Why Obama’s New Budget Will Pressure Republicans

Today, Barack Obama will release his proposed budget.  A budget that the GOP obstructionists will say is "DOA" - dead on arrival.  In terms of actually being adopted, the GOP obstructionists may be right, but that doesn't mean the proposed budget won't have a strong political role that will live on.  If the GOP rejects the proposals, then - God forbid - the Congressional Republicans will have to submit a counter proposal that will show their hand to voters.  It's easy to just say "no," but fashioning something that can be passed and survive a veto threat is something all together different.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this reality.  Here are excerpts:

When President Obama releases his budget Monday, the words “dead on arrival” will be widely incanted because they are part of a quasi-religious Beltway ritual.  This year, those words will be misleading.

No one expects Obama’s budget to be enacted as he proposes it. Republicans responded even to early outlines of his plan with a wall of opposition. But this time around is different because, paradoxically perhaps, the fact that Republicans control both the House and Senate makes Obama’s role more rather than less important.

Now, Obama’s plan will be the main public alternative to whatever the Republicans decide to do.

Moreover, the Republicans are responsible for passing a budget through two houses of Congress, so differences within the GOP that could be finessed in the past will have to be dealt with openly.

The most obvious will be on whether to continue cuts in the defense budget prescribed under the so-called sequester enacted in 2011. GOP defense advocates want to raise Pentagon spending substantially, libertarians want to keep both domestic and military spending low, and many mainstream conservatives will try to cut domestic spending even more to accommodate defense increases.

Obama has declined to offer premature concessions to the Republicans in his own proposal, which further clarifies the stakes. At the same time, he has made things trickier still for his opponents by putting many of his ideas in a form that Republicans have supported in the past. That’s true even of some of his tax proposals.

The president will call this bluff by putting $1.8 trillion in long-term deficit reduction on the table. But most of it will come on the revenue side. His argument here is straightforward: The bulk of the deficit reduction in the deals reached since 2011 has come from cuts in discretionary spending — that is, almost everything except the big retirement programs — which is now at its lowest level, as a share of gross domestic product, in decades. 

The deficit hawks who aren’t part of the ideological assault on the public sector know that the basic functions of government have already been cut too much and that some new domestic spending, particularly for infrastructure, is essential.

[T]he biggest challenge to Republicans may be whether they are willing to go along with Obama on ideas that are plainly in their wheelhouse. One small but significant hope: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) have been pushing the idea that we need more evidence-based policy making, and Obama is joining their campaign.

Republicans have tried hard to tout their concern about income stagnation and an increasingly frozen class structure. Obama will be pushing for a new initiative, “The Upward Mobility Project,” to provide more flexibility to local officials in a set of government programs if they can show how their efforts will help people climb occupational and income ladders. Projects of this sort are exactly what we should be thinking about.

Obama’s opening bid ought to be the start of a back-to-basics debate — an argument that will extend into the 2016 campaign — over what we want government to do and how we propose to pay for it.

With Tax Increases California Sees Economic and Job Market Growth

I have noted several times how GOP voodoo economics and huge tax cuts has sent Kansas into a deficit and left job growth shrinking.  Indeed, Kansas lags behind most of the country and is rapidly racing toward a major budget deficit and finds itself slashing education and public services.  In contrast to Kansas, the State of California has enacted tax increases and guess what?  It is experiencing economic expansion and far better than average job growth.  Will these real life experiences make any difference on GOP thinking?  Of course not.  Today's GOP is an anti-knowledge, sectarian party driven by ideology.  Facts simply do not matter.  Here are highlights on California's experience which ought to be a lesson to GOP Neanderthals:

Dire predictions about jobs being destroyed spread across California in 2012 as voters debated whether to enact the sales and, for those near the top of the income ladder, stiff income tax increases in Proposition 30. Million-dollar-plus earners face a 3 percentage-point increase on each additional dollar.

“It hurts small business and kills jobs,” warned the Sacramento Taxpayers Association, the National Federation of Independent Business/California, and Joel Fox, president of the Small Business Action Committee.

So what happened after voters approved the tax increases, which took effect at the start of 2013? 

Last year California added 410,418 jobs, an increase of 2.8 percent over 2012, significantly better than the 1.8 percent national increase in jobs.

California is home to 12 percent of Americans, but last year it accounted for 17.5 percent of new jobs, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. 

America has more than 3,100 counties and what demographers call county equivalents. Eleven California counties, including Sacramento, accounted for almost 1 in every 7 new jobs in the U.S. last year. 

The Central Valley is home to nine of the nation’s 335 largest counties. The data show that all nine counties enjoyed better job growth overall than the rest of America. Sacramento County experienced a 2.7 percent increase, 50 percent better than the national average, as 15,425 jobs were added last year.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/20/6564879/states-job-growth-defies-predictions.html#storylink=cpy

“Does raising income tax rates reduce hiring?”  “The answer is no. What firms care about when deciding how many workers to hire is the marginal product of workers and the marginal cost of those workers. So if you are an employer and your personal income tax rate is increased, that does not raise the marginal cost of your workers, but it may encourage you to work a little less hard,” Neumark noted, applying standard economic theory. 

Some research into tax rates indicates that high rates have the opposite effect: People may work harder, trying to make more money to achieve a desired after-tax income and may slough off if tax rates are lowered. This is known to be the case for people who have a savings target for money to leave their children and are subject to estate taxes – they save more to leave the after-tax sum they prefer, but save less when the tax is lowered or no longer applies to them.

The empirical evidence also shows that the best-paying jobs tend to be clustered in states (and countries) with high taxes. The same tends to be true of wealth creators, including the most money-motivated among scientists, and existing wealth holders not actively engaged in business.

How taxes are spent is also crucial to the effect on jobs. Increasing taxes can, in some cases, encourage job growth.

Highly skilled and educated workers tend to place a high value on commonwealth amenities, such as quality public schools and colleges; extensive parks; honest and reliable law enforcement; as well as fast-responding ambulance and fire suppression services.

So next time someone tries to tell you that raising income taxes will destroy jobs, tell them the evidence just does not support that claim.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/20/6564879/states-job-growth-defies-predictions.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/20/6564879/states-job-growth-defies-predictions.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/20/6564879/states-job-growth-defies-predictions.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/20/6564879/states-job-growth-defies-predictions.html#storylink=cpy

A National Deficit Decline the GOP May Be Hard Put to Explain

If one listens to the endless verbal diarrhea emanating from far right talk radio and many within the GOP - including some of my former proteges who seem to be imbibing Kool-Aid by the gallon -  you'd believe that the nation's budget is increasing.  Indeed, everything coming from the right describes President Obama as a big spender when not accusing him of being a socialist.  The truth, of course is quite different from the alternate universe inhabited by the Christofascists, Tea Party crowd and Fox News viewers.  Maddow Blog has some information that can't be popular with the far right.   Especially, because it shows the budget deficit exploding in 2009 after the U.S. economy tanked thanks to failed GOP policies and the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan launched by the cretin and sociopath known as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, respectively.  Here's the money quote:

For deficit hawks, all of the news is good news.

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.

Not only is this year's deficit on track to be significantly smaller than last year's, to the tune of about $200 billion, it's also on pace to be even better than optimistic projections from February. Hell, we even ran a surplus in April.

All told, the U.S. federal deficit will be about $600 billion smaller than it was in President Obama's first year in office, making this the fastest deficit reduction Americans have seen since World War II.

And with that, let's pause to note what a terrible mistake it is for Republicans to continue to prioritize a perceived problem that's quickly improving.

But let's also note another tidbit of information: one of the main reasons the deficit is shrinking so quickly is the increased revenue from the tax hikes that began in January.

Why the GOP has to get over Ronald Reagan

The irony is that given the characteristics - religious fanaticism and extremism in general - of the GOP base, Ronald Reagan could not win the for a state house race much less the nomination for the GOP presidential ticket.  Yet the knuckle draggers of the party base continue to feign worship to Reagan and his ideas.  And never mind that the challenges facing America in 2013 are far different from those back in 1980.  But for a party that claims a base and grassroots that is ever more detached from reality, none of these facts matter.  As noted earlier, the American Unity Fund recognizes that the GOP must change to survive, especially in terms of dropping its open anti-gay animus (even Nancy Reagan supports gay marriage according to her daughter).  A column in the Washington Post likewise makes the case that the GOP needs to face reality, get over Reagan and prepare itself for a far different world than over 30 years ago.   The columnists pleas will go unheeded by the spittle flecked members of the party base, but that fact doesn't make her argument less relevant.  Here are excerpts:

The unfailing reverence on the American right for Ronald Reagan is understandable. He was the only exemplar of modern conservatism to win the White House, and unlike liberal icons such as Roosevelt or Johnson or Obama, he presided over an economic boom and became beloved by voters not normally drawn to his party. No wonder that Reagan, long before his death in 2004, attained mythical status in the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

But that myth has become a burden for the modern GOP. It has bound Reagan’s followers on the right to policies and positions that were time-specific. The old guard has become convinced that Reagan’s solutions to the problems of his time were the essence of conservatism — not simply conservative ideas appropriate for that era.

Today’s Republican Party, however, faces legions of voters and candidates who came of age politically after Reagan’s eight years in office. An entire generation recalls him vaguely as a genial, optimistic president who stood up for America in the Cold War.

The Republican Party can remain a Ronald Reagan historical society, or it can try to endure as a force in national politics. But it can’t do both. The choice matters greatly, for there is no guarantee that the GOP will retain its ability to win national elections or that conservatism has a future as a national governing philosophy.

The Republican Party may survive, but only if its politicians, activists, donors and intellectuals rethink modern conservatism and find new issues to defend and new arguments with which to defend them. The public face of the GOP can no longer be aging, ill-tempered Reaganites such as John McCain and Jim DeMint but must give way to a diverse, media-savvy generation that understands the America we actually live in. Only then can the essence of conservatism — the promotion of personal liberty — survive, and the GOP along with it.

Mitt Romney seemed to be campaigning for the 1980 election, with attacks on welfare recipients and promises of greater defense spending and getting government off our backs.

In the months since Romney’s defeat, there has been a great deal of angst about the party’s future.  .   .  .  .  the problems are more serious than simply who is winning primary races. This is not a matter of individually competent candidates but of the GOP’s outdated worldview.

They confuse the Reagan-era expression of conservatism with conservatism itself. In clinging to it three decades later, the Republican Party has become not conservative but reactionary.

When Sen. DeMint (R-S.C.)decamped in January from Congress to a venerated conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, it was not to foster intellectual dialogue, innovation or self-examination. It was to be louder and more resolute on principles that voters had rejected in two national elections. Now DeMint fights innovation on immigration reform, same-sex marriage, economic policy and anything else that could propel the party out of the 1980s. He insists that the GOP’s problem is simply bad marketing.

[D]efenders of Republican orthodoxy have fought advocates of innovative conservative governance. On immigration, we see Rubio taking on DeMint, his former mentor. We see Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) endorsing gay marriage while social conservatives threaten to bolt the party. 


The fate of the party will be decided in the fight between those few who are determined to revive and rejuvenate conservatism and those who see such efforts as “selling out,” between those who would drag the party into the 21st century and those who would pull it back into the older, white, conservative enclaves that don’t care much for modernity. The new vanguard’s effort to redefine its party is the real story of the post-2012 GOP, and the party’s only hope for survival.

America is no longer Reagan’s America, and the world is no longer fighting the Cold War. A successful political party must not just acknowledge new realities but adjust to them, even embrace them.

[I]in this endeavor Republicans should recognize that America will not return to the pre-New Deal era. Limited government, not small government, must be the aim. That requires low taxes, not taxes that never increase. It requires modest regulation, but some regulation. And it acknowledges that the electorate expects government to solve problems, not merely stand aside. 

A modern GOP must also incorporate the national security lessons of the past 30 years, particularly in the wake of the Arab Spring. That means adapting to the new face of jihadism — often radicalized individuals rather than al-Qaeda leaders. It means showing some common sense in intelligence-gathering but understanding that we cannot label every American who goes astray as an enemy combatant. 

I generally do not like the op-ed author, Jennifer Rubin, but in her analysis of what the GOP needs to do, she is on target.  Sadly, the party base will ignore her message and perhaps call her a RINO or leave her death threats.  That's how intellectually low and extremist the GOP base has become.  An I say this as a former GOP activist who held a city committee position for 8 years.

Paul Ryan’sBudget Assumes Repeal of Obamacare - Except the Tax Increases and Medicare Cuts

In yet another display of Paul Ryan's glaring disingenuousness - and his desire to dupe the cretins in the GOP base - a new analysis of his budget proposal indicates that it assumes the complete repeal of Obamacare except all provisions that raise taxes.  Oh, and did I mention, it continues the Medicare cuts he and Mitt Romney whined about during the 2012 campaign?  That's right, cut all the parts of the Affordable Health Care that involves paying for benefits for Americans, but keep every tax increase written into the law and keep the Medicare cuts.  Naturally, the drooling, knuckle draggers in the GOP base will only hear the "repeal Obamacare"  portion of Ryan's message while they pay more in taxes with zero corresponding public benefits.  Which is exactly what Ryan apparently hopes for.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Ryan's con job.  Here are highlights:

Every Ryan budget since the passage of Obamacare has assumed the repeal of Obamacare. Kinda. Ryan’s version of repeal means getting rid of all the parts that spend money to give people health insurance but keeping the tax increases and the Medicare cuts that pays for that health insurance, as without those policies, it is very, very difficult for Ryan to hit his deficit-reduction targets.

After criss-crossing the country with Mitt Romney condemning Obamacare’s Medicare cuts, Ryan says they will once again be in his budget. As Talking Points Memo’s Sahil Kapur cheekily tweets, “Paul Ryan was against ACA’s Medicare cuts before he was for them before he was against them before he was for them.”

Ryan has also said he’ll use the new revenue baseline as the basis for his revenue-neutral tax reform plan — that means including both the tax increases of the Affordable Care Act and the “fiscal cliff” deal.

That’s the irony of Ryan’s balanced-budget. Much of it is built on taxes and Medicare cuts that he and his party would never have proposed, and which they in fact fought bitterly, but which they’ve now assimilated into their budget because it’s almost impossible for them to hit their deficit-reduction goals otherwise.

The GOP and the Christofascists truly deserve each other.  Lies and deceit and deception are the stock in trade for both the GOP and the Christofascists.

Why Marco Rubio Is Not "The Republican Savior"’

In its desperation to change its "messaging" rather than its increasingly unpopular theocratic/Tea policies, the Republican Party is grasping for anyone who could be the modern day Moses and lead the GOP out of the wilderness as demographic changes make the party's long term survival more questionable.   One such perceived savior is Florida Senator Marco Rubio who in the racist minds of the GOP mavens can make voters forget failed policies by simply putting a Hispanic face on the party in a form of putting lipstick on a pig.   Time Magazine bought into the GOP insanity and did the cover shown above.  Sadly, for the country, Rubio isn't the savior the irrational GOP perceives him to be.  A piece in Think Progress lays out exactly why Rubio is not going to succeed in transforming the GOP.  Here are excepts:

Since Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) abandoned his opposition to providing undocumented immigrants with a pathway to citizenship and embraced a bipartisan framework for comprehensive immigration, political pundits and Republican leaders have anointed the Florida Congressman the future of the GOP.

Consequently, the likely 2016 presidential candidate has become a media darling, appearing on conservative talk shows and mainstream outlets to tout his reform principles and convince skeptics of the wisdom of reforming the nation’s broken immigration system. The media idolization reached its zenith on the cover of this week’s issue of TIME magazine.

But dig beyond Rubio’s newfound embrace of immigration reform, and you’ll find that the GOP’s future appears stuck in the past, as the great hope of the party still espouses many of the extreme policies voters rejected in November:

1. Refused to raise the debt ceiling. Rubio voted against the GOP’s compromise measure to temporarily suspend the debt limit through May 19 in order avoid defaulting on the national debt. In a statement posted on his website, Rubio insisted that he would hold the debt ceiling increase hostage “unless it is tied with measures to actually solve our debt problem through spending reforms.”

2. Co-sponsored and voted for a Balanced Budget Amendment. “Now more than ever, we need a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Rubio proclaimed in 2011. A Balanced Budget Amendment would force the government to slash spending during an economic downturn, driving up unemployment and making the downturn worse, in a vicious cycle. If the amendment were in place during the last financial crisis, unemployment would have doubled.

3. Signed the Norquist pledge. Rubio pledged to never raise taxes under any circumstances and even voted against the last-minute deal to avert the fiscal cliff, since the deal included $600 billion in revenue. “Thousands of small businesses, not just the wealthy, will now be forced to decide how they’ll pay this new tax,” Rubio noted in a statement.

4. Backed Florida’s voter purge. Rubio defended Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) attempted purge Democratic voters from the rolls, brushing off its disproportionate targeting of Latino voters. He also defended Florida’s decision to shorten its early voting period from two weeks to eight days by pointing to “the cost-benefit analysis.” After Election Day, several prominent Florida Republicans admitted that the election law changes were geared toward suppressing minority and Democratic votes and researchers found that long voting lines drove away at least 201,000 Florida voters.

5. Doesn’t believe in climate change. During a recent BuzzFeed interview, Rubio claimed has “seen reasonable debate” over whether humans are causing climate change. Scientists have long agreed that the debate is now over.

6. Opposed federal action to help prevent violence against women. Rubio voted against the motion to proceed to debate the Violence Against Women Act, noting that he disagrees with portions of the bill. Rubio claims he supports a scaled-back version of the legislation.

7. Believes employers should be able to deny birth control to their employees. Rubio co-sponsored a bill — along with Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) — that sought to nullify Obamacare’s requirement that employers provide contraception to their employees without additional co-pays by permitting businesses to voluntarily opt out of offering birth control.

8. Recorded robo calls for anti-gay hate group. Rubio has previously boasted the endorsement of anti-gay hate groups like the Family Research Council and during the election recorded robocalls for the National Organization of Marriage urging Americans to deny equal rights to gays and lesbians. He recently wouldn’t take a position on legislation that would prohibit employers from firing employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identify and wouldn’t say “whether same-sex couples should receive protections under immigration law.”

 Rubio is nothing more than a new shade of lipstick on the same old GOP pig.

Will The GOP Force A Government Defaut And Destroy the Economy?

I have increasingly referred to Congressional Republicans - especially those in the House of Representatives  - as rabid dogs, anarchists and/or saboteurs.  Some have found those adjectives harsh, but in the grand view, that is precisely what they are as they increasingly determined to force a government shut down coupled with a default on the United States' financial obligations regardless of the fact that such a course of action will wreak havoc on the nation and world's economy and harm countless millions of Americans.   All because these Republicans are afraid to stand up and say "No" to the delusional elements of the GOP base - namely. the Christofascists/Tea Party lunatics - who in their childish tantrums threaten Republican incumbents with primary challenges, if the fanatics wishes are ignored.  A piece in Politico looks at this disturbing move towards destroying the economy and the financial well being of millions of Americans.  Here are excerpts:

House Republicans are seriously entertaining dramatic steps, including default or shutting down the government, to force President Barack Obama to finally cut spending by the end of March.
The idea of allowing the country to default by refusing to increase the debt limit is getting more widespread and serious traction among House Republicans than people realize, though GOP leaders think shutting down the government is the much more likely outcome of the spending fights this winter.

Republican leadership officials, in a series of private meetings and conversations this past week, warned that the White House, much less the broader public, doesn’t understand how hard it will be to talk restive conservatives off the fiscal ledge. To the vast majority of House Republicans, it is far riskier long term to pile up new debt than it is to test the market and economic reaction of default or closing down the government.

GOP officials said more than half of their members are prepared to allow default unless Obama agrees to dramatic cuts he has repeatedly said he opposes. Many more members, including some party leaders, are prepared to shut down the government to make their point.

Starting Monday, Boehner will huddle with his leadership team to discuss his preliminary thinking on a spending strategy. A source who attended meetings to prepare for those private talks said GOP leaders are authentically at a loss on how to control members who don’t respond to the normal incentives of wanting to help party leaders or of avoiding situations — like default — that could be public relations nightmares.

The truth is Boehner is at the mercy of a Republican Conference that is far more resistant to compromise than he is. Boehner was embarrassed when he had to pull his plan for raising taxes — and then watched as three-quarters of his members opposed him on the final tax increase bill after Christmas. He might be the weakest speaker of his generation right now — and there is a fair amount of back-biting about who to blame for the recent debacles.

Not to sound like a broken record but this anarchist/saboteur mentality traces directly back the rise of the Christofascists in the GOP.  Facts, reason, logic and objective reality mean nothing to these extremists and radicals.  The y are NOT conservatives as they pretend but rather are radical bomb throwers who do not care who they harm.  For the time being, President Obama is calling them out and one can only hope that he will continue to do so.  The GOP in its current incarnation needs to be destroyed and, hopefully, replaced by a political party that is not untethered from reality.  Here's a quote of Obama via the New York Times:

To even entertain the idea of this happening, of the United States of America not paying its bills, is irresponsible. It’s absurd. As the speaker said two years ago, it would be -- and I’m quoting Speaker Boehner now -- "a financial disaster not only for us but for the worldwide economy." So we got to pay our bills. And Republicans in Congress have two choices here: They can act responsibly and pay America’s bills or they can act irresponsibly and put America through another economic crisis.

But they will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy. The financial well-being of the American people is not leverage to be used. The full faith and credit of the United States of America is not a bargaining chip.

And they’d better choose quickly because time is running short. The last time Republicans in Congress even flirted with this idea, our triple-A credit rating was downgraded for the first time in our history, our businesses created the fewest jobs of any month in nearly the past three years, and ironically, the whole fiasco actually added to the deficit.

 Andrew Sullivan sums up the threat that today's GOP constitutes to both America and the global economy:

[T]the GOP is the single greatest threat not just to the American economy right now but to the global one as well. There is no party in the democratic West that comes close to their extremism: the British Tories have spent the last years doing all they can to avoid a credit downgrade; ditto the French right. But these fanatics want to save this country's fiscal standing by destroying it. They must be stopped - and the president is not the one who can really do it. Only we can. Public opinion must rally like never before to expose and defang the lunatics running the GOP asylum. And fast.

And let's also not forget that these same extremists who are willing to push the nation into default refuse to even discuss additional tax increases to address the situation that they themselves depict as meriting extreme action.  The levels of Republican delusion and hypocrisy are absolutely breath taking.

Is Chris Christie the GOP's Savior?

While I disagree with a number of Chris Christie's actions and positions - e.g., his veto of same sex marriage legislation passed by the New Jersey legislature - compared to most current day Republican's he is a breath of fresh air and seems committed to doing what needs to be done rather than kissing the bigoted and mean spirited asses of the Christofascist/Tea Party base of the GOP.  Given his failure to tow the line, the question becomes whether he can become the savior of the increasingly insane GOP or whether instead, the GOP will ultimately exile him.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at this issue.  Here are highlights:

A pair of polls out this week shows the dire state the Republican Party finds itself in — and a way out of the wilderness, should Republicans choose to take it.

Poll No. 1: Rasmussen Reports found that views of the tea party — the wing of Republicanism that dominates party primaries and therefore the congressional Republican caucuses — at a new low. Only 8 percent of likely voters considered themselves tea-party members, down from 24 percent in 2010. According to Rasmussen (which tends to have a pro-Republican bias), unfavorable views of the movement topped favorable views, 49 percent to 30 percent.

Poll No. 2: Fairleigh Dickinson University found that 73 percent of New Jersey voters approved of the job their Republican governor, Chris Christie, is doing — near his all-time high. Even 62 percent of Democrats approve of Christie, as well as 69 percent of racial minorities and 70 percent of women. The top would-be challenger to Christie in November’s gubernatorial election is trailing him by 33 percentage points.

[T]he tea party’s record lows and Christie’s record highs tell a larger story: Americans are crying out for an end to ideological warfare.

That has developed into Christie’s signature in New Jersey. He began his term promising tax cuts and fighting with the teachers union over tenure, pay and education reforms, but he now preaches reconciliation — a recurring theme in his State of the State address Tuesday afternoon.

More than three-quarters of Americans believe that politics in Washington is causing “serious harm to the United States,” according to a new Gallup poll — and they are correct to think so.  Christie lent his powerful voice to that sentiment last week when he condemned as “disgusting” the House Republicans’ decision not to take up a $60 billion Hurricane Sandy recovery bill because tea-party lawmakers considered it wasteful.

He unnerved fiscal conservatives by saying that the hurricane recovery would probably require higher taxes, because “there’s no magic money tree.” He came out against the National Rifle Association’s plan to have gun-wielding guards in schools, saying, “You don’t want to make this an armed camp for kids.”

Earlier, after conservatives criticized his appointment of a Muslim judge, he took on these “bigots” for their “gaze of intolerance.” And on immigration, he called for an “orderly process” to legalize immigrants and he criticized those who “demagogue.”

Certainly, Christie is no liberal, but his State of the State speech was full of policy prescriptions that conservatives might label big government

“You see,” he told the legislators, “some things are above politics.”  It’s a lesson that could help the national Republican Party loosen the tea party’s death grip.

Quote of the Day: Andrew Sullivan on Future GOP Shenanigans

As noted in the previous post, I do not foresee a sudden return to rationality on the part of the Congressional Republicans.  However, their maneuvering room may be limited - especially if they seek to avoid totally poisoning the public outside of Christofascist and Tea Party circles against the GOP brand. Andrew Sullivan sifts through the tea leaves and sees the following:

Does the promised debt-ceiling hostage-taking by the GOP render all this strategy moot? Maybe. But it seems to me that the GOP has hurt itself so far since the election on fiscal matters - appearing, especially last week, as a herd of feral, foam-flecked cats. I don't see their threatening to ruin America's credit unless they get to cut Medicare by $500 billion over a decade as a particularly strong political hand. Any party triggering a self-imposed credit crisis as the economy recovers will not be rewarded politically. On that, especially after 2011, the president has the upper hand. Americans do not like monkeying around with the national credit rating as a way to cut medical care for grandma. 

More to the point, the GOP has yet to even lay out the details of its proposed entitlement cuts (and campaigned in part against them). One way out would be for both parties to focus on cutting the Pentagon bloat - but that's not going to happen any time soon. And so I can see revenue-raising tax reform returning as a way to alleviate some of the political pain on both sides.

In other words, I can see Obama's logic here. What he's getting - which is a gradual shift toward more fiscal responsibility, with key protections for the working poor and the unemployed in place - is all he really wants right now.

It's not great, but it will do. Sometimes, the little advances are preferable under certain circumstances to big breakthroughs. And Obama has to face a rabid Republican House probably for his next four years. They self-destructed on Plan B. They will almost certainly have to swallow hard and vote for big tax increases in the next day or so [and, in fact, now have]. And a campaign to slash Medicare is their next major goal.  

Time will tell whether or not the Republicans regain a connection to objective and political reality.   I continue to hope that, if given enough time, the Christofascist and Tea Party lunatics will either completely destroy the GOP or themselves be driven from the party.

Senate Overwhelming Passes Fiscal Cliff Deal

In the early hours of this morning the Senate voted 89 to 8 for passage of a fiscal cliff deal.  The measure now goes to the the House of Representatives and must face utterly dysfunctional, misogynistic House Republicans - a group that continues to forget that their majority is due solely to gerrymandering and the Democratic candidates received one million more votes overall.  One can only hope that the House Republicans will for a change put the best interests of the country ahead of prostituting themselves to the foul elements of the GOP base.  It will be important to emphasize that it will be Republicans who will be raising taxes on all Americans if the legislation is not enacted.  Here are highlights from a Washington Post on the details of the legislation:

The Senate approved a bipartisan agreement early Tuesday morning to let income taxes rise sharply for the first time in two decades, fulfilling President Obama’s promise to raise taxes on the rich and avoiding the worst effects of the “fiscal cliff.” The agreement, brokered by Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), passed 89 to 8 in a highly unusual New Year’s morning vote. It now heads to the House, where leaders have not guaranteed passage but top officials believe it could win passage in the next few days.

The agreement primarily targets taxpayers who earn more than $450,000 per year, raising their rates for wages and investment profits. At the same time, the deal would protect more than 100 million households earning less than $250,000 a year from income tax increases scheduled to take effect Jan. 1.

Republicans gave in on the spending cuts, known as sequestration, by agreeing to a two-month delay in budget reductions that would be paid for in part with new tax revenue, a condition they had resisted. And the White House made a major concession on the estate tax, agreeing to terms that would permit estates worth as much as $15 million to escape taxation by the end of the decade, Democrats said.

Senior aides predicted the measure would pass the House with bipartisan support. But Boehner’s decision to delay the vote meant the nation would tumble over the cliff at least briefly.  In addition to dealing with the fiscal crisis, the measure would extend federal farm policies through September, averting an estimated doubling of milk prices. The deal also nixed a set pay raise for members of Congress.

Under the agreement, the top income tax rate would rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent for married couples earning more than $450,000 a year and single people earning more than $400,000 a year. Those households also would pay higher rates on investment profits, with rates on dividends and capital gains rising from 15 percent to 20 percent. 

Combined with a 3.8 percent surcharge on investment income adopted as part of Obama’s health-care initiative — a tax that also takes effect in January — the top rate on investment income would rise to 23.8 percent for high-income households.

Nor would taxpayers earning less than $450,000 entirely escape. The deal would restore limits on personal exemptions and itemized deductions that existed during the Clinton administration, with those benefits phasing out for couples earning more than $250,000 a year and single people earning more than $200,000.

The last last piece of the puzzle to fall into place was the sequester, which would be delayed until early March under an agreement to raise $12 billion in new tax revenue and $12 billion in fresh savings from the Pentagon and domestic programs.

A convenient summary of the measure is also provided by Ezra Klein here.  Is the deal a good one?  No, it could have been better, but the alternative of possible financial markets chaos and hits to the economy would have been worse.  Of course, the deal still must pass the objective reality untethered House GOP.

The Tea Party and Its Role in Destroying the GOP

Scott Olson/GETTY IMAGES

Other than the Christofascists in the GOP there are few elements of the GOP base I despise more than the so-called Tea Party crowd.   It's open embrace of ignorance, greed, bigotry and self-centered policies, not to mention it's less than subtle racism mark it as a toxic threat to constitutional government.  Although because of the Tea Party's significant overlap with the Christofascists, none of this should be a surprise.  What is perhaps more of a surprise is how over a little more than a two year period the Tea Party and its Christofacist allies are on the verge of destroying the Republican Party - or at least the GOP as it existed for many decades when logic, reason, intellect, responsible governing and true conservatism mattered.  All of these former attributes of the GOP have been swept away and replaced by madness and an almost anarchist mentality where destruction of the country and its economy do not matter a whit if a shift from extremist ideology is required.  A somewhat lengthy article in the Washington Post looks at the Tea Party's foul influence on the GOP.  Here are some excerpts:

The Gadsden flag, which flew proudly over the 2010 midterm elections, now lies in tatters — rent by internal disagreements, losses among its most visible standard-bearers and a growing sense that the tea party movement, which once looked like it could transform American politics, will soon be nothing more than a blip in the country’s collective memory.

The movement’s journey from boom to bust is the story of American politics writ large. The tea party’s ups and downs (in 2012, mostly downs) highlight some of the key forces shaping today’s battles — from the fissures that threaten to destroy the Republican Party to the perils of a leaderless or multi-leader effort to the difference between proving a point and winning.

No one person more embodies the fruitful-turned-fractious relationship that the tea party has enjoyed with the political world (and itself) than the man whom the movement made speaker of the House after the 2010 elections: John Boehner.

The debt-ceiling fight of 2011 was a sign of things to come for Boehner. The speaker engaged in long and serious talks with President Obama aimed at not simply raising the country’s debt limit but also addressing our long-term budget problems. But as it became clear that Boehner was going to have to give to get, the tea party crowd in the House, who saw the debt ceiling vote as a chance to tie the government’s purse strings, made clear that they wouldn’t be going along to get along. 

Then came the 2012 elections, a rebuke of the tea party’s ideas and leaders. Sensing an opportunity to wrest control of his party, or at least the House GOP, back from the fringe, Boehner went on offense.

[Boehner's] Plan B never made it to the House floor. The speaker and Majority Leader Eric Cantor couldn’t come close to securing the votes required.  The defeat was spurred by the tea party, which saw Boehner’s plan not as a way to put political pressure on the president but as an unnecessary sacrifice of a core principle. That principle? It’s never okay to raise taxes on anyone. As Boehner’s strategy sunk, and with it, his power as speaker, it was the lawmakers he had punished who celebrated most heartily.

Huelskamp’s victory, of course, was Pyrrhic. With Boehner marginalized, Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have been left to sort out a fiscal cliff deal — one that almost certainly will be worse for Republicans than what Boehner proposed.

It wasn’t just in legislative battles where the tea party proved a point but lost the fight in 2012.  Indiana’s Senate race showed the promise and peril of the movement. Sen. Dick Lugar, who was first elected in 1976 and had been easily reelected since then, faced a primary challenge from his ideological right from state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, a little-known but decidedly more tea-party-friendly candidate.

Mourdock’s win-then-loss epitomized the tea party’s steep decline, but he was far from the only GOP candidate who sacrificed victory at the altar of ideology. Rep. Allen West, running in a swing district in Florida, spent time speculating about how many communists there might be in Congress. (Eighty-one, in case you were wondering.) When asked about his feelings on abortion, Rep. Joe Walsh, running in a Democratic-leaning, suburban Chicago district, insisted that “there is no such exception as life of the mother.” (He lost by nine points.)

The tea party didn’t catch a single break in Election 2012. Take Missouri, where the defeat of Todd “legitimate rape” Akin in the Senate race was laid at the feet of the tea party. The problem with that theory? The major tea party groups had backed Akin’s primary opponents; he won on the strength of his support among social conservatives.

[T]he tea party needed a second act but had no director. And no one could even agree on what the script should be. The result? Chaos.  .   .   .   .  A movement can become something bigger only if it understands the difference between winning a battle and winning a war — or between a moral victory and an actual one. The tea party won a few of the former in 2012 but almost none of the latter.

Candidly, until the Republican Party finds a way to jettison the Tea Party crowd and the Christofascist, the extremism and insanity - and the threat to constitutional government - will only increase.  These people belong in an insane asylum, not in control of a major political party. 

Fiscal Cliff Deal Increasingly Unlikely Due to GOP Intransigence

If the nation goes over the fiscal cliff early next week it will be thanks to the intransigence of the House GOP and their only slightly less insane compatriots in the Senate.  Apparently, now totally lost in their own private alternate university the members of the GOP House caucus have not even returned to Congress after Christmas and seem only to happy to figuratively fiddle as Rome burns.  And the losers because of this GOP insanity?  Millions of working and middle class families among others.  As Politico is reporting, it looks as if no budget deal will be worked out even if the Senate and White House work strenuously.  Here are story highlights:

Nearly all the major players in the fiscal cliff negotiations are starting to agree on one thing: A deal is virtually impossible before the New Year.  Unlike the bank bailout in 2008, the tax deal in 2010 and the debt ceiling in 2011, the Senate almost certainly won’t swoop in and help sidestep a potential economic calamity, senior officials in both parties predicted on Wednesday.

With the country teetering on this fiscal cliff of deep spending cuts and sharp tax hikes, the philosophical differences, the shortened timetable and the political dynamics appear to be insurmountable hurdles for a bipartisan deal by New Year’s Day.

Hopes of a grand-bargain — to shave trillions of dollars off the deficit by cutting entitlement programs and raising revenue — are shattered. House Republicans already failed to pass their “Plan B” proposal. And now aides and senators say the White House’s smaller, fall-back plan floated last week is a non-starter among Republicans in Senate — much less the House.

On top of that, the Treasury Department announced Wednesday that the nation would hit the debt limit on Dec. 31, and would then have to take “extraordinary measures” to avoid exhausting the government’s borrowing limit in the New Year.

Senate Democrats are drafting a fallback bill to resolve the crisis, but they have little optimism that Republicans will accept their proposals. The White House, a senior administration official said, is in close coordination with Senate Democrats. Late Wednesday, Reid’s office pushed Republicans to pass a bill to extend tax rates for income below $250,000.

The House sidestepped a decision Wednesday to bring the chamber back into session, putting the burden squarely on the Senate, where the stars will need to align for swift action in the next few days. Speaker John Boehner’s leadership team said bluntly: the “Senate first must act” before the House will consider additional legislation to avoid the cliff. So that they’re all on the same page, House Republicans will have a members only conference call Thursday.

Democrats also have good political reasons to hold out until after the New Year, when the new Congress convenes Jan. 3.  Democrats are slated to increase seats in both chambers in the next Congress -- with a robust 10-seat majority in the Senate, and the White House believes it has little incentive to cave to GOP demands ahead of the fiscal cliff.

To some, last week’s debacle in the House looked a lot like several of the near-misses from year’s past; most notably in 2008 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 778 points after the House rejected the initial version of the Troubled Asset Relief Program before the Senate ended up cutting a bipartisan deal to right the country’s finances.

CNN Poll: GOP Policies Are Too Extreme

A new CNN poll reveals what ought not be a surprise to anyone living outside of the GOP's objective reality denying bubble:  a majority of Americans see the GOP and its policies as too extreme.  Likewise, a majority will blame the GOP if the nation goes off the so-called fiscal cliff.  With the GOP now effectively controlled by Christofascists, the Tea Party and other far right extremist elements, it should be little surprise that rational sentient Americans are concerned with the GOP's reverse Robin Hood agenda and efforts to make the nation a quasi-theocracy.  Here are some of the CNN poll findings:

[O]ver half the public says that the GOP should give up more than the Democrats in any bipartisan solution to the country's problems, according to a new national survey.

And a CNN/ORC International poll also indicates that a slight majority of Americans sees the Republican party's policies and views as too extreme, a first for the GOP, and fewer than a third say they trust congressional Republicans more than President Barack Obama to deal with the major issues facing the nation.

The poll's Thursday release comes less than two weeks before the country faces automatic tax increases on nearly all Americans, as well as deep federal spending cuts, if no deal is struck to avert the country from falling off the fiscal cliff at the end of the year.

According to the survey, 53% say the GOP should compromise more, with 41% saying the Democratic Party should give up more of the proposals it supports to develop bipartisan solutions.

"That's due in part to the fact that the Republican brand is not doing all that well," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

Fifty-three percent of those surveyed say they view the policies of the GOP as too extreme, up 17 points from two years ago. Only 37% say they view the polices of the Democratic Party as too extreme.

It probably doesn't help that House Speaker John Boehner, who's leading GOP fiscal cliff negotiations with the president, is held in fairly low regard, particularly in comparison to Obama. According to the poll, 34% of the public approves of how the top Republican in the House handling his job. By contrast, the president's approval rating stands at 52%.

The survey also indicates that seven in ten Americans continue to think that the fiscal cliff will cause a crisis or major problems for the country if a deal is not reached.

Despite these numbers, in the la la land that the GOP has become, John Boehner and his fellow zealots and extremists think they are dealing from a position of strength and are backed by a majority of Americans.  One has to wonder when the GOP will swear off the Kook-Aid.

Republicans Float Fiscal Cliff Fallback Plan

Having still not gotten the message that a majority of Americans do not want what they are peddling, Congressional Republicans continue to show that they are horses' asses and are plotting how to save face with the Christofascists/Tea Party base as the fiscal cliff deadline approaches.  If forced to accept even modest tax increases for the wealthy, indications are that the GOP will continue to seek draconian spending cuts on domestic programs that help far more Americans than their favored top 2% of taxpayers.  In short, these Republicans want to give the appearance of compromise, while wanting to still place the bulk of the burden on working class and middle class families.  Their reverse Robin Hodd mentality remains alive and well.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at the GOP's duplicitous strategy.  Here are highlights:

With negotiations on how to address the fiscal cliff apparently stalled, congressional Republicans are reportedly floating a fallback plan in both chambers of Congress to avert financial crisis if a deal is not reached. That plan would include ceding to President Obama on letting tax cuts expire for the top two percent of earners, but would also take a more hostile approach to other Democratic proposals. 

On Wednesday, Boehner warned House Republicans to not make plans for the upcoming holiday, signaling that there may not be a deal by the end of the year.   According to the New York Times and the Washington Post, Republican leaders are gearing up for that possibility and proposing an alternate strategy to pursue if a deal does not go through. The Times reports:

If no deal is reached, Republicans are increasingly talking about a more hostile outcome in which the House passes legislation that extends tax cuts for the middle class, sets relatively low tax rates on dividends, capital gains and inherited estates, and cancels the across-the-board defense cuts, but leaves in place across-the-board domestic cuts. Then House Republicans would engage in what Mr. Boehner, in a private meeting last week, called “trench warfare,” a running battle with the president on spending, first as the government approaches its statutory borrowing limit early next year, then in late March, when a stopgap government spending bill runs out. But such legislation might not be able to pass the Senate, leaving the country no closer to a resolution.

This strategy would result in significantly less new tax revenue than even Boehner's initial offer of $800 billion. Republicans could then declare victory on taxes while also appearing to compromise on extending middle class tax cuts, thus putting them in a position to pressure Democrats on spending cuts.

 

The GOP's Continued Budget Delusions

Watching the MSNBC lineup last night, a common thread came through: Congressional Republicans are throwing a conniption fit over the fact that Barack Obama is pushing the budget deficit plan that he campaigned upon over the better part of the last year.  Actually doing what one promised to Americans during seems an inconceivable concept to blowhards like John Boehner and the Palmetto Queen, Lindsey Graham, who prefer to cater to the wealthiest 2% of Americans and big business interests while throwing 98% of Americans under the bus.  Their reaction would be comical but for the fact that it indicates that today's GOP would rather harm the country than fail to deliver on promises to the greediest and most selfish elements of the GOP puppeteers.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the ongoing delusions in the GOP leadership.  Here are excerpts:

How dare he? President Obama, I mean: How dare he do what he promised during the campaign? How dare he insist on a “balanced approach” to fiscal policy that includes a teensy-weensy tax increase for the rich? Oh, the humanity.

Republicans are having conniptions. Witness the way House Speaker John Boehner reacted when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner presented the administration’s proposals on taxes and spending:

“I was flabbergasted,” Boehner told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “I looked at him and said, ‘You can’t be serious.’ I’ve just never seen anything like it. You know, we’ve got seven weeks between Election Day and the end of the year. And three of those weeks have been wasted with this nonsense.”

The “nonsense” in question is a set of perfectly reasonable measures that Obama wants Congress to approve. Nothing in his package should be a surprise — except, perhaps, that the president has opened this negotiation by demanding what he really wants, rather than what he believes would be convenient for Boehner to deliver.

“The president’s idea of a negotiation is, roll over and do what I ask,” Boehner groused.  Hmmm. Where do you imagine the president might have learned this particular bargaining technique? Might his instructors have been Boehner’s own House Republicans, who went so far as to hold the debt ceiling for ransom — and with it, the nation’s full faith and credit — in order to get their way?

Obama’s proposals include effectively taking away congressional authority over the debt ceiling, which would preclude a repeat of last year’s hostage crisis. Boehner called it “silliness” to think that Congress would willingly surrender a power it can use to “leverage the political process.” So it’s fine when Congress uses muscle to get its way but not when the president does the same?

This fight isn’t about whether the rich will pay more in taxes; it is clear that they will. It’s about whether this new revenue is collected in a way that allows House Republicans to say they have kept their pledge never to raise marginal tax rates for anyone, for any purpose.

Refusing to budge has served House Republicans well in previous budget negotiations. But the no-taxes-ever bulwark has not served the country well, and if Obama sees a way to blast through it, he would be remiss not to try.

Geithner seems confident. “You’ve heard (Republicans) for the first time, I think, in two decades, acknowledge that they are willing to have revenues go up as part of a balanced plan,” he said Sunday. “That’s a good first step, but they have to tell us what they are willing to do on rates and revenues. That’s going to be very hard for Republicans. We understand that, but there’s no way through this without that.”
 

Most House Republicans are in safe districts, but not all of them — and the GOP majority will be smaller when the new Congress convenes. Polls indicate that most Americans believe the tax increase Obama seeks for the wealthy is no big deal. It’s hard to imagine how Republicans can possibly get a better offer on taxes and spending in January than they can get now.  Hence Boehner’s urgency. Time is not on his side.

We can expect more shrieks and fits of the vapors from the GOP before year end.  One can only hope that Obama hangs tough and forces Republicans to for once do something that is in the best interests of the country rather than their political cronies and vulture capitalists like those associated with Mitt Romney.