Negotiating With Yourself

Isn't that rule #1 of things NOT to do in contentious/difficult negotiations? And Social Security is now on the table as well, despite the fact that neither of these programs contribute to the near term deficit problem. As Ezra Klein has said numerous times, the near term problem is Congress. We would be better off if they literally did nothing.

I'll save my angry liberal meltdown for until a deal is actually struck, but I will say this: Obama is making an enormous mistake and miscalculation if he thinks his base is going to swallow another "Aw Shucks guys, I did the best that I could" ala the extension of the Bush tax cuts in 2010. 

The Road Ahead

John Cole previews 2012:

This is just proof to me that I need to help raise more money, volunteer more time, and walk more precincts in 2012. It isn’t disheartening or demoralizing, it’s motivating.

And btw, we’ve talked about the Ryan plan to gut medicare and medicaid and give the proceeds to the rich while feeding the warpig, and it is important to recognize this is not some one-off. This is what they want. They are also coming for your pension, they are after your social security, they want to destroy your union so you can not organize against them, they will go after your minimum wage next, they want to get rid of the EPA so their donors can pollute your water, air, land, and food and not have to worry about being punished, they want to deregulate Wall Street more so they can screw you again and not face any consequences, they want to tell you what you can do with your body, and they are spending lots of time and money making it harder and harder for you to vote. The Ryan plan isn’t an isolated incident, it was just shots fired on another front. If you are disheartened by the budget deal the other night, which is one small skirmish in a big war, you probably should just give up and go buy yourself a ton of lube.

Agreed, but it would also be nice if our team in Congress actually, you know, fought for some form of a competing, rational economic vision a bit more ambitious than acting as an idle back stop to the severity of the Republican plan.

The Apex of Conservative Budgetary Batshit

Congressional Republicans have proposed their collective legislative wet dream of long-term fiscal policy:

A Republican plan for the 2012 budget would cut more than $4 trillion over the next decade, more than even the president's debt commission proposed, with spending caps as well as changes in the Medicare and Medicaid health programs, its principal author said Sunday.

[...]

Ryan said Obama's call for freezing nondefense discretionary spending actually locks in spending at high levels. Under the forthcoming GOP plan, Ryan said spending would return to 2008 levels and thus cut an additional $400 billion over 10 years.

Here are the highlights from their plan:

A "premium support system" for Medicare. In the future, older people would choose plans in the marketplace and the government would subsidize those plans. Ryan said that would differ from the voucher system he has proposed in the past. Those 55 and older would remain under the present Medicare system.

Translation: A market solution that will allow the Invisible Hand to magically dictate enormously higher prices just as the government announces it will be shifting costs to the consumer and moving away from the current Medicare system of direct payments from the Treasury.

A statutory cap on actual discretionary spending as a percentage of the economy. While Ryan did not specify the amount during the interview, he said it would be at a lower level than proposed by Obama and would return the government to its "historic size."

Otherwise known as a statutory imposition of the conservative ideology that will make the federal government fiscally ungovernable and unable to respond to economic cycles. This is very similar to Republican-imposed two-thirds vote requirements for raising taxes in state legislatures, which has had disastrous consequences for the state of California. As the economy shrinks, government spending would be lawfully required to shrink accordingly, which is antithetical to classical economic theory of managing a contracting economy.

Pro-growth tax changes, including lower tax rates and broadening the tax base. Ryan said overhauling taxes would boost the economy. The plan will not propose tax increases.

Or for those of us that didn't live under power lines or grow up eating paint chips as a kid, that's massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy which magically raises more revenue by virtue of ensuring that those with the most money pay the very least.

Ryan didn't mention how the budget plan would address Social Security.

Their plan is so regressive and controversial that they're not ready to comment just yet.

Republicans are very serious about the budget and the deficit - so serious that they have exempted cuts to defense spending, raising revenues, and wants to ensure that the government is bound by their ideology and thus limit its options for dealing with future crises. This is all very obvious and dull, but it should be concerning given the shit show that the budget negotiations have been up until this point. The Republicans demand that we cut $60 billion, the Democrats counter that maybe they could live with $55 billion. Ok, fine, you're right: $58 billion. What? No? Okay god...you drive a hard bargain: $65 billion. 

The Republicans have moved the goalposts so far to the right in this instance that it's just somewhat terrifying to me to see what the Democratic "counteroffer" will be.

The Democratic Embrace of So-Called Fiscal Conservatism

Digby:

What this adds up to is that last December, with a Democratic House and Senate our president agreed to extend massive tax cuts for the richest Americans and then in March, with only a Democratic Senate he agreed to massive spending cuts. I'm not really sure why I should applaud such a thing, particularly in light of the fact that every economist I respect says that this is the opposite of what any pragmatic technocratic, common sense leader would do in our current economic situation, much less a transformational progressive Democrat. I'm sorry, no clapping from me. The idea that we are supposed to accept the nonsensical idea that massive tax cuts for the rich combined with massive spending cuts to essential programs for ordinary Americans is a "victory" under those circumstances just doesn't make sense. 

I understand the politics, but it's simply not correct to say that the only possible way to govern is to slash spending, cut taxes and gush a lot of happy talk about "investments" and "winning the future" while hoping against hope that the economy improves enough (and the opposition is lame enough) to get reelected. Not when you have the presidency, the US Senate and a fractious, divided, opposition that should be easily leveraged against itself. 

Last session I was told that the president was powerless without more than 60 votes in the Senate and even then there wasn't much he could do. Now, he's powerless in the face of a GOP majority in the House and the smaller majority in the Senate will save us all from the Teabag dystopia. At this point I would think that the executive branch is fairly useless and we ought to get rid of it except for the odd fact that it seems to be able to function quite efficiently when the GOP is in power.

I will add that as the general election heats up, we will likely hear the same empty message from OFA/DNC that we heard in the midterms that Obama's supporters will come home to roost eventually, the economy sucks but we just need a little more time because you people are impatient and expect everything over night, and there was that whole healthcare thing so we should all be really excited about that, and never mind that the administration spent the last two years shitting on liberalism, swallowing GOP ultimatums, and failing to take a decisive antithetical stance to the GOP's retarded, draconian, failed, disproven fiscal policies, in the end 2012 will probably turn out all right.

If Obama and the Democrats truly believed in something other than Republican-lite fiscal policies, maybe we would actually see them fighting for them. Sen. Jeff Merkley shows us what that might look like:

The GOP budget plan will destroy 700,000 jobs. The last thing our nation can afford right now is further job losses. We need to be creating jobs, not destroying jobs.

There are common-sense budget cuts that could reduce our deficits without wrecking the economy or attacking working families. We can start by cutting back on the bonus tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires that Republican leaders insisted on just ten weeks ago. We could end tax subsidies for oil companies and save tens of billions of dollars in the process.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner summarized his perspective on the Republican budget as follows: if people might lose their jobs, "so be it." You might think the House Republican leaders would show some humility after their failed agenda turned record surpluses into massive deficits in 2001, or after their policies reduced the wages of working Americans during the modest expansion in the middle of the decade, or after they burned down the economy with unregulated derivatives and predatory mortgage securities in 2008.

Apparently not. Their proposals are exactly the same: give massive tax cuts to the wealthiest, shred the safety net, and eliminate investments that would help restore American economic leadership.

But Obama won't say that because it might hurt the GOP's fee-fees, and we all know how terrified Obama is of doing that. And as Greg Sargent notes later in that post, imagine what the 2012 election landscape might look like if Dems actually united behind such a message.

The Looming Specter of "Entitlement Reform"

It was only a matter of time, but Speaker of the House Otto the Orange John Boehner has brought the topic of "entitlement reform" into the ongoing, entirely odious budget/deficit "debate:"

House Speaker John Boehner plans to begin taking steps this spring to tackle ballooning Social Security and Medicare costs — proposing major cuts to the programs and selling those sacrifices to the American people — and maybe even joining with President Barack Obama to lessen the political risk.

“People in Washington assume that Americans understand how big the problem is, but most Americans don’t have a clue,” Boehner said in an interview with theWall Street Journal published Friday morning. “I think it’s incumbent on us, if we are serious about dealing with the big challenges, that we go out and help Americans understand how big the problem is that faces us.”

“Once they understand how big the problem is, I think people will be more receptive to what the possible solutions may be,” he said.

All I can say to that is this: what a fucking asshole. I can't wait to hear to hear from a man with a net worth well into the seven figures tell us about what a Very Serious Problem that Social Security and Medicare have become, and walk with us as he educates us on how to fix the Very Serious Problem. Here's a hint: his "fixes" and "reforms" won't have anything to do with raising revenue or adjusting the payroll tax/payroll tax cap to make it more robust and solvent. It will be solely driven by cuts and fucking over future recipients, because he wouldn't dare risk the ire of elderly white Social Security/Medicare recipients, otherwise known as the GOP's most reliable voting bloc. 

But there's another part of the article worth highlighting:

And, Boehner said, he’s asked Obama to join those efforts.

“I offered to the president we could lock arms and walk out and begin the conversation about the size of the problem,” he said. Obama responded “positively” to the suggestion.

Incredibly stupid colloquialism and visual image notwithstanding, we are basically screwed. With how this White House negotiates, expect their opening position to be raising the retirement age to 80, and then clapping themselves on the back and grinning like idiots in smug satisfaction, having taken a step toward their beloved demigod of bipartisanship, as they wait for Republicans to "meet them in the middle." And then Republicans come back and tell them to fuck themselves and that the retirement age should be raised to 90, because people are living longer these days you know, and that the payroll tax also needs to exclude millionaires and that won't accept anything less.


Once the "debate" over Social Security and Medicare begin in earnest, expect it to be just another display of our failure of a representative democracy. NBC/Wall Street Journal commissioned a poll this week that couldn't be a clearer illustration of this fact. Here's a graph summarizing what respondents saw as unacceptable cuts:

And a corresponding a graph showing respondent's preferences for deficit reduction:

I almost wish they had presented the same choices in both questions, because I'm willing to bet they might have been close to perfectly inverse. But regardless, it's evident that very few people want to cut Social Security or Medicare, but instead favor a whole other array of fiscal measures that are, for all intents and purposes, off the table and will never be seriously discussed in Washington. Those measures, as displayed above, include a tax on millionaires, ending the Bush tax cuts, ending oil and gas subsidies, and cutting defense (unnecessary weapons). And then there's this:

And Ezra Klein nails it:

We do have fiscal problems in this country: health care, for instance. We have to get growth in that sector down or we'll bankrupt the country. But that's not the case with Social Security. Social Security is just a question of priorities. And the legislators who are saying that we can extend the Bush tax cuts without offsets but that we need massive benefit cuts in Social Security are showing where their priorities lie, not stating a sad economic reality.

And it's absolutely true: if you had even a handful of members of Congress that actually faced the possibility of depending upon Social Security for economic security during their retirement, it would be absolutely untouchable. DC politicians do not need Social Security. Because who really needs Social Security when you have the private sector?

When They Say Jump

Dems say 'how high?'

WASHINGTON - Democratic leadership and Appropriations Committee staffers are meeting Thursday afternoon to find ways to cut social spending from the remainder of the fiscal year 2011 budget, a Senate Democratic aide told HuffPost. The object of the gathering is to identify cuts that will satisfy House Republicans' demands for drastic spending reductions despite the flagging economy.

[...]

That the two parties are now arguing merely over how quickly to make cuts indicates that their positions may be drawing close enough to avoid a government shutdown - without the GOP giving much up yet.

[...]

Senate Democrats are hoping that by offering the first concession, House GOPers will either respond in kind or take the blame for a shutdown. Yet each Democratic negotiating tactic has led to additional cuts. As the talks drag on, Republicans get closer and closer to their full goal. 

Here's a hint for the Democrats, since apparently they really have spent the last 2 years with their heads firmly implanted up their asses: when you make the first concession (or any concession for that matter) to Republicans, they do not respond 'in kind' or take the blame for anything. They tell you to go fuck yourselves, that your concessions are not enough, that you are the source of all that is soulless and wrong with this world and this country, and that it is your goddamn fault for not being flexible enough and meeting their every demand and then some. You can't even call this negotiating anymore, because negotiating assumes that both parties end up with something. At this point, the Dems are just giving up everything and getting nothing in return. And you can very well bet that they will be the scapegoats for the resulting government shutdown in the media and elsewhere for not sufficiently bending to the GOP's draconian cuts, rather than the other way around.