Category Archives: Party Over Country

Why Are Republicans Trying To Cut Us Back Into Recession?

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The deficit problem is largely solved. Yet Republicans are still trying to cut us back into recession. Before the election they had an excuse: if they kept the economy down people might vote against Obama. But now? What is their game? Jobs fix deficits, and to fix jobs, fix trade and invest.

Proof In Pudding

We now have (even more) clear evidence of what we already knew for sure: cutting government cuts the economy. Along with every other country that has tried cutting their way to growth (now and in all of history, ever, anywhere), our economy was forced into decline last quarter and that decline was entirely caused by cuts in government.

Bob Borosage yesterday, quoted in the Huffington Post’s Jobs Deficit: Austerity Politics Threaten Obama’s Economy,

As Europe has shown and the IMF has warned, inflicting austerity on a weak economy is ruinous and is likely to drive us back into a recession. Those dismissing the downturn as due to an odd drop in government spending should consider that more of these are on the docket.

And Borosage again in Warning: Austerity Hysteria Endangers Your Job,

The U.S. economy shrank unexpectedly in the last three months of 2012, ending over 30 months of economic growth. Exports lagged, reflecting, in part, declining markets in Europe, now suffering a costly recession inflicted by misguided austerity policies. But the greatest cause of the decline was unexpectedly large cuts in government spending, particularly in the military.

Yes, Virginia, cutting government spending in a weak economy costs jobs.

A three-month downturn is a caution, not a catastrophe. But Washington seems too wrapped in its deficit delusions to pay attention to the flashing yellow lights.

Krugman today, in Looking for Mister Goodpain, points out that everywhere else this has been tried the result is higher unemployment and slower growth. After describing the search of an austerity success story Krugman concludes that we should start fixing unemployment,

So what do we learn from the rather pathetic search for austerity success stories? We learn that the doctrine that has dominated elite economic discourse for the past three years is wrong on all fronts. Not only have we been ruled by fear of nonexistent threats, we’ve been promised rewards that haven’t arrived and never will. It’s time to put the deficit obsession aside and get back to dealing with the real problem — namely, unacceptably high unemployment.

Jobs Fix Deficits

The cutters have had their chance. We all understand that the deficit scare is not about deficits at all, it is really about cutting what they want to cut: the things We, the People do to make our lives better, because they want that money for the 1% who pay for their campaigns.

If you really want to worry about deficits the way to fix deficits is jobs. Invest in our economy and the things that make our lives better, and the growth will come. Because democracy is the best economic policy.

Invest in a modern, 21st-century infrastructure and the economy will grow, and deficits as a percent of that economy will become very small — just like what happened when we did that before. (Unless you think the interstate highway system and airports, etc. didn’t help the economy.)

Look to history, people, not to corporate/billionaire propaganda. Look at what has worked, and do that. Investing grows economies, cutting kills economies.

A Deficit To Worry About: Our Trade Deficit

We do have a deficit to worry about, and that is the trade deficit. More than $1 billion dollars a day is drained out of our economy by the trade deficit.

The same crowd (billionaires and their giant, anti-competitive corporations) that promotes the budget deficit scare is benefitting from the trade deficit.

Since Reagan (coincidence?) we have been buying more than we sell and moving jobs and factories out of the country. This pits American workers against low-paid, exploited workers in countries that do not protect people or the environment. And it gets worse every year.

The result of Republican policies has been millions of people begging for work at any wage, and the middle class forced into ever-increasing debt. Meanwhile all the income and wealth accumulates at the very top. … It almost looks like that is the real Republican plan.

See also:

Me, October: Trade Deficit – One Root Of Many Problems.

Borosage, today: Why a Trade Strategy Should Be a State of the Union Priority

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Don’t Feed The Debt Ceiling Trolls

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Bloggers have learned some hard lessons about engaging with right-wing nutcases who leave nasty comments: “Don’t feed the trolls.” Starve them of the attention they seek. Ignore them and move on. This advice also applies to the right-wing nutcases threatening to bring down our economy by refusing to raise the debt-ceiling limit. They won’t get any traction on this unless Democrats engage with them. So ignore them, isolate them and scorn them but do not engage with them. Their billionaire & Wall Street funders will stop them and the pubic will see them for what they are, but only if we all just leave them alone. They aren’t really going to hold their breath until we all die.

And if they actually did take down the economy (they won’t), the country will be better off in the long run because it means the end of the radical right as a force in our politics.

So let them hold their breath until the country turns blue.

Continue reading →

Sympathy For The Palin

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Since watching HBO’s Game Changer I have sympathy for Sarah Palin. She was in way over her head – not really her fault.
The “old” GOP didn’t understand that today’s GOP could elect someone who really “doesn’t know anything.” So they assumed a Governor would at least read newspapers and not just right-wing blogs, watch FOX and listen to Rush Limbaugh. The new GOP just reads right-wing blogs, watches FOX and listens to Limbaugh.
A Palin, and now the problem of a government that is destroying the country, its infrastructure, its courts, all the things that businesses rely on, this is the GOP/corporate establishment’s fault. This is corporate money and careerist politician/lobbyists, just using “the base” and nurturing this culture, because they use the ignorance.
It’s also the corporate short-term thinking thing. Yeah, it was great to get tax cuts and neglect the infrastructure. Great to get people believing there’s no climate change. Great to pile up cash for yourself but let the country pile up debt.
And now it’s “later.” If you aren’t one of the very few who piled up enough cash to fly your jet off to your private island, you’re fucked along with the rest of us, in a country rules by Sarah Palins.

Republican Budget For Billionaires

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The new Republican budget (called the “Ryan Budget” by DC insiders) reflects current electoral reality: billionaires and corporations now finance candidates, and we get government of, by and for billionaires and corporations. The rest of us no longer matter, except as “the help” and, at least to the extent we haven’t been entirely fleeced, a flock to harvest. This budget starts with $10 trillion in tax cuts — mostly for the rich. After adding $10 trillion to the deficits Republicans then claim that severe cuts are necessary to “fight deficits.” Right. Details below.
Keep in mind where we are starting from: The way our economy and tax system is already structured, the top 1% received 93% of income gains from recovery. As Mitt Romney’s tax returns demonstrated, those at the very top — whose income comes as checks generated by the money they already have — already pay much lower tax rates than those of us who work for a living.
Shock Doctrine
“Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes. — Republican Majority Leader Tom Delay, 2003″
After passing tax cut after tax cut, and military spending increase after military spending increase, and starting war after war, Republican borrowing has added up. So now Republicans terrify the public, telling them that budget deficits will lead to the destruction of the country — and soon. After a decade of screaming “9/11,” “9/11,” noun verb “9/11,” they now scream “deficit, deficit, deficit.” Then with the public suitably stirred up and terrified they offer “solutions” they say are necessary to cut the scary deficit (that they caused, for this purpose).
Behind a blizzard of fog and mirrors, the new Republican budget completes the ongoing shift of our government and our economy away from “we are in this together” democracy to a “you are on your own” system that is entirely for the benefit of a few at the top.
Cuts Taxes For The 1%
The smoke and mirrors: they claim this budget is necessary to reduce deficits, but it doesn’t even pretend to. Instead it starts by cutting taxes on the rich and their corporations by another $4.6 trillion while making permanent the Bush tax cuts, costing another $5.6 trillion. It gives a $187,000 tax cut To every millionaire!
Cuts Jobs
Ethan Pollack at the Economic Policy Institute describes how Ryan’s budget cuts would cost jobs — 4.1 million of them:

Paul Ryan’s latest budget doesn’t just fail to address job creation, itaggressively slows job growth. Against a current policy baseline, the budget cuts discretionary programs by about $120 billion over the next two years and mandatory programs by $284 billion, sucking demand out of the economy when it most needs it and leading to job loss. Using astandard macroeconomic model that is consistent with that used byprivate- and public-sector forecasters, the shock to aggregate demand from near-term spending cuts would result in roughly 1.3 million jobs lost in 2013 and 2.8 million jobs lost in 2014, or 4.1 million jobs through 2014.*

Cuts Everything Government Does For Regular People
This budget starts with $10 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy! After handing billionaires and their corporations trillions, increasing deficits by an additional $10 trillion, the Republican budget then cuts the things government does for the rest of us: Medicare, Medicaid, food assistance and public investments (mostly infrastructure and education), and pretends it is necessary because of deficits. (It increases funding for military contractors.)
What is cut? The following is from an analysis by the Office of Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer:
A Choice of Two Futures: A Look at How the Republican Budget Ends Medicare, Destroys Jobs, Benefits the Wealthy
Ending the Medicare guarantee and raising health care costs for seniors:

  • Ends the guarantee of health security and shifts higher costs onto seniors and the disabled over time.
  • Increases seniors’ health care costs just like last year’s budget – which drove up costs by over $6,000 per year, according to CBO.
  • Reopens the prescription drug donut hole, increasing seniors’ drug costs by up to $44 billion through 2020, including $2.2 billion in 2012 alone, according to HHS.
  • Increases seniors’ out-of-pocket costs for preventative care and annual checkups by over $110 million in 2012 alone, according to HHS.
  • 54-year-olds would have to save more money just to cover health care costs – an analysis of last year’s budget showed they would have to save an additional $182,000, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of working families:

  • Provides millionaires an average tax cut of $150,000.
  • Reduces revenue by $4.6 trillion on top of the $5.4 trillion cost of permanently extending all of the Bush tax cuts and other expiring provisions, according to the Tax Policy Center.
  • May force working families to pay higher effective tax rates to cover some of the cost of this $4.6 trillion tax cut for the wealthy by eliminating deductions.

Turning Medicaid into a block grant that jeopardizes access to affordable health and nursing home care for seniors and the disabled:

  • Cuts a total of $1.7 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade, and according to CBO, is on track to cut the program by 75% by 2050. According to the Urban Institute, block granting the Medicaid program could result in between 14 million and 27 million people losing coverage. An additional 17 million people, who gained Medicaid and CHIP coverage through health care reform according to the CBO, would also lose that coverage as a result of repealing the Affordable Care Act.

Making it harder for Americans to receive Social Security benefits:

  • Increases backlogs that delay people from getting benefits that they are due and could leave up to 90,000 people with disabilities waiting for a decision in 2013 and leave 300,000 more people with disabilities waiting for a decision each year over the next decade.

Weakening our ability to out-educate competitors and build a competitive workforce:

  • Reduces Pell Grants by more than $1,000 for 9.6 million students in 2014 and could eliminate Pell Grants for over one million students over the next decade.
  • Kicks 60,000 low-income children out of the Head Start program in 2013 and 200,000 low-income children out of the program each year over the next decade.
  • Cuts Title I funding, which could result in nearly 11,000 teachers and aides losing their jobs in 2013 and nearly 38,000 teachers and aides losing their jobs each year over the next decade.
  • Cuts funding for Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which could result in 7,800 special education teachers, aides, and other staff serving children with disabilities losing their jobs in 2013, and 27,000 teachers, aides, and staff losing their jobs each year over the next decade.
  • Reduces work-study funding, meaning almost 37,000 students could lose access to college work-study opportunities in 2013, and more than 166,000 students could be affected each year over the next decade.

Slashing assistance to low-income families:

  • Cuts the WIC program (Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children), kicking 700,000 pregnant or postpartum women, infants, and children off the WIC program and leaving another 100,000 without access to critical foods necessary for healthy child development in 2013. Each year over the next decade, the cuts would kick 1.8 million women, infants, and children off the WIC program and leave another 100,000 without access to critical foods.
  • Converts SNAP into a block grant beginning in 2016, which could jeopardize access to food assistance for millions of Americans.
  • Cuts HUD’s rental assistance programs, resulting in over 116,000 fewer low-income families housed through the Housing Choice Voucher program in 2013 and 400,000 fewer low-income families housed through the program each year over the next decade.
  • Risks permanent loss of affordable units that serve 1.1 million Americans.

Repealing patient protections and putting insurance companies – not American families – in control of health care:

  • Allows insurers to once again be allowed to discriminate against up to 17 million children with pre-existing conditions.
  • Subjects 105 million Americans once more to arbitrary lifetime caps on their health insurance.
  • Increases 54 million Americans’ out-of-pocket costs for preventative care.
  • Puts up to 15 million Americans who are sick or injured at risk of being dropped from their private insurance because of a simple mistake on an application.
  • Eliminates tax credits for up to four million small businesses, which are already providing more affordable care to two million workers. [Figures provided by HHS and the Treasury Department]

Weakening national security:

  • Cuts COPS hiring grants, which could result in 75 fewer local police hires and 6,200 fewer bullet proof vests for state and local law enforcement personnel in 2013, and 285 fewer local police hires and 23,000 fewer vests each year over the next decade.
  • Cuts Department of Justice (DOJ) funding, resulting in 1,311 fewer federal agents to combat violent crime, pursue financial crimes, secure the border, and ensure national security in 2013, and 4,587 fewer agents each year over the next decade.
  • Cuts DOJ funding resulting in 948 fewer prison guards to maintain safe and secure federal prisons in 2013, and 3,319 fewer prison guards each year over the next decade.
  • Reduces Department of Homeland Security funding for preparedness efforts of state and local governments, which could mean 100 firefighters and 80 emergency managers not being hired or laid off in 2013, and 400 firefighters and 300 emergency managers not being hired or laid off each year over the next decade.

Undermining American competitiveness by cutting investments in science, medical research, space and technology:

  • Cuts funding for biomedical research by NIH, meaning 500 fewer grants NIH could award in a cutting-edge field in 2013 and 1,600 fewer grants each year for the next decade, limiting research that could lead to new cures for diseases.
  • Cuts funding for NSF, which could result in NSF making up to 1,100 fewer competitive research and education grants supporting over 13,000 researchers, students, and teachers in 2013 and 4,000 fewer grants supporting almost 48,000 researchers, students, and teachers each year over the next decade.
  • Cuts NASA funding and puts jobs at risk by forcing the agency to terminate major programs and potentially close major facilities.

Threatening our clean energy future:

  • Cuts investments in the Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and its applied research program, known as ARPA-E, that was established specifically to conduct energy research that industry by itself cannot support but where success would provide dramatic benefits for the nation.
  • Eliminates jobs by setting back efforts to put a million electric vehicles on the road, retrofit residential homes, and make commercial buildings more efficient.
  • Fails to boost all energy sources by eliminating tax support for renewable energy generation and the domestic jobs created by those energy projects.
  • Unless otherwise noted, all figures from OMB.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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A Political Party In Service To Canadian Oil Companies

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Money is certainly changing hands over this one. Digby says Gird yourself — it looks like we’re in for another standoff: She warns that the Republicans are going to hold the government hostage to try to get the Keystone pipeline approved.
Think about what this means. A national political party threatens to hold the entire government hostage, so that Canadian oil companies can more easily sell oil to China. Think about the money that is changing hands. Think about the corruption involved in something like this.

A Quick Note About That Pipeline

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WHY all the pressure from the Republicans for building a “tar sands” pipeline across the entire country?
They say we need the oil. But we’re talking about CANADA, for pete’s sake! The oil is on our border and is already piped TO us.
This pipeline across the country is so they can ship the oil FROM us, to sell to China.
This is about Republicans pushing for big profits for Canadian oil companies, for shipping oil to China, in exchange for a cut of the take for themselves.

People Distrust Government — Conservative Mission Accomplished

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The corporate/conservative plan for decades has been to turn people against government and democracy. Because when people stop accepting the idea of We, the People making decisions, guess who gets to make the decisions instead? Last month a retiring GOP staffer explained how it works, this month a new poll show how well it works.
Distrust
NY Times today: New Poll Finds a Deep Distrust of Government,

Not only do 89 percent of Americans say they distrust government to do the right thing, but 74 percent say the country is on the wrong track and 84 percent disapprove of Congress — warnings for Democrats and Republicans alike.
… A remarkable sense of pessimism and skepticism was apparent in question after question in the survey, which found that Congressional approval has reached a new low at 9 percent.

The Gameplan
At the beginning of September a Republican Senate staffer retired, and wrote a widely-read “confession” that laid bare the conservative gameplan: turn people against government and democracy. In Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult, retiring Republican Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren wrote,

Far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican filibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.
[. . .] A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress’s generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.
A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters’ confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that “they are all crooks,” and that “government is no good,” further leading them to think, “a plague on both your houses” and “the parties are like two kids in a school yard.” This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s – a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn (“Government is the problem,” declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

Please read the whole piece. This Republican, writing from the inside, explains that they are doing it on purpose. They are making the government dysfunctional on purpose. They are making people hate government on purpose. They are working to turn people against democracy and put themselves and their corporate sponsors in power in its place.
#occupy Brings Signs Of Hope
There are signs of hope in the poll. Even with a dearth of media coverage (compare to the well-funded, billionaire-backed Tea Party!!!) the #occupywallstreet movement has changed the national conversation. From the NYTimes article,

Almost half of the public thinks the sentiment at the root of the Occupy movement generally reflects the views of most Americans.
With nearly all Americans remaining fearful that the economy is stagnating or deteriorating further, two-thirds of the public said that wealth should be distributed more evenly in the country. Seven in 10 Americans think the policies of Congressional Republicans favor the rich. Two-thirds object to tax cuts for corporations and a similar number prefer increasing income taxes on millionaires.
[. . .] With the nation’s unemployment rate at 9.1 percent, income inequality remains a palpable issue for Americans. Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats, two-thirds of independents and just over one-third of all Republicans say that the distribution of wealth in the country should be more equitable, even as a majority of Republicans said they think it is fair.

There is hope. The public is not stupid, and can at least sense what is going on.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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How To Understand Republicans

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Why does it seem that Republicans are doing everything they can to undermine people’s trust in government, in Congress and in all our other institutions? Here is the answer.
It is crucial for people to read this to understand what is happening in our politics. This is written by a retiring Republican Congressional staffer: Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult:

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress’s generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.
A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters’ confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that “they are all crooks,” and that “government is no good,” further leading them to think, “a plague on both your houses” and “the parties are like two kids in a school yard.” This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s – a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn (“Government is the problem,” declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).
The media are also complicit in this phenomenon. Ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable “hard news” segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the “respectable” media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. Paul Krugman has skewered this tactic as being the “centrist cop-out.” “I joked long ago,” he says, “that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read ‘Views Differ on Shape of Planet.’”

Please, please read the whole thing.