The American Dream Co-Opted By Pesky Foreigners

Today marks my re-entry into blogging after a several month long hiatus for a number of personal reasons. Didn't feel like doing it, so I didn't. I figured if my heart wasn't in it, then there was really no point. That being said, I'm glad to be back on (off?) the wagon. It's a new year - an election year no less - and there is bound to be an innumerate amount of issues to write about and discuss.

Issues like this one:

But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.
[...]
At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints.
[...]
While liberals often complain that the United States has unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only less equal, but also less mobile.
[...]
In 2006 Professor Corak reviewed more than 50 studies of nine countries. He ranked Canada, Norway, Finland and Denmark as the most mobile, with the United States and Britain roughly tied at the other extreme. Sweden, Germany, and France were scattered across the middle.

Read the whole thing. As the article says, the issue isn't that people don't have money or decent paying jobs (although that is obviously a separate issue) but rather that the American Dream is under assault. That is, it is increasingly statistically difficult, if not impossible, to be born in one economic strata and be able to move to a higher one through sheer force of will and hard work. That was the essence of the American Dream - that anyone that played by the rules and had an exceptional work ethic could become upper middle class, or at least significantly better themselves. Not so anymore, at least in most cases. That fairy tale has been left behind in our collective rear view mirror in the 1950s. And don't be fooled by the financial crisis/recession - this has been decades in the making. 

This is what happens when the de facto economic policy of the US is wildly tilted towards the highest echelons of the economic ladder in hopes that magical fairies and wildly generous and wealthy benefactors will trickle down their gains and table scraps to the rest of us. You'll note that the common denominator here is that the countries in the article with superior economic mobility do not subscribe to such fantasies. They have higher taxes on the high earners/wealth (sorry - the job creators) and don't believe in the infantile fallacy that if you give the wealthy shit for free, they give it away to the rest of us and make it rain because they are just that generous.

Occupy Wall Street is a start, and a good one at that. And people outside the movement are even starting to catch on - despite the abject failure of Washington and both political parties (with heavier blame on the GOP), public opinion wildly favors progressive economic policies. And I would venture to guess that a solid majority of the country would be very pleased with the results of a true progressive tax code and higher taxation on those who have done well if they would simply remove their heads from their collective asses and realize that they themselves are a part of the very statistics that this article details. This is what the 2012 election should be about (but probably won't be). Hopefully this dialog will continue into the future. Our political overlords would be incredibly stupid to ignore the dialog that OWS has started.

Breaking: People Having Money = Economic Growth

No one could have predicted that income inequality stifles economic growth:

"Countries where income was more equally distributed tended to have longer growth spells," says economist Andrew Berg, whose study appears in the current issue of Finance & Development, the quarterly magazine of the International Monetary Fund. Comparing six major economic variables across the world's economies, Berg found that equality of incomes was the most important factor in preventing a major downturn. 

In their study, Berg and coauthor Jonathan Ostry were less interested in looking at how to spark economic growth than how to sustain it. "Getting growth going is not that difficult; it's keeping it going that is hard," Berg explains. For example, the bailouts and stimulus pulled the US economy out of recession but haven't been enough to fuel a steady recovery. Berg's research suggests that sky-high income inequality in the United States could be partly to blame. 

So how important is equality? According to the study, making an economy's income distribution 10 percent more equitable prolongs its typical growth spell by 50 percent.

Clearly what this study misses is that it has not taken a long enough view or a large enough sample set to account for the trickle down from the plutocrats. You just need to wait longer, you impatient anti-American, capitalist hating asshole.

Seriously, That's the Best You've Got?

Wanker in the NYT says that the Buffett Rule will adversely impact...municipal bonds. Really.

And of course he also pays homage to the threat of our plutocrat overlords going Galt if Obama is too mean to them. You know, because they might just pout and sit on the sidelines if they aren't allowed to have free money from their investments any longer while the rest of us soak up their tax liability. 

It's actually quite amusing to watch these idiots flailing to come up with a coherent argument against raising taxes on the wealthy. They look like a bunch of damned fools in the process. 

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt: Evil Socialist

You can now add Eric Schmidt to the Right's growing list of wildly successful capitalists Unserious evil dirty socialist scum: 

But the current strategy is ludicrous. You have a situtation where the private sector sees essentially no growth in demand. The classic solution is to have the government step in, and with short-term initiatives help stimulate that demand. If they do it right, they'll invest in income and growth producing things, like highways and bridges and schools. 

[...] 

Business can create enormous numbers of new jobs in America. All we need to see is more demand. What's happening right now is: Businesses are very well-run, they have a lot of cash. They're waiting for more demand. At the moment, business efficiency allows them to grow at 1 or 2 percent, which is what we're seeing today. They don't have to hire more people. And until we solve the problem, people are going to sit idle. And it's a real tragedy.

Other recent and prominent additions to this list include Warren Buffet, for his audacity to point out the fact that the mega rich pay absurdly low, regressive levels of taxes.

And the Misinformation Begins

Paul Ryan is on the Sunday shows today, vomiting up the entirely predictable GOP tax cut talking point dreck that I alluded to yesterday:

RYAN: It adds further instability to our system — more uncertainty — and it punishes job creation and those people who create jobs. Class warfare, Chris, may make for really good politics but it makes for rotten economics. We don’t need to divide people and prey on people’s fear and envy and anxiety. We need to remove the barriers so entrepreneurs can hire people. These tax increases don’t work.  

[...] 

This is a double tax… If we tax investment and tax more you will get less of it. It looks like to me not a very good sign. It looks like the President wants to move down the class warfare path. Class warfare will simply divide this country more, will attack job creators, divide people, and it doesn’t grow the economy.

He hits them all - the dreaded uncertainty canard, the delicate sensibilities and fee-fees of our "job creators," the reverse class warfare, and suppressing the investment that hasn't materialized despite more than a decade of record low taxes on the rich. Also, where are the jobs we were promised from the Bush tax cuts, Mr. Ryan?

As ThinkProgress notes, Ryan is also in favor of letting the current payroll tax cut expire. Ryan and his cronies in the GOP love this idea because it is overwhelmingly punitive to the poor and middle class. The payroll tax is only levied against the first $100K or so of gross incomes. In other words, it is levied against pretty much the entirety of poor or middle class incomes, while affecting a very small portion of the incomes of the affluent. But this is a feature, not a bug, of the Republican platform. Remember, the problem with America is that the poor don't have any skin in the game, or in most cases, still have some skin left at all. 

The way the GOP wields the 'class warfare' cudgel as a talking point is so inept and bereft of any facts or merit that it really behooves the Democrats to seize on this and use it to their advantage. Sure, pitting one economic strata against the other is by definition class warfare, but that is why context is everything. If we were talking a 50/50 split or even a 60/40 split, then Ryan's vapid statements might make some sense. But we are literally talking against the top 2-10% versus the lower 90-98% of the country. When Democratic politicians and the lower 90-98% ask that a fraction of the country as small as 2-10% (the very same group, mind you, that claims to love America and its freedoms more than anything, except when it comes to actually giving back to the nation that has afforded them such lavish wealth) pay more in taxes during a period of the lowest taxation since the 1950s, its laughably stupid to term that as class warfare. It's simply economic and social justice, both of which are abhorrent and repellent to the modern GOP.

Our Economic Broken Record - Republicans Oppose Everything

This wasn't totally predictable or anything:

In a Friday memo to all House Republicans, GOP leaders came out against nearly all the major proposals in Obama's $447 billion job-creation plan, including his middle-class tax cuts and his approach to federal spending on transportation and school construction. 

The Republican leaders said cutting payroll taxes through 2012 would lead to a tax increase in 2013 -- an argument that didn't deter Republicans from a much bigger, 10-year tax cut in 2001 that was extended last December but is set to expire on Dec. 31, 2012. 

"There may be significant unforeseen downsides to large temporary tax cuts immediately followed by large tax increases," they wrote in their memo. "We are creating significant new uncertainty in an already uncertain economy."

This is just fucking crazy. They are now actually arguing that we can't cut taxes now, because when they return to their original level at a later date, that would be a tax increase. Am I the only one that sees the abject lunacy and idiocy in this argument? This is really what one of our major political parties now uses to justify its infantile bull shit?  And as many people have already noted - Republicans have finally found a tax cut that they don't like. Why? Because the payroll tax overwhelmingly benefits the wrong kind of people - poor and middle class citizens. If we were proposing a 200% tax increase on the working poor while abolishing capital gains and the top marginal tax rate, you know they'd be on board. They did vote for the Ryan plan after all. 

Anyone that has paid even one ounce of attention to politics for the last two and a half years know that the Republicans will never support anything the President proposes. So I will admit that while the American Jobs Act is long overdue and a much needed economic stimulus, I have never really seen its path through Congress. Sure the President wants us to call our congressmen and women, even the asshole Republican ones, but does anyone honestly believe that Democratic constituents calling Republican representatives and senators is going to make them shift from them their putrid ideological entrenchment? 

I think really the most likely scenario is that the economy is going to continue to suck tremendously well into the 2012 election season, thereby endangering Obama's re-election. We will get some sort of movement on economic stimulus between now and then, but it will be purposefully hamstrung by the Republicans who will ensure that it is a series of half measures or contains a bunch of their bull shit ideological sacred cows that will do nothing to stimulate the economy. The President's only chance between now and then will to be continue to bring Campaign Obama both to the American public and to his style of governance. If you can't get anything through Congress, then the one thing you can do is present an unmistakably stark contrast between the two parties values and ideas on how to rebuild a broken America. That started with the roll out of the American Jobs Act, and it continues with this:

President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials. 

With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts from Medicare and Medicaid. 

Mr. Obama, in a bit of political salesmanship, will call his proposal the “Buffett Rule,” in a reference to Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained repeatedly that the richest Americans generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers, because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages. 

Mr. Obama will not specify a rate or other details, and it is unclear how much revenue his plan would raise. But his idea of a millionaires’ minimum tax will be prominent in the broad plan for long-term deficit reduction that he will outline at the White House on Monday.

Republicans will never in a million years support a tax increase of any kind, especially not one on millionaires, or the "job  creators" as they are known among the mouth breathers. The problem that faces the Republicans is that a millionaire's tax is overwhelmingly popular with the public. They can spew all the bull shit they want, but the fact of the matter is that the public intuitively understands that there is a infinitesimally small slice of the population that controls pretty much all the wealth in this country, and they pay an absolute pittance in income taxes. As the NYT piece says, this tax would hit about three-tenths of one percent of tax payers. It doesn't matter how the GOP and Fox News try to spin it, with all the caterwauling about job killing tax increases or the delicate fee-fees of our job creating plutocrat overlords, the public is just not going to care when you're talking about hitting such a small portion of the tax base with this increase. It's good policy, and even better politics. 

Again, the Buffett Rule faces an even steeper uphill climb in Congress than does the American Jobs Act. But these are the sort of populist positions that Obama should have been taking long ago, since January 2009 on his first day in office. The public saw far too much of Obama as the most reasonable guy in the room. Maybe it's finally catching on that when you're in a room full of unhinged lunatics that want to savage the founding principles of this country and hand it over to rule by corporations and plutocrats, being the most reasonable guy doesn't count for much. Americans want someone on their side, and Obama appears to be finally understanding that.

The Problem With America In One Graph

Click here for the full size image. I don't know how anyone can look at that and still vote Republican. Democrats are certainly not the stalwart protectors of the poor and middle class that they once were, especially as they continue to rely more and more on corporate dollars for reelection, and corporatist policies because they fear being labeled as "anti-business." But the GOP is just crazy, and anyone who argues against the indisputable fact that they are the party of plutocrats and corporations is stupid, lying, or both. This is the reality they have created; this is the reality they want. But it's not enough. It's never enough. And they want to make it worse. It's like Jon Stewart said the other day - the problem, from the GOP perspective, is that the poor don't have any 'skin in the game.' In other words, the problem is that the poor still have skin. 

Noted dirty commie socialist and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich notes the following in the op-ed accompanying this image:

Pump-priming works only when a well contains enough water.Look back over the last hundred years and you’ll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income — as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 — the nation as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. We created a virtuous cycle in which an ever growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats. 

During periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion — as between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the present day — growth slowed, median wages stagnated and we suffered giant downturns. It’s no mere coincidence that over the last century the top earners’ share of the nation’s total income peaked in 1928 and 2007 — the two years just preceding the biggest downturns. 

[...] 

But starting in the late 1970s, and with increasing fervor over the next three decades, government did just the opposite. It deregulated and privatized. It cut spending on infrastructure as a percentage of the national economy and shifted more of the costs of public higher education to families. It shredded safety nets. (Only 27 percent of the unemployed are covered by unemployment insurance.) And it allowed companies to bust unions and threaten employees who tried to organize. Fewer than 8 percent of private-sector workers are unionized. 

More generally, it stood by as big American companies became global companies with no more loyalty to the United States than a GPS satellite. Meanwhile, the top income tax rate was halved to 35 percent and many of the nation’s richest were allowed to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax. Inheritance taxes that affected only the topmost 1.5 percent of earners were sliced. Yet at the same time sales and payroll taxes — both taking a bigger chunk out of modest paychecks — were increased.

We are living in a reality wrought by a thirty year march to the beat of the drum of the extreme conservative orthodoxy. Sure, there have been Democratic administrations in between, but the mantra of deregulate/cut taxes for the "job creators" survives and remains at the forefront of any economic debate. Meanwhile, current Democrats don't understand the importance of agenda setting or proper messaging, so these abject lies continue to pass as good ideas. It's very depressing.

(h/t Balloon Juice)

Economic Reality Check

Yes, things are really, really bad:

In other words, the ship has since collided headlong into the iceberg, is taking on water, and instead of deciding how quickly we should be bailing out water or what size buckets to hand out, policymakers are either suggesting we open up the hull to take on additional water, or that we just wait to see if the water will find its own way out of the boat. We are years away from recovering from the financial crisis, but all the supply side fuckwads in Washington are still convinced that we are just a few months, maybe a year away from the Invisible Hand pulling us all up by our bootstraps. 

Spoiler alert: we are not going to get out of this by traditional means. Desperate times call for desperate measures (and no, not desperate austerity measures). The private sector can't do it on its own, government can't do it on its own, and funneling free money to corporations, plutocrats, and banksters has not and will not work. 

I would suggest that perhaps we give some free money to households, you know, since they have none and the Fed found it within itself to be able to dole out $1.2 trillion to the banksters, but then we would need to clutch our pearls about moral hazard and not rewarding unscrupulous folks. Also too, socialism, and that's now how we've done it before here in the freedom loving real American United States, and it would never work.

Sigh

Same shit, different day:

Senate Democrats, who are desperate to stimulate the economy but don’t have the money to pass traditional stimulus legislation, will turn to cutting business taxes when they return to Washington this fall.  

In doing so, they will try to drive a wedge between business interests and the GOP leadership, who has tried to block almost every element of the Democratic agenda, by pushing a round of corporate tax breaks, say Senate Democratic aides.  

[...] 

Their first tax proposal is to make the corporate research and development tax credit permanent. The second is to pass an Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit. This would create a 30 percent tax credit for companies that manufacture new clean-energy technologies, which Democratic aides say would help create thousands of new jobs around the country. 

A third idea is to extend the payroll tax cut Congress enacted in December and expand it to employers, reducing the cost of labor. And a fourth option is to give employers tax breaks for hiring new employees, an idea Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee panned in 2009 but now seems more attractive. 

Excellent idea - let's give even more tax breaks to businesses that are already sitting on Scrooge McDuck Money Bin sized piles of cash so they can hire people to keep up with the demand that isn't there from all the customers that they don't have. But this is all we can do, because true stimulative economic policies aren't "politically feasible" and our political overlords are a bunch of lazy pussies that only want to try what they can pass even if what can pass is useless shit, rather than fight for something that might have a better chance of dragging us out of the quagmire. 

I like the neat little rhetorical flair at the beginning of this article too: Senate Democrats "don't have the money to pass traditional stimulus legislation." Right. Because tax cuts are always free!

Now let's just get some patent reform bills going, and then the epic pivot to jobs will be complete.

Cash for New Hires

Quick - someone give these people free money for hiring people, because they really need it. That'll move the chains!

Also too, patent reform.

You Had Your Chance

One of Ezra's co-bloggers (not really sure who they are, they just started showing up in my RSS feed) has a bit in the WaPo this week about the gridlock in Congress on the economy and notes the following about GOP intransigence:

“Everyone’s got their spin on it — there’s no consensus,” says former congressman Tom Davis (R-Va.). “The parties are very dug in.” 

For instance, even if everyone agreed that the United States desperately needed help to revive its economy in the short term, it would simply reinforce the GOP’s line against the Democrats, Davis asserts. Most Democratic proposals for short-term help have centered on injecting immediate spending into the economy, the underlying argument being that the stimulus dropped off too early and didn’t go far enough. For Republicans, however, “the narrative is: ‘We tried your way, we’re worse off. Now you’re going to waste more and draw up the deficit more?’ ” Davis says.

Every time a Republican utters that talking point, Jebus kills a kitten. This is obviously their marching orders, and I would say its effective politically because it cleverly draws a contrast between the two parties, implies the opposition's policies failed, and it makes good use of the fact that most people are too ill informed to know any better.

But it's also a deeply cynical and ignorant line. By my watch, we tried it the Republican way for the better part of the last decade. They got their three trillion dollars in tax cuts that were heavily weighted towards the wealthy with grand promises of money and jobs raining from the skies, compliments of our plutocrat overlords. And we were told further that these same monstrous tax cuts would actually create more revenue! Because you know, when you unchain the hands of the plutocrats and free them from the heavy burden of the already lowest tax rates in the developed world, they give free money and jobs to poor people and don't just keep it for themselves.

Needless to say, none of that happened. The Bush tax cuts have become the single largest contributor to the OMGdeficit that Republicans have spent the last two years screeching about, and in some cases, holding the country hostage until it is reduced through draconian spending cuts. Job creation was so dismal that even the hyper conservative WSJ dubbed it the "worst track record on record."

Fast forward to 2009. Barack Obama is elected president and immediately calls for a significant spending bill to prop up a rapidly deteriorating economy. The Republicans immediately bitch and moan about deficit spending, how government can't create jobs, and demand a bunch of useless tax cuts (again) in exchange for the vague promise of their support for the bill. The final bill that passes both chambers of Congress  contains over 40% of non-stimulative tax cuts, and by the conclusions of numerous prominent economists, is far too small in its scope to properly deal with the magnitude of the recession that faces the country. Oh, and it is passed with zero Republican votes in the House and only three in the Senate, despite their empty promises for votes in exchange for the fact that almost half of it is comprised of tax cuts. 

The stimulus bill didn't singlehandedly return the country to full unemployment and 5% GDP growth, but that was never going to happen. It was essentially hamstrung by the lack of political will within the Obama White House to push for a larger bill, and the ridiculous amount of tax cuts it contained. And despite those shortcomings, it provided a backstop to a faltering economy and prevented things from getting much worse than they would have in its absence.

So after all the promises of the capitalist utopia to be ushered in by Bush economic policies and ball pits full of $100 bills for us to swim in and the complete and total lack thereof, the Republican answer is to tell Democrats "you had your chance" after they enact a single piece of Keynesian legislation in the face of the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression.

Epic hypocrisy notwithstanding, that's some balls if you ask me.

Tax Cut Welfare

A good reminder that tax cuts too, are government programs. They are a policy enacted to reach a stated goal, or in the case of the Bush tax cuts, to concentrate all the wealth at the tiniest of upper echelons of society so the plutocrats can make it rain jobs and investments like it's dollar dance night at the local strip club. 

Republicans just use the term "government program" derisively to refer to the programs they don't like. You know, like the ones that don't give a big sloppy wet kiss the the uber rich.

Kevin Drum is Shrill

And by Halperin standards, kind of a dick:

But then, for about the thousandth time, my mind wanders over the past ten years. Republicans got the tax cuts they wanted. They got the financial deregulation they wanted. They got the wars they wanted. They got the unfunded spending increases they wanted. And the results were completely, unrelentingly disastrous. A decade of sluggish growth and near-zero wage increases. A massive housing bubble. Trillions of dollars in war spending and thousands of American lives lost. A financial collapse. A soaring long-term deficit. Sky-high unemployment. All on their watch and all due to policies they eagerly supported. And worse: ever since the predictable results of their recklessness came crashing down, they've rabidly and nearly unanimously opposed every single attempt to dig ourselves out of the hole they created for us.

But despite the fact that this is all recent history, it's treated like some kind of dreamscape. No one talks about it. Republicans pretend it never happened.

I'd say that's about right.

(Via Greg Sargent)

Obama Takes the Gloves Off

To the extent that he can, anyway.

On taxes:

There's been a lot of discussion about revenues and raising taxes in recent weeks, so I want to be clear about what we're proposing here. I spent the last two years cutting taxes for ordinary Americans, and I want to extend those middle-class tax cuts. The tax cuts I'm proposing we get rid of are tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires; tax breaks for oil companies and hedge fund managers and corporate jet owners.

It would be nice if we could keep every tax break there is, but we've got to make some tough choices here if we want to reduce our deficit. And if we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for corporate jet owners, if we choose to keep tax breaks for oil and gas companies that are making hundreds of billions of dollars, then that means we've got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship. That means we've got to stop funding certain grants for medical research. That means that food safety may be compromised. That means that Medicare has to bear a greater part of the burden. Those are the choices we have to make.

So the bottom line is this: Any agreement to reduce our deficit is going to require tough decisions and balanced solutions. And before we ask our seniors to pay more for health care, before we cut our children's education, before we sacrifice our commitment to the research and innovation that will help create more jobs in the economy, I think it's only fair to ask an oil company or a corporate jet owner that has done so well to give up a tax break that no other business enjoys. I don't think that's real radical. I think the majority of Americans agree with that.

I really don't know why he diddled around with the Biden talks and all of the behind the scenes chicanery for so long. This is a winning message. It's a populist message. The polls pretty much scream just this - no one wants to cut Social Security Medicare, everyone wants to cut defense, everyone thinks the uber rich and corporations ought to pay more in taxes (if some of them pay any at all). No one gives a shit about Obama's post-partisan-change-the-tone-of-Washington dreck. It was good for a campaign, but really - no one cares once you're in office. People want tangible results that they care about, not a warm fuzzy because Obama is trying his best not to hurt the Republican's fee-fees. And it's an easy contrast to draw too. Republicans want no tax increases ever because they are wholly owned subsidiary of the plutocrats and corporate elite. They just act like higher taxes kill jobs for the low information types to have a rationale to believe in their blindly ignorant anti-tax dogma.

And he savages Congress too:

And I've got to say, I'm very amused when I start hearing comments about, well, the President needs to show more leadership on this. Let me tell you something. Right after we finished dealing with the government shutdown, averting a government shutdown, I called the leaders here together. I said we've got to get done -- get this done. I put Vice President Biden in charge of a process -- that, by the way, has made real progress -- but these guys have met, worked through all of these issues. I met with every single caucus for an hour to an hour and a half each -- Republican senators, Democratic senators; Republican House, Democratic House. I've met with the leaders multiple times. At a certain point, they need to do their job.

And so, this thing, which is just not on the level, where we have meetings and discussions, and we're working through process, and when they decide they're not happy with the fact that at some point you've got to make a choice, they just all step back and say, well, you know, the President needs to get this done -- they need to do their job.

Now is the time to go ahead and make the tough choices. That's why they're called leaders. And I've already shown that I'm willing to make some decisions that are very tough and will give my base of voters further reason to give me a hard time. But it's got to be done.

And so there's no point in procrastinating. There's no point in putting it off. We've got to get this done. And if by the end of this week, we have not seen substantial progress, then I think members of Congress need to understand we are going to start having to cancel things and stay here until we get it done.

They're in one week, they're out one week. And then they're saying, Obama has got to step in. You need to be here. I've been here. I've been doing Afghanistan and bin Laden and the Greek crisis. You stay here. Let's get it done.

Here, here. I have never seen a bigger bunch of piss pants whiners than the 111th/112th Congress, or more sternly worded letters written to the President asking him to hold their collective hands on this issue or that. You didn't consult us on Libya, we need more leadership in the government shutdown talks, we need you to step in on the debt ceiling. You are legislators. You were elected to do a job. Put on the big boy pants and legislate. This was long overdue.

And finally, just like any time a Democrat calls Republicans on their bull shit, the media clutches their pearls in shocked horror:

I'm not going to go into the implications of a Drudge's cabana boy Halperin calling the President a dick on national television. See Greg Sargent for a comprehensive take down of why this obfuscates the real problem with our tabloid media. I will just note that Republicans are allowed, or even expected, to strut around preening and saying all kinds of ridiculous and often objectively false statements about the President and the Democrats, and the second any one Democrat says something to the contrary (or FSM forbid, forceful), the GOP and their media stenographers lose their shit over the lack of "civility" in our discourse. 

Also too, Halperin was well aware of the fact that there was no tape delay, and spewed his childish, pedantic comment anyway. I am willing to bet that he is angling for a Juan Williams style departure to Fox News. MSNBC eventually fires him, or Halperin leaves citing irreconcilable differences, he picks up an enormous contract as a Fox host/contributor, and voila, it's a victory for the Fox News Channel and a triumph over the meanie liberal media that punishes and censors people that take a position against the President. Just watch.

The Opportunity Cost of the Bush Tax Cuts

It's a red letter day today - the ten year anniversary of the huge embarrassing failure that were the Bush tax cuts. Here is a sampling of all the elitist socialist shit we didn't do while shoveling over truckloads of Benjamins to banksters and plutocrats alike:

- Give 122.7 Million Children Low-Income Health Care Every Year For Ten Years

- Give 49.2 Million People Access To Low-Income Healthcare Every Year For Ten Years

- Provide 43.1 Million Students With Pell Grants Worth $5,500 Every Year For Ten Years

- Provide 31.5 Million Head Start Slots For Children Every Year For Ten Years

- Provide VA Care For 30.7 Million Military Veterans Every Year For Ten Years

- Provide 30.4 Million Scholarships For University Students Every Year For Ten Years

- Hire 4.19 Million Firefighters Every Year For Ten Years

- Hire 3.67 Million Elementary School Teachers Every Year For Ten Years

- Hire 3.6 Million Police Officers Every Year For Ten Years

- Retrofit 144.6 Million Households For Wind Power Every Year For Ten Years

- Retrofit 54.2 Million Households For Solar Photovoltaic Energy Every Year For Ten Years

Also - the Iraq and Afghanistan wars factor in to be about another $3 trillion. Sure would be nice to have a cool $5.5 trillion lying around right now, wouldn't it? But I forgot - these tax cuts broadened the base and actually spurred record amounts of economic growth:

Meanwhile, all the teatards in the GOP caucus continue to tout widespread regressive tax cuts as the keystone of their economic policy and the sole path to making it rain GDP. I think one of their own had a good saying for that whole principle of not falling for the same bullshit time and again:

In Case You Forgot

Your latest reminder that Republicans do not care about the deficit and are a bunch of unhinged loonies that believe the in voodoo economics that state that cutting revenue creates more revenue. 

And the article mentions that the single greatest impasse in budget debate is that Republicans refuse to raise revenue, and Democrats refuse to reduce or cut the safety net. But therein lies the fundamental difference - there are plenty of people all over this country (corporations too, since they now seem to think they are afforded the same rights as an individual) that can afford and should pay substantially more in taxes. On the other hand, you have a significantly greater amount of people who can not afford basic healthcare or a decent standard of living in retirement. I will leave it up to you to decide which one of these groups ought to be the ones to sacrifice a little in a sane, moral world. 

And yes, I realize that our country is neither of those things.

I Can't Hear You! LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!

These people are the biggest fucking morons ever - there is just no other way to put this:

Republicans attending a White House meeting on Wednesday didn’t take kindly to President Obama telling them tax rates were higher during the Reagan administration. GOP members engaged in a lot of “eye-rolling,” according to a member who was on hand to hear Obama, who invited House Republicans to the White House for discussions on the debt ceiling. [...]

“[The President] made a comment like the tax rate is the lightest, even more than (under former President) Reagan,” Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) told The Hill following the meeting. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) joked that during the meeting, “We learned we had the lowest tax rates in history … lower than Reagan!”

They roll their eyes, but this is not up for debate - federal revenues as a share of GDP are the lowest they have been since 1950. But far be it for me to get in the way of the GOP's enjoyment of the Reagan as Jebus fantasy land in which they live. Facts are liberally biased, and Reagan is like Texas - you don't mess with him or say anything mean about him. Ever.

Read the rest of the Think Progress link. They go on to detail what a quick Google search would have revealed for these GOP geniuses. Their childish reaction to this is the latest example of just how deep their contempt for Obama runs.

Washington's Perverse Economic Priorities

The latest example of Washington's rush to solve a non-existent problem while completely ignoring that which ails millions of Americans - corporate tax reform:

The Obama administration is quietly gearing up for a high-profile launch in May or June on what may turn out to be the most heavily lobbied issue of the year: corporate tax reform.

“This will be a feast for K Street,” said one top aide.

At a time when the two parties can find little common ground legislatively, strategists on both sides tell POLITICO they hope to advance their jobs agenda by finding a way to lower corporate tax rates.

“This would send a reassuring signal to the economy, and is something both parties should support in theory,” a senior administration official said, predicting “a numbers game” in which companies and industries ferociously litigate the fine points.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner plans to ignite the debate by unveiling a white paper that advocates lowering the top corporate tax rate from the current 35 percent to less than 30 percent and as low as 26 percent, according to aides. The proposal is likely to fall between 26 percent and 28 percent.

To pay for that, the proposal will call for closing loopholes and slicing exemptions. The two main ones are a tax deduction for domestic manufacturing and accelerated depreciation for capital equipment.

Got that? Reducing corporate taxes is a "jobs agenda." Pervasive unemployment, a housing market in a continued tailspin, GDP in the shitter and barely strong enough to keep us from backsliding into another recession, and Washington's idea of an economic priority is...corporate tax reform. But it would send a reassuring signal to the economy, and we all know how important it is to stroke the delicate fee-fees of the economy (and our plutocrats) while categorically ignoring the economic hardships of millions of Americans. I hear markets get a real boner for that kind of thing. And why shouldn't we tackle corporate tax reform? You know, because our poor, beleaguered corporations are just struggling so hard right now! They can't compete or innovate globally with our punitive Highest Tax Rate in the World!

All told, the Fortune 500 generated nearly $10.8 trillion in total revenues last year, up 10.5%. Total profits soared 81%. But guess who didn’t benefit much from this giant wave of cash? Millions of U.S. workers stuck mired in a stagnant job market. [...] Nevertheless, we’ve rarely seen such a stark gulf between the fortunes of the 500 and those of ordinary Americans.

And they are now even considering the much maligned, corporate giveaway that creates zero jobs, unless you define jobs as bonuses for executives and dividends for shareholders.

One possibility for the administration white paper is a move toward a more territorial system that is consistent with taxation schemes in the rest of the developed world, focused on taxing profits earned in the U.S. Such a provision would probably include a transitional measure that allowed companies to move profits earned abroad back to the U.S. at a lower tax rate — say, 10 percent.

It's amazing what a few million dollars in lobbyists can buy you, and it's maddening to watch them fuss over lowering the marginal rate when pretty much zero corporations actually pay the top marginal rate to begin with. Whatever the "grand bargain" ends up being, expect it to be supremely corporation-friendly and likely put them in a position to be paying even less than they are now. The Chamber of Commerce will send their army of lobbyists in and crack the whip at their foot soldiers in Congress, who will promptly do their bidding, sell it as an enormous bipartisan success, and then head off to a cocktail party to discuss the intricacies of their post public service employment in the same companies to which they just gave an enormous slobbery legislative blow job.

There's no shortage of reasons why this is completely ridiculous, one of them being that corporate taxes as a share of federal revenue are at record lows:

And the evil socialists at the Congressional Budget Office have found that a significant number of American corporations pay no taxes at all:

But by taking advantage of myriad breaks and loopholes that other countries generally do not offer, United States corporations pay only slightly more on average than their counterparts in other industrial countries. And some American corporations use aggressive strategies to pay less — often far less — than their competitors abroad and at home. A Government Accountability Office study released in 2008 found that 55 percent of United States companies paid no federal income taxes during at least one year in a seven-year period it studied.

I'm not saying that the current system is perfect. But it's disgusting to focus on corporate welfare while millions are struggling, even if you try to assuage what's left of your conscience by couching it in an enormous pile of horse shit by calling it a jobs program.

Economic News From NoShit Town

Really? I never knew that small businesses do not live and die by tax cuts.

Michael Teahan, like his father, mother, and uncles before him, is a small business owner. The 52-year-old has spent most of his adult life running his own businesses: a restaurant, a coffee bar and various companies involved in the espresso machine business.

[...]

Teahan currently operates Espresso Resource, a company that imports espresso machine parts from Europe to sell to U.S. restaurants and coffee shops. And he’s doing very well for himself: The two-man operation clears about $1 million a year in total sales, Teahan says -- enough to secure himself annual income in excess of $250,000.

That makes Teahan one of the few small business owners to actually benefit from the Bush administration's tax cuts for the wealthy. He says the cuts save him about $12,000 a year, compared to what he paid before they were enacted. But as debates over the federal budget deficit have intensified, Teahan has found the political discussion increasingly divorced from the reality of his experience as a small business owner. 

Tax cuts for the wealthy, according to Teahan, will do nothing to bolster his firm. They won’t affect his hiring decisions, they won’t encourage him to buy new equipment or help him move into a bigger warehouse. He says all of those decisions -- the nuts and bolts of actually running a small company -- depend on the his customers' economic conditions, not his personal tax rate.

"What we do in business, how we spend our money, how we allocate our resources -- that has very little to do with tax policy," Teahan says. "I map my business based on my customers, and what my customers want to buy, and what they can afford to buy."

And other small business owners interviewed for this piece agree:

"We are fed by our consumers, not by our tax breaks," says Rick Poore, owner of Designwear, Inc., a screen-printing business based in Lincoln, Neb. "If you drive more people to my business, I will hire more people. It's as simple as that. If you give me a tax break, I'll just take the wife to the Bahamas."

[...]

"The economic premise, that people won’t hire because they might have to pay more taxes if they make more money, is beyond laughable,” says Lew Prince, owner of the Vintage Vinyl record store in St. Louis, Mo. "You hire when you think there’s a way you can make more money with that hire. The percentage the government takes out of it has almost nothing to do with it.”

It's so weird to think that what small businesses need most is more customers. I just can't wrap my head around it. But in all reality, these guys are probably Democratic shills - union thugs planted by MoveOn to push a socialist agenda. Real 'murikans know that tax cuts are what we need to grow our small businesses and expand our economy, and to remove the uncertainty caused by the Marxist Kenyan Muslim.

In all seriousness, it's been apparent for some time now that we are experiencing an issue with aggregate demand, and tax cuts will do little to solve that. Businesses need customers, and most consumers right now are deleveraging from the easy credit boom of the early 2000s, or are just in general loathe to spend. Or on another front, they may be one of the millions of unemployed, about whom DC no longer gives a shit. Businesses need more demand, more customers in order to hire, and tax cuts don't supply either of those things. And you know what else? If businesses are hiring and thus serving to reduce overall unemployment, that also reduces the deficit as you have bring more people back into the revenue base. Imagine that. Republicans do not care about the deficit, however, as evidenced by their fetish for unfunded tax cuts. And I can't say that either party really cares to do much for boosting aggregate demand or solving unemployment. The general consensus on both sides of the aisle appears to be wait and see, or more specifically, gut federal spending while waiting, and that's just an incredibly stupid approach. But it's not like Nobel laureates know anything about economic policy...we should probably just entrust our fate to the feckless morons in Congress instead.

Republicans Get a Taste of Their Own Medicine

Sorry for the shameless pun, but I could not help myself.

Now that House Republicans have officially gone on the record (and soon to come in the Senate as well) for their full throated support of trillions in tax cuts for plutocrats and corporations and abolishing Medicare, it turns out that their constituents are a little agitated. Who'd have thought? Here are just some of the recent highlights:

CONSTITUENT: I hear you saying two contradictory things about taxes. One you want to reform the tax code so that corporations to pay more, and two you don’t want corporations to pay so much so that they’ll somehow stimulate business. So I don’t understand that contradiction. The CBO […] the Ryan program proposes to turn Medicare into a voucher program.

DUFFY: It doesn’t, No it doesn’t.

DIFFERENT CONSTITUENT: Yes it does.

DUFFY: No, it doesn’t there’s no voucher.

CONSTITUENT: That’s what my understanding of what it is.

DUFFY: No.

CONSTITUENT: They count the cost to seniors if it goes into a voucher program, it’s going to be trillions of dollars for those young men like this guy in front.

DUFFY: It’s a premium support it’s not a voucher. The bottom line is if we do nothing, if we do nothing, you can all say this is all fine and dandy, you can get it and I know any young people here you can all get this program.

CONSTITUENT: I agree that if we do nothing we’re in trouble, that’s why we have to raise taxes on the rich, and raise taxes on the corporations who have never been richer than they have now. And you guys just cut their taxes again.

ANOTHER CONSTITUENT: Oh, Yeah!

DUFFY: When you say cutting taxes, if taxes maintain the same level and rate is that a tax cut.

CONSTITUENT: To maintain the same level that was long ago, that was sold on the premise of creating jobs by giving more money to the wealthy.

OTHER CONSTITUENTS: Yeah! [inaudible]

And more win from a different Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) town hall:

CONSTITUENT: I’d like to know where you get your information, where those projections come from?

DUFFY: That’s also from the CBO.

CONSTITUENT: No, no, no, no, no. Did you get any information from the Heritage Foundation?

DUFFY: [...] This is OMB and CBO.

CONSTITUENT: Show me how the Ryan budget that you just voted for brings down the deficit.

DUFFY: I don’t have the chart here. [...]

CONSTITUENT: [...] I know what chart you used, it came from the Heritage Foundation, from a man named William W. Beach, he’s lying. It’s a fraud. [...] A Nobel Prize-winning economist labeled it a fraud! [referring to Paul Krugman]

And finally, this ThinkProgress video of a town hall held by GOP Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL):

I love the "Liar - Goddamned Liar!" It's refreshing to hear people speak the truth since such unvarnished statements are rarely spoken on policy issues, and never by the media. Now I can't speak to the politics of the constituents at these town halls, but I get the distinct feeling that not even the batshit base of the Republican party can't swallow the abomination that is the Ryan budget. The GOP has severely overreached here, and they were too goddamned stupid and drunk with power to realize it. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are enormously popular with the public, as is raising taxes on those best equipped to pay them. They should have seen the writing on the wall in Wisconsin; people are waking up to what it feels like (or might look like) to get good and proper fucked at the hands of corrupt Republican oligarchs. And these are real 'murikans if you will, not the Koch/FreedomWorks/Crossroads GPS funded corporate shills that showed up in droves screaming to keep gubmint outta mah Medicare during the Affordable Care Act debate.

Harry Reid is right to force a vote on this issue in the Senate. I can only hope that Republican senators are actually stupid enough to support the Ryan budget in the upper chamber, and I'm sure they will. They value ideological purity and party loyalty over politics or the actual needs of their constituents, because they (like many politicians) do not go to DC to serve their constituents, but rather to ingratiate themselves, reward their campaign donors, and to make sure they've got a cushy seven figure job lined up in the private sector that they coddled with their corporatist policies during their tenure on Capitol Hill. This will be an enormous campaign issue in 2012 that should reap significant Democratic gains, if the Democrats don't manage to fuck it up that is.