The chief economist at Moody’s likes the tax cut deal a lot, and the guy has a pretty good prognostic record, so I guess that I like the tax cut deal as well.
I don’t care about Obama punching hippies as much as most people do. As Atrios says if it takes some verbal abuse to get good policy outcomes (not awful will also do) then so be it.
I still think that it was rather stupid to argue that he would fight more if only less was at stake. I guess that the GOP won’t push him around as long as the issue is not too weighty. We can therefore expect some satisfying fights over, um, post office namings and Sense of the Senate resolutions about the Superbowl.
On the flip side, the weird alliance between Bernie Sanders and Jim DeMint suggests that the whole deal honestly might die in utero. If that happens we could do worse than just put the damn hostage down. Virtually any other use of that money would do more for stimulus than what it is doing now. John Boehner will veto any plan that cuts the military budget, Medicare or raises taxes, so come January we will almost certainly lose any chance to plug that kind of hole in our budget.
eemom
um……Moody’s? Aren’t those the guys that helped drive us into our present economic abyss by AAA rating the mortgage backed securities for years and years?? Or was that some other Moody’s?
tweez
3…2…1…
FLAME WAR!
There’s something in here to enrage everybody at JC’s BJ.
Oh yeah, it’s on like Donkey Kong.
Sentient Puddle
I respect Zandi quite a bit, but he must be seeing something that I’m not. He clearly doesn’t think the Bush tax cut extensions are that stimulative, so he’s not shilling for those. But everything else just strikes me as a sort of extension of current policy (unemployment benefits) or a “best we could manage” item (payroll tax).
Is there any link to anywhere where he gets into more specifics about what he likes about this?
gene108
The real issue is if the tax deal gets passed, will other bills like DADT or the DREAM Act get a hearing during this session of Congress?
Anyway, if President Obama had fought harder…blah, blah, blah…
The Grand Panjandrum
The “hippie punching” during the press conference about the tax cut deal was a brief, and very mild rebuke at worst. He spent a good portion of his time talking about “hostage takers” in the GOP. It was pretty damn nice to hear him call out the Republicans and actually use a hyperbolic (for Obama) term like “hostage takers” for once. I watched the entire thing and recommend it to anyone who hasn’t yet seen it. Watch the entire thing. The snippets don’t capture the flavor of the press conference.
c u n d gulag
I started ‘to thinking (which is always a dangerous thing),’ and I wonder if a lot of us folks on the left don’t suffer from something, which for lack of a better term, I’ll call “Bush Envy?”
I’m proposing that Liberals who are like that want Obama to be the anti-Bush on the economy, general policies and war, but like Bush in his attitude and approach.
W. didn’t give a good Goddamn about how the Dem’s, or the public , or really anyone, felt (OK, really Cheney, but W. was the talking puppet). And he acted like it. Like a dictator – that’s why I always refer to him as “Little Boots.” He used 9/11, the “Wars,” and security like cudgels to browbeat any and all Dem’s, other Liberals, and even any, and there were only a few, Rep’s who didn’t jump to go in lockstep. It was, “My way of the highway, you treasonous, terrorist-loving, cowardly traitor,” 24x7x365.
Now, I’m about as far left as you can go, but I differ from the what I see in some people I read and hear in that I don’t look for Obama to have Bush’s approach or attitude. Yes, I want him to be strong and tough! But I don’t want a Liberal W. clone in that sense. And I think from what I see and read, what several very vehement bloggers and commenters (I don’t mean to create strawmen here, but they really are too numerous to mention) want subconsiously is a nice, environmentally, and economically friendy, anti-war tough-guy – Bush-like, if you please, who pushes legislators and people around until he gets what he wants. Since Republicans once did ‘my way or the highway,’ they feel like we should too. With Obama at the head.*
If you think I’m wrong, please tell me.
Obamabot comments on the way. 3… 2… 1… INCOMING!!!
*And if you notice the rhetoric coming from the right for the past two years, you’ll see that that IS their meme. It’s Freudian projection for that ‘my way or the highway’ approach “Little Boots” had -”Obama is ramming X down our throats!” “He never consults us!” “He makes arbitrary and universal decision!” “He’s a Fascist!” “He’s a Dictator!” Etc., etc., etc., and so forth… I’m guilty of saying those exact same things about Bush. Take a look in the archives here, and that’ll prove it. And I wasn’t the only one. And now, it comes back around. And the Republicans are so much better at meme’s and messages than Democrats.
Dave
@Sentient Puddle:
I think his point is that extending the UI benefits, the payroll tax holiday and the refundable credits will provide a stimulative effect to the economy that will keep the recovery from crapping out. Though, as Klein points out, if Spain goes under none of this matters.
This is really a stealth second stimulus. Like the first one, it’s not big enough but it’s better than nothing. Which is why I am loathe to pimp for killing this bill outright.
James K. Polk, Esq
Speaking of listening to the experts…
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,733630,00.html
Wow. I mean, wow.
Wikileaks uncovers backroom deal between US and China to scuttle the Copenhagen climate summit.
That one’s a real eye opener folks.
The Republic of Stupidity
@eemom:
No… you’ve got it right… the same Moody’s…
Davis X. Machina
Le Front Populaire vive!
LGRooney
I don’t trust any non-academic economist, financial analyst, politician, econometrician, investment analyst, or other-type-of guru working in the for-profit world to tell us whether something is good for the economy. More often than not, they see things through short-term-colored glasses which is always doom for the vast majority of people resulting in the top vacuuming up any potential prosperity before it is realized leaving the rest of us to pay the bill when it turns out the promised realization was bullshit on stilts.
I will admit that 75bn a year doesn’t seem like a lot to pay to get everything else but that 75bn is actually anti-stimulus, anti-growth, i.e., it takes away from the potential benefits of the rest of the legislation. On top of that, it is nothing more than a continuation of the pay off to those very people whose receipt of past pay offs is one of the chief reasons this country is fucked (not that it bothers the top since they have safely hedged their millions across currencies, geographies, politics, physical assets, and banking systems and they can go anywhere for a soft landing).
Carl Nyberg
What if low tax rates are part of the problem?
Say a corporation is holding a bunch of cash. It can invest the money in their core business. Or it can invest the money in the stock market.
With taxes low and the stock market doing OK, it makes sense to invest in the stock market and the like.
If taxes went up, corporations would have an incentive to reduce their net income. How do corporations reduce net income? They reduce their net income by investing in what they do.
Sentient Puddle
@Dave: Yeah, that about sounds like my impression of the package as well. I just feel like with a package this size, the hope of any recovery the size he’s predicting is based off the hope of the economy as a whole thinking that it’s kind of tired of being in a recession and starts doing shit. I can’t say I fall on the optimistic side of that hope.
And for the time being, I’m ignoring any impact that Spain or the rest of the eurozone might have. If they go to shit, then we’re going to have bigger problems than dealing with 9.8% unemployment on our hands.
Dave
@Sentient Puddle: Yeah, I try to put Europe on the back-burner as well. Talk about the 800-pound gorilla in the room…
I guess my hope is that the actual stimulative parts of this deal are enough to keep the gears greased as the country’s economic engine starts going again.
Tim H
Oh well, the guys partly responsible for crashing the entire global economy like it, so let’s go. They have absolutely no bias whatsoever in favor of the rich. I know because they told me.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Carl Nyberg:
You could think that way… if so inclined…
Clearly, this is why you’re NOT running a major corp or working on Wall Street, huh?
dollared
Tim,
I agree with your argument within its limits. But there are limits.
1. Messaging. Obama should nonstop be very clear where the blame lies, and should be very clear about who the Republicans are serving. Obama can be very clear about what’s broken and who’s in the way. He isn’t at all clear about that. And that includes being clear about the role of money in corrupting elections.
2. Urgency. We are in a desperate situation that requires more urgency than Obama has shown. IMHO, with the 12% annual health insurance increases, 9.8% unemployment, the massive deficits and the constant bleeding of good paying jobs to corporate cost cutting and China and India, Obama is not going to get to Morning in America without being much stronger in favor of real, hard policy choices, and his constant delegation to the Max Baucuses and the Timmy Geithners shows that he doesn’t really have the urgency to commit real change. The day health reform passed should have been the day that health costs stopped going up. No more free trade agreements. Stimulus had to be in infrastructure to absorb the lost construction jobs. Obama should be pledging no cuts to social security. Obama should be taking the time to explain exactly how Koch money intimidates the Blue Dogs in swing states, and how undemocratic that is.
Instead, we get competence and incrementalism. Guess what? Competence and incrementalism does not save companies or countries with a broken operating models. They go under.
Hal
For the Dems in Congress who hate this deal, do they actually have votes for what Obama and the Dems really favored? Can they combat Republicans into the new year and beyond, and ultimately end up with START and DADT repealed, and UI benefits?
If yes, I’m all for scuttling this compromise, but I would hazard a guess that that’s not the case.
gene108
@c u n d gulag:
Which is why he passed the largest entitlement expansion, the Medicare Modernization Act (i.e. Medicare Part D), since Medicare was introduced in 1965 and put more money into the Department of Education, than any other previous President – you many not like NCLB, but it was a large expansion on federal money allocated for education – and wanted to give “amnesty” to illegal immigrants.
Expanding Medicare, more money for the DoE and immigration reform are more liberal goals.
Bush, Jr. (and Karl Rove) were trying to expand the Republican brand.
The myth that Bush, Jr. just ran over Congress, bullied Democrats into supporting things they would never otherwise go along with, and was somehow never rebuked or never compromised is a myth.
His own Party turned on him over immigration reform. His biggest domestic policy goal, privatizing Social Security, never even made it to committee; it died a swift death.
Because of the fear caused by the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01, Bush, Jr. was able to get the authority to use military force in Iraq, if he wanted to and the Democrats, serving frightened electorates went along with it.
Otherwise, Bush, Jr. was not the invincible tough guy people make him out to be.
I think the perception is caused by his backers, at the time, actually backing him in the media. They didn’t, by and large, turn their daggers on him because of things like NCLB and Medicare Part D, because he was willing to serve their larger agenda for maintaining power.
Anyway, that’s my take.
terraformer
[email protected]Dave:
I just worry that the funds that would otherwise have gone into SS via the payroll tax reduction will be used as a cudgel to “do something about SS” i.e., opening up the catfood commission “recommendations” and to never reinstate them i.e., “they’re raising your taxes!”
mds
Coming soon to a Congress near you. Hostage II: The Debt Ceiling.
See, this is why at some point one has to be willing to walk away. Capitulation on extending the tax cuts needed something more in exchange. And despite all the breathless concern by the more right-wing hippie-punching BJ commenters for “the 99ers,” a 13-month extension of the 99-week benefit program (1) doesn’t do anything for those who are already at the 99-week limit, and (2) means that the 99-week program ends in 13 months unless new Republican demands to enact their agenda are met. Couple that with a permanent reduction** in the payroll tax in order to provide even more ammo to the “Social Security is in crisis!” liars and idiots, and this still isn’t looking very great. Any future progressive agenda requires revenue, and this not only cedes the battle on taxing the rich, it turns Social Security into a program already needing infusions from the General Fund to meet its promised obligations. Which, in a climate of deficit hysteria, is the road to killing it. So to give all that away, and not even deal with the next Republican hostage coming along in a couple of months? There’s actually plenty of room between the President smashing furniture on network TV and negotiating a weak deal with Republicans without even including Congressional Democrats.
**Oh, right, it’s a temporary payroll tax holiday. Just like the Bush tax cuts were going to expire this year, and now will expire in the next election year, cross our hearts and hope to die. Congressional Republicans are already publicly talking about how the payroll tax rates aren’t going back up. Since it’s a regressive tax on wage-earners, one can’t help but wonder why they’re so pleased about it.
WyldPirate
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Yep, 8 minutes minutes out of 30. That’s pretty brief, alright.
I mean I remember the good old days when the Bushs’ and Reagan publicly called their own side “sanctimonious” all the time and sent out their Press Sec. and CoS to derisively sneer “Professional left” and “fucking retarded” respectively about a segment of their supporters.
Corner Stone
In 2012 when we hear about Obama adding a trillion dollars to the deficit I am sure that will have no effect on low info voters.
NobodySpecial
@eemom: This is the other Moody’s, you know, the one that never never never lies about financial things. Tim Geithner told me so.
Lost Left Coaster
In fairness to Atrios, I think he made that comment in the context of doubting that Obama’s hippie punching in this case had actually delivered a good outcome. But he was saying that he could take it if it ended up resulting in something good. I’m inclined to agree with him; my feelings aren’t so easily bruised, but I don’t this is a good deal, so all the hippie punching seems rather gratuitous. I know that Obama has a plan to make himself look better to independents, but I have my doubts that insulting the left is going to take him there.
Omnes Omnibus
@WyldPirate: At this point, is there anything that Obama could say or do that would receive your approval? In this current situation, given the decisions that have been made leading up to it, how would you want Obama to handle the tax cuts, etc.?
The Republic of Stupidity
@terraformer:
Oh come on…
That’s. a. GIVEN.
You can all start bidding a fond farewell to SS…
dr. bloor
@WyldPirate:
The other thing is that it didn’t matter how brief it was. He could have accused Mitch McConnell of eating live babies and fucking goats, and it would have been buried by a throwaway line about how the DFHs need to temper their expectations.
I don’t particularly care about being scolded if it gets us somewhere, but Obama stepped on his message. Unless the whole thing was choreographed from the get-go.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s waaaaaaaaaay too easy…
Resign now, for the good of the country.
So President Bohner can be sworn in…
DecidedFenceSitter
@LGRooney: Don’t trust the academic ones either – a lot of them apparently do paid consulting on the side. (Actually this is common in many fields from what I’ve been told/read.)
Ronbo
This is bizarro world. We can continue the downward spiral with our current Obama trajectory or….
We can shake things up a bit.
I feel like I’m living with an abusive spouse and all my friends are telling me “go along with it; it’s like bad sex and will end soon enough.”
I just want out. My sweetheart married me and now forcing me to service the entire CIA.
Corner Stone
@dr. bloor:
Posture off the sanctimonious hippie purists?
Unpossible!
gene108
@dollared:
It would help his messaging, overall, not just on this bill, if his backers would also work to non-stop pin the blame on the Republicans. Unfortunately, there’s as much or more criticism of Obama and Blue Dogs, as there is of Republicans.
It’s sort of the “boys will be boys” attitude toward Republicans, because that’s just the way they are supposed to act and we have to adjust to it.
Fuck U II: The Duckening
Breaking on CNN: House Dems won’t take up tax deal as it is.
KoolAid Drinking Obamabot (and proud of it)
That is what boggles me. The fact that we have a usually reasonable guy, Bernie Sanders, arriving with the same views with an unreasonable Teabagging Terrorist like Jim Demint to filibuster this deal.
The only part about the deal I don’t like is the temporary extension of the tax cuts on the upper 1%… but that’s only 37% of the entire package. Most of the package deals with tax cuts for the lower income/middle class families and extending UEI.
The poutraging fauxgressives have disgusted me to no end with their complaints about how Obama has “caved” and comparing him to Neville Chamberlain. The Democrats were spineless cowards and fumbled the ball, refusing to take this issue up before the midterms. They allowed Boehner and his teabagging friends to score a touchdown, winning many House seats.
Now that Obama has the football back and has to go for a field goal because it’s third down, the congressional Democrats/poutraging fauxgressives decide that NOW is the time to go for a touchdown?
I saw a clip with Lawrence O’Donnell, he had Alan Grayson, Arianna Huffington, Ezra Klein, and some unknown economic guy. The economic guy pointed out how this deal is the best possible deal and how failing to pass it would hurt the lower income/middle class families. Lawrence took Grayson to task for wanting to vote against the deal, just because the deal continues the Bush era tax cuts until 2012. Seeing Grayson fumble and stumble, I can see why his constituents back home in Florida voted him out: the man doesn’t have a clue about actually putting forth actual policy ideals, as he does parroting poutrager ideological talking points. Arianna Huffington said that the deal was a failure, but didn’t pose forth any solutions. Ezra Klein agreed with the economics guy.
It’s amazing how Alan Grayson is the poutragers’ hero, yet here he is on the record advocating for raising taxes on low income/middle income earners, and cutting off their UEI, just to get back at the wealthy. This is why he and his kind were SWAMPED out of the House in November… they didn’t have a unified message or base, and cared more about their followers on online blogs than about their actual constituents back home. I don’t recall Grayson, Weiner, Sanders, or any of the darlings of the poutraging left wanting this fight before the midterms… now that they are in the lame duck session, they want President Obama to do all the heavy lifting and are having a fit because they are getting cookies and cream as opposed to Rocky Road.
And another irony: the new hero of the poutraging left is Mary Landrieu, the same whore from Louisiana who not only put one of Obama’s nominees on hold because of his stance on opposing drilling offshore there, but the same whore who voted FOR the original Bush era tax cuts. Now she wants to act like she’s been an ally of President Obama’s all along, just to score a cheap political talking point.
This is why fauxgressives NEVER get anything done: they care more about winning political battles, as oppose to actually accomplishing something worthwhile.
The recent poll done by Gallup shows that most Americans support the deal, and it’s only the poutraging liberals opposed to the tax cuts extension. 54% of Democrats from that poll also agree with the tax cuts extension, which is a bit over half. And 67% of Independents agree with the tax cuts extension, those are the folks who put Obama in office back in 2008… not the poutragers online who claim to be “the base.”
So I say to Ed Shultz, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Jane Hamsher, and the other poutragers expressing disappointment over this deal… have a nice cup of SHUT THE FUCK UP, because as the economic guy I mentioned earlier pointed out, if this deal fails to pass, then taxes will go up on low income/middle income earners, and their UEI will expire… but at least you stuck it to the filthy rich folks!
Tom Hilton
@The Grand Panjandrum: This.
Every fucking time I hear some manic progressive say (as, alas, the otherwise mostly sane Maddow did) “if only Obama got as angry at Republicans as he does at progressives” I want to punch through a fucking wall. That they would say this this in the wake a press conference where Obama fucking ripped the Republicans a new one (and he’s done it other times as well–remember the Boehner Boehner Boehner speech, for example?) just tells me that they are completely divorced from anything resembling reality.
22state
What part of this deal being step one of defunding Social Security do you not get?
Never mind that it perfectly sets up 2012 to be all about tax cuts and uncertainty.
If you reward hostage taking all you get is more hostages.
During the heyday of airplane hijacking, the Soviets had a policy of taking down the hijackers, damn the civilians (even to the point of shooting down the aircraft). They didn’t have many hijackings.
The point of this is not to “be like the USSR” – but to point out a real world example of one way to deal with hostage takers that worked. There are other methods that can (and should) be employed – like delegitimizing the tactic or going after the hijackers’ allies – but those are longer term tactics. In the short term, shoot the *&^#-s.
Corner Stone
@Fuck U II: The Duckening: “The Duckening” ?
Awesome.
shortstop
@dr. bloor:
Precisely. I really don’t give a damn that somebody’s feelings got hurt, but Obama should know better than to hand PRESIDENT SPANKS LEFT’S BARE BOTTOM headlines over like that. He oughta know by now that that’ll become the story across the board.
I’ve noticed that Obama seems to think he needs to answer every question he’s asked at great length. That’s fine when he’s asked to delineate policy or explain a complex issue, but not so good when he’s being openly baited for the purpose of splitting ranks among Dems. As I opined in another thread, the best way to handle that question would have been to briefly acknowledge that part of his base disagrees with this move, then redirect his comments to further slap the real enemy: total Republican obstructionism.
Church Lady
@Carl Nyberg: Kinda like going Galt?
debbie
Yeah, I guess it would sound stupid to a person who had a job.
Silver Owl
lol having been called stupid, can’t learn shit, don’t know shit, always driven by emotion, whore, slut, bitch, only good for having babies, blah blah blah and all the other names our society has applied to women over the decades, Liberal of any variety is tame.
Given the source and reasoning by the verbal pounding. It’s always to make some loser feel better about themselves, temporarily.
Fuck U II: The Duckening
Corner Stone: Why, thankee Mr. Stone.
magurakurin
I don’t know about CNN, but it seems like its going to pass
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jzI2gBZ7IEakOniWmfDePO0SipuA?docId=383ea108f67d4da4ad57377ff5e4dead
beergoggles
@gene108: There really hasn’t been a single case of needing his backers to work non-stop to blame the republicans because Obama hasn’t actually asked his backers to do so. It has been non-stop capitulation, disappointing one Dem constituency after another. Has he ever said anything to the effect of there being a line in the sand he would not cross because it would be compromising principles instead of compromising policies?
And after the info on the PO came out and Obamas actions on DADT/DOMA, I won’t be defending him to everyone like I did with HCR.
KoolAid Drinking Obamabot (and proud of it)
Then they can explain to the low income/middle income earners why their taxes are going up and why their UEI is cut off.
Seriously, this is why the Democrats LOST BIG last month. They don’t have the spine or conviction to actually do what is right when it matters the most.
As I’ve pointed out, they could have had this fight BEFORE the midterms, but they fumbled the ball. That’s their bust, and now they are preparing to fumble the ball yet again.
This is why I’ve quit supporting any and all political clubs, they’re all a joke. The Democrats claim to be for the middle class, yet here they are preparing to support tax hikes on the low income/middle income earners, just BECAUSE they want to stick it to the rich, just to win a political fight.
President Obama is on the right side of this issue, and I don’t mean the political right side. He is on the correct side, this isn’t a time to be playing politics with people’s money.
Haven’t these House Democrats seen the Gallup poll that shows MOST AMERICANS SUPPORT THE OBAMA DEAL?!!!
El Cid
Krugman on the Zandi piece.
c u n d gulag
@gene108:
Good take.
I really can’t argue. The only thing about NCLB was, and this is from teacher friends of mine in 4 states, that educators didn’t feel it was adequately funded.
Also, I know he wasn’t some invincible power, it’s just that he strutted and acted that way. And I guess part of my point is that there are people who would like Obama to do the same.
Again, I’m not sure, that’s why I was just throwing the thought out there.
KoolAid Drinking Obamabot (and proud of it)
You must mean Congress’ actions, because they are the ones who have the power to legislate.
This isn’t about Obama, this is about the spineless Democrats in Congress who don’t want to do any of the heavy lifting because they have been marginalized by the Republicans.
The President has done more to move DADT/DOMA toward a repeal than any President. Obama has been more demonized by the LGBT than Clinton was: where was the LGBT outrage towards Clinton, who was the originator of DADT?
As for public option from the HC debacle, the votes weren’t there for a public option. Schemin LIEberman was one of the votes needed, and he made it clear he wasn’t going to support ANY public option. How is Obama to blame for not having the votes needed to pass a public option?
The fauxgressives accuse Obama of “not fighting,” but when he punches back at their criticism their response is “HOW DARE HE!”
I believe the rants of Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Ed Shultz, Jane Hamsher, and other poutragers show how thin skinned they are. They seem more keen on bashing Obama and anyone who disagrees with their cynical worldview.
At the end of the day, they are pundits, not politicians. Pundits don’t do shit to pass legislation, the politicians in Washington do. And now that President Obama has a deal worked out, NOW they want to fight.
Hypocritical to say the least.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@c u n d gulag:
I think it is more a case of LBJ and FDR envy, conveniently leaving out LBJ’s Vietnam debacle and FDR’s pandering to southern racists. There is also the problem that under today’s rules FDR would have been ineligble to run for re-election in 1940, which means that WW2 and the permanent escape from Depression economics which followed from the massive stimulus the war provided would have happened under a different (and possibly Republican) president – a non-trivial matter when it comes to FDR’s legacy. Imagine how we would see FDR today if his 2nd and last term had been dominated by the downturn in 1937 and the court-packing debacle, and he was never a wartime leader.
dollared
@el cid
Obama – it’s 2002.
Krugman – It’s 1933, or 1992 in Japan. Or both.
Me – It’s 1933 in the US, 1992 in Japan, and 1974 in the UK. The jobs aren’t coming back.
Suck It Up!
Why are some of you still acting as if Obama sat you down on live TV and personally attacked you? get over it already. Its pathetic and you look like a bunch of self absorbed petty watb. And stop using the word “scold”, he ain’t your daddy. If you think you are not a sanctimonious purist then you shouldn’t have been offended. Stop looking for superficial high school reasons not to like him or give him credit.
fucking bizarre.
Davis X. Machina
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: And Wendell Wilkie on the dime….
dollared
@thatleftturn
He still would have created the SEC, fostered Glass-Steagall, legalized the labor unions, and created Social Security.
Utterly weird how anti-FDR this crowd is.
In our perfect world, we would want exactly what he did and how he did it. But because we want to excuse Obama’s weakness, we demonize FDR.
eemom
oh God. Again with the cognitive dissonance.
With respect to this
my problem is that “calling out” and harsh words don’t mean SHIT coming right after he just fucking gave IN to the mofuckers.
dollared
@ suck it up
It ain’t personal to me at all. Stepping on your base’s message is stuuuuuuuuuppppppiiiiiiiiddd politics.
We want to win because it’s good for America. But the Republicans have shown, again and again, and again and again and again for 30 years, that you don’t win in the long or the short game if you don’t have a tight, coherent message and passionate supporters.
It’s not personal. I just think he’s wasting America’s opportunity to be great. And I am pissed that he promised change and he’s delivering waffles, because I don’t think he will succeed that way.
eemom
……but, on the brigher side, I DO have a new eleventy-dimensional chess theory that no one’s thought of yet.
See, Obama KNEW that House Dems would revolt…..and that Bernie Sanders and DeMint would form their ungodly bedfellowhood……so he agreed to the thing KNOWING it would fail, and THEN……um……
someone help me out here……
NobodySpecial
@eemom:
Step 2: ?????
Step 3: PROFIT!
Suck It Up!
@beergoggles:
I don’t know who you think his backers are but when Obama needs help pushing legislation, he contacts members of OFA and posts action items on the DNC Facebook page.
Now if you are thinking of progressive bloggers/pundits I find it disturbing that you think THEY need to be stroked by Obama or asked to do THEIR job. So they are not going to go after the people who are hell bent on destroying this country because Obama doesn’t stroke their ego? How do these people call themselves activists or journalists? THEY are not supposed to call out Republicans for Obama, they should be doing it for the American people that they claim to care about. When I pick up the phone to call voters or my reps in Congress I don’t do it FOR Obama I do it because that bill will help myself and a lot of other people.
KoolAid Drinking Obamabot (and proud of it)
How exactly did Obama “give in” to Republicans? Just because he extended the tax cuts for the high income earners until 2012?
That is not at all what the Republicans wanted. They wanted the cuts to be permanent, and only for the high income earners.
Instead, they only got a temporary extension, and have to support cuts for the low income/middle income earners as well, not to mention also supporting UEI extensions.
Obama got a great deal, and both sides are foaming at the lips, which means he’s getting something done.
And as I pointed out, most Americans support the deal he came up with, according to this poll from Gallup.
calling all toasters
None of this tax cut will help the economy one little bit, because THE GOP ISN”T GOING TO RAISE THE DEBT CEILING. And all this alleged stimulus will be overwhelmed by the cuts that will be made to actual stimulative programs. Remember: they don’t care if we have a depression, it won’t hurt their rich friends much and it will bring their party to power for a generation.
Well played, President Obama!
jl
Boehner admitted in an interview recently that he would blink and go with extending the current under 250K rates and ending the current over 250K rates. That is why I think Obama should have tried to reach a better deal. If the House Democrats can force another look at it, I cannot object to much.
Krugman has good posts today that go into more detail about why the current deal is bad. One of the posts also has a very important link to joint work he has done with Gauti Eggertsson, that explains the underlying mechanism of the current L shaped ‘recovery’ and also behind the failure of previous stimulus efforts. I think everyone interested in understanding the current slow recovery should click and read it.
I have criticized Krugman in the past for writing popular work that is open to the criticism that he is a vulgur ‘hydraulic’ Keynesian; that is, that he seems to say that government spending will work forever and is a magic solution to everything. The link to his work with Eggertsson shows the thinking behind his policy recommendations, and explains why the recovery is not taking off, as it did in most post WWII recoveries until 2000, and what criteria to use to gauge how much government fiscal stimulus is needed to solve the current problems with recovery and the developing long term unemployment crisis (and I think crisis, even though a quiet and slowly developing one, is the correct word).
jl
@calling all toasters: Yeah, the lack of an agreement on the debt ceiling in the deal is a serious problem. Some one has to at least try to get a good bargain. If Obama cannot bring himself to do that right now, then maybe some one else can.
shortstop
@Suck It Up!: I am reminded of the time after Obama won the nomination. A number of PUMAs kept sniffing that he needed to “ask” for their votes. Well, okay, if you need engraved invitations (roll eyes)…so he did very specifically ask for the support of HRC backers. But I guess he didn’t ask right, because all the way up to the election we kept hearing that they needed more and different and better personal pleas for their votes. On and on and fucking on.
62across
@22state:
In your scenario, what exactly does “shoot the *&^#-s” entail? Isn’t allowing all the tax cuts to expire the only form of shooting the Republicans available? I understand you’re okay with damning the civilians or even taking down the plane, but can you tell how allowing all the tax cuts to expire hurts the Republicans at all, much less kills them?
Lawnguylander
Nobody’s anti-FDR and nobody’s demonizing him when they attempt to give an accurate portrayal of his presidency. He had Democrats to deal with that make today’s Republicans look like Henry Louis Gates on racial issues which led to some ugly compromises that must have driven civil rights advocates of the day crazy. I say that history shows that those compromises were worth it. I predict that if I live to be an old man and in my old age am still wasting my time on blogs, I’ll be pointing out to a younger bunch of commenters that the idealized version of Obama that they’re comparing that day’s liberal president to unfavorably never existed and that his compromises to get things done, like HCR, drove people nuts in my day. That won’t make me anti-Obama.
Tsulagi
This professional left guy doesn’t get as many starbursts from Zandi’s numbers as Klein…
Definitely on that last one.
gene108
@beergoggles:
Politicians are not the ones framing debates in this country. They most often react to the sentiment of the electorate.
Just because George Will was disappointed with Medicare Part D, he won’t stop his hippy punching. Same with more vitriolic right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, et. al.
No matter what Republicans do, it’s granted the right-wing media machine will always be on attack mode against liberals and Democrats. They attack us more than they will ever attack one of their own.
This is why Bush, Jr. and Republicans come off as tough; they are not publicly berated by their own professional supporters, as often as their professional supporters are berating the Left.
Even when you have a counter-revolution, within the Republican Party, which the Tea Party was to some extent, as evidenced by RNC candidates losing in primaries, you don’t have endless screeds from Hannity, Fox News, et. al. about how the Republicans in the Senate were weak for not holding together against ARRA or HCR or Fin Reg, because at least one Republican needed to vote for cloture to get those bills passed.
They spend most of their time attacking the Democrats for even thinking up those bills in the first place.
calling all toasters
@Lawnguylander: FDR? Obama’s gunning for the Hoover legacy: a goo-goo moderate Republican who failed to save the economy because he didn’t understand the seriousness of the problem. Hoover just had the misfortune to have the crash on his watch; Obama can’t be blamed for the current one.
Tsulagi
Oops, forgot to put a link to the professional left guy.
Tom Hilton
@eemom: Sorry, but you’ve got it completely wrong. Democrats in Congress “gave in to the motherfuckers” when they decided not to hold a vote before the election (and remember that it wasn’t just Blue Dogs–Boxer and Murray were among those pleading to put off a vote on the tax cuts). Everything after that was a foregone conclusion, except the specifics of the deal, which are actually better than anyone had any right to expect given that the capitulation of congressional Democrats (and again: that included a lot of liberals) before the election left the President with zero leverage.
WyldPirate
@Omnes Omnibus:
To the first question, yes. Stop capitulating and learn how to negotiate. Sometimes you have to walk away from the table. This is one of those times that he should have, IMO. But he and the Dems fucked their political calculations long ago. they painted themselves into this corner. to the country’s detriment and they face being held “hostage” over and over again.
On the second question, it may be out of his hands and he may end up looking even weaker and more ineffectual. I just saw on the TV were 58 Dems in a caucus meeting voted not to accept the deal as is. Then you have potential filibusters in the Senate. This isn’t a done deal yet.
@dr. bloor:
Yep, it’s beginning to smell a lot like Clinton triangulation and gearing up to run to the center in 2012. The only trouble is that it will drag the country further to the right in the long run.
A couple of years ago, i used to think that it would be the Rethugs that fractured into two parties. I no longer believe that and now think that it will be the Dems that split.
Jeff
Totally ignoring the policy, anyone who wants Sanders to filibuster the deal doesn’t really have much credibility when it comes to complaining about Republican obstructionism.
gene108
@c u n d gulag:
I guess I can’t argue either with “Bush, Jr. Envy”, but the reason he got wrapped in a mantle of “invincibility”, in my opinion, has as much to do with the Professional Right not eating their own, the way the Professional Left seems to do.
I think it has a lot do with marketing and why one product jumps out and out sells another, when they all do the same thing.
The Republicans, and the right-wing media, understand how to market their politicians, as evidenced by the Tea Party actually delivering the goods and firing up Republicans, when it seemed like a goofy idea with a few hundred people waving teabags around on April 15, 2009.
The Democrats and liberals really don’t get this, which is why there are so many frustrating losses, even when it would seem more people would be or should be attuned to Democratic / liberal ideas.
WyldPirate
@eemom:
Damn. I’m beginning to like the new eemom.
Observer
The chief economist at Moody’s likes the tax cut deal a lot, and the guy has a pretty good prognostic recordTim, seriously? based on what exactly?
This is the type of thing that’s been going on for years that tells me that the problem is not just with Obama, not just with the hapless elected Dems, but the problem includes *stupid* Democratic supporters. And not just you Tim. Ezra Klein too. The people on “Our” team are just not that bright.
It’s true that Obama seems to favor Zandi and so it seems that the “word” has been passed down to Dem supporters.
But how stupid do you have to be to say Zandi has a “good prognostic record”? Here’s, in no particular order,
1. “The Abysmal Track Record of Moody’s Mark Zandi” by Barry Ritholz. Take a good look at that long list of errant prognostication by your “expert”.
2. Zandi was the key person that allowed toxic assets to be rated AAA. Read the Big Short and other books. A couple of the shorts TOLD zandi it was crap but he kept rating them AAA. And they kept shorting them until they made $100B dollars. Sheesh. Moody’s still made a pile of cash of course.
3. he supported McCain as his economic advisor. You know, he was the advisor on the issue that turned the election against McCain.
Here’s just one Zandi quote from the Ritholz article:
Agence France Presse – Sept 13, 2008
HA HA HA HA HA.
Expert? Well expert at insider self promotion and navigating the halls of power and knowing which set of people to screw over.
For fricks sake.
goblue72
Look, I negotiate business deals for a living and they generally involve lots of zeroes. I know what a crap sandwich smells like. The Dems DO have an option of just walking away. It completely misreads the analysis in saying the Republicans don’t have any positive gains they need or want (as opposed to just wanting to oppose).
If the Dems walk away, the Bush tax cuts expire. They don’t have to lift a finger and they will expire. And as we know, all the Dems need to do is get 40 votes to stop any extension. And since the Democrats control the Senate and the White House, if the GOP wants tax cuts, then it HAS to do a deal. The Dems have a LOT of leverage here. There isn’t another election for two more years.
By that time, the tax increases will have been absorbed & the economy will be in whatever shape it will be in. (probably crappy, but there is little the government can really do in the short term to goose it enough – the amounts of govt. spending or tax cuts needed to move the needle on the GDP dial far, far, far exceed what is politically possible. Everyone, including Krugman, knows this but no one wants to face up to it. And there is still a LOT of de-leveraging the economy still needs to go through – loading on debt for decades doesn’t just disappear overnight).
The best point in time the Dems have to go to the wall is RIGHT NOW, not a year down the road when election seasons starts up. Their leverage will continually decrease as we move forward. Does it involve some risk of short term pain – certainly. But the “American people” have been dealing with crap for a long time now – its not like some marginal increase in the crap is going to end the world.
But what WILL create some long term pain is the revenue trap the GOP are setting up with this deal. Whatever short term, marginal goose to the economy we get out of this is, its being paid for out of Social Security’s stability – the deal decreases the payroll tax by 30% – that would be the tax that funds Social Security. And just try to keep it from being made permanent when the cut expires in two years. Just. Effing. Try.
As for Moody’s – whatever. The Wall Street fat cats like anything that involves strip mining our government for short term profit. Believe me – I deal with these a-holes personally – as a class, they are amoral leeches who would gladly sell their grandmother into slavery if there were a few points to be made off the spread. Whenever you see some “anaylsis” from a ratings agency, I-bank, etc., first thing you have to ask yourself is this: What’s in it for them?
Sentient Puddle
…and this thread devolved into a state that reminded me of why I fucking give up when people who don’t spend much time on the policy instead go into the politics. Jesus Christ, people.
catpal
NO. NO. NO.
Notice that Moody’s Zandi – does not speak of the Deficit-Increasing crappy low 15% Capital Gains tax rate – for Hedge Fund Billionaires and almost All of the Wall Street Billionaires/Millionaires.
and wasn’t Zandi the “fiscally-conservative” Economic advisor to Mr. Lost-His-Mind Mccain?
There is NO Excuse for allowing Billionaires to pay a lesser tax rate than most middle class taxpayers.
and What would Create Real Stimulus and JOBS — a Huge Penalty on US Corporations that send JOBS out of the US.
My recent experience with US Corps Customer Service – was in India, Philippines – and Nicaragua.
c u n d gulag
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Interesting take. I don’t disagree.
LBJ had a big sack, but he felt that enough of the public had his back, so he could go ahead on Civil Rights. And he knew how to manipulate the Congress, and, due to JFK’s death, had quite a bit of support there, too. Also, people outside the South were starting to pressure their Congressmen and Senators because of what they were seeing happening there on TV. Now, compare that to Obama, where Senators who sat on their asses for almost two years, now jump up and down to denounce the deal, not a great one by any stretch of the imagination. “Typhoid Mary” Landrieu being the most execrable example. Well, if you could have done better, Senators, why did you kick it down the road until AFTER the midterms? The House, as usual, did a good job.
And you’re right, FDR’s legacy would be much different if he wasn’t around for WWII.
Tsulagi
@eemom:
Okay, that’s funny. But true. Kinda like after voluntarily having your lunch money taken calling him an asshole while still standing there with your wedgie.
c u n d gulag
@gene108:
“..has as much to do with the Professional Right not eating their own, the way the Professional Left seems to do.”
Yup, exactly right. I’ve made similar comments on Maha’s and Steve M’s site. Though not as concisely. I tend to bloviate. :-)
FlipYrWhig
@goblue72:
Do you ever try to negotiate a business deal with someone who genuinely doesn’t want to make a deal? How does that go? The mistake IMHO is presuming that both sides want a deal and the point of the negotiation is to arrive at something like a midpoint. I don’t think that’s what Republicans do anymore. Mainline Democrats negotiate in that way with center-right Democrats, and then Republicans just sit on their asses. All the energy is going into getting a handful of them to step up to the table in the first place.
jl
I don’t have time to provide links, but I noticed that most of the analyses that give good marks to the current deal in improving the economy concentrate on its effect on GDP, not jobs.
Continuing the high end tax cuts will do some good in helping private sector deleverage. Nothing else. That is not enough to get a quicker and stronger recovery going in the short term.
FlipYrWhig
@c u n d gulag:
He also knew, and said, that it would lose the Democratic party the votes of Southerners for decades. Which was true. That’s the damage done. There are times when it’s worth it, but that’s the thing about politics: most times you can’t both do the morally/ethically right thing _and_ get elected or reelected. You have to balance those imperatives.
Like on the tax cut plan, if you have major Senators begging you not to have a vote on the tax cuts before the election, and you say, fuck it, we’re doing it anyway, because it’s an uncompromisable part of what it means to be a Democrat to stand foursquare behind fairer taxes on the wealthiest people… and then _those Senators lose_, and now you have neither house of Congress and get blamed for _that_ and have managed to confirm that the whole issue of increasing any tax on anyone will get your ass thrown out of Congress no matter how well-liked you used to be… well, that’s pretty fucking bad too.
Bob
@eemom:
Step 2:
Propose a new round of tax cuts next year during the State of the Union, which will be forever known as the Obama tax cuts instead of the Bush tax cuts.
El Cid
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
In fairness, without the Southern Democrats (who held a political monopoly in the region), particularly in the Senate, there wouldn’t have been a New Deal.
He actually discussed or considered or proposed policies which would have advanced the status of African Americans, but couldn’t move them because they just wouldn’t get through.
I.e., a national health insurance / care program, which couldn’t get through the Southern Dem’s because they feared a federal program might require a white hospital to accept a black patient.
goblue72
@FlipYrWhig: As I noted above, the GOP DOES want to do a deal. Its a fallacy to conflate what the other side wants from the deal with how they position themselves (their negotiating position).
The GOP wants the tax cuts extended. There is a no-deal option for the Dems that leaves them better off than the GOP – that being, letting the tax cuts expire. Once they expire, if the GOP wants to restore all or part of those cuts, they will HAVE to do a deal. The alternative is the moneybag who fill their campaign coffers see their taxes go up (INCLUDING, their estate taxes which are now at zero and will go up back to their Clinton levels)
The monkey-wrench is available to both sides. Again, its a fallacy to argue that all the GOP wants is to oppose. They DO want something – they’ve just chosen their oppositional position as the means to get there. The way out of that trap is to figure out what the path is to get you to a position where you can monkey-wrench what they want. At that point, you’ve neutralized their oppositional position and can force a deal.
El Cid
There is this now.
catpal
@Carl Nyberg:
This is Accounting 101. Even Warren Buffet speaks that Corporations and Billionaires have ZERO Incentive to Spend and Invest — when their Investment income – is taxed at the Ridiculously Low rate of 15%.
That is the biggest Insult in this tax cut “deal” – even Unemployment benefits income are taxed at 20%.
goblue72
@El Cid: I’m the farthest thing from a PUMA (and generally a fervent Obot) but it’s pretty darn cool that two Democratic leaders with the biggest set of stones in the last several years have been women – Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi.
FlipYrWhig
@goblue72:
It might leave them “better off” from a negotiating standpoint, but I feel very strongly that the Republicans would be quite happy to let the tax cuts expire themselves, whereupon they would leap to pin the blame for that on Democratic action or inaction, and considering that many people _now_ think that their taxes have gone up because of Obama, they would attribute any further tax increase to Obama as well.
Now, I’m surprised that the Republicans had any inclination to strike any deal at all, so maybe I’m mistaking the parameters of the debate. But if I were a Republican I would not want to make any deal except on the most advantageous possible terms, because I would be more than happy to walk away from the table with no deal. I can introduce a new round of tax cuts in less than one month when the new Congressional session begins, and if Democrats block that, that only reinforces the story that Democrats are eager to raise taxes, and I would be prepared to run on that in 2012, smiling all the way.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@dollared:
I’m not bashing FDR at all, far from it. But an honest assessment of his legacy has to include the recognition of all of the things he accomplished over a 12+ year span in office, not merely the achievements of his 1st term, and also to recognize that his very long span in office and the fact that his VP Truman won re-election in 1948 (i.e. the Dems controlled the WH over a span of 5 complete terms) played a crucial role in consolidating, improving upon, and making permanent the policies which FDR enacted during his 1st term. This is not exactly an original thought on my part – H.W. Brands says more or less the same thing in the concluding chapter of his FDR bio Traitor to His Class.
My conclusion is that if we are going to compare other post-WW2 presidents with FDR that includes recognizing that unless we pass a new amendment to remove the 2-term limit (IMHO this would be a good idea), no future president will have the opportunity to even approach FDR’s cumulative impact on the US and the world. In that sense Dems hankering after “another FDR” is an exercise in futility and disappointment.
But I’m less concerned about whether Obama can or cannot be compared with FDR and more concerned with whether some day he will be compared with Gorbachev.
El Cid
@goblue72: Sort of — there certainly has only been the standard foreign policy line from the State Department. Which of course is not unexpected, since that’s what the State Department does, though I was very disappointed in terms of how quickly the US policy on Honduras’ coup followed Jim DeMint’s interventions once he began yelling about it.
Pelosi’s on a different level entirely — one of our best Democratic political leaders in recent decades, and a staunch liberal / progressive / whatever at that.
Fuck U II: The Duckening
Yep. Not bad for a Baltimoron.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@El Cid:
That is a fair assessment, IMHO. I’d go further and say that the economic security which the New Deal provided to the almost entirely white middle class was a necessary pre-condition for the civil rights movement to make the gains which were achieved during the 50s and 60s. Also, FDR’s civil rights record has to include the integration of Federal employment and the FEPC. IIRC, the war industries spawned by WW2 were the first large scale integrated workplaces in the South since the inception of the Jim Crow era.
catpal
@Observer: Thank you for the agreed on list of Horrors spoken by Wall Street Bankster promoter non-expert Mark Zandi.
dollared
@goblue72 #72.
This. And @Flip, it is complete Bullshit that the Republicans do not have any negotiation goals.
It.is.about.the.rich.guys.money.
They don’t care about religion, abortion, gay rights, the military, whatever. That’s to lock down the religious right so.they.can.get.the.money.for.rich.guys.
And so they have a LOT to lose in this negotiation. That’s why I hate Schumer’s proposal but it’s way, way better.
And the payroll tax thing just makes them think that they can get an.even.bigger.pot.of.money.for.rich.guys.
MBunge
@goblue72: The best point in time the Dems have to go to the wall is RIGHT NOW
No, the best point in time would have been before the midterms. And anyone who thinks a significant tax increase is just going to be shrugged off by the public is fooling themselves, especially if the economy continues to sputter or gets worse.
Mike
FlipYrWhig
@dollared: They can get the rich guys their money in a month. Plus, rich guys have enough money to seethe over how much money they would _prefer_ to have without being hurt by that.
And I don’t know why everyone is so down on the payroll tax holiday proposal, considering that it was a staple of the stimulus debate on the progressive side. Let’s not worry about the deficit and Social Security “solvency” until after we’ve got the economy working again. These are long-term concerns, and we have immediately urgent things to handle first.
beergoggles
@gene108: So basically ur saying we need to beat the drum for our guy more like Republicans and all our problems will go away?
Not that different from so many accusing the liberals of wanting Obama to be their version of Bush.
I can’t tell which side has a bigger projection problem…
FlipYrWhig
@dollared:
I thought it was a good idea too, but progressives Durbin, Harkin, and Feingold voted against it when it came before them.
MBunge
@goblue72: The GOP wants the tax cuts extended. There is a no-deal option for the Dems that leaves them better off than the GOP – that being, letting the tax cuts expire. Once they expire, if the GOP wants to restore all or part of those cuts, they will HAVE to do a deal.
If you think you’re going to get a better deal than this out of a GOP controlled House, you’re dreaming.
If you want to let the tax cuts expire because you think that’s the best policy, that’s one thing. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that such a move wouldn’t have major political consequences or that there’s a much better deal to be had when Dems have even less power next year.
Mike
FlipYrWhig
@MBunge:
I agree. The one caveat I would offer is that if someone could come up with a way to get the public to blame Republicans for creating that tax increase, it would be a _great_ electoral issue. But just saying that it’s their fault hasn’t worked yet, and given that they just blocked a bill that would literally send $250 checks to elderly people–which came to pass without a stir–it doesn’t seem like anyone has figured out a way to demonize their demonic actions yet.
beergoggles
@FlipYrWhig:
I can’t speak for all progressives/liberals on this, but personally, I would have trusted Obama to do the right thing on this more if he didn’t stack the catfood commission and his record on premptive capitulation. But given that record, I can’t see this as anything but a way to meddle in SS and give it away to wall street to bankrupt.
El Cid
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Correct. Something FDR was forced into doing by A. Phillip Randolph and his threat to bring 100,000 or more black labor marchers to DC and endure whatever violence that provoked. Randolph offered and brooked no compromise, either.
FlipYrWhig
@MBunge: My sense of what makes Republicans tick is that they’d gladly watch everyone pay higher taxes for two years, get everyone grumbling and doing even less personal spending, then run on how much of a tax cut they’ll give us… and to get our free money, all we have to do is vote for Republicans in the Senate and White House.
beergoggles
@FlipYrWhig: There’s nothing stopping them from doing that anyway.
Some little thing about most Americans not even knowing they got a tax cut under Obama…
Fuck U II: The Duckening
Oooohh, goody! Ed Henry is concern-trolling a “Greek-style debt crisis.” WTF, does that mean it comes with Retsina?
mds
@MBunge:
Glad to see you agree that this agreement fucks up by making all the Bush tax cuts and the payroll tax holiday permanent, then. Because if the public won’t shrug off a “significant” tax increase right now, they definitely aren’t going to shrug them off heading into a presidential election year.
dollared
And GoBlue, I too do deals for a living.
So you of all people should know that second-guessing other people’s negotiations is way more entertaining than actually having to do the deal :-)
HyperIon
Tim F. wrote:
Seems like there are many here (with links even) that dispute your unsupported allegation that “the guy has a pretty good prognostic record”.
So…care to defend your reasoning…by supplying evidence of this “pretty good” record?
Tax Analyst
@Ronbo:
Well, OK. But keep in mind that Rachel Maddow probably ain’t runnin’.
And don’t forgot to invite us to your next wedding. You’ll probably get along just fine with Sarah Palin.
MBunge
@mds: Glad to see you agree that this agreement fucks up by making all the Bush tax cuts and the payroll tax holiday permanent, then. Because if the public won’t shrug off a “significant” tax increase right now, they definitely aren’t going to shrug them off heading into a presidential election year.
The difference is that when you’re going into an election, you can put pressure on Republicans to make a better deal or at least give Democrats a weapon to use on the campaign trail. That’s why Obama wanted to have this fight BEFORE the midterms.
Secondly, there’s never going to be a politically good time to raise taxes. Raising them on everybody when the economy is barely treading water might not be a great time to do it economically.
And what’s the with quotation marks? If the cuts expire, the bottom level of tax payers will see their taxes go up by 50%. That’s significant, no matter how you look at it.
Mike
22state
@62across
Vote out a stand alone middle-class tax cut and a separate stand alone UI extension out of the House and don’t go into recess until the new Congress.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@El Cid:
And where is that sort of mass action today? I know the media would refuse to cover it, except in the worst and most delegitimizing way possible (see anti-war rallies, 2003), but this is what we are missing today, especially on the economic front. We desperately miss the labor movement of the early and mid 20th Cen, I think. How would the votes in the Senate being going, I wonder, if 1 million+ unemployed people were marching to DC on a regular basis to voice their displeasure with the status quo? Instead we seem be content to hunker down and hang on in our individual misery, divided and ruled.
eemom
would it give any of the deal supporters pause if I mention that His High Broderness has an OpEd in today’s Kaplan fishwrap PRAISING Obama and welcoming him to Broder Bipartisan LaLa Land??
Sentient Puddle
@eemom: Unless Broder is talking about the policy side, no.
mds
Yeah, that change back from 10% to Clinton-level 15% will be murder for people on the bottom end who are nevertheless paying federal income tax. Meanwhile, as the NY Times reports about the compromise, thanks to the fact that Making Work Pay will expire and be replaced with the payroll tax cut:
Gee, I wonder if they’ll shrug that off.
So spare me your crocodile tears for the rate on net taxable income after personal exemptions and deductions, in the lowest federal bracket. “Hey, did you hear? The top tax rate only increases by a little over ten percent, yet the bottom tax rate goes up fifty percent! This is the most relevant way of evaluating relative tax burdens, because I’m a textbook concern troll!”
FlipYrWhig
@eemom: I don’t think anyone is a “deal supporter” in the sense that, were we Lord High Protector of America, we would want a policy that looked anything like it. To the degree that anyone supports a deal, it’s in the spirit that (1) many deals could have been worse and (2) no deal could be WAY worse. The guy who tore his arm off because he was trapped at the bottom of a ravine didn’t _want_ to tear off his arm, but it let him survive, where holding to his steadfast no-arm-tearing principle would have left him to die.
gene108
@beergoggles: I just think liberals get wound up about failures, because they feel their policies are clearly better for everyone and not just a few elites, such as good environmental laws, workplace safety laws, the minimum wage (very popular with everyone BTW and states that have measures to increase it on their ballots usually pass the increase with 70% in favor), etc.
They don’t get why people just don’t fall over themselves to support their liberal agenda.
It’s not about wanting liberals to be conservatives, but for liberals to understand that some things work and others don’t, when it comes to marketing your ideas.
What comes out of liberals, from what I’ve seen, is frustration that their ideas are quickly ridiculed by conservatives, as well as not being overwhelmingly popular, with the term liberal itself being branded as a “dirty” work no politician wants to be labeled as.
Liberals would love to have single-payer, but that’s been beat to death, not only with catch phrases such as “socialized medicine”, “government bureaucrats picking your doctor”, etc., that getting single-payer as an option to the negotiating table in this country seems to be virtually impossible.
The constructive way to push back, in my opinion, isn’t to go on and on and on about how Obama failed his liberal supporters by not demanding we go to single-payer and negotiate from their on HCR, but to have spent the last 16 years, since the Clinton’s big health care initiative failed, convincing people of the benefits of single-payer, so 50%+1 of the American people would be demanding that’s what we do.
Right now, every time Democrats go out on a limb and push the liberal agenda they get bit in the ass by the electorate.
President Clinton kicked off his Presidency by pushing the liberal goal of having gays serve openly in the military, when people questioned his ability to be Commander-in-Chief, since he was the first post-WW2 President with no military service, and he lost getting the repeal implemented. He followed it up with pushing for universal coverage (failed), and the assault weapons ban (won) and those big sweeping attempts to enact liberal changes led to a backlash that cost Democrats control of Congress.
The same thing happened this last time around in Congress. Big changes were attempted, most of which were part of the liberal agenda – HRC, Climate change, etc. – and some succeeded, while others have failed, but the net result is a backlash against Democrats, which cost them the House and slimmer margins in the Senate.
If liberals really want to be heard, they need to make sure Americans will support their goals, first and foremost, so when politicians try to put them in place, they won’t be met with voter backlash.
I don’t see why any sane Democrat would ever bother giving a liberal the time of day again, after what happened in 1994 and 2010.
Brachiator
Aren’t these the people who made up their credit ratings out of fairy dust and then tried to cop a First Amendment Plea when challenged on their fictions? And aren’t they among the firms which helped screw the finances of nations and industries?
I have to read stuff like CCH Tax Briefings and follow other analyses of the legislation. I am not seeing a consensus yet over the value of the compromise plan.
And even here, economists who get hot and bothered over macro-economics, including some of Obama’s Treasury Department advisors, are looking mighty weak on pragmatic tax policy. Their focus on aggregate performance and trends often have little to do with getting people back to work or putting money in their pockets.
And the bottom line is that the past predictions of this crew have been worth about as much as a Jim Cramer stock recommendation.
gene108
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: There were some attempts at organizing the unemployed to rally around Thanksgiving. Commondreams had it on their website, I think.
The Tea-Party protests, in and of themselves, were pretty insignificant on April 15, 2009, but Fox News gave them a huge platform.
What would the impact of these rallies of the unemployed have become, if say Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow, dedicated an entire show to covering them?
Maybe they’d get enough attention to warrant some of the less liberal talking heads to take notice. Maybe 60 Minutes would shed some more light on people, who’ve been unemployed during this recession (they’ve done a piece here and there on the topic).
And maybe because of this media attention, Congress would be forced to extend unemployment insurance or face a voter backlash…
MBunge
@mds: I have no idea what the hell your point is or what argument you’re trying to advance. If your argument is that the rich have to pay higher taxes, damn the political and economic consequences for the country, the Democratic Party and the non-rich…well, you’re certainly entitled to that opinion.
Mike
burnspbesq
@eemom:
And then the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire, and the republicans have to re-introduce them in the new Congress and explain why it’s a good thing to further enrich the already rich while ensuring that our kids and grandkids will live in a country that’s so fucked up that they will see emigrating to Bangladesh as a viable option.
Dunno. Best I can come up with.
mds
What tax bracket are you in, Mike? Because it actually does bother me that under this deal taxes are going up on families making under $40,000, while the rich get all their breaks continued. Sorry that reading comprehension isn’t your strong suit, at least compared to constructing strawmen and aping transparently fake concern for those less fortunate… who will really need Social Security to be there for them, for example.
Sentient Puddle
By the way guys, that whole “Zandi is part of Moody’s, which fucked up the ratings” spiel is bunk. Zandi is part of Moody’s Analytics, which isn’t the branch that hands out the ratings.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
What’s the point of Democratic Senators staying in the Congress if they end up giving the Republicans everything they want, especially if it is bad for the country?
@Sentient Puddle:
Fair point.
On the other hand, no actual legislation has been written, and the tax plan outlines (from the White House and the legislative analyses) are silent on whether a number of expiring tax provisions will be re-instated, so it is premature for anyone to be making claims about the value or impact of the tax plan.
beergoggles
@gene108: It’s an interesting rationalization that you propose. Yes the term liberal has been slimed by the republican media. After Obama’s term, progressive has similarly been slimed by the media. But it’s not the policies that seem unpopular since they seem to enjoy broad public support as long as they are dissociated with either ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ as affiliates.
But you have done little to refute that premptive capitulation charge. After defending Obamas role in HCR to friends and family and getting many of them to make calls to representatives, the information that he cut a deal to drop the public option without making that public makes me unlikely to stick my neck out in a similar manner again.
The whole DADT fiasco could have been avoided by not appealing the trial court decision. The tax cut renewals could have been avoided by not coupling unemployment coverage to tax cuts for the rich (even after the house passed a lower income standalone tax cut bill), and the list goes on and on (and that’s not counting the number of times he’s pissed the gays off by accommodating people who would never vote for him in the first place).
As $0(1alist as I am, I’m also a pragmatist and an incrementalist, and I cannot in any way justify Obama fighting battles he doesn’t have to and then expecting his base to support him, and I have begun to agree with many of my friends who think he would have been a great president if the culture and economic class wars didn’t exist.
Carl Nyberg
@The Republic of Stupidity:
Why is it that the “conservative” response to an argument often is a personal attack?
If my logic was flawed, please point out the fault in the reasoning.
It’s a fair bet that if you’re commenting on a blog during the day, you’re not one of the elites either. Just a sycophant flunky with time on his hands.
Observer
@Sentient Puddle:
I’m sorry but you break it you bought it:
From Moody’s home page:
Moody’s Analytics is a leading provider of research, data, analytic tools and related services to debt capital markets and credit risk management professionals worldwide.
The CDOs and credit risk mgmt pro’s rely on the work of the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. Who didn’t see the mortgage bubble that wrecked the entire world economy. So he kept telling the folks rating the toxic assets that the bubble was fine and so they kept rating them AAA. Nor did he tell any credit risk management professionals so they kept on inflating the bubble.