Ezra Klein summarizes the state of play on the debt ceiling negotiations:
We don’t yet know what the final deal to raise the debt ceiling will be. But now that Harry Reid is developing a proposal with $2.7 trillion in cuts and nothing in revenues, it’s a safe bet that it won’t include any tax increases. Which means that whether Republicans realize it or not, they’ve won. The question now is whether they can stop.
[….]Late last week, pollster Mark Blumenthal summarized the “consistent findings” from the polling on the debt ceiling. First, he said, “Americans prefer a deal featuring a mix of tax hikes and spending cuts to a deal featuring just spending cuts.” Second, “most of the surveys find strong sentiment in favor of compromise, especially among Democrats and independents.” Finally, “the surveys all show Americans expressing significantly more confidence and trust in President Obama’s handling of the issue than of either the Republican or Democratic leadership in Congress.”
Politics are not on Republicans side here (except insofar as they can get Democrats to go along with job-killing, Medicare-cutting policies that will hurt the president in 2012), but that doesn’t matter: they are still much less afraid of a default than Democrats are. Why? Because they think they might benefit from the chaos that ensues and because their base likes the idea of chaos and revolution.
I don’t know how Democrats should play this or should have played this. I don’t know how to negotiate policy with sociopaths. Do you?
boss bitch
Ezra Klein doesn’t know Republicans very well if he thinks a 2.7 trillion cut based on the wars ending and no cuts to entitlements is winning.
C.J.
I think Jane will be getting a shit ton more donations over this, but Obama will still be fine. As long as they don’t blow up the economy.
The Republic of Stupidity
Shorter Republican position:
Am I leaving anyone out?
stuckinred
The Republic of Stupidity
vets
Violet
The US markets are open and are dropping like a lead balloon. Wonder if that’ll have any affect?
AAA Bonds
Raising revenues through taxes is in the same bucket as financial reform. Either we’ll do it or we will lose economic clout in the world sooner rather than later.
AWL
In other news, Chunky Bobo is back at it as he tries to pull the ‘Both sides are to blame!’ card on the Norwegian tragedy. From what I gather Al Gore somehow deserves part of the blame!
I’m sure the usual group of people who get off on any bit of Broderism will love reading this!
Han's Big Snark Solo
You can’t. And nobody, including Boehner, can. The only way this will be resolved is if Boehner ignores the pyschotics in his caucus and does the right thing.
What are the chances Boehner, or any Republican, can do the right thing? Or put another way, if it comes down to doing the right thing for his personal political career and doing the right thing for his country, which will win out?
Linda Featheringill
@Violet:
The US markets are dropping, and rather steadily at that.
I’ve been monitoring markets since last night, starting with New Zealand, and Wall Street is the most volatile market I’ve seen over the past several hours. Maybe the players in the US market has a better idea of what’s happening than those in Europe and Asia.
Edited for clarity.
The Republic of Stupidity
@ stuckinred
Absolutely… consider them added to the list…
General Stuck
Shallow analysis, based on Village CW. Ezra fails to properly identify what it is exactly that republicans really want, and that is to blow up the benefit structures of SS and medicare, and most of all, the ACA.
They don’t give a shit about a bunch of generic spending cuts, nor lowering the deficit. The cuts, I believe, is similar to what Pelosi proposed, that do not affect entitlements, and actually constructs a firewall around social programs, or at least the New Deal ones.
And I don’t see it as a clear win for republicans, it would likely be a bigger win for Obama, for signing such a bill, he could inoculate himself from tax and spend liberal charges, that is one of the goopers most successful memes against dems.
The repubs know this full well, and unless they can damage the crown jewels of the dem party, SS and medicare, and the ACA, then they won’t play, I don’t think. Especially if they can’t replay this nonsense in the run up to the election.
walt
You don’t negotiate with terrorists by preemptively giving them what they want before the negotiations even begin. Why is that so hard to understand? The “deal” when it finally arrives will give them 98% of what they wanted. Obama will look weak, the economy will suffer, and you will have validated the strategy that there’s no downside to extorting demands at gunpoint. If we’re lucky, Obama will appear to be more adult-like for his frantic desire to compromise with these pigs. Or, the perception might begin to gel that he’s not a leader so much as a placator.
Joe Bauers
No. Because the root problem is a stupid, ignorant, lazy public, our political problems will not be solved. A healthy society that was destined to survive and thrive would never have this problem to begin with, because it would not elect sociopaths. A society that would elect such a large number of sociopaths is not a society that will perceive itself as having a problem, much less have the wherewithal to solve it. They’ll just blame whatever pain they are feeling at the moment on whatever minority out-groups are that day’s designated scapegoat as identified by their opinion leaders.
I was hopeful when Obama was elected that the end might be pushed off until I’m in the ground, but not any more.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’ve been reading 2.7T with no revenue is the Democratic proposal – all over a manufactured crisis.
Awesome deal. How does Obama do it? We are pawns in his eleventy dimensional chess game.
AAA Bonds
@Violet:
And here we go:
Dow Jones Industrial Average
S&P 500 index
MattF
Obama’s secret strategy is to agree with everything the Repubicans propose– then, since agreeing with Obama is forbidden, Republicans must propose even crazier policies, and then… everybody gets sucked into a black hole. The end.
AAA Bonds
And here we go:
Dow Jones Industrial Average
S&P 500 index
Davis X. Machina
@Joe Bauers: Generalized contempt for politics — and this is one case where both sides do do it — gets you contemptible politicians.
Jennifer
They’ve overplayed their hand so far that I don’t think there is anything they will accept at this point, short of complete elimination of Social Security and Medicare.
Sure would like to see the Dems out there repeating the line that “the Republicans have wasted time we could have used to deal with unemployment on a simple housekeeping matter.”
Seriously, at this point I’d almost rather let the unthinkable happen and let them succeed at creating another depression. At least then we’d be rid of them for a generation or two. It’s not like their bankster or corporate pals will be ponying up money for their campaigns if they put it all in the shitter, which might also finally give us a chance to get them out of the campaign funding racket.
PeakVT
@Linda Featheringill: 1% on any one day is kinda meh. It’s still early in the session, though.
AAA Bonds
Got a window open, watching a couple of the indices on Google Finance.
Boy, that was a fun first hour, wasn’t it? I think I got vertigo.
Zach
Am I the only one who’s happier if revenue’s aren’t touched in this thing? A revenue deal would almost inevitably include another extension of the Bush cuts for everyone except the very top bracket, at best. It takes away the 2012 expiration as a bargaining chip for Democrats. By not touching revenues now, it’ll be on the table in 2012: should we cut Medicare and Medicaid, or should we let tax cuts for the wealthy expire? Democrats won this debate in 2008, and that was before the entire House GOP and every Presidential candidate had signed onto gutting Medicare. So what could happen in 2012? If Dems gain, they’ll have a mandate of sorts to demand a better tax deal. If Dems lose, there will be enough left to be sticks in the mud and engage in the same sort of hostage taking over marginal tax rates.
Larime the Gimp
I’m actually thinking that this is beautiful. This is the last, and best offer the Republicans are going to get, and of course they aren’t going to take it. All of the social programs are safe, which we want, and there’s no tax raises, which they want, making it the perfect deal. Naturally, that means they can’t accept it.
When they refuse this, Obama can then go out and say that he gave them exactly what they said they wanted and none of what they said they didn’t, and they still said no. This is killing them. I need popcorn.
AAA Bonds
Greece default ‘virtually 100 percent’
Observer
Yes Doug, I do. You don’t negotiate with sociopaths that’s how you negotiate. You ignore them and go over their heads.
In this instance, what that means is the insipid Obama emphasis on “bipartisanship” is completely wrong. The Deal last December was wrong. Obama talking about deficits instead of jobs is wrong. Not raising the debt ceiling last session in 2010 was wrong.
Being cowardly or timid around a sociopath only leads to trouble.
What needed to happen was the case needed to taken to the public early and often. Raise the debt ceiling in 2010 before the election, talk about jobs and only about jobs until the recovery is working, let the tax cuts expire and don’t try to bargain. Rework the Senate rules to eliminate phony one man filibusters and blue slips rules. Pass a law that forces the Senate to vote on presidential nominations within 90 days or the nominee is confirmed.
That’s what you do.
jwb
The GOP is so far into stupid at this point, I don’t know that at this point they could pull out and make a go of it politically in 2012, at least at the presidential level. Default (or pseudo-default if Obama takes extraconstitutional measures, as I expect he will, to avoid it) is the ultimate reset, and I imagine that the GOP figures—to the extent that they are calculating at all—their chances are better after the reset than they are now. I’m not sure that is actually true, because a big crisis will have the power, at least temporarily, to cut through the Fox/MSM bullshit, since it scrambles the fixed narratives that the propoganda depends on even as it motivates people to seek out explanations as to why their world is falling apart. It has at least as much chance to further damage the GOP as it does of improving the Goopers’ lot.
On the other hand, is it too much to ask that the Dems and progressive activists have a plan in place to push the progressive line once the chaos breaks out? I’m feeling like it’s summer 2009 all over again, when the teatards came out in force, and the only answer the left had was to laugh at the funny hats and misspelled signs or to point out that it wasn’t a real movement because it was paid for by corporate money. Organizing an actual counter movement? Hell, that’s too much work.
PaulJ
CJ @ #2
Can you describe a series of events where cutting spending in a depression won’t blow up the economy?
also, both spending cuts and raising taxes remove money from the economy. Just saying…
cleek
@walt:
if that’s what Obama had done, he wouldn’t still be fighting this fucking fight three fucking months after the fucking thing started!
Xenos
@Larime the Gimp:
Exactly – this is how you negotiate with sociopaths… reveal them to be sociopaths. Give them what they say they want, in the most responible, transparent fashion, while letting them blow the deal up anyway.
The shit is already hitting the fan. Everyone knows, or will soon know, the reason why. Because a default is the only thing the teapartisans want. They want it because they think it will prove that they have been right all along, and that the American people will love them for it. Just like McVeigh thought the American people would rise up against the government if he just could light the fuse with a bomb in Oklahoma.
John Puma
The teatards are a little deficient in their understanding of both the base of their new found power AND its associated obligation.
They like to scream and think that means power and, despite decades of their ilk lecturing others on personal responsibility, not one of them has any idea what that is and has no plans to find out.
General Stuck
If you gauge winning and losing on this issue, by what the voters are thinking and reacting, then Obama is doing just fine. As polls continue to oppose more and more what the wingnuts are trying to do here.
Larime the Gimp
@Xenos:
I know, right? But JSF has a sad because there are no revenue increases in the deal, which means that we’ve totally lost. Not that, you know, any of the cuts are actually real or affect anything. Because Obama sucks, that’s why.
Cacti
Let them pull the trigger, go the 14th Amendment route, and give a “regretful” speech about how months were spent negotiating in good faith, but in the end, we couldn’t let a handful of political extremists destroy the full faith and credit of the United States.
AAA Bonds
@General Stuck:
I’d love to have an anti-Republican country but I’d also like to have a First World one…
eric
Not one person at this Site or in the Whitehouse or on an editorial board of a major paper has EVER had to deal with anything like this. There is no equivalent. I am sick and tired of what everyone says should have been done as if it for sure would have worked. BS. I don’t care what Obama wants in his heart (more progressive or more centrist), it does not matter. There is a set of the GOP House members that viscerally hate everything they perceive that Obama embodies — affirmative action, progressive taxation, regulation, community commitment — and they will do everything to make sure he loses in 2012. There is no “right move” Unlike War Games where tic-tac-toe was an unwinnable draw, the current situation is an unwinnable disaster. The GOP freshman now reject empiricism and facts and literacy to a point where there is nothing that you can confront them with that counters their current positions. No one has any experience dealing with that. They are like the drunk guy at the end of the bar, except you cant just walk away snickering at his babblings.
Hawes
I think we all agree that you CAN’T negotiate with sociopaths. There’s a line in Ezra’s piece where he notes that Democrats will probably accept a bad deal because they don’t want the economy to collapse, the clear implication is that the GOP does.
You can’t negotiate with that.
And that’s why these negotiations are so frustrating. Obama, Reid and Pelosi don’t want to blow up the economy and these fuckers do.
You can’t win.
That’s not bad negotiating on the Democrats part, it’s a desperate attempt to hold the country together in the face of fiscal terrorism.
Carl Nyberg
This is a great example of how the media and the GOP manipulate Democrats and “progressives” into being the new conservatives.
By pushing for something radical Democrats and “progressives” slip into the role of defending the status quo as being superior to the radical solution.
Once the Democrats are making concessions the GOP keeps asking for more.
How’s a low-information voter perceive this?
Does s/he think…?
1. The GOP has a plan; the Democrats are merely defending the status quo (and that hasn’t been working for me).
2. Even the Democrats know the Republicans are right. That’s why they are making concessions. The resistance is just a show for some Democratic voters.
3. The arguments that I’ve been told about liberalism and progressivism are bullshit. If they were true, the Democrats would fight harder for these issues.
gene108
If a Democrat has a news conference and repeats a talking point over and over again, but no one in the media is there to report, did the Democrat really say anything important?
You guys act like Democrats are getting tons of media exposure, have their own news network or something, and are failing to use all these resources.
The reality is the media has been tilted to the right. Even when commentators want to blast Republicans or should blast Republicans, they don’t. They try to do a “both sides” do it narrative, but when it comes to examples, they can only pull up Republican examples because these are only Republican problems.
Watched Fareed Zakaria (sp?). His opening comment was how fear of primary opposition – from the right with Republicans and from the left with Democrats – was making Congress more extreme and less willing to compromise. Of course the only examples he could muster of Congresscritters tacking to the left or right, were Republicans like Orrin Hatch and John McCain tacking to the right to avoid a right-wing primary challenge or because of a right-wing primary challenge.
He made some good points about the need to reform how districts are drawn and how the Founders were apprhensive about partisanship, but he couldn’t come right out and say the Republican Party has been hijacked by special interest groups that threaten incumbents.
Anyway, I’m just seeing this as chickens coming home to roost. Republicans thought they could whip up people into a froth, get them to the polls and ignore them. Well the creation has just taken control of the creator and the end result doesn’t look good.
AAA Bonds
@Larime the Gimp:
I’m pretty fucking mad about the cuts, how’s that?
KCinDC
Are some people watching the stock market in a parallel universe? There’s nothing unusual happening with it today so far.
Hugh
I posted a comment a few weeks ago noting that there may well be a significant percentage of Republicans who thought a tanking economy due to default would help them in the next election and who would also be ready to test it out. I thought afterwards perhaps I’d been hyperbolic. But now I don’t think so. It’s so enraging.
cat48
The Teahads will no longer permit Boner/Obama interaction. Obama has to give messages to Reid & he delivers them to Boner. This is unbelievable to me, yet the hosts on TV are treating it like it’s normal.
Ash Can
OT but on the subject of sociopaths, I’m a little shaken up here — in the “Homegrown Terrorists” thread, commenter Ives pointed out that the Maine Tea Party is calling Anders Breivik its “man of the year.” Maybe I’m just delayed-reacting to what happened in Norway, but it freaked me out enough that I sent the Maine Tea Party’s URL to the FBI. All I could think about was all those teenagers (bear in mind I’m the parent of an 11-year-old myself). Gah. I feel like I need a good stiff drink right now.
Anya
General Stuck @11 ~ Hate to say this, but THIS!
Carl Nyberg
What if Obama said…
boss bitch
@cleek:
Fucking Logic! no place in the blogosphere.
Bulworth
This is pretty symptomatic of the whole problem…Democrats keep proposing stuff, GOP says NO, and on and on.
Dave
Um, “revealing the Republicans to be sociopaths” is a terrible plan. Anyone who doesn’t know Republicans are sociopaths by now is beyond help. Obama does not somehow magically “win” a game of perception if and when unemployment spikes again.
Obama needs about 50 attack dogs and lots and lots of threats if he wants to get anything done. He should appear as the responsible adult in the room, compared with Biden and his political advisers, not compared with Boehner et al. Coddling Republicans like they all do is bonkers.
gopher2b
I may be wrong about this but I believe the revenue items Obama was trying to get would not have kicked in until 2013. The Bush tax cuts set to expire in 2012, right? And, I believe reverting back to the Bush tax rates (across the board) would produce more revenue than anything being negotiated now.
It’s punting the political fight down the road but we may end up with more revenue by not having the fight now.
RalfW
You don’t. Or you do the minimum theater to not look to the idiot media like you’re refusing. Meanwhile, given this from the prev BJ thread
You put out lists daily of everything that will be cut or shut by the GOP plan:
-> Don’t like jammed highways, tough shit, the GOP will kill the Transp bill.
-> Can’t afford to pay for mom to be in a nursing home? Tough shit, Medicaide is gone under cap, cut, destroy.
-> Enjoy seeing your kidlet succeed in college, too fuckin’ bad, Pell Grants got nuked courtesy of Mike Pence and Eric Cantor.
Drumbeat. Daily. Attach real consequences to the GOP’s airy-fairy gubmit-bad, cut-gubmit be free malarky. Yeah, free to twist in the wind when every popular program disappears.
People dislike gov’t in the abstract, and love gov’t when it helps them. The GOP is begging for the US to be reminded of what we LIKE about gov’t. Give it, NOW.
Rhoda
I’m beyond thinking about winners and losers.
Boehner has no fucking clue what is going on. Yesterday, he was supposed to put out a plan, right? Well, he didn’t break news on a plan he held a fucking conference call/Obama bashathon/ rally around the party boys message and then leaked to the press a plan that is basically a shitty version of McConnell’s original fucked up plan.
I think that sad son of a bitch is going to “accidentally” fuck up like Paulson did letting Lehmans fail and then go oops, what the fuck just happened? Only I don’t know how we come back globally from a US default.
Alex S.
@General Stuck:
True. Ezra simply doesn’t understand the Republicans in their current form. His mind is being consumed by the Village.
gelfling545
@Violet: Probably not because these people have at most only a rudimentary idea of cause & effect & apparently no idea at all about how the financial world actually works.
cleek
@Ash Can:
well, one commenter, who looks like has been a member of the forum for just a week or so, did. and the only reply was “no he isn’t”.
not exactly a full-on tea party endorsement.
Jennifer
I do think it will be interesting to see what happens to Republican fundraising efforts when they fail to accept a deal that gives them what they’ve demanded and the debt limit is raised more or less “over their dead bodies.”
Not that the Kochs et al will reward the people who kept their business empires from losing half or more of their value. I just wonder if GOP donors will continue to reward GOP fail. I’m sure the low-rent bufords who vote for them will continue to dig in the couch cushions for spare change to toss their way, but they aren’t the ones who really fund the GOP machine and keep it running.
4tehlulz
@KCinDC: I think it’s funny; Boehner tried to induce a panic in the stock markets to get Obama to cave, and neither happened.
In all seriousness, everyone might be waiting for the ratings nukes to drop.
Ash Can
@cleek: OK, that makes me feel better. And the FBI can just think I’m some crank/hysterical broad, I don’t care. I can breathe a little easier.
Bulworth
I have 0 confidence that the Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire. If Democrats couldn’t force an increase in the debt ceiling, when default was at stake, what evidence is there to think they will be any more successful in the next tax cut hostage situation? In an election year no less?
jwb
My read of the market opening is that money believes that we’ll muddle through whether the debt ceiling is raised or not. A little panic selling at the opening followed by a rally among the bargain hunters. Clearly, money doesn’t yet believe that whatever happens in Washington with respect to the debt will much affect the underlying economic and financial circumstances. Strange. Fascinating. Does money know something or is money in denial? Should be interesting to see this play out over the next few days.
Quiddity
You missed the most important element of Ezra’s report:
Will the deal be an enormous boost the Obama’s 2012 campaign?
Anya
I am sure Jon Stewart will tell me that both sides are at fault or stupid or both. He already convinced me that Obama is a hypocrite for asking the Republicans to increase the Debt Limit, when he voted against it, when he was a senator. He also informed me that a Congressman yelling at the President during his speech, “You lie!” is milder than the treatment the British Prime Minister receives at Question Period.
Larime the Gimp
@AAA Bonds:
Bully for you! Care to tell us why?
KCinDC
Bulworth, I don’t have much confidence either, but at least with the extension the Democrats have more power. It’s much easier to block something than to pass something (as we’ve seen repeatedly), and extending the tax cuts requires passing something.
jwb
Jennifer: I don’t know. This whole thing has been feeling a lot like the intransigence of the Koch-backed midwestern governors, especially Wisconsin. This is more than simply tea partiers gone rogue on their handlers. I smell Kochwork. In any case, I believe there are some big financial players on the side of default. Actually, there has to be or the teatards wouldn’t be given the time of day by the VSPs.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
Manufacturing consent isn’t easy.
How should the Democrats have played this? They should have insisted, from top to bottom, on a clean debt ceiling hike with no conditions. Just what happened under Bush 9 times.
So why didn’t they? Because Obama wanted to use this alleged “crisis”, too. Because Obama wanted a “Grand Bargain” that included cuts to Medicare and Social Security. It’s why he made a ‘bipartisan deficit commission’ with Simpson-Bowles in the first place.
Enjoy your kabuki, and your “entitlement” (yes, Obama uses that Frank Luntz-tested language, too) cuts.
Link:
~
Jc
Even ‘shadow’ cuts are unacceptable, if cuts are the only thing in the deal.
If that’s the case, demand a clean debt ceiling raise.
We’ll be going through this again in two months. If the sociopaths keep getting what they want, with one branch of government, they will just continue to do so.
Giving a sociopath what they want won’t make them stop.
jwb
Bulworth: This is probably why Boehner is insisting on the two-step raise: he knows he’ll have less leverage on the Bush tax cuts when they come up for renewal since he’ll need both Senate and Obama’s approval. On the other hand, we still have the budget that has to be dealt with, so there are plenty of opportunities for Boehner to take additional hostages.
Linda Featheringill
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©: #63
So you’re saying it’s Obama’s fault because, after trying to get a clean bill, he decided to try to address the core causes of debt?
Damn his hide for trying to do something that would be good for the country!
chopper
@Paul J 25:
i know. either way we’re screwed. in one corner, the austerity monster, pulling 2.7 trillion dollars out of the economy while historically low interest rates still won’t get banks to lend, pushing us right back into the liquidity trap. in the other corner, default.
what a country.
J.W. Hamner
My question… voiced by many others… is why do the Republicans want to have this argument again during the 2012 election? It seems like their strategy to win that election should be “jobs, jobs, jobs”… not their plan to voucherize Medicare.
Dave
Yup! What a shmuck.
blondie
I am sick to death of the Republicans playing chicken with the U.S. economy. It worked for them on the tax freeze. Now, they’re Kim Jong-il — do whatever bizarro thing we tell you to do, or we’re going nuclear on the world economy. Ha! ha ha ha ha …
Use the bully pulpit! Take it to the people and ask them to make their elected representatives be responsible. This is the United States, not the Association of Selfish States.
ML
The president didn’t insist on the expiration of the Bush tax cuts last year when the democrats were in control of congress. He did so, I believe, because he wanted to insure that repeal (or not) would be the focal point of his own 2012 campaign. If Klein and the polls are correct, he will have made a wise decision insofar as his own re-election odds are concerned, if an altogether cynical one.
jwb
Jc: When We, the People elected crazy people to govern us, we got crazy governance. Since the single goal of the crazy is to not agree to any deal with the President or the Dems, we are not going to get a deal.
Now, if you were President, what would you do about that? You could take the case to the people, but how exactly do you do that when the crazy people not only control the House but run a good deal of the media? Moreover, whenever you do go on TV and mention that We, the People elected crazy people to govern us, your approval rating in the polls drops. Apparently, We, the People do not like to be told that we elected crazy people to govern us.
So the only reliable way of getting your message out is to negotiate with the crazy people in the hope that by their actions they will reveal their crazy to We, the People. But ultimately it is up to We, the People not to elect crazy people if we don’t want crazy governance.
DZ
@Chopper:
You need to rethink your comment at #67. Low interest rates are not an incentive for banks to lend – they are a disincentive. Banks want higher return which requires higher interest rates. Low interest rates are an incentive for people to want to borrow but a disincentive for banks to actually want to do it.
Jennifer
As I said the other day (to which I got no response), for us average folks it looks like our choice is whether we are to be bled out slowly, or lose everything we’ve worked for in one fell swoop. I’ve kind of come around to the latter position. If I’m going to lose it all anyway, I’d rather lose it in some catastrophic failure that causes Richie Rich to lose a goodly portion of his as well. Not to mention that a catastrophe is a lot more likely to get the average Joe off the couch (once he can’t afford the bill and his cable gets cut off) and out into the streets. Bleeding us slowly means prolonged pain for all of us, but no critical mass of us hitting rock bottom together at the same time, which makes it a lot less likely that we’ll see heads on pikes. And you know, we really do need to see some heads on pikes before it’s all said and done.
Linda Featheringill
Senator Reid offers a plan. [Yglesias]
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/07/25/277811/harry-reid-calls-house-republicans-bluff/
As always, it depends on the details. I’d like to hear the reactions of the House Dems on this.
General Stuck
This is a good question, that I don’t think has a rational answer. It is a worrisome sign for us all, that the wingnuts in the House are starting to believe in a cult like way, their own ideology.
It is crazy for them to think another round of this bullshit will help them. I think it is altruistic reasons why Obama and dems have put their foot down on not having this play out again, even if they could demagogue the wingers on their humping the third rail, close to the election. For the simple reason of its destabilizing of the markets and econ recovery.
The wingnuts have convinced themselves that the country, outside the tea party, cares more about the deficit than they do medicare and SS. Totally delusional, and very dangerous to revisit the edge of the abyss. Even if dems could likely profit politically from it.
General Stuck
linda
Here is one detail
Linda Featheringill
@Jennifer:
#74
Uprising.
I appreciate your frustration and desire for MAJOR changes that would represent a revolution, violent or peaceful.
Perhaps one reason you haven’t gotten responses is that too many of us have looked at the question of revolution deeply and have studied past revolutions and are slow to call for an uprising until we have a critical mass of people in favor of it.
Also, many of us have been on the receiving end of what the police can do to people who have the audacity to protest. And we are the survivors. We got off light compared to some others.
We understand the risks involved. However, if such a popular uprising were to occur, we would probably make out our wills, kiss loved ones goodby, and go where the action was. Que sera, sera.
But let’s try political and legal means first.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
Linda, what does Social Security have to do with the core causes of debt?
Have you internalized Frank Luntz’ talking points as well?
Did you even read the article I linked?
There is a straight line between Obama’s appointment of Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to his “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform” to the G-6 proposals to Social Security and Medicare cuts being offered up by the Democrats.
…after trying to get a clean bill…
Right. He worked as hard for that as he did for the health insurance public option.
~
chopper
@DZ:
the fed target rate is ridiculously low. it is ridiculously easy for banks to get credit from the fed. but none of that money is making its way to regular borrowers at the obviously-higher rates they would charge.
that is what i mean.
boss bitch
@Anya:
You caught that bullshit too?
Sometimes I wonder if its just the writers talking or just him or if they all have to agree on the main idea of the skit before shooting.
boss bitch
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©:
Social Security is not the cause of our debt and Obama has said so several times.
KCinDC
Linda, I’d say one huge drawback of revolutions (aside from all the death and suffering) is that they very often don’t produce the desired outcome. You may end up in a worse position than you were before. And economic collapse doesn’t often cause people to seek the most enlightened “solutions”. More from Thoreau (the blogger).
Linda Featheringill
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©:
Social Security has nothing to do with the core causes of federal debt. Did I say it did?
Did Obama say it did?
Citation, please. Chapter and verse.
Linda Featheringill
@KCinDC:
revolutions:
You’re quite correct. Historically, revolutions have seemed to evolve into living, self conscious beasts. They go where they want to go and they do what they want to do.
No mere human [or group of humans] can control a full-throttle revolution.
Actually, they can’t start one, either. They can try but such efforts have usually devolved into self-limiting rebellions.
rumpole
Fourteenth amendment. He could have kept the checks coming ’till Congress told him which ones to stop. Why he took that off the table is a complete mystery to me–more from a negotiating perspective than a substantive one. If he had played that one down to the line, he would have been the hero of all this to the general pubic, the wingers would have FREAKED, but the media would have been OK with it because by then, they would have figured out that the tea party is just confederacy 2.0.
PaulJ
[email protected]…
What bothers me most about this debt-ceiling kabuki is it’s all based on a fabricated BS argument that we have a debt problem.
Reading most of the comments in this thread will demonstrate that the arguments aren’t even remotely focused on the real problem.
A fundamental misunderstanding by all parties involved including the leadership on both sides and all of the “Serious™” economists that have never been right about anything are telling us how to fix the problem.
horatius
I think the POTUS should capitulate. And give them everything. That’ll work.
Jennifer
I think you’re all missing the point vis-a-vis what I said about an uprising: we’re going to be bled dry either slowly, or in one fell swoop. So our options at this point are serfdom or uprising, depending on how quickly they bleed us dry. The “ending up in a worse position than before” conclusion is foregone with either route. The only thing in question is whether we’ll submit to a period of slavery before an uprising, or not.
chopper
@Paul J:
which is why the GOP has won, unless obama walks away with a clean bill. and even then, we’re still looking at large-scale austerity measures, so we still lose.
no, we don’t have a debt problem. we will if we default and interest rates get jacked up, and we will if we fall into a liquidity trap and see deflationary pressure when the fed has already emptied its bag of tricks. pick one, we’re still boned.
PaulJ
[email protected]…
So true. It doesn’t help that our own party is helping to drive the stake home.
PaulJ
[email protected]…
The crash will either show the lemmings that they are following the wrong piper or they will look for some other group of (imaginary) demons to take their wrath out on.
Midnight Marauder
Nothing gets on air without Jon Stewart’s approval.
Nothing.
Catsy
@Xenos:
Win.
That is an analogy I will be repeating.
chopper
the saddest thing is how completely manufactured this crisis is. 5-year bond yields (IP) are negative! borrowing more is actually better. we should be borrowing tons more, we should be dumping all the money into the economy and we’ll be paying it back with money that’s worth less than the real face value of the fuckin’ paper! it’s win-win.
but no, instead we have everyone pulling their hair out over debt, and the way to fix it is to ceremonially cut our guts out.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
Good grief.
1) Obama’s deficit commission co-chairmen Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles recommend cuts to Social Security benefits.
2) The Senate Gang of Six recommends cuts to Social Security benefits.
3) Obama praises Gang of Six recommendations.
4) Linda Featheringill: So you’re saying it’s Obama’s fault because, after trying to get a clean bill, he decided to try to address the core causes of debt?
5) Linda Featheringill part II: Social Security has nothing to do with the core causes of federal debt. Did I say it did? Did Obama say it did?
I’m won’t waste any more time arguing with someone using the logic of a two-year old.
President Obama and the Gang of Six Want to Cut Social Security and Medicare, but Readers of the NYT Probably Wouldn’t Notice
~
KCinDC
Chopper, it’s maddening. It’s like no one in the media or among the politicians can remember all the way back to December when there was zero concern for the deficit or the debt as Congress added trillions to it by extending the Bush tax cuts, which was the “crisis” then.
chopper
and now, because of an invented crisis, we’re either going to default on our debt obligations or push ourselves back into recession via massive austerity measures.
i’m just wondering if there’s a single person in our government who understands exactly how stupid this whole thing is.
OzoneR
Because it’s not true, you often do give them some of what they want.
OzoneR
you can’t go over Congress’ head
OzoneR
Back when Obama actually did demand a clean bill, like five times, in April, I said this would be forgotten about, Turns out I was right.
PaulJ
[email protected]…
Pete Stark (D-CA13)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjbPZAMked0
Philbert
How do you negotiate with a sociopath? Obviously you give him everything he demands. And you keep on giving him everything he demands whenever he demands it. And for good measure you should concede the next election in advance, because, well, he’s a sociopath.
To do anything different makes you a whiny liberal obstructionist.
Seriously, its funny to hear the howls of outrage on this board about the Democrats’ surrender. Progressives saw it coming, but of course we’re just anti-Obama troublemakers.
How do you really negotiate with a sociopath? You kick him in the nuts, that’s how.
OzoneR
uh huh, ever tried kicking a sociopath in the nuts?
I tell you what, you go kick a Republican in the nuts, see what it gets ya.
Kane
Republicans were desperately trying to use the debt ceiling as a way of cutting into Medicare while getting Democrats on the record for cutting Medicare so that Democrats couldn’t use the Ryan plan against Republicans in the elections in 2012.
The Reid plan provides the debt reduction that Republicans demanded, but without cutting into the safety net, keeping alive a winning Democratic issue in 2012. Brilliantly played.
Now if Republicans refuse this deal as well, it underscores their previous vote to dismantle Medicare.
Heliopause
The way it works is, you vote for the guy who convinces you that he knows how to negotiate with sociopaths.
OzoneR
None of these analogies work, we commit sociopaths, we don’t let them near anything sharp, we don’t give them any power, but the sociopaths have power, so that analogy doesn’t work. We do negotiate with hostage takers, and we give them what they want to keep the hostages alive until we can position our snipers to kill them. Killing Republicans isn’t an option.
What these analogies tell us is the answer to the problem is civil war. Is there were the left is going?
Heliopause
@107
I’m thinking more along the lines of distracting them. Obama needs to get his dick sucked in the broom closet by an intern. The more worked up they get about Obama’s dick the less attention they can pay to destroying everything.
Kane
I can’t wait to read all of the mea culpas from the panel of experts, backseat drivers, and political no-it-alls who took great joy in blaming President Obama and Democrats every step of the way. Once again, they have underestimated the good guys.
Philbert
Well, we’ve been kissing their asses. Where has that gotten us? And where will it get us the next time around? And the next?
The mistake was to negotiate over the debt ceiling at all. That’s just negotiating with terrorists. The debt ceiling should be nonnegotiable. That’s why every President (Republican and Democrat) and every Congress has raised it, usually without debate. Reagan did it 18 times.
If the Republicans want to argue about spending, let them do it during the budget negotiations. The Democrats never tried to make that case to the public, never tried to teach people the consequences and explain why one does not threaten the debt ceiling. Now the precedent has been set: the Republicans can threaten the debt ceiling & extort concessions with impunity.
Whether or not the Republicans accept the Democrats’ surrender, this can’t turn out well.
OzoneR
a truly despised Republican Party
And yet Congress must raise it, and when the President asked them to do it in the Spring, they did not. Why is this so hard to admit?
They didn’t? Cause last I checked, the public went from overwhelmingly against raising the debt ceiling in April to supporting it this month. Anyway, you think sociopaths are going to be swayed by a change in public opinion? Really? Have you never met a sociopath?
This is what I don’t understand about the left, you tell us the Republicans are irrational and should be ignored, but when challenged with the fact they can’t be, suddenly you insist they’re rational and Democrats didn’t do enough to force them to bend.
Which is it?
chopper
@112:
that would make a lot more sense if the GOP didn’t control the house, where all debt ceiling legislation originates and is passed.
we’re not talking about some crazy guys tugging on obama’s shirt sleeve asking for his attention, these guys are the ones running the house. obama can’t just ignore them and get a clean bill passed by himself.
Corner Stone
@chopper:
The same argument I’ve been making here for 2 years +/- now.
Philbert
If a “deal” is struck the public will be happy and the press will be happy and the issue will go away. And the Republicans will be laughing at us and high-fiving each other. If a deal is not struck, the mainstream media will blame both sides and plenty of people will believe them. (“Why can’t they both just compromise?”)
Yes, my brother-in-law is one. And I once tried negotiating with him. Came out about as well as the debt ceiling debate. Never again.
Did you actually read what I wrote??? I don’t want them to bend, I want them to break. Preferably into little pieces. We should have called their bluff, all the while pounding on the meme that what they are doing is wrong wrong wrong. Make them the bad guys from the get-go. And if it wasn’t a bluff? Then there is nothing we could have done anyway. (They’re sociopaths, remember?) Conducting negotiations implicitly legitimized their demand to negotiate. It isn’t legitimate and never was.
Superking
I’m sure someone else has mentioned this, but if Reid was going to introduce any plan whatsoever, it was never going to have revenue increases.
Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
‘If a deal is not struck, the mainstream media will blame both sides and plenty of people will believe them. (“Why can’t they both just compromise?”)’
If the GOP had said for a debt ceiling to be passed, all Congressional Democrats and federal Democratic political appointees had to be violently sodomized with broom handles, the MSM would be having Op-Eds from David Brooks on the intransigence of Democrats, given that lubricants could reduce the pain, and that Cantor and Boehner had shown reasonableness by allowing Proctologists to be on-site during the sodomization, and that Democrats not compromising was hurting GOP fee-fees.
DC and the MSM are wired for GOP control.
bob h
How you negotiate with people who get off on pissing off liberals, who don’t want to let that feeling go? You’re a know-thing, flyover Babbitt, and the Ivy League professors, Wall St. bigs, and pointy-headed DC bureaucrats are quaking with fear of you.
A Humble Lurker
Ezra Klein annoys the shit out of me.
That is all.
TenguPhule
Shove a gun up their nose and pull the trigger?