And a mess of Bam's barbecue

By Zandar 

And Fox Nation leaves this in a bag on America's doorstep, lights it on fire, rings the bell and runs (h/t Oliver Willis).

Ahh, the president's birthday celebration had black people at it and didn't create jobs! This is where we are right now, it's a brutally long campaign season, folks... and the rampant, ugly, and now massively overt racism by the GOP and their enablers is only beginning. People ask me how President Obama can put up with such drooling idiocy, and I remind them that the president is never the true audience for shock-jock racism like this.

In a sick way, you have to admire the blue-steel hatred Fox has for the man. When the dog whistles are put away and the megaphones are brought out instead, it's proof that the president's most recent maneuver has demoralized the Tea Party faithful and that it's time to throw the red meat into the pit to get some action going (which gives more "moderate" conservative pundits the chance to pretend to disavow the bomb-throwing to look "centrist and principled").

It must mean, then, that the rank-and-file Tea Party disagree with John "Orange Julius" Boehner's assessment that the GOP got 98% of what it wanted in the debt deal. Indeed, many Americans are furious at the Republicans in the wake of this week's deal and the weeks of hostage-taking that preceded it.

Time both to fire up the base and to take the higher ground at the same time while Eric Cantor blames the extension of federal unemployment benefits for causing unemployment itself, and vows to hold it hostage next.  Always onwards to the next Pyrrhic victory, our GOP friends.

Bifurcated democracy

By Carl 

This was an interesting op-ed in yesterday's New York Times:

OUR nation isn't facing just a debt crisis; it's facing a democracy crisis. For weeks, the federal government has been hurtling toward two unsavory options: a crippling default brought on by Congressional gridlock, or — as key Democrats have advocated — a unilateral increase in the debt ceiling by an unchecked president. Even if the last-minute deal announced on Sunday night holds together, it’s become clear that the balance at the heart of the Constitution is under threat.

The debate has threatened to play out as a destructive but all too familiar two-step, revealing how dysfunctional the relationship between Congress and the president has become. 

The article talks about how presidents have decided to exercise power unilaterally, like Obama's Libyan adventures (although the practice goes back decades to Reagan and even Nixon,) while the Congress has been unable to rally itself to challenge the President's usurpation of power. Either the Congress is divided (like now) or reinforces the person holding the Oval Office (as under Bush the Younger).

This is what the punditry tells us we want, over and over again: divided government. Given what we've experienced for over three decades now (absent the six years of Bush the Younger) is this really what we want? An ineffectual Congress hamstrung by the tyranny of the minority and a Presidency who usurps power like a king?

Mind you, none of this is partisan: Republicans and Democrats have been to blame in BOTH branches. Clinton was forced to legislate by executive order, much as Obama is. Both Bushes declared wars without making a firm case to the American people as to the need for them (this wasn't dominoes toppling or any such credible threat.) Reagan tossed American troops around like candy and American armaments to enemies.

In Congress, John Boehner can't even get a centerpiece of legislation passed trying to keep the party's dog-and-pony show from tearing each other up. When Pelosi was in charge, she had to placate Blue Dog Democrats, rather than muscle them into line.

Hell, about the only thing any Congress since 1990 has been able to agree upon is that Bill Clinton needed to be impeached and a bunch of Asian deserts bombed!

This has effectively emasculated an entire branch of government. Power seeks a vacuum. It's almost understandable that the president would unilaterally legislate.

Plus, members of Congress don't have to take a stand on anything controversial. Take the EPA actions earlier this year to regulate greenhouse gases. Now, long time readers of this blog know there are few people more concerned with global climate change than me. Maybe Al Gore. So while I don't have a problem with Obama taking the bull by the fumes... so to speak... I worry about the fact that Congress didn't vote on this.

Note: it wasn't voted down. The bill stalled before a vote could be taken. It's probably still in the hamper, waiting to be aired out. Look at what this saves Republicans from, say, Montana, where people believe climate change is real and a problem. The party would insist they vote against the EPA actions. Their constituencies would say "We need a better Congresscritter." No responsibility, yet they can parade around touting how angry they are that they didn't get their say.

The more a controversial issue remains undecided, and the more critical that issue becomes, the less likely it is Congress will ever actually take action. And the more likely it is they will cede that issue to the Executive branch. Fine for a liberal like me when a semi-liberal like Obama is in charge, but what happens when another Dumbya hits the Oval Office? One a little more clever?

Congress will still feel this is expedient.

But it is unhealthy. It is unhealthy for an economy, it is unhealthy for a Constitution and it is deep unhealthy for a society and its people.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Made in the GOP

Republicans Seek Credit for a Debt Ceiling Solution

By Nicholas Wilbur

It's pretty clear at this point that the debt ceiling debacle isn't about spending cuts and tax increases and entitlement reform and balanced budget amendments.

It's about 2012.

That is the only logical explanation for the Republican Party's blanket opposition to every attempt by Democrats to solve this impasse over an otherwise routine debt limit increase. Republicans need something they can campaign on in 2012.

After three years of saying no to everything – health care reform, Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal, the Dream Act, a nuclear treaty with Russia, the Libya intervention, unemployment benefits, and most recently the debt ceiling increase itself – Republicans need a legislative victory they can show off to the voting public.

They fared well in the midterm election by campaigning against policies that were already on the books, but they've failed to achieve any of the repeals and nullifications they placed at the center of their 2010 campaign: "Obamacare" is still in place, the stimulus bill was not reversed, and the debt continues to grow.

They also failed to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood and NPR, to gut the regulatory oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency, and to turn Medicare into a voucher program. As for the far-right Tea Party conservatives out there who thought the 2010 election would mark a turning point for the morality of the United States, every day is another reminder that Republicans have also failed to make abortion illegal, to replace biology with Intelligent Design in our nation's schools, to abolish the IRS and the Department of Education, to return to the gold standard, and to protect our government against Sharia law with a constitutional amendment.

They cannot win another election simply by campaigning against everything, especially not when they've fallen short of achieving any of the goals they sought. Republicans need a legislative victory. This debt ceiling fight may be the last opportunity to campaign for something in 2012. (God knows they can't point to the 2011 budget negotiations and boast about how they slashed the deficit; according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the bill they agreed to eventually ended up costing $3.2 billion, not saving the $78 billion they claimed.)

And that is why Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor stormed out of negotiations last month. It's why Speaker John Boehner abandoned negotiations with President Obama last week. Every deal Democrats have offered, whether to slash government spending by $4 trillion or to cut entitlements, may have been a capitulation to Republican demands; it may have been snatched up without pause by any other Republican Party; but it was still offered by Democrats.

Democrats are the opponents, and accepting a deal crafted by the enemy is sacrilege in Washington, D.C., today – even if doing so provides a means to achieving the ends you campaigned on in the last election.

Republicans need to draft their own bill. They need to prove that they are capable of governing, of leading. They must be able to demonstrate to their constituents that the Grand Old Party represents more than obstruction. They need to pass a law that has a "MADE in the GOP" label on it.

And so they did. Or tried.

It was titled the "Cut, Cap and Balance" bill, and it did everything Republicans wanted. It cut spending, capped total outlays based on average GDP growth, and called for an amendment to the Constitution requiring balanced annual budgets. (See "The Balanced Budget Amendment that Wasn't")

Despite being heralded by Speaker John Boehner as a "bipartisan bill," CC&B passed along party lines in the House, receiving only five Democratic votes to 229 from Republicans. Not a single Democrat voted for it in the Senate.

In a speech following the president's national address on the debt ceiling crisis, Boehner claimed, "there's no stalemate here in Congress." It wasn't his only false claim.

  

"I want you to know," he said, "I made sincere effort to work with the president, to identify a path forward that would implement the principles of 'Cut, Cap and Balance' in a manner that could secure bipartisan support and be signed into law."

The bill "could" secure bipartisan support if it were a bipartisan bill, but it didn't because it isn't – and neither was the proposal Boehner came up with after Democrats rejected the CC&B bill in the Senate.

CBS News poll

In attempting to solve one problem, Republicans have created another. Like everything Republicans have proposed this year – repealing health care reform, eviscerating the EPA, defunding public radio – Boehner's proposal is slated for failure because it makes no concessions to Democrats.

What's more, not only will the new proposal fail to garner bipartisan support in the upper chamber, it is also failing to unite Republicans in the House.

Rep. Jim Jordan, standing alongside Boehner at a press conference, thanked the speaker "for fighting for Republican principles," but said "I cannot support the plan that was presented to House Republicans this afternoon."

Instead, Jordan is urging Republicans to stick with the CC&B proposal, even though it couldn't garner a simple majority in the Senate; even though it requires a supermajority to pass.

Republicans have found their footing with a bill that the majority of Republicans support, but they have isolated their opposition such that voting on their bill represents nothing more than a symbolic gesture aimed at creating the perception of party unity.

Boehner's speakership is on the line. The Republican Party's majority hold over the House may be in jeopardy, as well. A strong majority of the American people have shunned the GOP for holding up a deal to avert default. A strong majority supports tax increases. A strong majority supports compromise.

Any debt ceiling deal that cuts federal spending, reduces the national deficit, and averts disaster by preventing U.S. default will be seen by voters of both sides as a policy victory for the ages.

Republicans appear incapable of taking the steps that are necessary to allow them to claim even partial credit in that historic deal. They cannot accept anything they themselves didn't create, and they cannot make concessions that will allow Democrats to accept anything they did create.

Congress is no closer to a debt ceiling agreement today than it was six months ago, and the Republican Party's goal of having a legislative record on which they can base their 2012 campaign is still out of reach.

At this point, Plan B is likely a repeat of the 2010 "blame Obama" strategy.

Unfortunately for Republicans, public opinion polls consistently show a "blame Republicans" mentality.

According to the latest CBS News poll, 71 percent of the American public holds Republicans responsible for the impasse.

If the United States defaults, Democrats would be wise to take a page from the Republican Party's 2010 campaign playbook. A "repeal the GOP" platform could prove effective in 2102.

Then again, if Republicans let the nation default, Democrats might not have to campaign at all.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Little green apples

By Distributorcap

It took 30 years and 204 days, but on Tuesday, August 2, 2011 the fruits of the Reagan Tree of Life will finally have reached its peak when the over-ripened, low-hanging, worm-filled Reagapples will begin to pound the ground, not with sweetened blossoms, but with a dead thud. Thirty years and 204 days of belittling and ignoring the American education system, calling ketchup a vegetable, telling us trees cause pollution, cutting taxes to create trickled-down imaginary jobs (okay, there are a few more maids and gardeners), and teaching Americans that they could have everything they want and it will cost nothing -- the Teadras-educated Republican Party is willing to take the ultimate bet and tell the piper (or croupier) this time to shove it.

The U.S. Congress has spent the better part of the past month arguing over whether the credit limit on the Visa card should be raised in order to pay their bills -- bills they have committed and signed to pay. If this game of cold-war brinkmanship weren't so dangerous on so many levels, it would actually be comical to watch. Watching the children of the right storm out of a meeting (Eric Cantor, who probably has the distinction of having had the most spit balls thrown at him during 7th-grade lunch) and then say no, no, no as the opposition capitulates to nearly every one of their demands is nothing short of having Macbeth playing in a Kabuki theater.

The 80 or so Teabaggers who sandbagged their way into Congress last November promising to stop those eternal welfare queens from driving Cadillacs and finally ridding the country of the leeches who live off their hard-earned (over)taxed dollars, are about to allow the real grand experiment to go forward -- let the U.S. default on its payments for the first time in history, and default by choice. You know the world's strongest economy is going to look like it is managed even worse than Greece.

I used to think the only item on the Republican platform (aka Our American Mein Kampf) was the personal destruction of Barack Obama (or any Democratic president), but now I realize there is actually a second principle enshrined in the GOP's manifesto. Not only do the Teabaggers and their enablers want to see Obama fail, they also want to prove that the ripened fruit of the Reagan revolution ("something for nothing") is actually a sweet treat, that the U.S. defaulting on its bills will have absolutely no consequences.

After all, American exceptionalism is American exceptionalism. Chicken Little is really just Donkey Little, a completely made-up scenario just to allow those pesky liberals to abscond with more money from hedge-fund billionaires and private jet owners to pay for BMWs for those food-stamp queens and unemployed kings. Unlike Bill Clinton, Barack Obama has not given the goose-stepping lunatics in the GOP any stained dresses to use as evidence of a grand socialist conspiracy. Short of the 21st-century version of Fanne Foxe showing up in next few days, the Teabaggers will have to resort to their only other weapon, actually pushing the nuclear trigger. In other words, in order to save the country, they have to vaporize the country. Three hundred million Americans will just have to hope the dice on 8/2/11 are boxcars or snake eyes and not a craps. Good luck with that when one die is all threes and the other is all fours. 

Obama has made this so easy for the Republicans. He has caved so many times to the right on so many issues even the more "reasonable" Republicans (an oxymoron if there ever was one) realize they can play the blinking game knowing their odds of winning are about as good as Secretariat's was at the 1973 Belmont. His obvious weakness as a leader and his hesitancy to confront a group of people bent on his destruction has made the Republican work of making a mountain out of a molehill as easy as selling worthless credit default swaps to a bunch of insurance companies. Compromise requires compromise, not rolling over time after time. Obama has rolled over so many times John Boehner finally figured out that those 80 or so Teabaggers in Congress must really be onto something.

What the Teabaggers and their enablers (actually, they are all a bunch of Teabaggers) fail to realize is that if the sky does fall on August 2nd (and it will), it will be more than repossessed Cadillacs. While those teabagging Congressmen will barely suffer the loss of a nickel in salary, benefits, and pensions (and plenty of them have more than enough money to cushion the potential blow), I would think they have relatives who will suffer, and suffer badly, from a default. And what about the millions who actually voted for the Teabaggers thinking these really smart guys would save them from the leeches on society, only to see now that a government that cannot pay its bills means no Social Security checks mailed, no medicare payments, soaring interest rates on their variable mortgages, a collapsed housing market, more bridges and roads crumbling, weakened airport security, soldiers in Afghanistan watching their checks bounce, and finally a lot of very angry Europeans, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Brazilians, Australians, Saudis, and Swiss, people who help fund the elite of Wall Street?

And what about those private companies the Teabaggers just love so much? You know, the ones that actually employ thousands of teabagging voters, the ones that receive a big chunk of their revenue from government contracts? Do you think Boeing and Lockheed Martin are going to keep pay a lot of private employees sitting around the lunchroom while they wait for Tim Geithner to sign the checks? What about the diners, dry cleaners, auto mechanics, waiters, coffee trucks, baby sitters, and hundreds of thousands of other private businesses that exist because of companies employing thousands of workers based on government contracts? And those free parks the Teabaggers love to take their kids to on vacation -- gonna get awfully expensive at $50 a head to get into Yellowstone. This is the real trickle-down economy, people who really do earn a living because other people are getting a paycheck, no matter where that paycheck originates, not from so-called job creators who just take their tax breaks and buy more Prada or stash the money in the Cayman Islands.

So old people, government contractors, ancillary businesses, soldiers, medical professionals that help the elderly -- it is time for you to sacrifice in the name of proving the Teabag Gambit. The road to Teabag nirvana is filled with collateral damage. We may suffer, we may default, we may see rising interest rates, we may start opening Hoovervilles, but those fine Republicans in the House, the ones that were sent to ensure an orderly country -- well, they will just be right.

Maybe we can form a new union of people to pick up those little green Reagapples.

Boehner's flaccid proposition

By Carl 

Well, this is not kicking the can down the road, this is pushing the penny across the table: 

According to a GOP aide familiar with the emerging House bill, it would provide for an immediate $1 trillion increase in the government's $14.3 trillion debt limit in exchange for $1.2 trillion in cuts in federal spending.

The measure also envisions Congress approving a second round of spending cuts of $1.8 trillion or more in 2012, passage of which would trigger an additional $1.6 trillion in increased borrowing authority.

While the bill marked a retreat from legislation that conservatives muscled through the House last week, the two-step approach runs afoul of Obama's insistence that lawmakers solve the current crisis in a way that avoids a politically charged rerun next year in the middle of the 2012 election campaign. 

This is probably a premature enactment on the part of the GOP. Pushing this issue into the middle of next year's election cycle will create a far bigger headache for them than it does for Obama.

Boehner is mollycoddling his radical right wing with this proposal, and basically throwing his hands up and saying "Basta!" Placing this issue in the middle of the election cycle is going to lose him the House, and any chance at the Senate. I see the warped logic the GOP is using, so let me analyze it a little for you.

Of tangential import, this will be the first major issue in the post-Murdochian-meltdown of FOX News, so Boener loses his most effective propaganda tool.

The gamble Boehner is making is that in the next six months to one year, he can marshal public opinion in his favor. Right now, the nation seems pretty divided over who is to blame for the debt ceiling crisis, with the slight benefit of the doubt given to President Obama.

What I believe he is misreading, what Obama can rely heavily on, is that the nation is pretty unified over the idea that the problem demands a long-term solution and now. All those months of stroking to whip up a froth of "you can't spend more than you make" has left the wrong impression of the Republicans in this constituency. It's not about cutting spending deeply, it's about making more money for them. The American people understand that there will be sacrifices, but they remember the Great Depression and World War II when everyone sacrificed. We're all in agreement spending should be cut, and while we may disagree in detail, in the long, broad strokes we get it.

Cutting Grandma's blood pressure medicine won't do it. Cutting ExxonMobil's taxes sure as hell won't do it. The American people want a solution that they can examine, agree with, and then conveniently ignore, secure in the knowledge the problem is wll in hand, and not rising again in six months' time. We, like the markets, prefer certainty, not a "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" buyoff.

Which leads me to point number two that I think Boehner is misreading: Apart from Ryan's universally panned $6 trillion debt-cutting plan, President Obama's proposals are the only ones on the table (not even Reid's match his numbers) that will permanently cut the debt, mount revenues while shedding risky behavior like farm subsidies and plug other corporate loopholes.

If the GOP is successful in kicking the can down the road, Obama can simply run the tape of these past few weeks where he has been stiff in his resolve to seek a permanent solution to the problem. "See? I told you so!" would be a mantra that he could run on.

Meanwhile, in the intervening six months, the GOP has to winnow down the seven dwarves, err, twelve monkeys to a viable field in the primaries. If you think that the debt ceiling isn't going to be a major topic of conversation that the GOP will be arguing back and forth, up and down, in and out until the cows come home, thus softening the impact of any media campaign the GOP leadership might roll out, you'd have to be an idiot, Mr. Weaker Boehner.

We don't have much of an attention span, we Americans, but over and over again, we've shown the distinct ability to sniff out garbage, which is precisely what you offer.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

The politics of the debt ceiling crisis: Tea Party says no to Boehner, Republicans snatch defeat from the jaws of victory

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Things were looking good for Republicans. More or less. They might not have been able to turn the tables on Obama and the Democrats, which was the plan, but by continuing to hold the country (and, more specifically, the Democrats) hostage on the debt ceiling, they were testing the Democrats' resolve -- and it didn't look like they had much resolve left.

A two-step plan. That's what the Republicans were proposing -- not because it's a good idea but because it's pretty much the only way for them to keep the party from fragmenting, the only way to win the issue politically. Show a bit of seriousness, maybe win back public support, give both the GOP's financial establishment and the Tea Party something to like, hope Obama and the Democrats take the blame. Simple enough.

And, indeed, it was looking like Republicans were poised for a huge win:

John Boehner is proposing a deal with about $1 trillion in spending cuts and a short-term increase in the debt ceiling and a bipartisan congressional committee charged with developing a large deficit reduction package that would be immune to amendments and filibusters and would be the price of the next increase in the debt ceiling. Harry Reid is developing a package of spending cuts that Democrats could accept and would reach Boehner's $2.4 trillion mark.

If you take the Republicans' goals as avoiding a deal in which they have to vote for tax increases and denying Obama a political victory, it looks like they have succeeded. That success has come with costs -- they've done themselves political damage, are risking a crisis that could do the economy tremendous harm, and have left the Bush tax cuts unresolved, which means they might end up watching taxes rise much higher than if they'd taken Obama's offer -- but it's still been a success. 

Basically, Boehner would get a short-term debt increase, appeasing the GOP's corporate-finance base, as well as spending cuts not offset by any revenue increases. Obama would have gotten his increase, but not a political win. And the issue, and the crisis, would have been largely put on hold until 2012, with Republicans dishonestly hammering Obama for supposedly not being serious enough about making a deal. Yes, the costs could turn out to be enormous for the Republicans, but they probably hope they could win the spin.

But no.

Aside from the fact that Boehner is almost certainly wrong about this -- the public is against the GOP on the debt ceiling and Obama has proven successful at using the bully pulpit to shift public opinon -- opposition to his plan has come not so much from the Democrats, who oppose a short-term increase but who might have given in, but from his own party:

The chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee wasted little time announcing his opposition to the House GOP leadership's two-step plan to raise the debt ceiling.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who stood — visibly uncomfortable — next to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) during Monday's announcement of the plan, released a statement saying he would vote "no" on the measure.

As well as from the Tea Party:

A coalition of Tea Party chapters and conservative lawmakers on Monday rejected the debt proposal put forward by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), despite his efforts to sweeten the deal with provisions favored by his conservative base.

The Cut, Cap, Balance Coalition, which boasts hundreds of Tea Party groups and more than 100 GOP lawmakers in its membership, is citing two provisions in Boehner's proposal that amount to deal-breakers: its call for creating a Congressional Commission and its inclusion of a balanced budget amendment that, according to the group, is only for show.

Yes, even when faced with an historic victory, Republicans don't think it's quite good enough, demanding more and more and refusing to give up their ideological absolutism for anything smelling of compromise -- even a pro-GOP compromise with an almost full-scale Democratic sellout.

So why is anyone even listening to Boehner anymore? He clearly doesn't control his caucus and can't even come up with a viable plan. Maybe that's not his fault. He's dealing with extremists, after all, and with them refusing to budge, there isn't really much he can do. Forget the policy, he can't even win the politics, which means the Republicans won't win the spin.

On the other side, Harry Reid actually does have a plan, one Obama seems to like. It's hardly an ideal plan from a progressive perspective, a $2.7 trillion debt ceiling increase with $2.7 million in spending cuts (mostly from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), but it's got some potential:

[W]hile Reid's plan doesn't raise taxes, it also doesn't take tax increases off the table. Currently, the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire in 2012. If Reid's all-cuts plan passes, that still leaves the door open to significant revenue increases. Now that doesn't mean this is brilliant 11-dimensional chess. The Reid Plan is consistent with substantial revenues coming online in 2012, but that will only happen if President Obama and Senate Democrats stand firm and play hardball on the tax issue. Back in December 2010, they utterly failed to do so. 

True, it's hard to have much confidence in Obama and the Democrats. But this could be a way for them to "win" the issue politically, as it shows once more that they're serious about getting something done, even if nothing actually gets done, while the Republicans continue to splinter and look desperate and pethetic, and ever more extremist.

But... enough.

We're spending so much time on the politics of the debt ceiling crisis. What about actually raising it? Is that going to happen? If so, how?

Economic catastrophe is at hand. Isn't preventing that from happening a more pressing priority than scoring the most political points?

Maybe Jonathan Chait is right and Obama, in his speech last night, was "positioning himself for failure." And maybe there's just no avoiding it now.

If so, if there is failure, then it is American democracy that has failed. And if it has, it is the Republicans who are to blame, for they have embraced right-wing radicalism, descended into madness, and pulled the country into the abyss.

I used to think America was better than that. I was wrong. And now, I am at a loss. What is there left to do?

(photo)

The politics of the debt ceiling crisis: Republicans seeking to shift blame onto Democrats, but Obama needs to stand firm

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I wrote yesterday that Republicans, completely unserious about trying to do anything substantive about either the debt problem or the more immediate debt ceiling crisis, were looking for a way to turn the tables on Obama and the Democrats -- this after the president had successfully turned the tables on them, backing them into a corner, not least because he had public opinion on his side and because the Republicans are deeply divided over what to do (basically, financial establishment vs. Tea Party).

This is what's driving the GOP -- the politics -- and it's pretty much the only way GOP leaders on Capitol Hill can keep the party together (and not lose independents). Facing pressure from both sides, Boehner et al. have to find some way to have the Democrats take the blame for the country defaulting (and for the failure to deal with the deficit in any meaningful way).

Well, guess what?

As right-wing hack Jennifer Rubin wrote at WaPo, quoting Boehner's statement to House Republicans yesterday:

That suggests to me that the House Republicans will pass a bill, send it to the Senate and let the Democrats decide if they want to send the country into default.

What exactly did Boehner say?

You know, last week we passed the Cut, Cap & Balance Act and showed America our solution, our vision, as we did months ago with our budget. So we've done our job. And I think the nation knows it. But as you all know, the Senate tabled the Cut, Cap & Balance Act. And I think the nation knows that, too. So the question becomes — if it's not the Cut, Cap & Balance Act itself — what CAN we pass that will protect our country from what the president is trying to orchestrate?

The White House has never gotten serious about tackling the serious issues our nation faces — not without tax hikes — and I don't think they ever will. The path forward, I believe, is that we pull together as a team behind a new measure that has a shot at getting to the president's desk. It's won't be Cut, Cap & Balance as we passed it, but it should be a package that reflects the principles of Cut, Cap & Balance. We're committed to working with you — and with our Republican colleagues in the Senate — to get it done. No one is willing to default on the full faith and credit of the United States.

And I think the leaders in both parties and both houses of Congress already agree that we need significant reductions. But if we stick together, I think we can win this for the American people... because I do think there is a path. But it's gonna require us to stand together as a team. It's gonna require some of you to make some sacrifices. If we stand together as a team, our leverage is maximized, and they have to deal with us. If we're divided, our leverage gets minimized.

Rubin's a fool, but she's a connected one, and she's someone insiders leak to. What's interesting here, though, is that she's revealing, in its utter nakedness, the cynical game her beloved Republicans are playing.

On the merits, Boehner's case is completely dishonest. Obama has been extremely serious about working on a bipartisan deal, even going so far as to put cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid on the table, all while positioning himself essentially as a moderate Republican alienating the Democrats' progressive base. He has actually proposed massive spending cuts with only minimal revenue offsets. Significant tax hikes aren't on the table, just letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire and closing some loopholes.

This is why Paul Krugman can write a compelling post entitled "President Pushover." Obama is a pushover, in the eyes of many on the left (including me), because he has signalled time and time again that he is prepared to give Republicans most of what they want, that he is willing to cave to their demands. Maybe not all of them -- no, he supposedly remains committed to some progressive principles -- but enough to suggest that any deal would be heavily Republican-oriented. In saner times, Republicans would have jumped at what Obama was offering them. Now, dogmatic right-wing extremism having taken hold of the party, they can't even see what's right in front of them. Or if they can see it, they're just too crazy to accept it.

What's more, CCB was DOA, a reflection of that dogmatic right-wing extremism that would have required the Democrats to give up everything they believe in. It was never going to go anywhere, it wasn't an effort at compromise, and it's ridiculous of Boehner to hold it up as a viable plan. (It makes you wonder if he was ever serious about working out a deal with Obama. Or was that all for show as well? Or is he just flailing about without much rhyme or reason other than self-preservation? Cantor, after all, is similarly flipping and flopping.)

Just as it's ridiculous of him to say that "the nation" is on the Republicans' side. Wishful thinking, but it's not.

But you can see clearly what's going on here, what they're going to do and how they'll spin what they've done. Indeed, the talking points pretty much write themselves: "We tried to work with Obama and the Democrats to get something done for the American people, but all they wanted was tax increases. They rejected our sincere and reasonable efforts. It's not our fault the country will default. Blame them!"

BULL. SHIT.

As they have been throughout this process, with genuine crisis upon us, the Republicans are being completely dishonest. And their only hope -- and they know it, which is why there's desperation behind the machismo -- is to bet on the utter ignorance of the American people and the media's willingness to give them a free pass by taking their bullshit at face value and reporting it without a trace of serious analysis.

Do they think they can succeed? Sure, why not? They often succeed mainly because of public ignorance and the media usually act as their uncritical enablers, as a huge megaphone through which they can communicate their dishonesty.

Will Obama and the Democrats let this happen? Will they stand firm and refuse to let the Republicans define the narrative? Who knows? They've let it happen so many times before, on issue after issue.

What I do know, as I also wrote yesterday, is that they'd be crazy not to take advantage of their current position, with public opinion on their side and with Obama commanding the bully pulpit, and keep up the pressure on the Republicans.

Simply put, Boehner can't be allowed to get his way. Not with America desperately needing the Democrats to win both the policy and the politics of the debt ceiling crisis.

Obama's bully pulpit forces Boehner to bail on debt talks

By Nicholas Wilbur

Here's a theory:

House Speaker John Boehner recognized what President Obama has been doing with the debt ceiling negotiations, and in recognizing this he was forced to recall what happened with the April budget negotiations, and in doing that he realized he's about to lose another "historic" battle over "historic" spending cuts if he doesn't do something.

Obama is utilizing the bully pulpit like never before, and it's working.

[C]onsider the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, which found that a plurality of Americans — for the first time — actually wants Congress to increase the debt ceiling. Also note the speed with which this turned around: in April, a tiny 16% minority was on board with doing the right thing. Three months later, that total has more than doubled and is now a plurality. (Steve Benen, Washington Monthly)

What's the solution? For Boehner, it's eliminating Obama from the debt ceiling equation by walking out of the negotiations and lobbying Congress to pass a plan of its own – with the hope that his caucus will be more willing to accept a deal if the evil hand of the Great Socialist isn't involved in the molding process.

I may be wrong.

I don't think I am.

In politics, perception is the name of the game, and Boehner hasn't scored a point for his team since November 2.

(photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

News of the Week

By Distributorcap

While the dog days of summer doldrums may be arriving early on the east coast in the form of a record 104 degree temperature in New York's Central Park, the rest of the world continues to plunge into insanity at its own record pace.

Insane congresswoman (and someone who has passed NO legislation and has NEVER governed anything) continues her 2012 presidential campaign in the Corn Belt.

Amy Winehouse: RIP.

Boner and Obama, the last of the foot stomping whiners, continue to soak up local color by battling for control of the whine vat.

Governor Rick Perry consults with his mentor about a potential run for the 2012 Republican nomination.

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch proved one too many people has skied over this mogul when he testified in front of the British Parliament and basically told the world "he knew nothing."

Marcus Bachmann and one of his most famous ex-gays figure they could make a few extra bucks pitching for Abercrombie & Fitch.

Even in jaded NYC, the street vendors realized that they should beware of Greeks bearing coffee cups.

The politics of the debt ceiling crisis: How it's still Obama's issue to lose

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The debt ceiling crisis has become more about politics than policy. Actually, it's become a game of chicken -- all thanks to the Republicans. The only question is, which side will swerve out of the way first.

Well, sort of.

President Obama and the Democrats have proven again and again that they're serious about averting imminent economic catastrophe by reaching across the aisle in search of compromise. To that end, they've been willing to give up a lot. The same has obviously not been true of Republicans.

Indeed, while Republicans refuse to budge on taxes, on sufficient revenue increases to make getting America's fiscal house in order possible, the president -- the adult in the room -- has indicated that he's willing to agree to massive spending cuts, including to Social Security and Medicare, much to the frustration (to put it mildly) of progressives and much of the Democratic base.

On the policy, in my view, Obama has been less than admirable. On the politics, though, he has been typically awesome, successfully turning the tables on the Republicans and backing them into a corner. Polls show that the American people blame the Republicans far more than they do the president for the debt ceiling fiasco, and I suspect Obama has been willing to give up so much largely because he has realized all along that he'd never actually be able to get a deal done. In this sense, he has successfully positioned himself as the sort of centrist, the sort of serious deficit-fighter, independents, not to mention the Beltway media, like (and want to vote for). Meanwhile, the Republicans look like a gang of extremists wielding unreasonable demands and petulantly threatening to pull the country into the abyss if they don't get their unreasonable way.

This is all happening quickly, but what's clear is that the Republicans have gotten desperate, hurling smears at Obama that bear no resemblance to reality whatsoever. He a tax-happy socialist, they scream. Well, no, he's willing to agree to a deal that would slash trillions in spending with only minimal revenue increases. He's not at all serious about cutting spending, they shriek. Wrong again. Look at what he's been proposing. The facts are clear.

Ultimately, Obama will find some way to increase the debt ceiling. He has to. And the Republicans know it, not least because their corporate, Wall Street backers are demanding that it be done, just as it's always been done. But that doesn't mean they won't try to win the issue politically, and that's what's going on now. They're trying to turn the tables back on Obama, trying to back him into a corner, trying to make him take the fall if a deal doesn't get done.

Speaker Boehner is now saying he wants a deal done by today. Okay, but where's he been all along? Clearly, this is posturing. And it would appear that what he wants is a two-stage deal:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is set to call the Democratic Party's bluff on the debt ceiling. The Ohio Republican, in a briefing with his conference on Saturday, announced that he would press for a short-term deal, with major spending cuts paired with longer-term deficit-reduction strategies, as a way around the current impasse.

That strategy puts the speaker directly at odds with the White House and allied Democrats, who have insisted for weeks that they would not support a short-term extension of the debt ceiling. The president went so far as to dare House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to test his opposition to a temporary deal during a tense meeting more than a week ago.

Whether that rigidity will fade as the Aug. 2 deadline to raise the debt ceiling nears is a big gamble on Boehner's part. 

This after talks collapsed yesterday.

Now, it's possible that, faced with that deadline (and with the possibility of economic catastrophe), Obama and the Democrats will cave. But thus far they've been firm in their staunch opposition to a short-term deal. As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid clarified yesterday:

I want to reaffirm my statement from last night. I will not support any short-term agreement, and neither will President Obama nor Leader Pelosi. We seek an extension of the debt ceiling through at least the end of 2012. We will not send a message of uncertainty to the world.

The Republicans are obviously hoping they can pin the blame on Obama and the Democrats for the collective failure to get something done. Whether or not they sign on to Boehner's plan, Republicans can and will accuse them of being the real obstacles to a more substantive deal. In other words, they hope they can win the spin. It may be entirely dishonest, but you know they'll do it. Because it's pretty much all they've got left.

In my view, Obama and the Democrats need to stand firm. If Boehner is calling Obama's bluff, then Obama needs to call Boehner's. The president has public opinion on his side and can go with the constitutional option to raise the debt ceiling. And, of course, he has the bully pulpit, not to mention his own phenomenal political skills, and can make his case far better than the Republicans can theirs. (And, what's more, Republicans are still deeply divided on the issue, with the Tea Party right opposed to compromise and the establishment, with the party's financial backers behind it, understanding that a debt ceiling increase is absolutely necessary. The president should exploit this division as much as possible.)

In other words, don't let the Republicans define the issue and get their way. It's as simple as that. I'm not sure I have all that much confidence that Obama and the Democrats will actually stand their ground, but they'd be crazy not to take advantage of their current position and keep up the pressure on the Republicans. The issue, politically speaking, is theirs to lose.

Kabuki kablooie

By Mustang Bobby

The debt talks got to the tantrum stage yesterday when House Speaker John Boehner took his balls and went back to the House, presumably to give them back to Eric Cantor:

Facing the specter of the government's first default, President Obama summoned congressional leaders to the White House for an emergency meeting Saturday morning, and Senate leaders rushed to revive a fallback strategy for raising the debt limit before the Aug. 2 deadline.

"We have now run out of time," a visibly angry Obama said during an impromptu White House news conference held after Boehner (R-Ohio) called to say he was walking out on the talks for the second time in two weeks — again citing differences over taxes. Now, Obama said, "one of the questions that the Republican Party is going to have to ask itself is: Can they say yes to anything?"

This whole thing is playing out the way these crisis situations always do; lurid bits of gossip being floated by reporters on the White House lawn and trying to come up with some reason to justify staying on the air and preempting a rebroadcast of a 2003 episode of Lockdown.

It's theater, as predictable as a traditional Japanese kabuki. We know how it will end. (Ezra Klein lays out the three scenarios.) The stock characters all know their roles and their actions, the audience knows exactly what they're going to see, the outcome is preordained. And still we watch because we wait to see if there's any enlightenment for us by observing the characters in their roles.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Craziest Republican of the Day: Todd Rokita

By Michael J.W. Stickings

To put it nicely, Republicans -- wallowing in ignorance and delusion to the point they're prepared to destroy America -- have their heads so far up their asses on the debt ceiling they're spewing nothing but excrement every time they open their mouths.

Is that clear enough?

For some, it's not so much ignorance or delusion as it is pure politics. Sen. Mitch McConnell, for example, knows full well what's going on, but he's torn, as the party itself is, between the corporate financiers in the establishment and the anti-government Teabaggers on the far right. While trying to score political points, he and Speaker John Boehner are at least also trying to work out a deal with President Obama.

But, on Capitol Hill, they appear to be in the minority. Not only do McConnell and Boehner face the wrath of the Tea Party, which promises to launch primary challenges against any Republican who dares violate its orthodoxy, they also face the opposition of their own caucuses, particularly in the House, where Boehner himself has effectively been pushed to the side and where his main rival, Eric Cantor, has already made a move, if as yet informal and unofficial, to unseat him.

And, make no mistake, the extremists in the House, extremists who are really now the Republican mainstream, are crazy. For example:

Despite numerous warnings from three major credit agencies, economists, businesses, members of their own party, and general common sense, the Republican "Hell No" caucus remains ever vigilant in ignoring the economic disaster that will follow a failure to raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2. While some Republicans have offered simply ludicrous reasons to paint the deadline as arbitrary, an increasing number are pushing the notion that there's no danger at all in defaulting on our debt.

[Yesterday] on ABC’s Top Line, Rep. Todd Rokita (R-IN) went one step further and threw away the word "default" altogether. While he views Aug. 2 as an "important date," he refuses to "take the premise that we're going to default on our obligations." Believing "default" isn't even the right word to use to describe the economic consequences, Rokita slammed those who would avoid default as "piggish" and "un-American" for worrying about "my own little program or my own little economy." Rokita then declared defiantly that he's willing to vote down a debt ceiling raise even if it means "the economy might get worse."

Fuck the economy, in other words, not to mention the millions upon millions of Americans who would suffer should the country go into default. This is pretty standard fare among Republicans, but the degree of abject ignorance on the economy, on what the debt ceiling issue is all about, on what would happen were America to go into default, is nonetheless astonishing -- even when you expect nothing else from them, even when you know these are your views, it's hard to believe that the people's representatives can be this stupid, this careless, this irresponsible.

Well, okay, no. Maybe it's not so hard to believe, not if you've spent any time thinking about the Republican Party, even just observing it from afar. And maybe that's part of the problem. We don't actually want to believe that the country is in the hands of stupid, careless, irresponsible, and downright fucking crazy blowhards who seem to have little to no regard for reality and who spew shit whenever they open their mouths. And so we pretend, or a lot of us do (not me, mind you), that it isn't that bad, that surely they know what they're talking about, that they're all in it for the common good, that it'll all somehow work out -- now pass the deep-fried pork fat, the extra-meat pizza, and the gargantuan Coke, and let us get back to watching American Idol.

Well, that's what you get when you elect a Republican, and it's only so much worse when you hand them the keys, say, to the House, where with a majority they can spew so much shit as to threaten to sink the whole country.

Which, apparently, they're more than happy to do. Even if they don't have a fucking clue.

Obama 2012: Just do it!

By Nicholas Wilbur

Watching President Obama's press conference, you got the feeling he wouldn't care if Congress put a bill on his desk ordering the immediate demolition of Capitol Hill, so long as it included a measure to increase the debt ceiling.

"Let's step up," he told a packed house of reporters. "Let's do it. I'm prepared to do it... Let's consider it... Let's go... Let's act now... Let's get this problem off the table... Let's deal with it... Now is the time for us to go ahead and take it on... Do it now... I'm ready to do it."

If nothing else, he's got a new slogan for his 2012 re-election campaign, assuming Phil Knight doesn't mind the trademark infringement.

As further evidence of the complete incompetence of the United States Congress, the president has once again been called in to play the moderator in a partisan battle over a routine budgetary matter that in the last 40 years hasn't been any more controversial than a declaration to rename the Inverness, Calif., post office.

Congress didn't balk when it voted to triple the national debt with 18 increases to the debt ceiling during Ronald Reagan's two terms. No Republican majority leaders stormed out of the room before Congress voted a half-dozen times to increase the debt ceiling during George H.W. Bush's one-term presidency. There were never any threats of defaulting on the nation's credit card when Congress voted seven more times to raise the debt ceiling and nearly double national debt during Junior's two terms in the White House.

But Obama isn't a Republican president, and Republicans today have no other choice in the matter. If you sow beets, you will not reap olives.

They thumped Democrats in the midterm elections by campaigning against big government, against government spending, and against the national debt. To break that promise would be to sever the support from one of the most vocal and active factions in politics today, the Tea Party. Reneging on their vows would carry the consequence of early retirement, as Tea Party organizations across the country have threatened to oust "Republicans in Name Only" (RINOs) in 2012 primaries if they fail to seriously tackle the debt. It would also carry the risk of making Republican members of Congress look like H.W. Bush after he uttered the now infamous campaign promise, "Read my lips: No new taxes."

On top of that, Republicans know that a poor economy (made worse by their efforts to enact massive federal spending cuts) is their only hope for a repeat performance in 2012.

Barack Obama Swoosh

What GOP leaders fail to realize is that their stall tactics and obstructionist strategies only make the president stronger. They've fought "big government" by demanding massive spending cuts as part of a deal to increase the debt ceiling, but they've vehemently opposed every option put on the table. Their House majority leader, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), walked out on negotiations because Democrats wouldn't agree to 100 percent of his demands. And then they had to call in the president to help heal the wounds and iron out a deal.

Just like in April when Obama took over the 2011 budget negotiations, he's re-framing the debate, and it doesn't look good for Republicans.

He agreed to $2 trillion in spending cuts. Republicans said no. He then offered more than $3 trillion in spending cuts. Republicans again said no. As the icing on the cake, he proposed significant reforms to Social Security and Medicare, the Democratic Party's sacred cows, and the GOP still said no.

He's taken to the podium twice in as many weeks to lay out the general scope of the negotiations, to ask for some modicum of urgency and fairness in the talks, and to send the message to the American public, to the electorate, that he's willing to go to any length to avoid an economically catastrophic default. The only caveat: reciprocity.

"I'm prepared to take on significant heat from my party to get something done," Obama said, "and I expect the other side should be willing to do the same thing – if they mean what they say, that this is important."

"Now is the time to do it,” he said in a warning to Congress about the added pressure of continuing this debate any further into the 2012 campaign season. "It's not going to get easier. It's going to get harder. So we might as well do it now – pull off the Band-Aid; eat our peas."

Despite ample evidence to the contrary, Obama is showing the American people that there actually is an adult in this fight, and that that adult doesn't care about the political differences. He wants results.

"[I]f each side takes a maximalist position, if each side wants 100 percent of what its ideological predispositions are," he said, "then we can't get anything done."

He's direct and pragmatic where other politicians are demagogic. He's confident about the potential for compromise where other politicians are frantically, stubbornly obstinate. And he's reassuring where other politicians are apocalyptic.

The more time he gets in front of a room full of reporters and cameras, the more he gets to demonstrate to the American public that sanity has a seat at the head of the table in the daily operations of an otherwise insanely politicized federal government.

"[I]s the package that we're talking about exactly what I would want? No. I might want more revenues and fewer cuts to programs that benefit middle-class families that are trying to send their kids to college, or benefit all of us because we're investing more in medical research," he said. "I make no claims that somehow the position that Speaker [John] Boehner and I discussed reflects 100 percent of what I want. But that's the point. My point is, is that I'm willing to move in their direction in order to get something done. And that's what compromise entails. We have a system of government in which everybody has got to give a little bit."

It's the reason political analyst Mark Halperin described the president not as an "ignoramus" or an "economic bonehead," but as a "dick" following his last debt ceiling press conference.

Obama wasn't wrong. He wasn't misinformed about the necessity of increasing the debt limit. Rather, Halperin knew no other way to vent the frustration of seeing a Democratic president take the upper hand in a debate that Republicans not only started but started with the self-assurance that its outcome would wreak havoc on Obama's approval rating and credibility. 

 

Understandably, it must be quite embarrassing to pick a fight only to bow out every time the opponent steps into the ring. 

It was Republicans, remember, who spent a year campaigning against excessive government spending.

It was Republicans who demanded "historic" federal budget cuts.

And it's Republicans who are holding the debt ceiling hostage in order to secure even more "historic" cuts.

The debt wasn't only contributing to the economic "uncertainty" that Republicans claimed was hampering job growth. It was also going to destroy the American Dream for all future generations.

Then the president said, "Okay, let's do it... I'm prepared to do it... Let's go," and the GOP panicked.

The big-government loving socialist suddenly endorsed one of the most un-socialist, small-government policy positions ever.

Obama 2012: Just Do It! 

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)