The plan is vulnerable on a number of fronts (not the least of which is the funding for the Medicaid expansion) and all we heard for months was “don’t worry, once you pass an ‘entitlement’ they’ll never be able to take it away.” And that was nonsense. With the plan taking years to implement, the right having packed the courts for decades and the Republican Party being batshit insane, there was always a very good chance that some element of the plan was going to be struck down. And because it was such a Rube Goldberg mess by the end of it, the result was likely to be the whole thing falling apart. Having something like an optional Medicare buy-in would have been a good back-up just in case. (After all, if they start invalidating Medicare, they know there will be hell to pay.)
All the Very Serious People also told us that the plan would be immediately “improved” and all the problems would be fixed once it was passed, so I suppose they could still add on a Public Option. I was just a teensy bit skeptical that they would even be able to defend the plan as it was, much less “fix” it, and I’m even more skeptical now. But who knows, maybe a miracle will happen.
Packing the Courts
A year ago, no one took seriously the idea that a federal health care mandate was unconstitutional. And the idea that buying health care coverage does not amount to “economic activity” seems preposterous on its face. But the decision that just came down from the federal judgment in Virginia — that the federal health care mandate is unconstitutional — is an example that decades of Republicans packing the federal judiciary with activist judges has finally paid off.
While I would find it hard to agree that only just now are Republican efforts to put conservative activists on the bench paying off, Marshall’s point stands. More importantly, it’s obvious that a political faction can pack the courts with activist judges of a particular ideology over a prolonged period of time. This has been a conservative priority for decades and it’s paid off today. It’s a sad statement that the Democratic coalition has ever prioritized the judiciary as much as conservatives have made it a key part of their theory of change in America.
People Hate Banksters
I guess it really doesn’t matter that 88% of Americans think Wall Street bonuses should be either heavily taxed or banned in full, unless you are trying to figure out a way for the big banks to be upstanding members of American society. This does seem to be a great opportunity for the President, though. Rather than respond to idiotic concerns that he isn’t nice enough to them at a time when the stock market and bank profits have exploded, there should be recognition by the banksters that they are hated by the American people and President Obama is standing between them and a very angry public. In an ideal world, this political dynamic should enable the President and Democrats in Congress to extract concessions from Wall Street that will enable greater economic growth.
The biggest question I have is why aren’t politicians on either side of the aisle trying to speak to this 88% of America? I would hazard that the person who can best capture this anger politically will be well poised to turn it into political power and use it for improved economic policy-making.
Student Protests in London
Austerity has consequences and it’s not surprising that there have been massive protests in London by students following massive tuition hikes for British students. This speech by a fifteen year-old student is pretty incredible and a real example of what anger about the theft of wealth from working people to pay for the folly’s of banksters.
The notion that the Millenials, which this student describes as previously post-ideological, will become ideological because of cruel austerity measures has got to scare the crap out of those who wish to consolidate wealth into the hands of the powerful.
Do the rich need us?
On Twitter last night I saw NTodd (via Steve Benen) promote this post by Ted Frier of They Gave Us A Republic (neither a blogger nor a blog that I was familiar with). Frier writes an incredibly thoughtful and important post on today’s economic crisis and the cold way in which the wealthy – and their political proxies in the Republican Party – are showing disdain for the continued existence of the American social compact. Frier writes:
Elites can make money from factories in China by selling to consumers in India, says Lind “while relying entirely on immigrant servants at one of several homes around the country.” Between the profits they can earn from overseas factories in countries policed by brutal autocracies, and factories in the US manned by non-voting immigrant labor, “the only thing missing is a non-voting immigrant mercenary army whose legions can be deployed in foreign wars without creating grieving parents, widows and children who vote in American elections.” That, maybe in part, is what the Dream Act is about.
There was a time when rich and poor alike subscribed to the promise that a rising tide raises all boats. But American investors and corporate managers no longer need the rest of America to prosper, says Lind, since “they can enjoy their stream of profits from factories in China while shutting down factories in the US.” And if Chinese workers have the impertinence to demand higher wages, says Lind, American corporations can find low-wage labor elsewhere.
…
The point is, says Lind: If the rich do not depend for their wealth – or even their security — on American workers, consumers and soldiers “then it is hardly surprising that so many of them should be so hostile to paying taxes to support the infrastructure and the social programs that help the majority of the American people. The rich don’t need the rest anymore.”
That is all too evident from the contempt for the unemployed that we see coming from Republicans like Jim DeMint, Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle, as the severing of America’s historic social contract now finds institutional expression in a modern Republican party that has abandoned all pretense that it governs on behalf of those other than the upper class.
From my experience both inside and outside the Republican Party, I’ve gradually come to believe that one of the major differences separating Republicans from Democrats is that Democrats view service in Congress as the pinnacle of their careers while Republicans look at their time on Capitol Hill as an internship – a chance to do their time, pay their dues and build up a resume of favors and chits they can cash in later for a far more lucrative second career as lobbyist or corporate hack.
Yes, Democrats pass through the same revolving door between government and K Street that Republicans push on. But Republican behavior while still in government seems far more devoted towards creating jobs for themselves when that Big Day finally arrives and they get to make the jump to an appreciative corporate sector.
There’s real truth to this, though I think the break is more along the axis of conservative versus liberal than it is Republican versus Democrat. There are many conservative Democrats who do exactly what the Republicans Frier refers to in this passage. Later in the piece, he does get more specific along ideological lines.
Eventually, says Drum, someone needs to notice “that Republican policy is no longer rooted in any kind of recognizable conservative principle” and is instead “little more than a program of preventing the middle class from sharing in the gains of economic growth and divvying up the resulting loot among the richest of the rich.”
Conservatives, says Chait, have simply redefined conservatism to be nothing more than an expression of material self-interest, “defined in the narrowest and most short-sighted terms.”
And there’s the rub. Conservativism is no longer a substantive ideology, but a vehicle to facilitate the transfer of wealth from the poor and working classes in America to the rich.
Go read all of Frier’s piece. It’s a thoughtful look at wealth, power, and economic voodooism that is driving change in America.
Tax Cuts & Liberalism
Looking at American politics from a 100,000-foot level, conservatives have won. Programmatic liberalism is essentially dead for a good long time, and small bore stuff is probably the best we can hope for over the next 10-20 years — though social liberalism will continue to make steady advances. I reserve judgment on whose fault that is.
David Dayen responds:
It’s certainly dead in a situation where tax rates are permanently at 2001 levels. To me, that’s the choice. If the debt ceiling rise was included in this deal, ensuring that one bargaining chip for spending cuts came off the table, I’d have a much easier time agreeing to this, mindful of the near-term need for stimulus. As it isn’t, I have problems with mortgaging the future for a short-term gain I find ephemeral.
Bai on an Obama Primary
The New York Times’ Matt Bai has long displayed an intense dislike of the American Left, particularly the online progressive movement. His column at the Times, “Political Times,” is an opinion column masked to look like straight news analysis. Almost everything he writes is filtered through his own normative prism. As such it’s no surprise that today’s piece, “Murmurs of Primary Challenger to Obama,” is laden with distortions. The most obvious is the notion that there are serious talks to run a primary challenger against President Obama. While there is discontent on the left and a small number of progressive writers have floated the idea, it’s hard to describe this as something that is moving towards reality, at least worthy of reporting by one of the Times top political, ahem, reporters.
Things get more interesting when Bai mentions the key issues which he sees liberals as raising when it comes to primarying Obama. He writes:
All of this would have seemed unthinkable in 2008, when Mr. Obama’s red-white-and-blue visage seemed omnipresent on campuses and along city streets, a symbol to many of liberalism reborn. That, of course, was before the abandonment of “card-check” legislation for unions and of the so-called public option in health care, the escalation in Afghanistan and the formation of the deficit-reduction commission.
Note Bai’s issue choice and tone. First, there hasn’t been a single labor union which has cited the lack of movement on the Employee Free Choice Act – or any other issue – as grounds for challenging the President. Yet Bai leads with labor reform, couched in scare quotes, as the first issue liberals are citing as grounds for a primary. Of the three published pieces Bai cites calling for a primary, neither Michael Lerner, nor Robert Kuttner, nor Clarence Jones mention labor reform broadly or Employee Free Choice specifically as reasons to primary the President.
Second, note the “so-called” part of his reference to the public option. It wasn’t so-called. That’s what it was. Again, though, while there is disappointment widely and outright anger in some places, I don’t see the particular presence or absence of the public option from health care reform legislation as a driving force in discussions on the left of a primary challenge.
No doubt the zeitgeist in liberal spheres is one of disappointment and anger. It’s also evident that the President is angry with the progressive left for raising their criticisms, as yesterday’s White House press conference clearly demonstrated. There’s been more tension between the administration and the base than I would hope for, but Bai doesn’t do anyone a service by elevating what are at best tangential policy differences in the quiet conversations about a Democratic primary. Of course, that’s Bai’s point. He’s seeking to exaggerate the volume of these conversations and frame them in such a way as to make it really simple for Village elites to punch the left.
I don’t doubt that more progressives will float the idea of primarying the President. It’s a natural part of the conversation when a sitting President is headed to a re-election campaign. But there isn’t a single organization who has moved towards a primary. There isn’t a single Democratic politician who has expressed interest or willingness in running, let alone a draft movement directed at any individual to run against Obama from the left. Maybe these things will change in the future. For now, there is obviously dissatisfaction but nothing near the level of formative campaigning that Bai implies, making me think the sole purpose of Bai’s piece is to be a vehicle for his intense dislike of the left.
Fiscally Doomed
If you were structuring a tax code from scratch, it would look nothing like this. But the problem is that tax hikes seem to be politically impossible no matter which party is in power. And since any revamp of the tax code would involve tax hikes somewhere, I fear we’re fiscally doomed.
There has to be a conversation about the tax code that includes arguments by Democrats for making corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. Unless and until Democrats are willing to forcefully make this argument to the public, we will continue to be incapable of doing what is fiscally necessary, viz. raising taxes on the wealthy.
On Wikileaks
I think Digby has written the best piece on why Wikileaks is important and what stance progressives should hold towards it. This passage is of note:
It’s true that much of what’s been revealed in the last year has pertained to US foreign policy, but the US is the world’s superpower, spending more on its military than the rest of the world combined, has more global interests and more connections. It’s natural that it would be a primary subject for such revelations. But that doesn’t mean that Wikileaks is only interested in the US or is working on behalf of others to bring it down. Remember, it’s certain Americans who have felt compelled to reveal these secrets about out country. Why the messenger should be shot is beyond me.
Also:
People feel very strongly about this on all sides and that’s fine. But I do think that there is one thing we should all agree on: the appalling open calls for Julian Assange’s assassination are barbaric authoritarianism at its worst. (The obvious attempt to smear him as a sexual predator for alleged condom failure fall into the same category.) The man put some documents on the internet and there is a vigorous global debate going on about it. If there was ever a case for public servants and the media (which should all clearly be on the side of Wikileaks, in my opinion) to be circumspect in their language it’s in this case. I’m astonished that these calls for murder are so casually accepted. (But then, we are living in a country in which torture is accepted, so I’m probably foolish to keep clinging to these silly notions about civilized, democratic behavior.)
PFC Manning is known to have leaked documents to Assange. He has been arrested and faces court martial and a very long jail term if convicted. Wikileaks is just a messenger and not the only one (eg., the Guardian provided the New York Times with this round of documents the US paper of record has reported on). Given that the leaks are in no ways exclusively damaging to the US, but most other major governments of the world, it’s really hard for me to get the hysteria around Wikileaks as being particularly anti-American. Throw in that there are as of yet no documented cases of people being hurt or killed as a result of the leaks and I think this is not much more than powerful people (mostly governments) coming together to defend themselves from facing public scrutiny. That the reaction from Western governments and the Chinese government is functionally the same is both disturbing and telling of the commonalities between threatened elite power structures, regardless of what governmental system they exist in.
The Cost of Tax Cuts
Separate from the partisan ideological debate over what should be done in response to the pending scheduled expiration of Bush’s tax cuts, there’s a real argument to be had about how expensive these cuts would be if they were extended. Paul Krugman, in a column where he goes somewhat from critic to coach of the President, writes this about the short-term costs of a blanket extension of these tax cuts.
But while raising taxes when unemployment is high is a bad thing, there are worse things. And a cold, hard look at the consequences of giving in to the G.O.P. now suggests that saying no, and letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule, is the lesser of two evils.
Bear in mind that Republicans want to make those tax cuts permanent. They might agree to a two- or three-year extension — but only because they believe that this would set up the conditions for a permanent extension later. And they may well be right: if tax-cut blackmail works now, why shouldn’t it work again later?
America, however, cannot afford to make those cuts permanent. We’re talking about almost $4 trillion in lost revenue just over the next decade; over the next 75 years, the revenue loss would be more than three times the entire projected Social Security shortfall. So giving in to Republican demands would mean risking a major fiscal crisis — a crisis that could be resolved only by making savage cuts in federal spending.
And we’re not talking about government programs nobody cares about: the only way to cut spending enough to pay for the Bush tax cuts in the long run would be to dismantle large parts of Social Security and Medicare.
Keeping the tax cut expiration debate squarely in the realm of the political is a mistake. There’s no way to win this argument without talking about the actual economic impact these cuts will have down the road. At a time where there is a mania about deficit reduction, what the Republicans are pushing for truly represents a break with fiscal reality. As Krugman points out, the only way to pay for what the Republicans want is to thoroughly crush the social safety network…to pay for tax cuts for millionaires.
What’s most frustrating about how this debate has played out, again as Krugman notes, is that the GOP is blackmailing the President and Democrats in Congress. No more, no less. The response should come on multiple levels: as I said above, laying out the case for the fiscal irresponsibility of extending tax cuts to millionaires, a partisan assault framing for 2012 (which is where it has mostly been done so far), and a moral argument about pushing for handouts to Paris Hilton at a time when millions are about to lose their unemployment benefits.
Unfortunately, it’s late in the game. Though there is still nearly a full month before the cuts expire on schedule, there doesn’t seem to be a desire to have the fight that needs to be had. Maybe there really is too much at stake to deal in the details now, but I’m just hard pressed to believe that neither economics nor ideology have anything to play in the resolution of this legislative fight.
Hold Fast 