"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Monday, January 05, 2009

Would somebody please remind Barack Obama that he won?
Posted by Jill | 6:47 PM
I really wanted to be wrong about this one. God knows I was wrong about John Edwards, and it is to my everlasting shame that I was. But when I just couldn't bring myself to get on the Obama bandwagon back when I was choosing a breakout session at Yearly Kos 2007, it was because of what I saw as a troubling tendency to capitulate to bullies in the name of "changing the tone." I wouldn't mind if he were simply a centrist, because given the media mouthpieces we have in this country and a peculiar American tendency towards willful ignorance, I'm not sure that even a speaker of his gifts and charisma would be able to sell a truly progressive agenda to a bunch of people who think that a song called "Barack the Magic Negro" is a lighthearted joke. But whether it's the malevolent influence of Joe Lieberman as his early mentor, an unwillingness to admit to himself that the kind of politics the Republicans play in Washington is a far cry from what they're able to get away with in predominantly Democratic Chicago, or if he just plain is a Republican in disguise, it's looking more every day like his idea of bipartisanship is less oriented towards persuasion and more the Harry Reid style of letting them take his lunch money and thanking them for doing it.

Because the Obama Economic Plan is starting to look awfully Republican to me -- and to Paul Krugman:
Let’s lay out the basics here. Other things equal, public investment is a much better way to provide economic stimulus than tax cuts, for two reasons. First, if the government spends money, that money is spent, helping support demand, whereas tax cuts may be largely saved. So public investment offers more bang for the buck. Second, public investment leaves something of value behind when the stimulus is over.

That said, there’s a problem with a public-investment-only stimulus plan, namely timing. We need stimulus fast, and there’s a limited supply of “shovel-ready” projects that can be started soon enough to deliver an economic boost any time soon. You can bulk up stimulus through other forms of spending, mainly aid to Americans in distress — unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc.. And you can also provide aid to state and local governments so that they don’t have to cut spending — avoiding anti-stimulus is a fast way to achieve net stimulus. But everything I’ve heard says that even with all these things it’s hard to come up with enough spending to provide all the aid the economy needs in 2009.

What this says is that there’s a reasonable economic case for including a significant amount of tax cuts in the package, mainly in year one.

But the numbers being reported — 40 percent of the whole, two-year plan — sound high. And all the news reports say that the high tax-cut share is intended to assuage Republicans; what this presumably means is that this was the message the off-the-record Obamanauts were told to convey.

And that’s bad news.

Look, Republicans are not going to come on board. Make 40% of the package tax cuts, they’ll demand 100%. Then they’ll start the thing about how you can’t cut taxes on people who don’t pay taxes (with only income taxes counting, of course) and demand that the plan focus on the affluent. Then they’ll demand cuts in corporate taxes. And Mitch McConnell is already saying that state and local governments should get loans, not aid — which would undermine that part of the plan, too.

OK, maybe this is just a head fake from the Obama people — they think they can win the PR battle by making bipartisan noises, then accusing the GOP of being obstructionist. But I’m really worried that they’re sending off signals of weakness right from the beginning, and that they’re just going to embolden the opposition.


Bingo. Perhaps "compromise" worked in Chicago, but it isn't going to work with Washington Republicans. Remember, these are the guys who sent paid Congressional thugs to Florida in 2000 to threaten the people who were simply trying to count all the votes. These are the guys who decided that since Ross Perot's run in 1992 meant that Bill Clinton didn't get 50% of the vote, his presidency wasn't legitimate, and they set out to first stonewall him, and then destroy his presidency -- simply because they saw ALL the power in this country as theirs by birthright. These are the guys who painted a blithering idiot as some kind of military hero and ran against a legitimate one in 2004 by painting that one as some kind of cowardly wuss.

What the hell does it take for these people to realize that You Simply Cannot Do Business With Republicans? How stubborn or naive do you have to be to watch this happen for nearly thirty years and not have it sink into your head that there is no such thing as compromise with these people?

UPDATE: Josh Marshall, as usual, nails it:
First, there seems to be a decent consensus that the tax rebates from last year had little stimulative effect on the economy. So while it's a good thing for families on the margin to get another $500 or $1,000, it's not clear how much bang for the buck you'll get for the money spent in terms of creating demand/consumer spending in the economy.

Second, the amount of the bill that comes in tax cuts leaves the spending side of the bill really small -- judged by the standards of what most economists seem to think is necessary, like $400 billion over two years. So it's not just the logic of the tax cuts on their own merits but the degree they're beggaring the spending side of the ledger. (A lot of this just comes down to whether or not you buy into the Keynesian premise of the whole exercise, of course. But let me note for the record that there does seem to be a decent rationale for significant tax cuts in year one of the bill, since you need to get money into the economy rapidly and there may not be enough projects that can be started quickly. That leaves the question of why so much of it is also included in year two. I fear that may be the 'tell'.)

Third, and in some ways this is the most troubling. It would be far better on many counts to bring in substantial Republican support for this bill. And I don't just mean that in the BS sense in which President Bush usually meant it, which was to say essentially, 'Of course we'd like you to vote for exactly what we want. More the merrier. But if you don't want to vote for our ideal bill, tough luck.' No, I think there's a real logic in not going the 51 votes model President Bush followed. But Obama seems to be telegraphing that to a significant degree the fundamental structure of the legislation is being built around accommodating the concerns of Republicans -- members of a political party that are about as unpopular and weak as you can get at the moment. And that sounds a lot like he's negotiating with himself, something that will embolden opposition and invite Republicans to up the ante even further.


Perhaps Mr. Obama has forgotten that when people don't have jobs, they don't have any income to pay taxes on, and if they don't have income on which to pay taxes, tax cuts do them no good whatsoever.

Labels: , , ,

6 comments
Bookmark and Share
6 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Imagine Obama the Shrewd. What if, when the Republicans say they won't vote for the package with 40% tax cuts because it's not 100%, Obama aligns even the damned Blue Dogs and Sen. Collins and Snowe, then at the last minute has Dem leaders change the 40% to 10% or less and pass it quickly.

Then he can say, "Hey, I compromised but you Repubs said no. So, no compromise. Next time, play like a grown up."
1/5/09, 11:46 PM  
Blogger Jill said...
I've seen too much of Obama the Capitulator to believe that this is a likely scenario. Obama was always about playing nice trumping everything. But the only way to play nice with not-nice people is to capitulate to them. And that's what it sure looks like he's doing so far.
1/6/09, 5:32 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...
Jill, it's not too late to get one of these.
1/6/09, 9:04 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Josh came to his senses a little late, wouldn't you say? But then, being kidnapped will do that to you.
1/6/09, 11:09 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I am hoping that Obama is luring them into a false sense of security. As he said about so many things he can't comment on, Only one President at a time, even though Chimpy has long ago checked out.

Once he gets sworn in and has the power and the pulpit I think you may see him calling out the obstructionists to explain why they hate American citizens so much that they would delay policy beneficial to them.

I might be wrong, but I hope I'm right.

Shame them Obama, call them out!
1/6/09, 8:46 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
The Harry Reid style also includes "standing up to Democrats" !
1/7/09, 5:05 PM  
Post a Comment
<< Home