WTF Mike?

By Richard Barry

And that's the name of that tune

Ever since we first heard Tea Partiers express the view that government should keep its hands off their Medicare, we knew there was some serious cognitive dissonance going on in the conservative movement.

If you think about it, though, people rarely have difficulty with their own entitlements, which they are sure they deserve. It's always the other guy's entitlements that ought to be cut back or abolished.

Mike Huckabee is smart enough to figure that out and said so to supporters as he launched his campaign on Tuesday to join the growing field of Republican presidential candidates. As the New York Times reports, he declared himself "the guardian of so-called entitlement programs, warning, 'Let them end their own congressional pensions, not your Social Security!'"

But his pledge to fend off any tinkering with the popular Social Security and Medicare programs put him at odds with his Republican opponents, exposing growing fault lines in the party over an issue that has long been considered a political third rail.

At the core of Republican concerns about the programs is a traditional distrust of big-government largess, coupled with growing fears about their long-term insolvency. Yet the party’s base of white — and often older — voters includes many blue-collar conservatives who mistrust the government but depend on its programs for older Americans.

Sounding a bit like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, Huckabee "said in a video announcing his candidacy, 'Washington has done enough lying and stealing. I’ll never rob seniors of what our government promised them and even forced them to pay for.'"

Progressives might think that government is the vehicle that allows us to pool our resources to everyone's mutual benefit. And though Huckabee seems intent on perverting that notion to suggest entitlement programs are nothing more than what the government owes individuals who have "paid in," to a particular system, he is still reminding folks that government has an important role to play. He is reminding people that it isn't the bigness of government per se that ought to worry, but in whose interest government acts when it acts on our behalf.

Making more conservative voters aware of government's role in delivering Social Security and Medicare may not make them raving socialists, but it could help to challenge some of the libertarian rhetoric that informs so much of the debate on the GOP side these days.

Thanks, Mike.

Entitlement programs by many other names would be sweeter

By Richard K. Barry

I don't know where the term "entitlement programs" comes from, but it certainly helps shape the budget debate in the Republican's favour. As we all know from common usage, people who feel 'entitled' are surely not people who are deserving of our assistance. They are spoiled takers who can never get enough. What's the problem with asking these ne'er-do-wells to take a little less? Why, it's no problem at all.

From this point on, I propose that we call entitlement programs "just society programs." At least when people talk about cuts in these terms, they will have to contemplate the fact that they will be making society less fair.

That may not slow many of the Tea Partiers down, but it will make me feel better. 

Will Obama cave to Republican demands on fiscal deal?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The other day, National Journal ran an article entitled "Republicans, White House in Talks Toward Big Fiscal Deal":

At least a dozen Republican senators are regularly meeting with President Obama's top aides in an attempt to plot a way forward on the looming fiscal challenges facing leaders this fall, senators involved in the meetings tell National Journal.

The meetings, which began after Obama hosted GOP senators for dinner earlier this year, are the first sign that Democrats and Republicans are in talks to strike a deal that would reduce the deficit and reform entitlements and taxes.

Now, let's not get ahead of ourselves. There's no deal in sight: "The talks are, as McCain put it, still in the 'embryonic stage' and so far have consisted of identifying the dividing lines between the two sides." Furthermore, "[t]he differences between the two sides... remain vast."

Suffice it to say, though, this is all rather concerning.

First, there are no Democrats to be seen, at least in this piece. It's the White House and Congressional Republicans doing the talking.

Second, if the point is to establish the dividing lines and to find agreement in between the White House on one side and Republicans on the other, the result will be a deal that is somewhere on the center-right: tax revenue the Republicans agree to along with entitlement and tax "reform" (with Obama having put entitlements on the table, and any such deal securing Republicans an historic victory in their quest to dismantle the social safety net) the Republicans demand.

Meanwhile, we see yet again what the president thinks of progressives, and of the vast majority of his own party -- he wants to cut a deal with Republicans, moving to the right in the process, everything to the left of his establishment centrism be damned.

Of course, the House likely won't agree to any of this. So there's that, for better and for worse.

(By the way, the answer to the title of this post is: Yes, probably.)

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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Tax and entitlement "reform"

By Frank Moraes

This afternoon, Greg Sargent wrote, Republicans Say They Want Entitlement Cuts. But They Want Dems to Own Them. In it, he shows that all this Republican talk about entitlement reform is just a way for them to trick Democrats into owning Medicare and Social Security cuts so that they can campaign against them in 2014 and 2016. As usual Sargent is dead on. What would be really surprising is if Obama does not fall into that trap.

But Sargent—a good, strong liberal—makes a mistake in how he writes about the issue. Word is that Republicans will accept a small tax increase if the Democrats make a big show of owning large entitlement cuts. The Republicans will finesse the coverage of such a tax increase by calling it "tax reform." And that is just how Sargent writes it: he puts "tax reform" in quotes, because it is a euphemism. But he has no problem writing a sentences like this, "Dems would have no choice but to offer up significant entitlement reforms." Do you see it? He writes as though "entitlement reforms" is what it claims to be.

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A watery state

By Carl 

Thus goeth Marco Rubio's presidential aspirations. Apparently, Rubio can't stand the heat. 

But, as to the President's State of the Union address, all seems to be in order. It was populist, and took much more liberal stances on issues that Obama had in his first term, as it followed closely on the heels of his stemwinder of an inaugural address. 

He outlined a vision of a middle class that is healthy and growing that is in distinct contrast with the patrician and elitist views of the Republicans in Congress. His "ladders of opportunity" and support for increasing the minimum wage (a modest increase of less than 30%, to be sure) mirror my liberal libertarian views on government. 

Government ought to be levelling the playing field.

Let me take a moment to brief new readers on what I mean: I view society as a three-legged stool. There's the people, the government, and the business sector. 

When these are in balance, the country is stable. It can grow and everybody benefits to some degree.  

When one of these comes up short, the country is unstable and when two come up short, the country is set to topple over. 

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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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Republicans fight to kill Medicare

By Frank Moraes 

Do you remember the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB)? It is what Sarah Palin famously called "death panels." It is necessary for not only making more affordable Medicare and Medicaid, but all health care in the United States. Of course, conservatives hate it. They wouldn't have hated it had McCain been crowned president and the Affordable Care Act been a Republican law. But it wasn't and so the reason they claim to hate it is that it limits care. In fact, it does not. What's more, these people who are oh so concerned that we won't spend millions of dollars keeping brainless babies alive are not at all concerned about the 50 million Americans without health insurance.

The IPAB has come up recently because the House said it is going to stop the current law that states that the IPAB should be fast-tracked. (Strangely, the vote was supposed to take place on Thursday, but I haven't been able to find any information indicating that the vote took place.) What this means is that the Republicans are trying to kill healthcare cost containment. They claim that this is in the name of of providing "Freedom!" But of course it is the opposite.

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Senate passes bad "fiscal cliff" deal. So is it time to give up on President Obama?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

To begin, let me put it this way: There are good things and bad things about the fiscal cliff deal the Senate passed today, including:

The good: Tax rates for the wealthy go back to Clinton-era levels; federal unemployment insurance is extended for another year; and certain tax breaks for low-income Americans are extended for five years. (And, as Krugman notes: "no giveaway on Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. Basically, no spending cuts at all." That's huge.)

The bad: The threshold for the new/old tax rates is set at $450,000 for families and $400,000 for individuals, much higher than the $250,000 threshold Obama and the Democrats had initially sought; nothing is done about the debt ceiling, and so the Republicans can continue to use it to hold the political process and the economy hostage; the threshold for the 40 percent estate tax is set at the same level as that for income tax, which is very high, and it's also tied to inflation, which Republicans wanted, and sequestration is put off for just two months, meaning we'll be back in this whole fiscal mess sooner rather than later.

It seems like a bad deal to me, one that requires Obama and the Democrats to give up way too much to the Republicans just to get something, anything done. And it seems like they're willing to give it up without much of a fight.

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Chained CPI madness

By Frank Moraes 

I'm getting sick of having to talk about this stuff. The possible Chained CPI change would be even worse for future retirees than it is for current retirees. According to Greg Sargent at The Plum Line, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is willing to go along with the Chained CPI madness "if it is offset with a small increase in Social Security benefits for longtime beneficiaries." Remember: the CBPP is a liberal group. But does that also mean that they are brainless?

If we use Chained CPI for Social Security, it will mean that the cost of living adjustments will be at least 0.3% too low every year. For current retirees, that means that in ten years, they will see about a 3% reduction in their real (inflation adjusted) benefits. This comes to roughly $100 per month. This is important and we should not accept it. The CBPP is suggesting that we adjust very old retirees' benefits up. There are two problems with this.

First, if we know that the Chained CPI is wrong -- that it won't allow benefits to keep up with inflation -- why are we doing it? The answer, as I've already discussed, is that those in power in Washington want to cut benefits. But they are cowards and don't want to be seen as doing so. So they use this convenient backdoor to gut Social Security.

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Obama to sell out Social Security?

By Frank Moraes 

(Ed. note: Frank will have more on so-called "Chained CPI" later today. Stay tuned. -- MJWS)

Ezra Klein is again reporting that a Fiscal Cliff deal is almost done. And once again, I don't get this deal. He says that we will see the 39.6% tax bracket but only for incomes over a million dollars. There will be something less for incomes over $250,000 amount. In return for this, the president gets an extension of unemployment benefits and some unnamed stimulus spending. But the payroll tax cut will end. And the biggest thing of all: we will change the way that cost of living adjustments to Social Security are made.

People are calling this new Chained CPI a reduction in benefits. It is most definitely that! But it is also a backdoor way of destroying Social Security. The program will not keep up with inflation. Over the long term, the program will become more and more irrelevant. And that's why conservatives (and to a lesser extent "liberals") have been pushing this for decades. The truth is that the current COLA for Social Security is probably too low, because of what seniors actually buy. For example, they buy a lot of drugs that don't go down in price and they buy relatively few electronic devices that do.

The trick to Chained CPI is that it assumes that people will substitute. If flashlights get too expensive, people will switch to lanterns! Really. Although it is more along the lines of energy substitution. If heating oil gets too expensive, people will switch to gas. The problem is that this is very likely not an option. When was the last time you changed your water heating system because the price of energy changed? And how much did it cost? But again, the point is not to more accurately model how prices increase; it is to destroy Social Security; or at least to cut it without anyone noticing.

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Americans side overwhelmingly with Obama and the Democrats on fiscal policy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've got this, Speaker. You lose.

Reflecting the right-leaning, Republican-friendly, split-the-difference views of the Beltway media generally, NBC is pumping up a new poll that suggests Americans are hungry for compromise:  

An overwhelming majority of Americans want Congress and the Obama White House to reach a deal featuring both tax increases and spending cuts to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, according to the latest national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Oh really. So Americans just want each side to give in and meet halfway, because apparently each side is equally right/wrong and perfection can be found right in the middle alongside the Beltway media and its indisputable wisdom? 

Uh, no:

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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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Screw rich a little, poor a lot

By Frank Moraes

I try not to read David Brooks, but Matt Yglesias tricked me into reading him with this tweet:

I don't understand what David Brooks is proposing here or why:nytimes.com/2012/12/04/opi…
— Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 4, 2012

So I went ahead and read "The Truly Grand Bargain." What Brooks is doing is a bit of a mystery. Normally, I would think he was just admitting that some Republican demands are hopeless. For example, the top marginal tax rate will go up to 39.6% automatically on 1 January. But he isn't calling for that. Instead, he claims that the Republicans should be, "Willing to see top tax rates go up to 36 percent or 37 percent." What?!

But it gets worse. He wants major cuts to Medicare and Social Security in exchange for this one or two percentage point increase in the top tax bracket and a one year ceasefire in the Republican war on the United States credit rating, know as the debt ceiling. Dean Baker did some calculations on this offer. He finds that Brooks is asking for a 6% cut to poor retirees' incomes and in exchange, Brooks is offering a 1.5% cut in the incomes of the rich through tax increases.

Baker notes, "It's interesting to think about what he would suggest putting on the table if the Republicans had won the election."

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Not serious

By Mustang Bobby

The Republicans said that President Obama's offer on the fiscal cliff fix was "not serious." So they came back with one of their own:

That framework aims to raise new revenue through an overhaul of the tax code. It also calls for slicing $600 billion from federal health programs, in part by increasing the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67, and saving $200 billion by applying a less generous measure of inflation to all federal programs, including Social Security benefits, according to GOP aides.

For the first time, Boehner managed to get his entire leadership team — including conservative champions such as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (Wis.), the 2012 vice-presidential candidate — to publicly sign on to a plan that explicitly calls for new tax revenue. Republicans say they are willing to extract all the new tax money from households earning more than $250,000 a year, the same group Obama wants to target with higher tax rates. But the GOP plan would raise the money by wiping out deductions instead of raising rates.

In a meeting with reporters, Boehner called it "a credible plan that deserves serious consideration by the White House."

It's basically the same stuff that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were offering up until about a month ago when they lost the election. No tax rate changes, severe cuts to programs for the middle class, and deficit reduction through the magic of closing loopholes, which is one step away from traveling to the Delta Quadrant via a wormhole.

The only point of this counter-offer was to show what "not serious" really looks like. 

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Dumb, Dumberer, Dumberest

By Carl 

You'd think after having their asses handed to them in the November elections, Republicans might be a little more... flexible.

And you'd be wrong. The Great Orange Satan -- No, not Kos, the other one -- has stopped crying long enough to lash out at working Americans:

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner proposed $2.2 trillion of spending cuts and new revenue that lack what President Barack Obama calls essential for a fiscal agreement: higher tax rates for top-earning Americans. 

Boehner, an Ohio Republican, yesterday called it a "credible plan that deserves consideration by the White House." The Obama administration promptly rejected the proposal, which would raise the Medicare eligibility age and slow Social Security cost-of-living increases. 

[...]

With the Republican blueprint, both parties now have their opening offers on the table. Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, a Democrat, said the Republican plan signals "act two" in negotiations over the so-called fiscal cliff. "There will be an act three undoubtedly, and hopefully the distance between the bid and ask is closed," he said.

In fairness, at least one of the aspects noted above might make sense, in a perverse way: raising the Medicare eligibility age.

Look, people are going to have to work longer for a bunch of reasons (not least of which is the two major recessions that have triggered on the watch of President Bush, destroying 401(k)s), which means there is a good chance that they'll have private health insurance available to them under Obamacare. By delaying the port over to Medicare, the nation could save billions over time.

Of course, who relies on Medicare but the folks who weren't able to sock away shrinking wages for retirement.

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Republicans reject Obama's initial "fiscal cliff" proposal, but he was right to make it

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Times reports:

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner presented the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a detailed proposal on Thursday to avert the year-end fiscal crisis with $1.6 trillion in tax increases over 10 years, $50 billion in immediate stimulus spending, home mortgage refinancing and a permanent end to Congressional control over statutory borrowing limits.

The proposal, loaded with Democratic priorities and short on detailed spending cuts, met strong Republican resistance. In exchange for locking in the $1.6 trillion in added revenues, President Obama embraced the goal of finding $400 billion in savings from Medicare and other social programs to be worked out next year, with no guarantees.

Tax increases (on the rich)? Stimulus spending? No more Republican-made debt ceiling crises? Now that's some change I can believe in. No wonder Republicans immediately rejected the proposal.

So does that mean it was pointless? Absolutely not.


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I got mine...

By Mustang Bobby

James Kwak in The Atlantic on the future of entitlement programs:

When people say that we can't afford our entitlement programs, they're really saying that rich people won't pay the taxes necessary to sustain our entitlement programs. To be fair, many rich people probably would be willing to pay higher taxes if they knew the facts. But a small number of extremely rich people have successfully spread the myth that we can't afford our entitlement programs.

By the way, the term "entitlement" has been used to make it sound as if people are getting something for nothing. Of course that's bullshit. Everyone who collects a paycheck pays into Social Security and Medicare. But it's not like it's going into a savings account with their name on it; they're paying for the people on it now, and when they retire, the people working will be paying for them. So if everybody — and that includes those of you in the royal boxes — pays their fair share, the system works and it will keep on working.

Ironic that the ones who are the real freeloaders are the rich folk who don't give a rat's ass about anyone else.

Along those lines, I really like what Josh Marshall has to say about how to solve the fiscal crisis:

When you want to efficiently raise revenues, you raise rates. A major simplification of the structure, rooting out all the miscellaneous loopholes and special interest deductions, is probably also a good idea. But that's for fairness and efficiency. Not what you do if the federal coffers simply need more money.

Usually when people say they're willing to raise revenues but want to do it by closing loopholes, they're BSing you. And that's most of what we're hearing today. But I think we're at the point where some of the Republicans making these arguments have gotten themselves so wrapped up in a ball of anti-tax verbiage that they may actually be ready to accept some bizarre Rube Goldberg approach to deduction caps which would raise something like the same amount of revenue as tax rate hikes. And that may be possible.

But at the end of the day, just clean your clothes. If you've got some weird hangup about doing the laundry you could keep buying new clothes after each wearing. Or you could use more perfume. Or you could socialize only with people with no noses. But at end of the day, just f'ing clean your clothes. And the same way, just raise the rates.

Anything else is just people in denial or bargaining from people who need to quickly move through all five stages and get to acceptance. Or a fight they need to have with Grover Norquist. Whatever the problem is, get into therapy, get over it and don't inflict it on the rest of the country or the nation's finances.

Just do it.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Ross Douthat wants a fight

By Frank Moraes

You all know how much I admire reasonable Republicans. Or at least, you know how much I would admire them if they existed. For the record: any Republican who is reasonable has already become a Democrat. The people like David Frum are not reasonable. This is very simple, people! "Not crazy" does not mean "reasonable." Instead, "not crazy" means less -- perhaps, "reasonable fascist."

Ross Douthat is a supposed reasonable Republican. How do I know? He's a Republican and he is sometimes on Up with Chris Hayes. But unlike Josh Barro, who often makes a lot of sense, Douthat just annoys me. In fact, what most annoys me is that he is a Catholic, yet doesn't evidence much in terms of Christian compassion. Also, he doesn't write nearly as well as Garry Wills.

Most recently, Douthat tells us about "Our Enemy, the Payroll Tax." It's a bit weird, because he is making sense but in the cause of evil. He says we should turn Social Security into a plain old-fashioned tax.

Yes! We should do that! If we did that, we could get rid of the Social Security cap. The problem with the way it is now is that people think of it as an insurance program: the more you pay in, the more you get out. And this justifies billionaires paying in a pittance, because they will only get what they consider a pittance out. But if Social Security is just a tax like any other, there is no justification for this most regressive of taxes. In fact, we might even be able to make it a little progressive. But for the time, making Social Security a flat tax would be a huge improvement. (And that ought to give you some idea of how awful the system is today.)
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Contrary to what the media might tell you, Lindsey Graham is anything but courageous

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Serious, patriotic bullshit.

Gasp! A Republican says he'll break The Pledge? Stop the fucking presses!

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday said he is ready to violate conservative activist Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge to reach a deal to avoid the looming "fiscal cliff."

"I will violate the pledge, long story short, for the good of the country," Graham said on ABC's "This Week." "When you're $16 trillion in debt, the only pledge we should be making to each other is to avoid becoming Greece."

But Graham cautioned that he he would violate the pledge "only if Democrats will do entitlement reforms" and ruled out increasing tax rates. 

"I am willing to generate revenue," he said. "I will not raise tax rates to do it; I will cap deductions." 

First, the U.S. isn't about to become Greece. Not now, not soon, and probably not ever.

Second, this isn't the first time Graham has issued this ridiculous warning. "What is calamitous is the path we're on as a nation," he said in July 2011. "We're becoming Greece." This is just more of the same.

Third, this also isn't the first time Graham has agreed to revenue increases. Calling on Romney to lead the way, he said the same thing back in August.

Fourth, Graham's self-serving "for the good of the country" rhetoric is complete bullshit.

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