Oh Dear. Republican wrongness still threatening economic calamity...

So a few days ago, in my round up of the many vital things about which Republicans are wrong, I wrote, referring to their then-apparent decision to avoid threatening the US with debt default:

The one Republican achievement this week is their (apparent) willingness to reluctantly agree that they will NOT cause a financial calamity for no apparent reason.

May I take this opportunity to strike this unfounded praise?

Turns out the giant game of chicken Republicans were playing with their economy is back on:

In a speech before a Wall Street crowd on Monday, John Boehner laid out the three legs of the GOP's opening bid on the debt ceiling. They are:

1) "Without significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt, there will be no debt limit increase. And the cuts should be greater than the accompanying increase in debt authority the president is given. We should be talking about cuts of trillions, not just billions."

2) "They should be actual cuts and program reforms, not broad deficit or debt targets that punt the tough questions to the future."

3) "With the exception of tax hikes -- which will destroy jobs -- everything is on the table. That includes honest conversations about how best to preserve Medicare."

With the exception of tax hikes. Which will destroy jobs. Everything is on the table.

Forgive me a moment, as my head is currently on fire.

OK. Have dowsed head in bucket of water.

I feel that this line of argument cries out for an analogy and I'm struggling to find one sufficiently vapid.

How about:

1) For curing a fatal disease: "With the exception of taking medication, which will kill unicorns, all options are on the table."
2) For making a baby: "With the exception of heterosexual sex, which will threaten kittens, all options are on the table."
3) For losing weight: "With the exception of eating less food, which will help terorists, all options are on the table."
4) For doing a web search: "With the exception of Google, which bitch-slaps infants, all options are on the table."

I'm not sure any of these fully convey the stupicity of the Boehnerism, though. Further suggestions welcome. Other than that, I just want to say what he said:

As a substantive matter, Boehner has no idea what he’s talking about. His entire schpiel is gibberish. Even a rudimentary understanding of recent events should make clear, even to someone with Boehner’s limited abilities, that his model doesn’t make sense. Reagan raised taxes and the economy grew. Clinton raised taxes and the economy grew. Bush slashed taxes and produced the worst job-creation record of any president in generations.

How does the Speaker even think this is possible?

Copious Republican Wrongness: I Try to Keep Track of it All

The Republican Party is so fundamentally wrong so often about so much stuff that is so important that's it's ironically easy to lose track of it all. And in recent days we've been bombarded with evidence of Republican wrongness at such a fast and furious clip that I realise I personally haven't been able to full absorb the depth and breadth of the wrong.
So let's make a quick list - based just on news stories from the past week:

1. Republicans - including John McCain back in 2008 - were wrong to insist that we should not pursue Osama Bin Laden into Pakistan if we had credible intelligence that he was there. Or rather, since one could argue that the policy might be right even if the outcome would be bad, let's say that whether this is right or wrong, Osama Bin Laden would still be threatening America today if the Republicans had won the last election.
2. Republicans - including, most notably, Dick Cheney - were wrong to suggest that Americans are less safe from terrorism under Obama than they were under Bush.
3. Republicans leaders were wrong to keep calling everything that Democrats proposed a "job killing" measure, when in fact the last three months has been the best 3 month period for job growth in 5 years. On the other hand, independent experts at Moody's have reproted that the GOP's proposed budget would result in the LOSS of over 700,000 American jobs. That's just wrong on so many levels.

4. Republicans - in particular Rep Paul Ryan - were wrong to suggest that they had a plan to cut the deficit. Ryan's so-called deficit reduction plan was based on heavy tax cuts for the wealthy plus heavy cuts to needed services for the poor (that's balanced! See! He's cutting taxes AND spending! Everything gets cut!). But even with these deep spending cuts, Ryan wasn't able to project any ability to balance the budget without his piece de resistance - a plan to eliminate Medicare and replace it with vouchers to allow the elderly to buy private health care. This proposal has been strikingly unpopular with the public, and has now been abandoned by Republican leaders - though not before House Republicans voted for it. Without the elimination of Medicare, Ryan's plan does not balance the budget.
5. Republicans in Congress were wrong to make posturing noises to suggest that they would be willing - nay! eager! - to let America default on its debt. For bizarre procedural reasons, every time US borrowing goes above a certain point, Congress must vote to allow this debt ceiling to rise. Republicans, however, had been ranting about their unwillingness to do this unless Democrats were willing to let old people die accept the phase out of Medicare. Fortunately, cooler heads have prevailed and Republicans are willing to settle for deep cuts to non-entitlement spending programs instead. Gee, thanks. The implications, if the debt ceiling were not raised, would be that the US would default on its borrowing, doing severe damage to our position within the markets, which experts believe could trigger another financial crisis. White House Economic Advisor Austen Goolsbee put it this way, "If we get to the point where we damage the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity.”

So to sum up:

If Republicans were in charge this week, they would have left the world's most dangerous terrorist happy in his Pakistan mansion, lost 700,000 jobs instead of adding 250,000, eliminated Medicare, and cut taxes for the rich.

The one Republican achievement this week is their (apparent) willingness to reluctantly agree that they will NOT cause a financial calamity for no apparent reason.

Why does anyone vote for these guys?

I Love US Voters. But I Don't Understand Them...

It's the job of political activists and politicians themselves to try and understand the point of view of their constituents to that they can either persuade or represent as needed. But what are you supposed to do with a voting population that, within a few weeks of giving the President's party the biggest Congressional defeat in a hundred years, still tell pollsters that they basically don't trust the guys who they just voted in one little bit, and think the President will stand up a lot better for their values.

Obama's position against the Republicans in Congress is much stronger than that of his predecessors. The following polls were all taken in the December after the president's first major midterm defeat. So for Bill Clinton, the poll results are from December 1994, and for George W. Bush, they're from December 2006. In both cases, the public trusted the congressional opposition more than the president. Not so today

I mean, I agree with the assessment of the people. But I just can't reconcile it with their vote. Hmmmm...

For the Record: Liberals Hate the Deficit...

There's a commonly accepted conventional wisdom that somehow Republicans are supposed to be the party that is "Fiscally Conservative" whereas Democrats love running up giant debts. There is no evidence whatsoever that the Republican party actually behaves in this manner, and there's equally little evidence that Democrats don't take the deficit very seriously. In fact, welcome to opposite world, the complete opposite of the conventional wisdom has been the actual behaviour of Democratic and Republican Presidents for longer than I've been alive.

I'm not going to comment on the Republican love of deficits, but from a progressive point of view, it's fairly obvious why Democrats might behave this way.

Liberals don't love govenment spending for its own sake - we support it when and because it actually does things that we think are worth doing. So, if it can stimulate the economy, educate children, put out fires, build infrastructure, keep people alive then we want the government to do those things. But we also realise that there is a limited amount of money that can be raised from taxation. If it's necessary to go into debt in the short term to keep the country moving, then that's the right thing to do. But in the long run, every dollar that we spend on interest for loans is a dollar we're not spending on health, education, poverty reduction or innovation. So it's in our interest as progressives to find a stable way of funding our programs that is sustainable. That's why we want to reduce medicare costs. That's why we want to cut waste from the Pentagon. That's why we consistently support Pay as You Go policies.



The 5% of the federal that we spent last year on debt interest was not wasted money, but it wasn't maximally efficient either. In the long run, we want to stabilise this in a way that doesn't cause people too much pain in the short term.

But Republicans... just don't care about this at all. Not even a little bit. So ask them why not...

Deep Thought: Tim Pawlenty Edition

I think it would be neat if we could reduce the deficit just by wanting to really badly. That would be so much more fun than having to raise taxes or cut spending.

I'd also like to lose weight by eating more. I'm sure it's Obama's fault that I can't do this.