Book of the Month

Deficit Rorschach Test: the Presidents, the Editors, and the Truth

by AmericanDreamer 9/11/2012 - 10:57 am

Richard Eskow, Campaign for America's Future blogsite, yesterday.

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With a few selected phrases, President Obama and former President Clinton appeared to endorse this tiny faction's recovery-crushing austerity approach last week in Charlotte. But the rest of their speeches, along with others given at the convention, were a strong rejection of the privately-authored set of policy proposals known as "Simpson-Bowles."

That's good, since Simpson-Bowles so closely resembles the Republican Party Platform that the Democrats could wind up running against themselves.

Voters should embrace the Democrats' stirring anti-austerity rhetoric. They should also encourage Democratic leaders to embrace their own rhetoric, to stop 'triangulating' themselves into invisibility and speak plainly and directly to the American people:

In other words, Democrats should say they oppose any cuts to Medicare or Social Security benefits. They should say they'll use government resources to create and protect the jobs we need - for teachers, firefighters and police officers, among others. And that the face facts and address the real cause of the government's long-term budget deficit.

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This small circle is pushing a clear, simple program: Even lower tax rates for corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Benefit cuts to Social Security, along with changes to Medicare that (especially in today's political climate) would cause its slow deterioration and eventual collapse. Limits on how much money the government can spend, irrespective of the need at any given time.

If you think that looks a lot like Paul Ryan's budget, which is now the GOP's official budget, or like the Republican platform, you're right. Even the GOP's lower tax rates for millionaires and billionaires are in the Simpson-Bowles proposal.

Is that what President Obama was endorsing when he said these words? "I’m still eager to reach an agreement based on the principles of my bipartisan debt commission." (That commission actually deadlocked and failed to issue any conclusions; he is referring to a document which was privately prepared by Simpson and Bowles, its two co-chairs.)

Or what Bill Clinton was endorsing when he spoke of "the kind of balanced approach proposed by the Simpson-Bowles Commission, a bipartisan commission (sic)"?

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The Simpson-Bowles tax plan is very similar to the one Bill Clinton was mocking last week when he talked about those unspecified "I'll tell you after the election" loopholes President Obama made fun of this policy too: “Have a surplus? Try a tax cut. Deficit too high? Try another."

Joe Biden said "President Obama knows that creating jobs in America, keeping jobs in America, bringing jobs back to America is what the president's job is all about." And that was after his moving tribute to his wife's work as a teacher - which is, after all, a government-funded job.

And just two weeks ago Joe Biden told some older voters in a Virginia diner that he could "flat guarantee" there would be no changes to Social Security if he and the President were re-elected.

So why did the President, former President Clinton, and Vice President Joe Biden all name-check Simpson-Bowles last week?

The Inkblot

You'll have to ask them. But maybe the plan has become a kind of political Rorschach test, a shapeless inkblot meant to conjure up "reasonableness."

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Read the full article at http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2012093710/deficit-rorschach-test-presidents-editors-and-truth

My take is that this is a typical example of calculated gamesmanship where politicians knowing they need votes from different blocs of voters try to make it sound as though they are being responsive to each of them.

It's not any different from 2008 in that respect, when the central tension/contradiction was between his process commitments (change the tone in Washington, restore bipartisanship) and his substantive policy and issue commitments.*

One perspective is that this is what electoral politics is and requires; that Obama doesn't know what the Congressional makeup is going to be come January; and that he is trying, with the favorable S-B reference, not only to check the deficit reduction box to try to enhance his chances for re-election, but to leave himself room to maneuver in what promises to be an extremely interesting lame duck Congress coming up after the election.  The 2-year Bush tax cut extension expires in December and big, must-pass Congressional appropriations bills remain unpassed so far this year as Congress opted to punt until after the elections. 

The need for post-election vigilance from those worried about the potential for a horrible budget agreement shortly thereafter is a given.  

*Examples:

"any [health care reform] plan I sign must include an insurance exchange...including a public option." (a Weekly Address made July 18, 2009--granted, after the election, at:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Weekly-Address-President-Obama-Says-Health-Care-Reform-Cannot-Wait)

pledge "to fight for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act."

http://change.gov/agenda/economy_agenda/

"as president, I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming--an 80 percent reduction by 2050."

http://grist.org/article/obamas-speech/ (elsewhere as well if that doesn't work for you)

pledge to "put in place the common-sense regulations and rules of the road I've been calling for since March--rules that will keep our markets free, fair and honest; rules that will restore accountability and responsibility in our corporate boardrooms."

https://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stateupdates/gGg2xq

My point with these examples is not to blame Obama, alone, for the fact that not all of this has so far come to pass.  It is, rather, to document that Obama supporters who thought they heard substantive policy commitments were not, as some assert, engaging in delusional thinking, projecting their own lefty or progressive fantasies onto a candidate who did not state such things.

by AmericanDreamer 9/12/2012 - 11:03 am

On the budget talks, nothing going on at this point, say Politico's Jake Sherman and Jonathan Allen yesterday: 

President Barack Obama wants to fix the debt problem and stop the nation from falling off a fiscal cliff. So does Mitt Romney. And John Boehner. And Paul Ryan. And Joe Biden, too.

They all said as much at the Republican and Democratic national conventions and accused their opponents of lacking the guts to pick a plan and make it stick.

So it would make sense that while they were talking, their aides and allies were meeting behind the scenes to steer away from that fast-approaching cliff, right?

Wrong.

The truth is that none of the top leaders or their aides are in serious negotiations. This leaves the key players simply pointing fingers and praying that voters clarify Washington’s power structure in November in a way that favors Republican entitlement cuts or Democratic tax hikes. The winners at the ballot box will get to set the terms, the thinking goes. Until then, don’t give an inch.

The only lawmakers negotiating right now belong to the Senate’s Gang of Eight, a salon of solvency hawks with little sway so far. They meet this week at 5 p.m. Tuesday. But their group has been huddling for months with little to show for it, and the real players — Obama, House Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) — aren’t engaged, and neither are the staffers who do the heavy lifting on legislative deals.

Fiscal cliff: all talk, no deal-making, at http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=61BD5871-859A-4072-95D4-5778B6382EDD

by AmericanDreamer 9/11/2012 - 1:40 pm

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