Red light, green light, 1, 2, 3...

By Carl 

So it seems that the historic bipartisan budget deal in the House last week – historic, in that it's been years since we didn't just pass a Continuing Resolution to fund the government – is falling on enough deaf ears in the Senate to be a problem:

The prospect that the budget would clear the cloture hurdle brightened Monday, when three GOP senators -- Orrin Hatch of Utah, Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia -- announced that they would vote yes. A fourth, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, expressed his support on Sunday. Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona also said they would vote in favor of cloture last week.

But unlike in the House, where Speaker John Boehner aggressively battled conservative groups trying to kill the bill, GOP leaders in the Senate are signaling opposition, or at least resistance, to the package.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has not said which way he will vote Tuesday, but he is widely expected to oppose the measure. Similarly, Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn of Texas announced his opposition Monday morning on his campaign's website -- a step his Senate office was unwilling to take. It was later deleted after reporters from The Associated Press asked for confirmation of a Cornyn quote that appeared on the Internet site Breitbart.com.

"Senator Cornyn opposes this budget deal because it breaks previously set spending caps and goes in the 'wrong direction' with regards to entitlement spending," according to the post. His Senate spokeswoman, Kate Martin, would only say that Cornyn would take "a close look" at the measure and is "concerned" that it reverses some of the spending cuts won in a hard-fought 2011 budget pact.

Interesting. It appears that hard-line conservatives in the Senate have drawn a line in the sand. The political implications of this are larger than the legislative implications (the bill overcomes any filibuster and becomes law, with minor amendments).

For one thing, the Republican nominee-apparent, Paul Ryan (by dint of running as the Veep candidate with Mitt Romney), was one of the driving forces behind this deal. The thinking on his part had to include a calculation of the national political implications of being out in front of a bipartisan budget bill ahead of an election that will likely feature Chris Christie, who's main attraction is his ability to bring Democrats on board with his agenda.

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Senate close to deal ending the shutdown, raising the debt ceiling, and further enabling Republican extremism and obstructionism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Politico:

Senate leaders are closing in on a deal to reopen the government and extend the U.S. debt ceiling until next year, marking a major breakthrough in an impasse that has paralyzed Washington and struck fears across the globe.

In a furious round of last-ditch negotiations, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were discussing a proposal to reopen the government until Jan. 15 and extend the national debt limit until Feb. 7. The plan would also set up bicameral budget negotiations over major deficit issues, that are to conclude by Dec. 13.

Now, there's hardly any guarantee this would get through John Boehner's House. There's some cover here in forcing Democrats to negotiate, which is usually done on mostly Republican terms, but would the extremist Tea Party minority of Republicans in the House, goaded on by the likes of Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin, really agree to anything without major concessions like Obamacare defunding and/or, oh, I don't know, the immediate obliteration of Social Security? (There would have to be concessions on both sides in any deal, and the ones reportedly in this one are relatively minor.)

But let's assume this deal were to go through? Is it a good one?

Well, it could be worse. Apparently Democrats have rejected McConnell's proposal to prevent the Treasury Department by law from using "extraordinary measures" to deal with the debt ceiling and prevent the country from going into default. (When you're dealing with Republicans, you just can't agree to this. Given Republicans' dysfunctional extremism and rabid partisan obstructionism, you have to have recourse to such measures.)

My initial reaction, though, is that it's a bad deal. Republicans hold the country hostage, shut down the government, threaten economic catastrophe, and see their approval ratings collapse with most of the country blaming them for the shutdown, and what they get is more time to keep doing what they're doing and the opportunity to shift the focus to bipartisan negotiations where they're more likely to be able to control the narrative and redirect the blame for this whole mess onto Democrats?

Yes, this seems like capitulation on the Democrats' part.

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Republicans have been very, very good to social conservatives

By Frank Moraes 

I have a bone to pick with Paul Krugman. His column today is quite good, "Republicans Against Reality." The first half of the article is about Republican dysfunction. He highlights last week's transportation bill fiasco. It's an old story. Talk to any conservative (and sadly many liberals as well) and they will tell you that there is loads of wasteful spending in the government. But when you ask them what ought to be cut, the first thing they say is: foreign aid. There are two problems with this. First, foreign aid really does help us out globally by pushing back against all the bad stuff we do. (And note: Israel gets by far the most foreign aid of any country.) Second, foreign aid only makes up about 1% of the federal budget.

So the problem the House Republicans are having is that they've gone along with Paul Ryan's new mythical budget. But when it comes to actual policies, the House members don't like it because it requires cutting programs that their constituencies like and depend upon. So vauge notions of cutting "waste": gooood! Concrete ideas of cutting actual programs: baaad!

The second half of Krugman's article is about how the Republican leadership is reaping what it sowed. He writes:

For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party's base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities -- deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.

That is mostly true, but I take exception to the claim that the Republican Party has abandoned the social conservative base. Just in terms of policy, they got things like the Defense of Marriage Act and Terri Schiavo. But more important, they've gotten really conservative judges throughout the federal court system. I don't have any doubt that if Roe v. Wade came up for a vote in the Supreme Court that it would be overturned. So social conservatives have gotten what they want.

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Money matters

By Mustang Bobby 

The way the Republicans tell it, the economy is still collapsing, the deficit is ballooning, the tax hikes in January are killing business, and Barack Obama is a socialist bent on crushing small business under the heel of the federal government with regulations on top of regulations. Oh god oh god we're all gonna die.

Except none of that is true:

The Congressional Budget Office reported Tuesday that the federal budget deficit is declining this year compared to fiscal 2012.

For the first seven months of 2013, the deficit was $489 billion. That is $231 billion less than the budget shortfall for the comparable period last year.

The decrease is almost entirely due to revenue increases.

And we are seeing the strongest rate of job growth in eight years.

Meanwhile, the stock market is booming, the Dow having hit 15,000 earlier this week.

As for the growth of regulations from the federal government, it's a canard you always hear from the Republicans — the party of vaginal probes, by the way — but it's been debunked time and again, even when it was a campaign issue for Mitt Romney.

As I've said before, if Barack Obama is a socialist, he really sucks at it.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Inside Obama's budget

By Frank Moraes 

In his "Happy Hour Roundup" at The Plum Line the other night, Jonathan Bernstein provided links to three articles that argue in different ways that there is much to like in Obama's new budget. I've never argued otherwise, but I have been too focused on the entitlement cuts. Let's be clear though: Obama's offer of these cuts is very bad. Even if nothing happens in the next four years, Republicans will go on to accuse Democrats of intransigence: "Even that socialist Obama thought we needed to cut entitlements!"

Annie Lowrey over at the Economix blog argues that Obama's entire focus, not just his budgets, have been about reducing income inequality. She rightly notes that the ACA (Obamacare) will help the issue. Just on the face, giving people healthcare who didn't have it before makes them richer; it doesn't matter that you aren't giving them cash. But perhaps as important, it will make medical bankruptcies far less common. (Remember the big push by the feds to make bankruptcy harder because all of these spendthrifts were abusing the poor bankers? It was mostly bankruptcies because of our broken health-care system.)

She goes on to mention a number of good things that are in the new budget. It includes a rise in the minimum wage, universal preschool, and of course, slightly higher taxes for rich people. One thing that is in there really surprised me: the earned income tax credit (EITC). The budget would make it permanent. I thought it already was, especially since traditionally, that is one form of welfare conservatives agree with. Well, it is only in effect until 2017. That's a big deal. The idea that President Paul Ryan would end the program is very troubling.

In the great Wonkblog fashion, Brad Plumer presents the "Winners and Losers in the White House Budget." The winners (at least in terms of programs) are primarily the poor. As Lowrey points out, there is the EITC and the minimum wage. But in addition, although Medicare is cut, Medicaid is not. To some extent, this defines Obama's economic policies. I can see that he truly does care about the poor. It is when you move up the income ladder to the middle class, that he thinks things are fine. But they aren't fine. And helping the middle class thrive is really important to all of the classes.

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He just don't get it, do he?

By Carl 

President Obama, I mean:

In his fifth annual budget proposal to Congress on Wednesday, President Obama once again put forward a fiscal mix of investments in infrastructure, education and research with further deficit reduction through tax increases and spending cuts.

But for the first time he included changes to Medicare and Social Security intended to entice Republicans back to the bargaining table. The concessions, however, showed little sign of winning them over.

The main new element of the budget is his proposal, offered previously in private negotiations with Speaker John A. Boehner, for a new cost-of-living formula that would reduce future Social Security benefits. On the spending side, Mr. Obama wants to spend $66 billion over 10 years to help states make prekindergarten available universally, paid for by higher taxes on tobacco products.

Mr. President, they don't care. They. Don't. Care. If you propose it, it's bad. You could repeal taxes on everything and Republicans, Inc. would still find a way to try and paint you as a tax-and-spend liberal. You could declare war on Islam, and Republicans, Inc. would still find a way to call you a Muslim. Hell, you could resign your office today and they'd start impeachment proceedings!

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This is America. This ain't no stinkin' utopia.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) tweeted at 5:26 PM on Mon, Mar 18, 2013:

Demand a budget that makes sure that the wealthiest Americans and most profitable corporations pay their fair share. (link to petition)

A good and noble cause, and I'm all for it, but it's also an uphill battle given the power of the plutocracy over both major political parties and the media, as well as throughout the national mythology.

You might as well demand that the country interact with the rest of the world with something other than a hegemonic bludgeon, or that the powers that be give a damn about the poor and disenfranchised, or that "the people" not be armed to the teeth in preparation for armageddon, or that the Republican Party embrace science, or that the Miami Heat lose a basketball game.

In any other advanced, civilized democracy, Bernie Sanders would be a mainstream voice of justice and reason. In America, he's a "radical." That alone should fill you with despair.

There is no long-term budget problem

By Frank Moraes 

Alan Blinder is a economics and public affairs professor at Princeton. Recently, he got placed in the middle of the argument between Paul Krugman and Joe Scarborough when Scarborough claimed that Blinder was on his side. Blinder didn't like that much. Yesterday, he wrote a short article at Politico, "Morning Joe's Accuracy Deficit." He says that he and Krugman only disagree about some very minor details.

Blinder claims there are three issues regarding the budget. In the short term, we are already doing too much deficit reduction. In the medium term (ten years), we have already done about what we should do. And in the long term, things are going to be very bad indeed. He is right about all this. The problem is that, like most people (including Krugman at times), when it comes to the long term, he is being deceptive.

In his new book, After the Music Stopped, Blinder claims:

The government can cover no more than a small fraction of the projected deficits by raising taxes. Sorry, Democrats, but the Republicans are right on this one. Americans are used to federal taxes running about 18.5 percent of GDP; they will not allow them to rise to 32 percent of GDP. Never mind that a number of European countries do so; we won't.

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Budget cuts, lies, and Republicans

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Robert Reich (@RBReich) tweeted at 8:52 PM on Mon, Feb 11, 2013:

Biggest and most dangerous lie told by Republicans: Anemic economy due to budget deficit. Truth is deficit cuts now will make economy worse.

The truth will set you free. Unless you're a Republican.

And when Republicans have political power, even as the minority party, the truth doesn't stand a chance.

There is no fucking spending problem

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Appearing on Fox News today, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the following:

It is almost a false argument to say we have a spending problem. We have a budget deficit problem that we have to address.

She's almost right.

It's an entirely false argument to say the U.S. has a spending problem, and to the extent there's a deficit problem it's a problem of revenue, specifically not enough of it, not expenditures.

But if you really do want to cut spending, the place to look is defense, where a bloated military sucks up an extraordinary amount of the overall budget. It isn't discretionary spending, which is government spending in a whole range of areas, which is at an historic low thanks in large part to recent cuts that President Obama himself supported alongside Republicans and a good number of Democrats.

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Out of control: The Republican myth of Obama's deficits

By Mustang Bobby

One of the many knee-jerk GOP memes is that President Obama has exploded the deficit and is spending our nation down the road to oblivion and it's getting worse with every passing moment.

Yeah, except it's not true:

The federal budget deficit in 2013 is projected to be $845 billion, the first time the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has forecast a deficit below $1 trillion under President Obama.

The reduction in the budget deficit comes after Congress approved higher tax rates on households with annual income above $450,000. 

 
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More Republican immaturity

By Frank Moraes 

James C. Capretta wrote in the National Review on Monday, "The Budget Battles Ahead." He said that the Republicans are not going to do any negotiating with President Obama. Instead, they are just going to let the budget deficit get completely out of control and then blame it on Obama.

"Future generations of Americans will live less prosperously because of the massive debt and deficits of these years," he says. "And President Obama will rightly shoulder most of the blame for this colossal failure of leadership."

This is interesting in a few ways. First, it is wrong. The budget deficit is not going to be a problem for quite a while. What's more, it is already going down. It will become a problem as the economy gets better, but that will happen as the government gets more tax revenue. So this is just more conservative hysteria over invisible bond vigilantes.

Second, this is just the newest iteration of McConnell's plan to make Obama a one-term president. As I've written about a lot around here, Republicans don't have any ideas about how they want to govern outside of savaging the social safety net and cutting taxes on the wealthy. Given they aren't going to get either of those opportunities for the next four years, their plan is to make Obama look bad.

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Mitch McConnell offers lesson in Republican bullshittery

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Mitch McConnell was on the teevee yesterday laying the groundwork for Republican entrenchment in the next round of budget negotiations:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) vowed on Sunday that Republicans would force significant spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling even if President Barack Obama had to be "dragged kicking and screaming."

"What we're saying is that the biggest problem facing the country is our excessive spending," McConnell told NBC's David Gregory. "We've watched the government explode over the last four years. We've dealt with the revenue issue, and now the question is will the president lead? Why should we have to be bringing him to the table?"

Gregory pointed out that trillions of dollars in spending cuts had been part of last year's Budget Control Act and Republicans had refused to accept significant cuts in entitlement programs as a part of a larger deals offered by Democrats going back to debt ceiling negotiations in 2011.

"You can re-litigate the past if you want to," McConnell laughed. "I wish the president would lead us on the discussion rather than putting himself in the position of having to be dragged kicking and screaming to discuss the single biggest issue facing our future. You know, until we adjust the entitlements so that they meet the demographics of our country, we can't ever solve this problem. The time to solve it is now."

Good for David Gregory to stand firm against this nonsense, or at least to point it out for what it is.

Let's go through the bullshit:

First, the U.S. does not have a spending problem, it has a revenue problem, and the budget deficit could be eliminated simply by establishing tax rates at normal historical levels, as we saw during the Clinton years. (As the Times noted last month, "[t]he average federal income tax rate is at its lowest in more than 30 years.") And if there's a spending problem at all, it's with military spending, which is way too high. In fact, under Obama federal government spending is rising at the lowest rate since the '50s, while discretionary spending as a percentage of GDP is the lowest it's been since the same decade. There's no exploding safety net either.

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No, Boehner, you tell us what popular programs you'd like to cut

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As usual, more ridiculousness from Republicans on the "fiscal cliff":

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said on Tuesday that he was still waiting on the White House to detail what spending cuts President Obama would be willing to make in a potential deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff at the end of the year.

"Where are the President's spending cuts?" Boehner said in speech on the House floor.

Talk about negotiating from a position of weakness. This is just bullshit posturing. As Greg Sargent notes, "Dems have already agreed to well over $1 trillion in spending cuts in 2011 -- cuts Boehner himself said were significant at the time. By contrast, Republicans have not agreed to a penny in new rates."

Two things are going on:

1) As Sargent suggests, "the idea is to try to blame the White House and Dems for the failure to reach a deal. But polls continue to show that Republicans are losing this PR battle badly."

2) "As for the demand that the White House go first in detailing its spending cuts, this is an almost laughably transparent ruse. As I keep noting, if Dems propose more in detailed spending cuts, Republicans will simply dismiss them as unserious, no matter what Dems offer -- pulling the talks further and further in their direction."

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Conservatives fear "fiscal cliff"

By Frank Moraes

You remember how I've spent much of the last year ranting about how unserious Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are about dealing with the budget deficit? My main argument: you don't start a discussion of the budget deficit by making it worse. Tax cuts may be a great idea, but that's a different issue. You just aren't being serious if you say, "I want to cut the budget and the first thing I'm going to do it reduce revenue and increase spending." And that is what both of these guys have said.

It isn't just partisan Republicans who do this. Remember Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the two Very Serious gentlemen who have been screaming that the sky is falling for the last many years? Two years ago, they had their deficit reduction committee, which came up with a plan that the committee wouldn't vote for. (Eventually, Simpson and Bowles released their own report that journalists erroneously refer to as the the committee report.) That plan started with -- wait for it! -- a reduction in the top marginal tax rate.

But wait! Isn't Erskine Bowles a Democrat? Yes he is. But he's not that into it. Or perhaps better: so what? Being a Democrat doesn't mean you are liberal; it only means you aren't a complete freak. It is better to think of Bowles as a board member of Morgan Stanley. Not only is that true, but it gets at the heart of who he is and what interests he has. Let me go a little deeper.

Why does anyone care about the deficit? The government must borrow money to finance the deficit. If the economy were not depressed, this government borrowing would reduce the amount of money available to businesses for their own projects. Given that there would be more demand for this money than the supply, interest rates would go up. This is not the situation now and probably for the next couple of years. But eventually, the federal deficit could make the cost of doing business more expensive.

What's more, it could cause inflation, and if you are a follower of the Austrian school of economics, you just know it will. And this seems to include Erskine Bowles. Two years ago, he claimed that within two years interest rates would skyrocket. It is two years later and interest rates are two percentage points lower than they were when Bowles went all Chicken Little on us. So Bowles was completely wrong. And you know what that means to the fools in media: he's a genius!

The more important point here is not just that Erskine Bowles is an idiot; it is that people like him care about the deficit because they fear it will cause the rentiers (the owner class) to make less money than they normally would. Certainly, this could also affect workers. But mostly, the deficit is just a concern of the 1% and all their apologists in Very Serious media (who are all pretty much in the upper class).

Fiscal Cliff!

On Wednesday, in a Washington Post op-ed, Erskine Bowles argued, "Make a Deficit Deal Now." Jonathan Chait dismantled the argument. Bowles went full-tilt Chicken Little again by claiming, "Going over the fiscal cliff would mean allowing a massive and immediate cut to nearly every major government agency and activity, including those vital to our national security or economic growth." Chait minced no words, "That is totally false."

The whole phrase "fiscal cliff" is a bad one. If we don't stop the tax increases and budget cuts by the first of the year, nothing happens suddenly. In fact, the government can pass another tax cut and make it retroactive so that there is no tax hike at all. So all this hysteria makes no sense, unless...

Unless these people are worried about something else. And they are. The truth is that the Democrats have great leverage in his battle -- especially if they are willing to push the fight into next year. If the Republicans want to keep the top tax rate from going up by 4.6 percentage points to the still ridiculously slow 39.6%, they must get a deal done this year. If they wait until next year, they will have no hope. This is why Erskine Bowles wants to pretend that we must make a deal now. Now! Now! He even made the preposterous claim that not making a deal now will help the Republicans:

[M]any partisans on both sides seem to think they have the upper hand in the negotiation... Republicans see large domestic spending cuts, tax increases on poor and middle-income Americans and the need to increase the debt ceiling as their own leverage points.

This is simply not true. As Chait noted: who is it that is pushing for a deal now and is so afraid of the fiscal cliff? It's not the Democrats. It's not President Obama. It's Morgan Stanley trustee Erskine Bowles. It is The Wall Street Journal. What does that tell you?

Afterword

I have heard word that Erskine Bowles may replace Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. This may just be wishful thinking on the part of conservatives. Anyway, I'm not sure that Bowles would necessarily be any worse than Geithner. The problem with Bowles being named Treasury Secretary is that it would be a very bad symbolic move. Just as bad, it would mean that Obama would be continuing to surround himself with the very people who caused the financial meltdown. It would be nice to think that Obama has learned something these last 4 years. But I'm not counting on it.

Update

Sign the petition against Erskine Bowles as Tresury Secretary.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

It's shrinking

By Mustang Bobby

One of the boilerplate lines from the Romney campaign has been that President Obama has "doubled the deficit."

They're right... if by "doubled" they mean the president actually made it smaller:

Late Friday afternoon, the Treasury Department published the official report on the U.S. budget deficit for the most recent fiscal year: $1.089 trillion. While that's obviously still a very large budget shortfall, the deficit is $200 billion smaller than it was last year, and is nearly $300 billion smaller than when President Obama took office.

To add a little historical context to this, over the last four decades, only two presidents have reduced the deficit this much, this quickly: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

This is one of those stories that doesn't get a lot of press — did you hear about it before now? — which makes it easy for Mitt Romney to lie about it and get away with it. But the deficit has historically grown under Republican presidents and shrunk under Democrats.

So when Mitt Romney tells you that "getting our fiscal house in order is more than an economic imperative — it's a moral imperative" and that "Americans deserve a president who will secure a future for our children that doesn't leave them buried in debt," he's telling you to vote for Barack Obama and the Democrats because clearly the Republicans don't know how to do anything about the deficit but make it bigger.

By the way, I'm sure that if the Republicans actually admitted that the deficit had shrunk in the last four years, they'd take credit for it, saying they stopped Obama from his "reckless spending." Yeah, except they haven't passed a budget in two years.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Quote of the Day: Obama on Romney's attack on Sesame Street

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

The president, at a speech yesterday in Wisconsin:

When he was asked what he would do to actually cut spending and reduce the deficit, he said he'd eliminate public television funding... But I just want to make sure I got this straight. He'll get rid of regulations on Wall Street -- but he's going to crack down on Sesame Street.

Yes, that's right. Because, of course, Romney doesn't want to tell the voters just what he'd cut given how deeply unpopular such cuts would be. Better to talk about offsetting his massive tax cuts for the rich with vague talk about loopholes and deductions and to go after one of the right's usual targets, public television, which takes up a minuscule percentage of the federal budget.

And by minuscule I mean 0.012 of the budget. 

Yes, killing Big Bird is surely the way to go. I mean, it's not like the numbers have to add up or anything. (Right, Paul Ryan?)

(For more, see TakeMyCountryBack, where I got the image above.)

The fiscal havoc Republicans have wreaked

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Republicans are in Tampa this week blaming President Obama for... well, for pretty much everything, but mostly, it would seem (based on Christie's speech last night), for not being serious enough and so not doing enough about the bloated budget deficit and ballooning national debt.

The propaganda will be in heavy supply, and Romney is being touted as, and will tout himself as when he takes the podium Thursday night, just the sort of responsible fiscal conservative America needs at this time of fiscal crisis.

Don't believe a word of it.

First, of course, there's the Romney-Ryan (and orthodox Republican) "plan," which mostly focuses on tax cuts for the wealthy (you know, people like... Mitt Romney), paying for them, sort of, by crushing government into oblivion -- there are a lot of unspecified spending cuts, though not to national defense, which is indeed rather bloated, unspecified largely because the devil, as they say, is in the details, or in other words because any such cuts would be unpopular, along with entitlement reform of the kind that would essentially destroy hugely popular and hugely successful programs like Social Security and Medicare -- that is, summing up, paying for them by burdening everyone else, the vast majority of Americans who aren't rich.

You won't hear any of that in Tampa, though you'll hear a lot about how Obama and the Democrats are waging class war and unfairly picking on the wonderful job creating "makers" who just happen to be rich, boo-hoo for them, pity the poor souls and their god-given wealth, and you'll hear a lot about how the only way to get the economy moving again, and to resolve the fiscal crisis, is to reintroduce some serious trickling down. Oh, they won't call it that, but that's what they mean when they propose slashing taxes (on the rich, though they'll claim it's much broader than that) and spending (mostly for programs that benefit everyone else).

But then, second, there's this... the fact that the current fiscal crisis is largely a Republican creation, a product of the gluttonous Bush years, when the GOP controlled the White House and Capitol Hill and ran roughshod all over fiscal responsibility through tax cutting and warmongering.

Here's where a graphic would help, and helpfully Ezra Klein provides one:

Pretty clear, no? As Klein explains:

The top layer, the orange one, that's the Bush tax cuts. There is no single policy we have passed that has added as much to the debt, or that is projected to add as much to the debt in the future, as the Bush tax cuts, which Republicans passed in 2001 and 2003 and Obama and the Republicans extended in 2010. To my knowledge, all elected Republicans want to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Democrats, by and large, want to end them for income over $250,000.

In second place is the economic crisis. That's the medium blue. Recessions drive tax revenue down because people lose their jobs, and when you lose your job, you lose your income, and when you lose your income, you can't pay taxes. Tax revenues in recent years have been 15.4 percent of GDP — the lowest level since the 1950s. Meanwhile, they drive social spending up, because programs like unemployment insurance and Medicaid automatically begin spending more to help the people who have been laid off.

Then comes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's the red. And then recovery measures like the stimulus. That's the light blue, and the part for which you can really blame Obama and the Democrats– though it’s worth remembering that the stimulus had to happen because of a recession that began before Obama entered office, and that the Senate Republicans proposed and voted for a $3 trillion tax cut stimulus that would have added almost four times what Obama's stimulus added to the debt.

Then there's the financial rescue measures like TARP, which is the dark blue line. That's almost nothing, as much of that money has been paid back.

In other words, a largely Republican mess, made worse by a global economic downturn that hardly was Obama's fault. And, indeed, the president has tried to do something about it.

First, he pulled the economy back from the brink of collapse, not least through a stimulus package that Republicans tried to block and through rescuing the domestic auto industry, which some Republicans, including Romney, also tried to block.

So contrary to Republican propagands, it's not that Obama has done so poorly at fixing the economy, it's that the economy would be so much worse were it not for him, were Republicans the ones calling the shots.

Which in many ways they have, controlling the House since 2010, using the filibuster like a disloyal opposition in the Senate, and pursuing a course of absolute obstructionism at every turn, even when the president was handing them a deal that was incredibly friendly to conservatism: "Obama has proposed a multi-trillion dollar deficit reduction plan. Republicans just refused to pass it." He was more than willing to compromise, even to put key entitlement programs on the table, much to the chagrin of progressives, but... no. Never. Refusing to hand him any sort of victory, Republicans chose to block any measure other than one steeped in their right-wing extremism, like the Ryan budget, that aimed to get the country's fiscal house in order.

All of which makes their rhetoric about fiscal responsibility, about how Romney will do what needs to be done, complete and utter bullshit.

Ryan's budget: It's a joke

By Mustang Bobby 

Never one to mince words, Paul Krugman gets delightfully shrill on the plans Paul Ryan has for our economy:

What Mr. Ryan actually offers, then, are specific proposals that would sharply increase the deficit, plus an assertion that he has secret tax and spending plans that he refuses to share with us, but which will turn his overall plan into deficit reduction.

If this sounds like a joke, that's because it is. Yet Mr. Ryan's "plan" has been treated with great respect in Washington. He even received an award for fiscal responsibility from three of the leading deficit-scold pressure groups. What’s going on?

The answer, basically, is a triumph of style over substance. Over the longer term, the Ryan plan would end Medicare as we know it — and in Washington, "fiscal responsibility" is often equated with willingness to slash Medicare and Social Security, even if the purported savings would be used to cut taxes on the rich rather than to reduce deficits. Also, self-proclaimed centrists are always looking for conservatives they can praise to showcase their centrism, and Mr. Ryan has skillfully played into that weakness, talking a good game even if his numbers don't add up.

The question now is whether Mr. Ryan's undeserved reputation for honesty and fiscal responsibility can survive his participation in a deeply dishonest and irresponsible presidential campaign.

It doesn't really matter if his numbers do or don't add up. We have already seen that Mr. Ryan is, if not a full-bore hypocrite about such things as the Obama stimulus, he's at least an opportunist. He's also shown that even if you dress up snake oil and sell it as a scientifically tested cure for everything from the common cold to the limp dingus, it's still snake oil.

The blame for the Republicans running a con man for VP isn't really with the party or the candidate; they've been doing that for years. The blame is that the voters have let them get away with it. You would think that after Spiro Agnew and Dick Cheney we would have learned our lesson. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Paul Ryan is no deficit hawk

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So you know how Paul Ryan has a reputation -- pushed self-aggrandizingly by the man himself, as well as by his party, and spun by a willing, kowtowing Beltway media establishment -- for being an uncompromising deficit hawk, for being ever so willing, unlike most of his Capitol Hill colleagues, to make the tough fiscal choices that are required at this time of urgent fiscal panic?

Yeah, well, here's a shocker. Seems that reputation is completely undeserved:

A Center for American Progress Action Fund analysis shows that Ryan voted to add a grand total of $6.8 trillion to the federal debt during his time in Congress, voting for at least 65 bills that either reduced revenue or increased spending.

From 2001 to 2008, Congress passed legislation that increased the national deficit by a total of $4 trillion — the number grows to $6 trillion if you add in the how much those policies have cost through 2011. Ryan voted for 90 percent of these deficit increasing bills. 

Of course we knew this already. It's just good to have a number attached to it.

And that number is $6.8 trillion. That's trillion. With a T.

Paul Ryan isn't a deficit hawk, he's an Ayn Rand-loving trickle-downer whose aim is to reduce the tax "burden" on the rich while screwing everyone else.

Remember that next time he's held up, including by Mitt Romney, as a serious, courageous man with serious, courageous "ideas" for America.