Cao Strikes Again

I hope Congressman Joseph Cao isn't getting too comfortable in Washington because he definitely won't be there very long.

Git Er Done

Congress stepped up and passed President Obama's budget last night.

From the Washington Post.

Congressional Democrats overwhelmingly embraced President Obama's ambitious and expensive agenda for the nation yesterday, endorsing a $3.5 trillion spending plan that sets the stage for the president to pursue his most far-reaching priorities.

Voting along party lines, the House and Senate approved budget blueprints that would trim Obama's spending proposals for the fiscal year that begins in October and curtail his plans to cut taxes. The blueprints, however, would permit work to begin on the central goals of Obama's presidency: an expansion of health-care coverage for the uninsured, more money for college loans and a cap-and-trade system to reduce gases that contribute to global warming.

The measures now move to a conference committee where negotiators must resolve differences between the two chambers, a prelude to the more difficult choices that will be required to implement Obama's initiatives. While Democrats back the president's vision for transforming huge sectors of the economy, they remain fiercely divided over the details.

There is no agreement, for example, on how to pay for an overhaul of the health-care system expected to add more than $1 trillion to the budget over the next decade, nor is there consensus on how to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars the government stands to collect by setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions and forcing industry to buy permits to pollute. Those issues will be decided in committees where lawmakers have begun the torturous work on the specifics of Obama's broad plans.


"Democrats in the House and, I think, the Senate are shoulder to shoulder with the president in trying to make the big decisions we need to make in this country," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). But, he said, "Hammering out the details will require everyone to roll up their sleeves."

But all was not great on the Democratic front as Evan Bayh joined Ben Nelson in voting against the President's budget. Now this might seem as just electoral posturing but on closer examination that doesn't hold up. Steve Benen notes:

I've heard some see this as an act of political cowardice on Bayh's part, but I think that's wrong. Obama carried Indiana. There are many Senate Democrats in more vulnerable states who voted "yes." Bayh just made a decision of conscience and principle to stand with Mitch McConnell and Jim DeMint on the most important domestic policy vote of his career.

I think that's right, and I'd add one key detail. Just yesterday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, effectively conceded that Republicans won't go after Bayh next year. "We have a sort of priority list," Cornyn said. "He's down on that."

Bayh, in other words, represents a state that supported Obama in November and he knew that no matter how he voted of Obama's budget, his re-election is all but assured in his home state.
Bayh didn't have to worry about impressing conservative voters back home; he didn't have to worry about fundraising; he didn't have to worry about a Republican opponent back home using this budget vote against him. Bayh was free to vote however he pleased.

And given all of this, Bayh still sided with a right-wing Republican caucus against the Obama White House.

Honestly I think I know the answer and it is this, Evan Bayh is the Democratic version of Mark Sanford in the Senate. He is making decisions right now not based on what is good for the country, but what will be good for his Presidential aspirations in 2016. He probably believes that if he shores up his conservative cred by voting against items that he knows will pass anyway, he will look more attractive when its "his turn" to run. But he is making the same mistake that the Republicans are. This is not your father's country anymore. As President Obama has said before, the grounds are shifting under the conservatives' feet. Evan Bahy is going to end up looking just as unappealing as Eric Cantor or Bobby Jindal by the time its all over with and for what? Just so he can feed his own ego? I think maybe its time to try to primary his self serving ass so he gets the message loud and clear. Its time for Democrats to be Democrats and if they don't like it cross the damn aisle. Otherwise we will end up letting the fringe of our party take it over just like the Republicans have just in the name of having more seats in Congress. I am personally not inclined to endorse that notion.

The Singing Is Over, Now Comes The Swinging

President Obama gave an interview to the Louisville Courier-Journal and a handful of other papers and his tone was markedly different from his first month in office. It seems at this point the President has taken the gloves off and he is not going to allow the Republicans to obstruct his agenda without a fight.

"I do think that the Republican Party right now hasn't sort of figured out what it's for," Obama said in a White House interview with The Courier-Journal and reporters from five other newspapers. "And so, as a proxy, they've just decided 'we're going to be against whatever the other side is for.' That's not what's needed in an economic crisis."

He added that "you could play that game maybe in the early '90s, when basically we were pretty prosperous. Right now, everybody's got to pull together."

snip

"What we still haven't seen from those who would argue that we're trying to do too much is an alternative budget," Obama said. "And the reason we haven't seen an alternative budget is because they know full well that the real drivers of our deficits long term have almost everything to do with our rising health-care costs."

He said the "problem is Medicare and Medicaid, and we can't fix that unless we fix health care as a whole. That's why our investments are so important."

Needless to say I don't think there will be any more cocktails or lunches with the GOP any time soon in President Obama's future. And you can be sure that I believe thats a good thing.

New Ideas?

Check out this excerpt from Bruce Bartlett's post about President Obama's budget at forbes.com.

Republicans will undoubtedly make extravagant claims about the detrimental economic effect of these higher taxes. When one hears these claims, however, it is worth remembering that they said the same things in years past and none of their dire predictions came to pass.

According to a recent Treasury Department study, Ronald Reagan proposed the largest peacetime tax increase in American history as part of a budget deal to get the federal deficit under control. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) of 1982 was signed into law on Sept. 3, and most of its provisions took effect on Jan. 1, 1983.

During debate on TEFRA, many conservatives predicted economic disaster. They argued that raising taxes in the midst of a severe recession was exactly the wrong thing to do. "Every school child knows you don't raise taxes in a recession unless you want to make it worse," The Wall Street Journal's editorial page warned. Said Rep. Newt Gingrich, "I think it will make the economy sicker." The Chamber of Commerce of the U.S. said it had "no doubt that it will curb the economic recovery everyone wants."

Looking at the data, however, it is very hard to see any evidence that TEFRA had a negative effect on growth. Indeed, one could easily make a case that its enactment stimulated growth. As one can see, the economy's growth rates after TEFRA took effect were among the fastest in history.

My my, that all sounds so familiar. Didn't I hear those very same arguments recently from many Congressional Republicans? As a matter of fact isn't that the very same meme that Newt Gingrich is once again promoting all over again? Now after they get off their fainting couches having learned that President Reagan actually RAISED taxes the GOP needs to do some serious soul searching The Republicans need wake up to the fact that their "new" ideas can't continue to be repackaged old ideas. That is at least if they ever want to have a shot at being relevant again in the future.

(h/t Steve Benen)

Slaying Strawmen

David Brooks has a column up today in the New York times entitled "When Obamatons Respond". Basically Brooks uses the new en vogue technique of invoking "unnamed sources" to write a column about how he says some people in the White House responded to his previous high concern troll column about President Obama's budget. Funny, but I thought there used to be some parameters for using unnamed sources higher than them just telling you not to use their name. Nowadays however you would be hard pressed to find an article in a major newspaper that doesn't include quotes or thoughts from anonymous figures. But I digress.

Now some people will see this as progress since it would seem that Brooks is including the thoughts of people in the Obama administration in his discussion about his vision for the future of our country. But Brooks starts just about every paragraph with strawmen that only a Republican could love. So what I am going to do is excerpt from his article crossing out the strawman so you can get a feel for what was probably actually said by these unnamed officials and perhaps you can get the effect of how they probably actually responded rather than how Brooks wanted to frame it.

In the first place, they do not see themselves as a group of liberal crusaders. They see themselves as pragmatists who inherited a government and an economy that have been thrown out of whack. They’re not engaged in an ideological project to overturn the Reagan Revolution, a fight that was over long ago. They’re trying to restore balance: nurture an economy so that productivity gains are shared by the middle class and correct the irresponsible habits that developed during the Bush era.

The budget, they continue, isn’t some grand transformation of America. It raises taxes on energy and offsets them with tax cuts for the middle class. It raises taxes on the rich to a level slightly above where they were in the Clinton years and then uses the money as a down payment on health care reform. That’s what the budget does. It’s not the Russian Revolution.

Second, they argue, the Obama administration will not usher in an era of big government. Federal spending over the last generation has been about 20 percent of G.D.P. This year, it has surged to about 27 percent. But they aim to bring spending down to 22 percent of G.D.P. in a few years. And most of the increase, they insist, is caused by the aging of the population and the rise of mandatory entitlement spending. It’s not caused by big increases in the welfare state.

snip

Fourth, the White House claims the budget will not produce a sea of red ink. Deficits are now at a gargantuan 12 percent of G.D.P., but the White House aims to bring this down to 3.5 percent in 2012. Besides, the long-range debt is what matters, and on this subject President Obama is hawkish.

He is extremely committed to entitlement reform and is plotting politically feasible ways to reduce Social Security as well as health spending. The White House folks didn’t say this, but I got the impression they’d be willing to raise taxes on the bottom 95 percent of earners as part of an overall package.

Now at the end Brooks still wasn't at all convinced which leads me to ask why would anyone in the Obama administration try to convince him in the first place. That's what makes me suspicious of the whole supposed exchange, especially when there isn't one single solitary actual quote included in the article. Its just all his paraphrasing sprinkled with plenty of strawmen. Put together it adds up to yet another Brooks high concern troll editorial but I am sure plenty of Villagers will hold it up as some kind of gold standard of centrist journalism since after all its David Brooks.

Poll Porn

The Taxes On Charitable Giving Cannard

OMB Director Peter Orszag breaks down why its a bunch of baloney.

David Gregory Is A WingNut

First I want you to watch the video and pay attention primarily to the statements that David Gregory makes and the questions that he asks. Then skip down to my commentary under the video.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Did you notice anything curious about David Gregory's framing of President Obama's budget? I sure did. Now setting aside for a moment that you had basically 3 Republicans on to talk about the budget when you consider the fact that Harold Ford Jr is the President of the DLC ie the Blue Dogs ie Republicans with a D in front of their names, the fact that every single talking point from the "moderator" David Gregory is just ridiculous and egregious. Look I am all for a debate on the merits of President Obama's budget, but how is this in anyway a fair or balanced look at it? So maybe I am just overreacting right? Ok lets take away all of the invited pundits who you would imagine are going to be partisan and focus solely on Gregory's words.

MR. GREGORY: We are back and we are joined now by Harold Ford Jr., Joe Scarborough, Dee Dee Myers and Mike Murphy.

Welcome, all of you.

Well, here it is. It's not a, a big document for $3.6 trillion, but it is a significant document. "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise." And this is no ordinary budget. This is how David Leonhardt described it in The New York Times this week: "The budget that President Obama proposed is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters. ... More than anything else, the proposals seek to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years."

Joe Scarborough, tax increases and a real focus on, if you like, wealth transfer from the wealthy to the middle class.

snip

MR. GREGORY: But, but, Mike Murphy, there is a fundamental shift here in the approach that Washington has basically been governed by for 30 years.

snip

MR. GREGORY: It's a redefinition of government's role.

snip

MR. GREGORY: Let's break down some of the, the tax increases from more of a conservative point of view, as reported by the New York--excuse me, by the LA Times this week. "Brian Riedl," the coverage--the article points out, "a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, says `Obama's plan amounts to an unfair redistribution of the tax burden.' He said that the top 20 percent of taxpayers now pay 80 percent of all taxes collected by the government. And 40 percent of households pay no income tax. Under President Obama's plan, he said, the top 20 percent of tax filers would pay 90 percent of all taxes, and the number of families who owe no tax would climb to near 50 percent."

The question, Dee Dee, is in this kind of economic crisis--the Obama administration says there's no tax increases till 2011; nevertheless, is this what you do in the middle of a recession?

snip

MR. GREGORY: Yeah. I don't know that there--anybody's saying there'd be robust growth by that point.

snip

MR. GREGORY: Let me, let me get in here. I want to, I want to challenge another assertion in this budget, and that is that the president has said that he has identified $2 trillion in spending that he will cut back. He will cut $2 trillion in programs. Again, the LA Times reported this week, is that really going to happen? This is the piece: "For all the talk of fiscal responsibility, Congress is not ready to mend its free-spending ways. Exhibit A: The House passed a huge spending bill left over from the last year that increased expenditures by 8 percent. And it's laden with thousands of pet projects." The president's not happy about that, by the way.

Here's Judd Gregg, the senator from New Hampshire--was going to be Commerce secretary, decided he didn't agree with the president well enough. He says this: "The $2 trillion in savings touted by the president is a hollow number based on tax increases and reduced war funding. Where is the spending restraint? Instead, government spending continues to grow and expand, while the economy continues to suffer."

Dee Dee, in this budget, $600 billion as a down payment to get to that goal of universal health care that was first initiated under President Clinton's administration.

snip

MR. GREGORY: Where--but here--where are the cuts? Where are the cuts? We have seen in the stimulus bill, people in the White House will acknowledge that the appropriators, the Democrats in--especially on the House side wrote some of the spending into the stimulus bill. It got away from the White House. We have now an omnibus spending bill that appears to have gotten away from the White House. Can he get these cuts of $2 trillion?

snip

MR. GREGORY: Harold, the deficit, the debt picture, talking about a reality check here, this is how The Washington Post reports in terms of what we're looking at: "The numbers in the new budget are unlike anything the country and its elected leadership are used to dealing with. Not only will the current deficit reach $1.75 trillion," that's 12 percent of GDP, "next year's will also top a trillion dollars and the deficits will remain about $500 billion until fiscal year 2019." Will Congress simply choke on the size of those numbers? The promise is to cut the deficit in half by the end of the first term. Realistic?

snip

MR. GREGORY: I want, I want to talk about the Republicans.

snip

MR. GREGORY: Let's talk about Republicans, because one of the, the--and Stephen Hayes does it in the Weekly Standard, points out what the strategy has been so far for Republicans, which is to not go after President Obama specifically. He writes, "This has been the Republican strategy since Obama took office: Refrain from criticizing the president directly, praise his stated desire for bipartisanship; trash congressional Democrats as irresponsibly liberal and poor stewards of taxpayer dollars; offer alternative solutions to the country's problems even if the media pay them no attention. The reasons for doing this are plain. The country was broadly enthusiastic about Obama's inauguration, and his popularity remains high." How high, you ask? Well, look at the numbers. New Washington Post/ABC News poll, a 68 percent approval rating. The president's got some juice right now. But here was Rush Limbaugh at the CPAC conference. This was the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington this week. Here's what he had to say about the president.

snip

MR. GREGORY: The question, Mike Murphy, is are these principled objections, ideological differences about the role of government? Or is this calculation? And, and are Republicans open to the idea of hey, this is--as Warren Buffett said, this is Pearl Harbor for the economy. This is like during the Iraq war, Americans have to come together here of all parties and all stripes.

snip

MR. GREGORY: And as--Harold, do you agree with that? Do you think he--it appeared that he'd more centrist. Has he gone left with this budget, particularly?

snip

MR. GREGORY: I want to talk about the government's role in bailing out this economy. And we keep a running tab here of federal bailout and stimulus spending since February of 2008. And I want to put it on the screen and, and have everybody absorb this. The total is $2.3 trillion. Let's go through it. The first stimulus in February of 2008 was $168 billion, money for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and all, all of which has been drawn down, including the latest $400 billion. AIG, the insurance company, $150 billion, probably more to come. The financial bailout, both ends of it--$350, $350--$700 billion, some of that for the auto bailout. Bank of America and Citi got $45 billion each, now the government's going to come in and take 40 percent of Citi. The Obama stimulus package, $787 billion. The housing plan, $75 billion. That's $2.3 trillion. Seven hundred and fifty billion dollars additional in this document for additional bailout money for the banks.

Meantime, what metric do we have to see how people--what people think of that government intervention? The Dow is one metric. It closed on Friday at its lowest level since 1997, just over 7,000.

Harold, has the president yet done a good job persuading Americans to be confident about the future of this economy?

snip

MR. GREGORY: ...I just want ask this question, which is--and I think it's a fundamental question. If you look at those numbers of how much the government's spending, will the American people continue to support this president even if he fails in some of these efforts to revive the economy?

Now literally other than some "Mmm Hmms" and some one word answers, this was the meat of David Gregory's "moderation today. So lets go from the top. He opens up with a line from the New York Times about the budget that isn't very damning, but then he prefaces his question to Joe Scarborough with an alley oop lob pass referring to redistributing wealth. Helluva way to start off the segment. But it only gets worse from there. He references Judd Gregg, Rush Limbaugh, Stephen Hayes and Brien Riedl, all conservatives, during the segment. He doesn't reference even one Democrat, let alone a liberal or progressive during the whole frikkin discussion. He goes on to repeat a Republican talking point about the earmarks in the omnibus bill with out noting that 40% of those earmarks came from Republicans and all together the earmarks made up less than 1% of the budget. After that he comes with the zombie lie that the House Democrats "hijacked" the stimulus bill. And then he goes on to use every negative Republican term to describe spending by the government when talking about President Obama's agenda. I mean really why even worry about having representation from the Republicans on Meet The Press when the "moderator" will do the job for them? I don't know what in the hell possessed NBC to give David Gregory this post in the first place but hopefully somebody will rectify this sooner rather than later. There simply is no justification for this kind of slanted coverage.

A Little Trip Down Memory Lane

Yesterday President Obama presented his budget to the members of Congress and the media and suddenly a narrative emerged. You see President Obama asserted earlier in the week that he wants to halve the deficit by the end of his first term. So some "genuises" who took a look at the budget decided to call President Obama out because they said he was counting money that will be saved in Iraq after our withdrawal as part of his spending reductions. "It was going to happen anyway" they said as if it was preordained that no matter who won the election we were going to withdraw from Iraq in the next two years. Now this is the height of revisionist history and totally dismisses everything that was said by both then President Bush and then candidate John McCain on the campaign trail about how "dangerous" it would be to withdraw from Iraq and how "naive" then Senator Obama was to even entertain the thought. So I thought we might want to take a little stroll down memory lane to refresh these idiots' memories.


John McCain June 2 2008:

"It's worth recalling that America's progress in Iraq is the direct result of the new strategy that Senator Obama opposed. It was the strategy he predicted would fail, when he voted cut off funds for our forces in Iraq," McCain said.

"He now says he intends to withdraw combat troops from Iraq -- one to two brigades per month until they are all removed. ... This course would surely result in a catastrophe."

John McCainMay 16, 2008

Earlier, McCain bowed to anti-war sentiment by setting 2013 as the date for withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, in an attempt to boost his chances of winning the White House. He said he expected the war to be over by that date. The comment marked a U-turn for McCain, who had based his run for the White House on his willingness to keep US forces in Iraq for up to 100 years.

McCain's retreat came despite having berated his Democratic rivals for the last 12 months for demanding a firm withdrawal date from Iraq, saying it would lead to chaos and genocide. But his strong support for keeping US troops in Iraq has proved costly for his campaign, with feelings against the war running as high as 63% in a USA Today-Gallup poll last month.

John McCain July 23, 2008

"General Petraeus has been in charge of this incredible, incredible reversal of fortunes in Iraq has said it would be a dangerous course," McCain told Wright. "The future of young Americans who are at stake here. Because if we do what he wants to do, which is withdraw -- and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on a certain date has said that it's very dangerous, and even in Senator Obama's own admission we could have to go back -- then that's dangerous for the future of America. And he should know better if he wants to be commander in chief, and certainly behave differently as far as this, our presence and our strategy in Iraq."

President Bush April 5, 2007

Bush has said he will veto any bill that includes a timetable for withdrawal, arguing that it will make it impossible for his military plan to succeed.

“Just as the strategy is starting to make inroads, a narrow majority in the Congress passed legislation they knew all along I would not accept,” he said at Ft. Irwin. The bills pushed by the Democrats “impose an artificial deadline for withdrawal from Iraq. Their bills substitute the judgment of Washington politicians for the judgment of our military commanders.”

John McCain July 22, 2008

Yet McCain has decided to remain with a position that entails remaining in Iraq despite the expressed wishes of the Iraqi government. His campaign blogger, Michael Goldfarb, wrote on Monday that the Obama-Maliki withdrawal plan was “an unconditional timeline we reject not only as being dangerous but unfeasible.” In an interview Monday morning with Meredith Viera, McCain himself suggested that he knew what Maliki wanted better than Maliki himself did: “I have been there too many times. I’ve met too many times with him, and I know what they want.”

George Bush May 2, 2007

"I believe setting a deadline for a withdrawal would demoralise the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East, and send a signal that America will not keep its commitments," he said in a televised speech.

President Bush July 17, 2008

President George W. Bush has said Iraq wanted to include an "aspirational goal" for the departure of most foreign troops there in any agreement authorizing future U.S. operations, but he reiterated his opposition to what he called "an artificial timetable for withdrawal."

His remarks Tuesday reflected growing doubt within the administration that the United States could negotiate an agreement that would clear the way for U.S. troops to operate in Iraq for many years. Bush and the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, had pledged to reach such an agreement last year.

President Bush August 27, 2008

The United States asked Iraq for permission to maintain a troop presence there to 2015, but U.S. and Iraqi negotiators agreed to limit their authorization to 2011, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said.

"It was a U.S. proposal for the date which is 2015, and an Iraqi one which is 2010, then we agreed to make it 2011. Iraq has the right, if necessary, to extend the presence of these troops," Talabani said in an interview with al-Hurra television, a transcript of which was posted on his party's website on Wednesday.

John McCain April 8, 2008

Republican John McCain, chiding his Democratic opponents for promising a hasty withdrawal from Iraq, said today that it was “imprudent and dangerous” to leave the combat zone too quickly.

John McCain March 26, 2008

In a major address in California on foreign policy, the presumptive Republican nominee said, "It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible and premature withdrawal."

Now thankfully to a certain extent the Iraqi people made this all moot when they themselves called for a timeline to be in any new Status Of Forces Agreement and would not agree to sign on until they had one. But its just not credible to believe that John McCain wouldn't have tried to find a way to usurp that agreement had he been elected. It just defies logic to make that leap. So for the people who want to play gotcha journalism and politics with this part of President Obama's budget please stop insulting the American peoples' intelligence as if we don't remember. Part of the reason why John McCain didn't get elected is because nobody trusted him to withdraw from Iraq so this isn't a small thing that you can try to sneak by us. I know its hard to give President Obama props for keeping his campaign promise but this is one time you are just going to have to grin and bear it. He is walking the walk just like he talked the talk and you people need to recognize.