David Brooks' little brain

By Frank Moraes 

There was a flurry of writing on Friday about David Brooks' column, "The Next Four Years." Jonathan Chait summed up the column well: "David Brooks Now Totally Pathological." And Ezra Klein asked, "Is the Republican Party Obama's fault?" Answer: no, but a lot of Republicans want to think so.

They are both referring to the second half of Brooks' column where he speculates about what Democrats are really thinking. You see, they are going to propose modest bills like Hurricane Sandy relief. The Republicans will respond as wackos -- but not because they really are wackos. That's what makes the Democratic plan so cunning: by proposing reasonable policies they are making the Republicans seem unreasonable just because the Republicans are devoted to unreasonable policies. I swear, I am not exaggerating; he gives no reason at all for why the Republicans must act crazy; I guess we are supposed to think it is a Pavlovian response: Republicans just can't help it.

He continues on. The Democratic Party will push "wedge issues." Wedge issues like -- wait for it! -- President Bush's comprehensive immigration reform. The other one that Brooks mentions is gun law reform like requiring universe background checks. Traditionally, a wedge issue is one that greatly divides people. You know, things like abortion. These two issues don't even divide the Republicans. The only thing they divide is the Republican elite from the rest of the nation. Man oh man, are those Democrats cunning!

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A good day for sanity

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It may be that "the House GOP is adopting a minority posture," as The Hill suggests, or it may just be that they finally realized that their hostage-taking strategy was a political loser, but whatever the case it was indeed a good day for sanity in Washington with Republicans backing off debt ceiling armageddon and, while still posturing stupidly (no pay for Congress? -- how unconstitutional), conceding that they won't in fact take the country to the brink of economic meltdown to get their extremist right-wing way on fiscal policy.

And it is a significant victory for President Obama. As Jon Chait wrote yesterday:

The main credit here goes to the Obama administration for recognizing that enmeshing the debt ceiling with policy negotiations was a horrible idea that it had to stop dead in its tracks. To let debt ceiling hikes become contingent on fiscal policy agreements was to set up endless future crises that would eventually trigger default when one party or another held out for a little too much.

The whole key to making Obama's extortion-squelching plan, and saving American government from endless cycles of hostage drama that would eventually end in a default, was to credibly insist that he would not trade anything for a debt ceiling hike. After he moved his red line on tax cuts, I doubted that Obama could really make this stick. But he has. 

Even after the president's repeated concessions to Republicans, even after he showed time and time again that he was willing to give up a great deal to get a deal done, on issue after issue, even after he seemed to give up his post-election leverage to push a bad fiscal cliff deal through the Senate earlier this month, I was hopeful that he would stand firm on the debt ceiling and take a firmer line on fiscal policy going forward, refusing to give in to Republican terrorism on Capitol Hill. We'll see how the budget discussions go, but on the debt ceiling at least he deserves our enthusiastic applause.

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Pity the rich

By Frank Moraes 

This image comes via Matt Yglesias. Apparently, The Wall Street Journal is highlighting the plight of those poor souls with six-figure incomes. Because of the Fiscal Cliff deal, they are paying more in taxes. Here is their infographic:

Note here that the single woman and the single mother ("a typical single mom trying to raise two kids on merely quintuple the median household income," writes Yglesias) are paying 1.3% extra in federal taxes. But people making $35,000 are paying 1.4% extra in federal taxes. But you have to put this information in the Wall Street Journal context: those with six-figure incomes matter.

Pity the rich, for in this world they have no voice. Except, you know, every fucking politician and media figure in America.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Political capital is a myth

By Frank Moraes 

Yesterday, Jonathan Chait metaphorically scratched his head: "Nominating Hagel Most Un-Obama Thing Ever." He can't understand this nomination given that (1) Hagel will be a hard sell and (2) Obama doesn't much listen to his advisers anyway. It is interesting speculation, but I wouldn't have even thought about it had he not written, "Why waste political capital picking a fight that isn't essential to any policy goals?"

This brought to mind something that has been on my mind for a while, as in posts like "Bipartisan Consensus Can Bite Me." I'm afraid that just like Santa Claus and most conceptions of God, "Political Capital" is a myth. I think it is just an idea that Villagers find comforting. It is a neat narrative in which one can straightjacket a political fight. Otherwise, it is just bullshit.

Let's go back to late 2004, after Bush Jr was re-elected. He said, "I earned capital in the political campaign and I intend to spend it." What was this thing that Bush intended to spend? It is usually said that political capital is some kind of mandate from the masses. But that is clearly not what Bush meant. He got a mandate to fuck the poor and kill the gays. But he used his political capital to privatize Social Security. One could say that this proves the point, but does anyone really think if Bush had decided to use his political capital destroying food stamps and Medicaid that he would have succeeded any better? The truth was that Bush's political capital didn't exist.

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Prelude to a catastrophe

By Frank Moraes

(Ed. note: This post was written before the House vote last night. But the deal is still the deal, and it's not great. -- MJWS)

For the record, the Senate Fiscal Cliff deal is worse than indicated the day before yesterday. It doesn't raise capital gains tax rates as high as thought: only up to 20% and only on incomes above $450,000. It does not tax dividends as regular income. The estate tax was not raised as high as it should have been, thanks largely to fucktard Democrats. The sequester will only be delayed for two months; what's the point? Doctors get more money, but the payroll tax holiday is ended. As I wrote yesterday morning, this is very bad. And we get a 9-month farm bill. Nine months?!

It isn't horrible. But again: this is all we get when the Democrats hold all the cards. Just wait for a month or two when the Republicans hold all the cards. What are they going to demand? Burnt human sacrifice? Paul Krugman points out the real demon in this deal:

So why the bad taste in progressives' mouths? It has less to do with where Obama ended up than with how he got there. He kept drawing lines in the sand, then erasing them and retreating to a new position. And his evident desire to have a deal before hitting the essentially innocuous fiscal cliff bodes very badly for the confrontation looming in a few weeks over the debt ceiling.

He goes on to say that if Obama does a good job managing the debt ceiling fight, then this deal will look pretty good in retrospect. But really: how likely is that?

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House follows Senate and passes fiscal cliff deal

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It wasn't clear when a vote was coming, but it came tonight:

The House gave final approval Tuesday night to a bill to rescind tax increases for the vast majority of Americans, but only after a day of closed-door debate among Republicans, who were forced to allow a vote on a compromise many in their party disdained.

The final tally, 257 to 167, included most of the chamber's Democrats and fewer than half of the Republican majority. 

It looked for a time as if there could be enough Republican opposition to block the deal, but in the end Boehner had enough votes:

Early in the evening, Republicans held a second caucus meeting. This time, take-out Chinese food replaced sandwiches, and resignation subbed for defiance.

Several Republicans said afterward they feared that, if the bill failed and taxes went up, their party would take the blame.

"You do have to know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em," Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio), an ally of Speaker John A. Boehner, said as he emerged from the meeting. "We've been beaten [in] this fight."

Well, they folded, sort of, but whether they were beaten is debatable.

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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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Happy New Year from The Reaction

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I can't speak for everyone here, but I must say I don't much care for New Year's. It's probably my least favorite "holiday" of the year (with Valentine's Day being my least favorite faux "holiday"). But, well, a day off's a day off, and it's been a pleasant holiday season so far, so who am I to complain?

Besides, tonight we followed tradition by bringing some good Indian food and then watching movies: first the always-amusing Despicable Me (for, like, the 1,453rd time) with the kids, then the incredible Rashomon (the Criterion Blu-ray version, of course). And then flipping through some truly awful TV, Canadian and American alike, before finally landing on CNN (Anderson Cooper, looking helpless, and the astoundingly unfunny Kathy Griffin?) for the usual anticlimax. And now I'm watching the rather underrated Ghostbusters II -- because, why not, and it's the best thing on.

All this after seeing The Hobbit in IMAX 3D this afternoon. I wasn't exactly looking forward to it -- though I did like the LOTR trilogy quite a bit -- but... wow. Awesome, awesome movie. (Though the highlight of that experience was the incredible extended preview for Star Trek: Into Darkness, which plays more like a short film than a trailer -- possibly the best movie preview I've ever seen.)

Anyway, we'll be back with the political blogging soon. Thanks to Richard for holding down the fort during my break the past several days.

(Hey, did you know America went over the fiscal cliff? No? Seems like nothing happened? Uh, yeah, that's because there's no fucking fiscal cliff. It's just an invention of the media, the fiscal scolds, and various Republicans who are trying to scare the country shitless so as to score some political points. So, yeah, whatever. A deal will get done, likely very soon, and it'll be a deal done mostly on President Obama's terms (because he has the leverage now that the Bush tax cuts have expired), which, while hardly perfect, will be way better than a deal done on strictly Republican terms.)

In the meantime, I may not much care for New Year's, but I do love this...

Happy New Year, everyone. Make it a happy and safe one, and best wishes for 2013.

Don't fear the fiscal cliff!

By Frank Moraes 

Ryan Grim has written the best article I have yet read on the Fiscal Cliff, "Fiscal Fail: Government Agencies Plan Few Significant Changes For January, Despite Cliff Hype." He starts by explaining what readers of this site already know: nothing happens on 1 January. The stock market won't freak out. Tax collectors won't go door to door demanding money. And an asteroid will not collide with the earth. Instead, John Boehner's caucus will finally see that in fact they had no leverage all along and an agreement will be made to keep tax rates the same on the bottom 98% of tax payers.

I have been wondering how all of this would affect government agencies. In particular, the IRS has to tell businesses how to withhold taxes. And other government agencies need to know what to assume about their budgets. As Grim points out, they are all in agreement: they will proceed assuming that a deal will quickly be worked out: 

[T]he letter also holds clues to the agency's broader plans -- or lack thereof. The IRS told lawmakers it would not reprogram its system to account for the possibility the AMT would not be patched because "if Congress were to act at some point next year to enact a new AMT patch, the time and substantial expense necessary for the IRS to reprogram its systems... would ultimately be wasted."

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Still worried about Kerry

By Frank Moraes 

Jonathan Bernstein at The Plum Line blog encourages us, "Don't Worry Too Much About John Kerry's Senate Seat." I not exactly worried about this, but I have been opposed to it. Of course, that was when Kerry was going to be moving to the Pentagon. Moving to State seems like a better deal, but I still think it is a questionable idea.

Bernstein argues mostly that Scott Brown isn't that big a threat. First, he says that Brown is not the favorite to win the special election next summer. But as reported yesterday by his own paper, "Scott Brown Would Win Special Election Today." That's just a poll nine months out, of course. But exit polling of the 6 November election showed that the people still liked Brown by a lot; they just liked Warren more. So Brown has at least a decent chance to take Kerry's seat.

Bernstein says not to worry because the seat comes up for re-election in 2014. So the Democrats would have a second chance to defeat Brown. This strikes me as a very weak argument. If Brown wins the special election, he will almost certainly win the off-year election.

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Friday afternoon schadenfreude

By Frank Moraes 

John Boehner seems like a nice enough guy. The truth is, I feel kind of sorry for him. He doesn't seem like a ideologue. It's possible that over the years, he's come to realize that his party has no ideas other than the commitment to stay in power. Every time I see him, he looks like he would much rather be in a bar somewhere drinking. (And I'm pretty sure he spends a large part of the time I don't see him doing exactly that.) At this point, I suspect his beliefs have ossified and he doesn't even think about it anymore. Outside of the House, he'd probably be an alright guy.

Having said that, I'm really enjoying this whole thing. The Republicans (and to a lesser extent the whole conservative movement) is in a full tilt meltdown. I don't usually allow myself to experience this much schadenfreude, but I think I deserve this. It isn't just that the vote for "Plan B" had to be called off. It is that they went ahead with a really vile spending cut bill to woo recalcitrant Republicans. This bill was a great big "Fuck you!" to a large majority of America. And they voted for it, because -- and I don't say this lightly -- Republicans hate America. They have a hard time passing up any opportunity to flip off the Home of the Brave.

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Cliff report

By Mustang Bobby

As we draw ever closer to January 1, the talks on the budget are beginning to sound less and less like serious fiscal management and more like a Roadrunner cartoon:

The clearest indication that House Speaker John Boehner's final fiscal cliff ploy backfired came late Wednesday when he began modifying his so-called Plan B.

Plan B, recall, is legislation to lock in the Bush tax cuts for all incomes up to $1 million — a fallback plan he hopes will strengthen his negotiating hand with President Obama.

But late Wednesday, faced with a daunting whip count, Republican leaders did two things. First, they began entertaining the notion of tacking spending cuts on to the bill — to entice skeptical House conservatives to provide badly needed votes. (Their skepticism is understandable: Why should they vote for legislation designed to strengthen Boehner's hand in deficit reduction negotiations they don’t support in the first place?)

Second, and crucially, they scotched a tandem plan to vote down legislation, supported by most Democrats, extending the Bush tax cuts for income up to $250,000.

That was the biggest tell of the day: Boehner can't deep-six that bill, because he may need to pass it -- with help from Democrats -- if fiscal cliff negotiations with Obama fall apart completely.

Meep, meep.

The president has already agreed to a deal I don't like

By Frank Moraes 

I saw a bit of The Ed Show last night as I was making dinner. Ed Schultz said something that shocked me. I don't have the exact quote, but it was more or less, "I know that the president isn't going to agree to any deal that we don't like." I could hardly believe it. Did he really just say that? After chained-CPI and $400,000 lower limit for tax increases? Maybe by "we" he meant "multi-millionaires on TV." Because the only liberals who expect Obama not to make a very bad deal are liberals who aren't paying attention. 

In the same segment, he talked about how Boehner's "Plan B" (That's the name of a birth control pill, right?) would raise taxes on the poor and middle classes because of other tax cuts that were part of the stimulus bill. Greg Sargent deals with this in detail in an article earlier today at The Plum Line blog, John Boehner, Scourge of the Wealthy, Ctd. ("Ctd." means "continued" because of a previous article.) He shows that half of the households in the top 1% would get a tax break. So this is not a serious plan.

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Boehner's failure leaves Obama with all the leverage

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Two must-read posts from Jonathan Chait (with whom I disagree somewhat on what we should be willing to give up for a deal but who as usual is providing some of the soundest commentary on the current fiscal clusterfuck): 

-- Boehner's Plan B Fails; Inmates Running Asylum

-- House Republicans Again Show Why We Need to Wait Until January for a Deal

Basically, Boehner can't get a deal done, at least not a deal that is remotely acceptable to Democrats and that President Obama will sign, even though the president has put a lot on the table already that arouses the wrath of progressives (understandably, in my view) and event though there's no doubt a Republican-friendly deal could get done (if only they were prepared to allow modest tax increases on the rich).

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Weaker Boehner's morning after pill

By Carl 

The so-called "Republican Plan B" for avoiding the fiscal cliff will be brought up for a vote today. Like the real-life Plan B, it's pretty much going to be prophylactic in getting passed on into the uterus. I mean, Senate:

House Speaker John Boehner has proposed Plan B, which would extend Bush-era tax cuts on income of up to $1 million. He described it as a fallback option to prevent a sweeping tax hike while negotiations continue on a broader plan. 

GOP leaders also had planned to vote Thursday on President Barack Obama's long-standing proposal to return to the higher tax rates of the 1990s on income above $250,000 for families.

But Republicans decided to drop their plan to vote on extending tax breaks on incomes over $250,000. One GOP aide said that since the president has moved the threshold to $400,000, there is no point to that exercise. 

What's astounding about this plan, even this minimally effective plan, is that Boener is having trouble rounding up enough votes to get it through his House. He's had to hand out lollipops to the children in his caucus, even to the point where the sequestration that both parties in both houses of Congress agreed to two years ago are up for modification.

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The Obama-Boehner conspiracy

By Frank Moraes

There has been a lot of reporting on the fact that there isn't anything to report about the Fiscal Cliff negotiations. John Stanton makes a big deal of this in his almost fun article for BuzzFeed, "The Fiscal Cliff Is Boring Washington To Death." Everyone seems to agree that the lack of leaks indicates that the negotiations are at least going fairly well. I have a different theory. 

The two sides have decided that they can't get anything done until next year. The Republicans just can't allow a vote on supposedly raising taxes. And it's even worse than that. If they struck a deal on the income tax rates, they would either have to give on the extension of the payroll tax holiday, or they would also in effect be raising payroll taxes. So everything gets a lot easier for Boehner & Co. in 2013. 

But there is a wrinkle. The staffs of Obama and Boehner really are meeting all the time. What could they be doing? They could be working on a deal that they will make on January 2nd or 3rd. I really don't know. What I do know is that Obama gets a better deal in 2013. And I know that Boehner will have a much easier time selling a deal to the Republicans in 2013. (I would be embarrassed if I were a Republican and I had to take a worse deal just to satisfy the idiots in power in my party.) 

So I'm still inclined to think that we are going over the Fiscal Cliff. Or maybe I'm just optimistic. Or drunk.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Boehner: Obama must reveal mythic bad government

By Frank Moraes

Pollsters are constantly asking Americans how much the government spends on foreign aid and how much it ought to spend on foreign aid. The numbers never really change in any substantial way. In a poll in 2010, Americans thought that the government spends about 25% of its budget on foreign aid and that it ought to only spend 10% of its budget on foreign aid. In fact, the government spends 1% on foreign aid.

I know: Americans are ignorant. Nothing to see here. Dog bites man. Now if our political elites thought such rubbish, that would be a story. Jonathan Chait wrote a really insightful column this afternoon that addresses this very issue, "Why Republicans Can't Propose Spending Cuts." Basically, his argument is that Republicans are vague on what it is they don't like about government. But they are just certain that government is too damned big!

This, according the Chait, is why Boehner keeps yelling at Obama for not offering spending cuts. It isn't a negotiating strategy. Rather, it is Boehner asking Obama to show him the hundreds of billions of dollars in government waste that Republicans just know is hidden in the budget. The problem, of course, is there is no such thing. By the standards of developed countries, we spend very little on social programs. We do, undoubtedly, spend too much on our military, but the Republicans wouldn't think of cutting that. In fact, think back on Romney's budget proposal: he wanted to cut taxes, spend more on military, and spend more on Medicare. What does that leave? Medicaid, basically.

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More "fiscal cliff" bullshit from Republicans and the media

By Michael J.W. Stickings

And really, if you want bullshit (as opposed to all-out right-wing evil), just turn to CNN:

One of the reasons Tuesday night's conversation between President Barack Obama and John Boehner did not go well was because the GOP House speaker sent the White House a fiscal cliff proposal calling for a permanent extension of Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans, including for incomes in the top 2%, a Democratic source said Wednesday.

Democrats took the GOP counter offer to mean that tax reform cannot result in any marginal rates higher than current law, according to the source, who said Boehner's proposal was a "sign" to Democrats that "Boehner and the GOP are unwilling or unable to do any sort of deal that can pass the Senate or be signed by the president."

Democrats favor raising tax rates on wealthy Americans as part of a deal to avoid the year-end fiscal cliff, while Republicans want to extend the Bush-era cuts for all income levels.

A Republican source insists the White House may have misinterpreted the latest GOP offer, since Boehner's offer includes tax reform down the road, which would render anything permanent moot.

Okay. Deep breath.

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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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The case for cliff diving

By Frank Moraes

Noam Scheiber over at The New Republic makes the case: "To Save His Second Term, Obama Must Go Over the Fiscal Cliff." He counters the standard thinking that while it may be tactically smart to go over the Fiscal Cliff, it is bad strategy. He quotes a number of people who argue that if Obama wins this fight, he will so anger the Republicans that he won't be able to get anything done for the next two years. Scheiber calls this for the nonsense that it is.

Anyone who reads me with any regularity know that I don't buy any of this talk about honor among politicians. In fact, I've been defending the Republicans for their intransigence. Politics is about getting power to enact the policies that you favor. That's why there are two political parties: because they disagree. That's why we work to win elections. Bipartisanship doesn't make any sense as an end in itself. It only works when each side thinks the trade offs are worth while. We could have a deal where the top tax rate goes up to 99% and we end Medicare and Social Security. That would be bipartisan: both parties would hate it. But both sides would be giving up something that's important to them! So it must be good, right?
 
Scheiber says there are currently two kinds of Republicans in Congress: "moderately delusional and the utterly, irreconcilably delusional." The moderately delusional are those who understand that the tax fight cannot be won. The irreconcilably delusional are the ones who think that with a stiff upper lib and a song in your heart, all things are possible. They aren't. But as Scheiber notes, even the moderately delusional crowd is wrong: why would Obama take a 37% top tax bracket when he automatically gets a 39.6% top tax bracket by doing nothing at all?

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