, according to the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, "focus only on reducing spending and balance the spending interests of the other panels tasked with appropriating and authorizing new outlays." It's unnecessary; appropriations committees operate under spending ceilings, and these committees are intimately familiar with the programs they are funding. But having a committee of rock throwers at a construction site makes for entertaining, as well as destructive, theater.

8. Amp up the insecurity in Social Security.

Conservatives have wanted to kill the New Deal for a long time. Now they have a historic window of opportunity. Unless the President and other Democrats stand up for Social Security, it’s going to be needlessly gutted in the name of “deficit reduction”—even though it doesn’t contribute to the deficit. Why? They want Social Security’s $2.6 trillion trust fund, so they can use it to pay for two wars and tax breaks for the rich. They’ve managed to capture most of the media with phony scare tactics about Social Security and insolvency. They’ve roped in quite a few Democrats, too.

Next up: Once the program is gutted, they’ll pretend to “make up the difference” by bringing back George W. Bush’s failed “privatization” scheme. The end result will be cutbacks in benefits for the lower- and middle-income elderly, tax breaks for the rich, and more customers for the Wall Street gambling casino.

9. Starve public education.

Here is an easy way to keep the rich rich and the less well-off part of the permanent underclass: continue the decades-long conservative-led assault on public education. In just the past month, one report says U.S. children lag behind those in China, Finland, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Switzerland and New Zealand in educational achievement, and another says one in four youths fail the Army entrance exam.

Our inability to provide a quality education to all of our children is a risk to our national security as well as our economic well-being and competitiveness. Yet many conservatives in Congress want to respond to this national crisis by abolishing the national agency charged with addressing the problem, the Department of Education. That's on top of the continuing push for school privatization and private-school vouchers, the scapegoating of teachers and their unions, and the shifting of funding burdens to states that simply can't handle the load.

10. Don't ask the rich to help reduce the deficit; ask low-income Americans instead.

Cutting taxes on the rich and increasing military spending caused the deficit. But the solutions offered by the conservative elites all center around cutting the things government does for the people.

Without so much as a blink, conservatives succeeded in forcing an extension of tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans that would add $36 billion to the deficit in 2011 alone.

Next, Republicans want to make their "cutgo" scheme the law of Congress, in which new spending authorized by Congress must be offset by cuts elsewhere but cannot be offset by tax increases or fees on anyone. But new tax cuts would not have to be offset by spending reductions. That should finish off any molecule of credibility they had left on their feigned concern about the deficit.

If the wealthy aren't being asked to sacrifice something, guess who is. Social Security is the lifeline for America's elderly, but even though it adds nothing to the deficit it is at the forefront of proposals for cutting it. Medical programs for the poor, the Making Work Pay program, and so many other things the government does for our people are the first things suggested by the well-to-do who dominate the inside-the-Beltway commissions and commentariat.

Banana Republic? New York City More Unequal Than Chile

Robert Borosage — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 06:13:49 -0500

From naked capitalism.com:

"Given its degree of inequality, if New York City were a nation, it would rank 15th worst among 134 countries with respect to income concentration, in between Chile and Honduras. Wall Street, with its stratospheric profits and bonuses, sits within 15 miles of the Bronx—the nation’s poorest county."

The top 1% is capturing nearly 45% of the city’s income – up dramatically from less than 15% in 1980 when the conservative era of misrule began. And, of course, the wealthiest Manhattanites manage to pay a lower rate of taxes than the increasingly endangered middle income earners.

The full article below.

Banana Republic Watch: New York City More Unequal Than Chile

A newly released report, “Grow Together or Pull Further Apart? Income Concentration Trends in New York,” by the Fiscal Policy Institute (hat tip reader Thomas R) gives a picture of how New York City is now at Latin American levels of income disparity.

New York’s top one percent has an income share that one and a half times as high as the 23.5 percent historically-high national level….The city used to have a broad middle class, rooted in a vast manufacturing sector and mid-level positions in corporate headquarters as well as in education, government, construction and other good-paying blue-collar jobs. But manufacturing is about one tenth the size it used to be, and the city’s labor market has seen the disappearance of thousands of middle-paying jobs and the growth in their place of moderate- to low-paying jobs, mainly in services.

Given its degree of inequality, if New York City were a nation, it would rank 15th worst among 134 countries with respect to income concentration, in between Chile and Honduras. Wall Street, with its stratospheric profits and bonuses, sits within 15 miles of the Bronx—the nation’s poorest county.
And if you think that the rising tide of burgeoning financial services profits has improved the living standards of those at the bottom, think again:

The concentration of income growth at the top does not necessarily mean that those below the top are not experiencing real income gains and generally rising living standards… However, over the period from 1980 to 2007 in New York, when total inflation-adjusted income in the state grew an average of 2.1 percent a year after adjusting for population increase, incomes for those in the bottom half of the income spectrum generally declined while those in the middle income range rose but at only a fraction of the pace of total income growth.

In addition, taxes do little to redistribute income:
Because the city has a mildly progressive personal income tax, high-income residents pay a lot in New York City taxes. However, when local sales and property taxes are factored in, it does not appear that high income residents pay more than their proportionate share in local taxes. In fact, as discussed later, they pay a smaller share of income in local taxes than residents in the middle of the income structure.

The reason rising income disparity matters, as we have discussed before, is that highly unequal societies produce poor outcomes on virtually all social indicators – mental health, crime, teen pregnancy, lifespan – to such a degree that it has a negative impact even on those at the top of the foodchain. But no one in the kleptocracy wants to hear that message.

Listening To Conservatives Is Making Us Poor And Poorer

Dave Johnson — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 15:17:59 -0400

Who counts and who doesn't count? We hear so much about the "middle class" but rarely about the plight of the poor. And of course we hear again and again that the wealthy are "successful" and the "job-creators" who shouldn't be "punished" by being asked to give something back to the country that enabled their wealth. Conservative "market" thinking and Ayn Randian "the poor are losers" dehumanizing ideology* has become pervasive and dominant as we transition from one-person-one-vote democracy to one-dollar-one-vote plutocracy. In this plutocratic environment the national discussion of tax cuts for the wealthy saturates the corporate media, while the 44 million of us in poverty now are barely mentioned and count for little.

Yesterday the Census Bureau reported (NYT) that another four million people fell below the poverty line just last year, with trends showing it will probably grow. 44 million Americans -- one in seven of us -- are now trying to make it on $10,830; $22,050 for a family of four.

“We’re seeing more younger people coming in that not only don’t have any food, but nowhere to stay,” said Marla Goodwin, director of Jeremiah’s Food Pantry in East St. Louis, Ill. The pantry was open one day a month when it opened in 2008 but expanded this year to five days a month.

This chart (from the Census report) shows the trends.

On top of this, the level of "severe poverty" has hit an all-time record level. At Angry Bear, All Time Record Level of Severe Poverty,

Coverage focused on the headline poverty rate which is horrible enough. Much worse, 6.3% of people in the USA suffered severe poverty, that is lived in households with income less than half the poverty line. This is the highest severe poverty rate on record. That means that over 19 million people in the USA live in households with income less than half the poverty line (severe poverty implies income significantly less than $ 11,000 yr for a family of four) [emphasis added]

The Lifesaver Net Is Under Attack: Unemployment Benefits, Food Stamps, Welfare, Social Security

Even as poverty rises (because of conservative policies) the conservatives are attacking and weakening the safety net that keeps this disaster from getting even worse. They denigrate the idea of our government assisting citizens -- taking care of and watching out for each other -- as "spending" and "handouts." They say that unemployment and poverty assistance "undermine the work ethic." They say that helping the poor is "reaching into other people's pockets." Click through to read an example of what the Koch/Scaife/Walton (WalMart)/Tobacco/Oil/Corpation-funded Heartland Institute on "handouts". Or click through to read a sample of what the Koch/ Scaife/Tobacco/Corpation-funded Freedomworks (one of the astroturf organizations behind the Tea Party) on "handouts." Here is the Koch-founded/tobacco/oil/corporate-funded Cato Institute saying, about helping the people of New Orleans after Katrina, that government helping people is"coercion" (taxes are theft) and "it is important to remember that you can't be compassionate with other people's money."

This is dehumanizing and degrading and listening to it at all dehumanizes and degrades all of us. And the result is right in front of our faces: poverty grows, poverty becomes more extreme, wealth concentrates at the top, society becomes more cruel, the country falls further and further backwards. We have lived through a decade of conservative policies, and from the NYTimes story on the increasing poverty rate,

“This is the first time in memory that an entire decade has produced essentially no economic growth for the typical American household,” Mr. Katz said.

The Money Is Going To The Top

The Census report notes that the highest "quintile" or fifth of income-earners received 50.3 percent of all income last year, the bottom fifth receive only 3.4%..

In 2009, the share of aggregate income received by the bottom quintile was 3.4 percent; the second quintile, 8.6 percent; the third, 14.6 percent; the fourth, 23.2 percent; and the highest quintile, 50.3 percent.

Unemployment Benefits Running Out

Conservatives in the Congress are blocking emergency extensions of unemployment benefits, jobs programs and other critical parts of the safety net that helps people in emergencies such as the conservative-caused financial collapse. So another indicator of human suffering is about to get even worse. Unemployment for the "99ers" is running out, many of them older, with no jobs in sight.

Only unemployment benefits are keeping another 3.3 million from the same fate. (Chart from Center for Budget and Policy Priorities)

Health Insurance, Too

According to the Census Bureau report, the number of United States residents without health insurance climbed to 51 million in 2009, from 46 million in 2008. Additionally in 2010 millions of unemployed workers who were covered by the stimulus' COBRA subsidies are losing their coverage. There is no relief in site for years.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Expiring

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund from the "stimulus" expires at the end of this month. Steve Benen at Washington Monthly writes that the TANF program, "subsidizes jobs with private companies, nonprofits, and government agencies and has single handedly put more than 240,000 unemployed people back to work."

So of course it needs to be renewed. But conservatives are blocking this. Benen writes,

The irony is, when those Americans lose their jobs, Republicans will say it was the failure of the stimulus. Their pathetic rhetoric will have it backwards -- the stimulus created those jobs, and the GOP's filibuster of an effective jobs program will throw these men and women out of work. In a sane political world, this would be a pretty big scandal...

Food Stamps Cut

Last month we saw this tragedy happen, Food Stamps Slashed to Pay for Teacher Jobs Bill. Conservatives forced cuts to food stamps before they would allow a bill providing $26 billion to help states cover Medicaid expenses and teacher salaries to pass.

Social Security

It has been covered here extensively that the President's "Deficit Commission" is talking about cuts to Social Security, which by law cannot borrow so it cannot contribute to the deficit, instead of looking at the tax cuts for the rich and military spending increases which caused the deficits. At the very time older Americans have had their retirement savings wiped out and many cannot find jobs and are taking early retirement, the commission is talking about reducing instead of increasing this vital program!

JOBS JOBS JOBS JOBS

This is really all about jobs and wages. The best antidote to poverty is more employment and better wages. Just yesterday 300 economists issued a statement saying so. But conservatives continue to block all efforts to provide jobs and lift wages. Isaiah Pool wrote here yesterday, in Latest Senate Jobs Bill Tests The Limits Of Right-Wing Obstruction,

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus has introduced a bill today that is a frankly unadventurous mix of jobs initiatives and tax incentives, with a healthy dose of loophole-closings to make sure that it can be presented as revenue-neutral.

. . . Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued his "hell no, you can't" edict ... telling reporters that he'd lead a filibuster to make sure billionaires and millionaires paid not one dime more in earned income tax.

Such is the political environment in which Baucus drops his latest effort to move the jobs debate forward.

So every indicator of a society in terrible trouble -- unemployment, poverty, severe poverty, balance of trade, concentration of wealth, foreclosures, health insurance coverage, you name it -- is going in the wrong direction. And conservatives are proudly doing what they can to make it even worse! Why do we even listen to them at all?

* (For more on the roots of Ayn Rand and dehumanizing ideology click and scroll to the asterisk.)

The Chamber of Commerce: Without Shame or Sense

Robert Borosage — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:54:43 -0400

The Chamber of Commerce is rolling out its “jobs and economy” political initiative today. As Politico reports, the blitz is “designed to drive voters toward '5 Questions to Ask Your Candidates,' to be distributed by mail and online to millions of voters.”

Here are the five, accompanied by five alternatives tied to reality rather than the Chamber’s ideological phantasmagoria:

1. Do you believe that our free enterprise system is currently threatened?

Do you believe that entrenched corporate interests are blocking reforms vital to our country’s future?

2. Do you believe that tax increases hurt job creation?

Do you believe that tax cuts to businesses sitting on trillions of dollars will create jobs or waste money?

3. Do you think that the growth of government at all levels and the deficits that follow negatively impact job creation?

Do you think that deregulation of corporations and banks and the financial wilding that followed, crashing the economy, and doubling the national debt negatively impacted job creation?

4. Would you deal with the debt and deficit issues through increasing government revenue or decreasing government spending?

Would you deal with debt and deficit issues by building a new foundation for the economy so we can grow our way out of the hole we are in, or with austerity, cutting spending on education, energy, infrastructure, Medicare and Social Security to balance our budget?

5. Do you believe that the uncertainty resulting from pending tax increases, higher government deficits, and more government regulations will hurt the economy?

Do you believe businesses aren’t hiring because they see no demand for their products, or that they are foregoing profitable opportunities fretting about deficits, and possible increases in taxes and regulations?

This country is struggling to respond to the worst downturn since the Great Depression, a direct result of the failed conservative policies that the Chamber of Commerce has advocated for decades.

Over the last decade, we lost one in three manufacturing jobs. Inequality reached Gilded Age extremes.. CEOs and bankers pocketed million dollar bonuses while cooking the books and gambling on exotic securities, inflating the housing bubble until it burst. Health insurance companies kept a strangle hold on a health care system that costs twice as much as those in other industrial countries, leaves millions uninsured and provides worse health care. Catastrophic climate change went unaddressed. Big Oil and big coal insured that the US would forfeit the lead in the new green industrial revolution that is sweeping the world. Conservatives removed the cop on the corporate beat leading directly to the financial wilding and collapse, the horrors of Massey in West Virginia and BP in the Gulf, the risks of poisoned toys and infected eggs.

One would think that in the ruins, the Chamber of Commerce would have the common decency to reconsider its ideological positions. After all, they have not only been ruinous to workers and the country, they led directly to the economic freefall that devastated businesses.

But no. Not one comma has been changed. Not a line changed in the stump speech. Mindless, without shame or sense, blind to the world around it, the Chamber gathers new millions from companies and peddles its poisonous nostrums.

The Obama Speech in Cleveland

Robert Borosage — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:41:44 -0400

President Obama traveled to Cleveland to deliver an address on the economy designed to highlight the "differences in governing philosophy" between his view and that of the Republican opposition. (A copy of the text is found here: http://www.oliverwillis.com/2010/09/08/text-of-obama-speech-in-cleveland.... )

This was a powerful presentation, one that we wish the President had done repeatedly from his first days in office. He summarizes the conservative ideas and policies that drove us over the cliff, and offers a contrasting belief in a government on the side of working people that rewards work and offers a "hand up."

What's missing in the speech is any explanation of why the economy hasn't recovered. He argues, correctly, that he acted to stave off a depression. He admits that the recovery hasn't come as quickly as he hoped.

He then doubles back to lay out the differences between his view and the Republicans on policy. He's for ending tax breaks for corporations; that take jobs abroad; they are not. He's for infrastucture spending; they are not. He's for ending the top end Bush tax cuts but extending those for the rest of Americans; they want to extend them all. They oppose somethings that they are for simply for partisan political advantage.

But he gives no clue as to why the recovery has been so slow. There is no real mention of the financial wilding that caused the economic bubble and bust. He does not repeat his powerful argument that the recovery is slow because we can't go back to the old economy, and shojuld not want to. It was built on debt and speculation. He doesn't argue that we need to build a new foundation for the economy to put it back on track. He doesn't lay out the case for reviving manufacturing in the US as a centerpiece of a new economy. He doesn't contrast a belief in the need to regulate finance with their deregulation, the need to curb the casino in contast with their license of all gambling. His repeated contrasts are between his tax cuts for business and theirs -- not exactly an appeal that will rouse the troops.

As I said, it's a strong speech. But the president is asking Americans to vote for Democrats to sustain the course we are on and not go back to the old failed ideas. For that to work, Americans need to hear a compelling argument of what that course is, why it is necessary, what we've learned from the torturously slow and halting growth we've experienced coming out of the freefall.

Boehner's Half-Baked Economic Plan

Robert Borosage — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:52:17 -0400

Rep. John Boehner, the perpetually tanned House Minority leader, unveiled his plan to get the economy going today in a speech before the Cleveland City Club. Hold on to your job; if he becomes speaker, things will get worse.

Understandably, Boehner said not a word about the policies that led to the Great Recession. In fact, he said not a word about the economic collapse. Instead, he argued only that America's economy was in trouble because business was scared to death. It isn't the worst recession since the Great Depression, the lack of demand and customers that is plaguing businesses; it is the fear of tax hikes and regulation.

In response, Boehner detailed a five-point plan to "break the ongoing economic uncertainty." Three of the five points are basically rhetorical. He calls on Obama to pledge to veto any future tax increase. He calls on Obama to fire his economic team. And he promises to eliminate the 1099 tax return mandate that requires small businesses to report any expenditure on goods and services over $600, an aggravation that Democrats are also intent on reversing.

The last two points have greater substance. Boehner would keep tax rates where they are, opposing Obama's plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire for couples making more than $250,000 a year, or the top 2% of Americans. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates this would add about $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years.

Second, he would impose an immediate cut of about 25% on domestic discretionary spending, returning it back to 2008 levels, repealing any further recovery spending. Later, he suggests that the cut with a "hard cap" (presumably for three years) would save $340 billion, recouping a little more than a third of his proposed top-end tax cut.

That's it. (Later in the speech, Boehner promises to unveil a more complete agenda in the future, and suggests possibilities, including the conservative standards: less spending, more tax cuts, less regulation, and more corporate trade treaties. Details to come later.)

There are some major problems with the Boehner plan.

1. It is a joke. We have over 25 million people unemployed, with an economy that is slowing. The Boehner response is to keep tax rates where they are for the rich, and cut all recovery spending, slashing 25% from domestic discretionary spending. We know two things about this program: It will kill more jobs than it creates; and it will add to, not subtract, from projected deficits.

2. It's half-baked. It is as if Boehner hasn't noticed what is going on in this country over the last decades of conservative domination. Instead he would exacerbate the worst ruinous trends. For example:

We suffer from the worst inequality ever. The top 1% pockets about 20% of all income, and has captured two-thirds of all income growth in the Bush years before the recession. Boehner's extension of the Bush top-end tax cuts will simply add to that in after-tax income.
We suffer a costly and growing public investment deficit—in everything from sewers and roads, to education and training, to research and development—areas vital to sustaining a competitive private economy. Slashing non-defense discretionary spending —which includes spending on education, on energy, on the environment, on everything the government does outside of defense and entitlements like Social Security and Medicare -- will only worsen that.
(And the hints Boehner offers about future plans aren't reassuring: more of the trade treaties that led to the ruinous trade deficits that force us to borrow $2 billion a day, largely from Chinese and Japanese central bankers; less regulation in the face of what deregulation of the big banks did to the economy, to the citizens in the Gulf, in the coal mines, and most recently to egg buyers in grocery stores; turning Medicare into a private insurance voucher, and more.)

Boehner became an instant YouTube celebrity for his "hell-no-you-can't" rant on health care reform. So it is understandable why he would want to offer voters some clue about what Republicans are for, not just what they are against. And no doubt the rhetoric of his speech has been dial-tested and focus-grouped to the last syllable.

But as a plan to get the country going, a plan to put people to work, a plan even to "break the ongoing economic uncertainty," this is just silly. The time would have been better spent working on his tan.

The High Cost of Conservative Intellectual Bankruptcy

Isaiah J. Poole — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 22:20:13 -0400

Frum: Health Care a Republican Waterloo

Robert Borosage — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:55:38 -0400

David Frum is a conservative, former Bush speech-writer. He has the quaint view that Republicans in office should provide leadership, not zealotry. In this post, he describes the "crushing legislative defeat" conservatives have suffered on health care.

Worth reading

Waterloo
March 21st, 2010 at 4:59 pm by DAVID FRUM | 117 Comments |Share

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:

(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.

(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.

So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.