Levees Not War

“Governing by Near-Death Experience” and Other Observations

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“This is all about stopping a law that increases taxes on rich people and reduces subsidies to private insurers in Medicare in order to help low-income Americans buy health insurance. That’s it. That’s why the Republican Party might shut down the government and default on the debt. . . .

“Imagine if the Republican Party had won the 2012 election and Senate Democrats threatened to breach the debt ceiling and cause a financial crisis unless Republicans added a public option to Obamacare. Does anyone think a President Mitt Romney would find that position reasonable? Does anyone think that position would be reasonable?” —Ezra Klein, “Don’t Forget What the Shutdown Is Really About,” at Wonkblog

In reply, a reader writes in to Wonkblog:

“There might be an even more instructive analogy. In May 2007, 140 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted to defund the Iraq war. In September of the same year, Congress voted to increase the debt limit. Imagine if Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats had threatened to breach the debt ceiling unless Republicans agreed to defund the war. At that time, approval of the Iraq war was polled at 33% in favor and 64% against.”

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“You cannot have this reckless, nihilistic, fundamentalist, ideologically driven governance. . . . Ultimately, advocacy can’t trump governance.” —Paul H. Stebbins, executive chairman, World Fuel Services Corp., and member of Fix the Debt

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“For all the ubiquity of political polarizing and heightened partisanship, no honest observer can deny that the rise of crisis governance and various forms of legislative hostage taking comes entirely from the GOP. . . . This is the reality that finally brought Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein, two of DC’s most fastidiously sober, even-handed and high-minded arbiters of political standards and practices, to finally just throw up their hands mid-last-year and say ‘Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.’ ” —Josh Marshall, “Broken Windows, Broken States,” Talking Points Memo

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“There is no need to watch Gone with the Wind to grasp the American South’s taste for lost causes. Just watch Congress . . . [A]s Obamacare’s socialist, secular machine gradually mows down what remains of civil society, diehards can comfort themselves they were brave enough to lie in its path. It will be a glorious defeat.” —Edward Luce in The Financial Times

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“Against the backdrop of a government-shutdown deadline, Karen Tumulty noted yesterday the ‘cumulative effect of almost three years of governing by near-death experience.’ It’s phrasing that rings true for a reason—since Republicans retook the House majority in January 2011, no major legislation has become law, but we have endured quite a few crises.

“In April 2011, congressional Republicans threatened a government shutdown. In July 2011, congressional Republicans created the first debt-ceiling crisis in American history. In September 2011, congressional Republicans threatened a government shutdown. In April 2012, congressional Republicans threatened a government shutdown. In December 2012, congressional Republicans pushed the nation towards the so-called ‘fiscal cliff.’ In January 2013, congressional Republicans briefly flirted with the possibility of another debt-ceiling crisis. In March 2013, congressional Republicans threatened a government shutdown. And right now, in September 2013, the odds of a government shutdown are quite good once again.

“That’s eight self-imposed, entirely unnecessary, easily avoidable crises since John Boehner got his hands on the Speaker’s gavel—a 33-month period in which Congress racked up zero major legislative accomplishments.

“ . . . great nations can’t function this way. The United States can either be a 21st-century superpower or it can tolerate Republicans abandoning the governing process and subjecting Americans to a series of self-imposed extortion crises. It cannot do both.” —Steve Benen, “A Series of Near-Death Experiences,” at Maddow Blog

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“Listening to the Republicans lie outrageously on the Sunday shows about the catastrophic effects of a program that isn’t even in effect (while denying that climate change exists!) is enough to give me a headache. It reminded me of . . . [Rick Perlstein’s] fascinating article for The Daily Beast about what he calls our ‘mendocracy’—which means a society ruled by liars.” —Digby, “Exchange Grate,” a Hullabaloo

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Photo credits: Top: White House photo; upside-down reflection of Capitol by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg; Washington at dawn by Doug Mills for The New York Times

There are some basic notions that undergird the operation of a democracy. When there’s an election, the candidate who gets more votes is the one who takes office. When a bill is passed through Congress and signed by the president, it’s now the law. And when you lose, you don’t get to demand that your agenda be enacted, for no reason other than that you’d prefer it that way. If you want a bunch of policy changes, you have to win an election, then pass that agenda through the legislative process. That’s how it works. Baseball players who strike out don’t get to just demand that they be given a triple or else they’re going to set fire to the stadium.

—Paul Waldman, “Memo to Republicans: You Lost. Now Deal with It”

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Set This House on Fire

A continuing resolution funding the U.S. government expires Monday, Sept. 30, and without new funding legislation, federal agencies will be forced to shut down. The Treasury secretary has notified Congress that if the federal debt ceiling is not raised, then by Oct. 17 the United States will be unable to borrow to pay its bills. (For more detail, see “Shutdown vs. Default: The Relative Impact” [NYT 9/23/13].) For months, and still, at this late hour, Republicans in Congress have been threatening to refuse to vote for any debt ceiling increase unless all federal funding for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is stripped away. Republicans are divided over how hard to push the issue, but so far the hard-liners have refused to yield.

The White House and congressional Democrats say the Affordable Care Act, passed in March 2010 and upheld in a 2012 Supreme Court decision, is the law of the land and is nonnegotiable. “This is it. Time is gone,” warned Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Sept. 27. “Here’s a president who less than a year ago won election by five million votes. Obamacare has been the law for four years. Why don’t they get a life and talk about something else?”

20 Treats Now!

Now get this: In an effort to win agreement from hard-line House Republicans to vote to raise the debt limit, GOP leaders have put forward a tantalizing wish list of just about everything they (that is, their campaign contributors) have ever wanted. The Republican caucus is still some 15 members away from enough votes to support a debt limit measure. If the reluctant representatives were to agree, the Republicans would be sending to the Senate the following list of demands in exchange for votes on what used to be, in olden tymes—say, before January 2009—a fairly routine legislative procedure. (Congress raised the debt ceiling 7 times under George W. Bush, 18 times under Ronald Reagan.)

Roll Call reports, “According to a document obtained by CQ Roll Call, that ‘wish list’ contains 20 ‘additional options’ for the debt limit bill, on top of four principles in the ‘Core Package’—a one year debt limit increase for a one year delay of Obamacare, the agreement of tax reform instructions and the Keystone pipeline.

“The 20 additional options, according to the document, are:

Economic Growth

1. Offshore Energy Production

2. Energy Production on Federal Lands

3. Pipeline Permitting Reform

4. Coal Ash

5. Prohibit EPA from Regulating Greenhouse Gases

6. REINS Act

7. Regulatory Process Reforms (APA)

8. Consent Decree Reform

9. Regulatory Flexibility Improvements

10. Block Net Neutrality Regulations 

Non-Health Care Reforms:

1. Federal Employee Retirement Reform, which Republicans estimate will save $20 to $84 billion.

2. Eliminate Dodd-Frank Bailout Fund, which they estimate will save $23 billion.

3. Eliminate Mandatory Funding for CFPB, with estimated savings of $5 billion.

4. Require SSN to Receive Child Tax Credit, with estimated savings of $7 billion.

5. Eliminate Social Service Block Grant, with estimated savings of $17 billion. 

Health Care Reforms:

1. Increase Medicare Means Testing, which Republicans estimate will save $56 billion.

2. Reduce Medicaid Provider Tax Gimmick, which Republicans estimate will save $11 billion.

3. Medical Liability Reform, with estimated savings of $49 billion.

4. Disproportionate Share Hospitals, with estimated savings of $4 billion.

5. Eliminate Public Health Slush Fund

 

Well, that’s not asking much. Anything else we can get you?

Paul Waldman at The American Prospect comments, “I’m sure that if you asked them the logical question—Are you people insane?—they’d respond that this is an opening position for negotiations, and we can go from there. Sure, maybe we won’t get everything on the list, but maybe we could bargain it down to, say, delaying the ACA for a year, handcuffing the EPA, the Keystone XL pipeline, and cutting money for public health.”

Once There Was a Surplus

Remember, America, George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus when he succeeded Democratic president Bill Clinton in January 2001. Projections released by the Congressional Budget Office in January 2005 showed that “changes in law” enacted since January 2001 had increased the federal budget deficit—which, again, had not existed, when Bush took office—by $539 billion. By January 2005, tax cuts along with defense and homeland security expenditures accounted for 85% of that deficit. Only six months into Bush’s first term, after Congress (with help from Democrats) passed a $1.35 trillion, 10-year tax cut, the Associated Press reported that “the Treasury Department was tapping $51 billion of credit in order to pay for the budgetary cost of the first round of Bush tax cuts’ rebate checks.”

Think Progress observed in 2011, “The opponents of the tax cut turned out to be right. The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts combined have blown a $2.5 trillion hole in America’s budget and created deficits stretching on for years.”

See “2001 Bush Tax Cuts: Where the Deficit Began” (LNW 7/20/11)

 

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