Tag Archives: debt deal

Morning Bunker Report: Wednesday 4.25.2012

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——————————WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY

SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD) says he and his senate colleagues may push a government shutdown to get out of the debt deal agreed upon last year with President Obama. — TPM

ROMNEY SWEEPS GOP PRIMARIES (i.e. collects on his investments) – Mitt Romney laid claim to the fiercely contested Republican presidential nomination Tuesday night with a fistful of primary triumphs, then urged all who struggle in a shaky U.S. economy to “hold on a little longer, a better America begins tonight.” Eager to turn the political page to the general election, Romney accused President Barack Obama of “false promises and weak leadership.” He declared, “Everywhere I go, Americans are tired of being tired, and many of those who are fortunate enough to have a job are working harder for less.”  The former Massachusetts governor spoke as he swept primaries in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York, the first since Rick Santorum conceded the nomination. — HuffPo  

ROMNEY STILL WITHOUT RICK SANTORUM’S Holy Blessing and endorsement — “Logistically, there’s just no way,” top Santorum adviser John Brabender told POLITICO of an endorsement prior to Pennsylvania’s primary. “That won’t be happening … Look, the senator takes his endorsement very seriously. He feels there’s many things for he and Governor Romney to talk about. This isn’t just a five-minute meeting: How do you do, let’s endorse.” – POLITICO

JON HUNTSMAN HANDS OVER HIS TINY SPINE to the Republican Party establishment (disregard his comments of the past 48 hours) – Huntsman was asked on CNBC’s Squawk Box whether he was still 100 percent behind Mitt Romney’s presidential bid. ”Absolutely, I am,” Huntsman replied. — Buzzfeed

SEN. SCOTT BROWN (R) seems to believe Elizabeth Warren’s personal finances are of the utmost importance in this year’s Senate race in Massachusetts. [...] Why should anyone outside Massachusetts care? Because it turns out, the Republican senator’s top political advisers are the same people advising Mitt Romney, who’s trying to keep his tax returns secret. In other words, the same campaign strategists telling Brown to push for more disclosure are also telling Romney to push for less disclosure. Eric Fehrnstrom, who advises both Romney and Brown, believes it’s wrong if Elizabeth Warren releases only two years of tax documents, but also believes it’s perfectly acceptable if Romney does the same thing. — Maddow Blog

GOP WAR ON WOMEN: FLORIDA GOV RICK SCOTT (R) celebrates Sexual Assault Awareness Month by cutting aid for Rape Crisis Centers

DARRELL ISSA (WHO BANNED A WOMAN FROM SPEAKING AT HIS ALL-MALE CONTRACEPTION PANEL) calls Obama Admin the ‘most corrupt government’ in history.  Speaking to Bloomberg on Tuesday, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said: “But again, we’re very busy in Washington with a corrupt government, with a government that I said a year ago, because of the money, because of the TARP and stimulus funds, was going to be the most corrupt government in history, and it is proving to be that.” In spite of Issa’s allegations, he only cited two specific scandals. According to journalist Haynes Johnson, the “most corrupt” label actually belongs to the administration of President Ronald Reagan. Plagued by dozens of scandals like selling weapons to Iran, rigging federal grants, the savings and loan crisis and other assorted political skullduggery, it all ended with 138 officials having been investigated, indicted or convicted — the most of any U.S. presidency, ever. – The Raw Story

PRESIDENT OBAMA / DEMOCRATS————————————————————

SLOW JAM THE NEWS with Barack Obama: Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

…

OBAMA TELLS UNC CROWD he only paid off his student loans 8 years ago – His chief policy message was an appeal for Congress to pass legislation to stop interest rates on a popular student loan from doubling July 1 from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. “I didn’t just read about this. I didn’t just get some talking points about this. I didn’t just get a policy briefing on this,” the president said to laughter from the crowd. ”We didn’t come from wealthy families. When we graduated from college and law school we had a mountain of debt. When we married, we got poor together. We added up our assets and there were no assets. And we added up our liabilities and there were lot of liabilities—basically in the form of student loans,” — ABCNews

FROM A NEW ROLLING STONE INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT OBAMA — Given all that, what do you think the general election is going to look like, and what do you think of Mitt Romney?  “I think the general election will be as sharp a contrast between the two parties as we’ve seen in a generation. You have a Republican Party, and a presumptive Republican nominee, that believes in drastically rolling back environmental regulations, that believes in drastically rolling back collective-bargaining rights, that believes in an approach to deficit reduction in which taxes are cut further for the wealthiest Americans, and spending cuts are entirely borne by things like education or basic research or care for the vulnerable. All this will be presumably written into their platform and reflected in their convention. I don’t think that their nominee is going to be able to suddenly say, “Everything I’ve said for the last six months, I didn’t mean.” I’m assuming that he meant it. When you’re running for president, people are paying attention to what you’re saying.” — Rolling Stone 

Another debt ceiling fight from the Teaparty Republicans in 2013? Probably not.

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Jonathan Bernstein doesn’t think we’re going to see this debt ceiling fight again after the next election, whether a Republican wins the White House or President Obama is re-elected. The political rewards for the GOP just wouldn’t be there:

…if we get a Republican president and a Democratic Congress, the issue won’t play nearly as well in reverse (although it’s certainly possible that President Romney or Perry could veto a clean limit increase and demand cuts – but would a brand-new president really want to risk that?). Of course, a unified Democratic government would not only probably pass a clean increase, but it also might well scrap the debt limit entirely, as Jonathan Chait suggests they demand in the future.

What if we have the status quo in January 2013? Hard to say. But it’s going to be a whole lot easier for Republicans to vote for a clean debt-limit increase at that point (perhaps loaded with some symbolic stuff). One of the key problems for Republicans this year is that they were just elected on a lot of extravagant promises about immediate, absolute change. My guess is that those who are reelected in 2012 won’t repeat those promises, at least not quite as loudly. They will have voted to raise the debt limit. They will have voted for appropriations bills that spend gazillions of dollars. They will have voted for budgets that don’t immediately balance. They may not own up to those things, and some of them will certainly keep up the rhetoric, but the bulk of them? We’ll see.

Moreover, should we have a status quo election in 2012, the incentive of defeating Barack Obama will, of course, be gone in 2013. Instead, members of Congress will be worrying about their own reelections, and triggering an economic crisis just after the president is inaugurated may not work well for that goal.

Deficits don’t matter! Sometimes!

Freedom ISN’T free — that’s why we pay taxes.

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Via Laura Conaway | Maddow Blog:

In theory, President Obama preserved the possibility of new revenue in the future through raising taxes on the wealthy and closing loopholes. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is on the Twitters saying Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s claim that it could happen “is absolutely false. House Republicans will not agree to tax increases. Period.”

Careful watchers of Congress — and this show — will remember that in March, Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee proposed lowering the deficit with a magic elixir of 85 percent spending cuts and 15 percent new revenue. Steely Democrats countered with an offer of 87 percent spending cuts and 13 percent new revenue. Which is how we got to this deal, with 100 percent spending cuts and the hope (or not) of new revenue.

Related:

Jon Stewart on the Teaparty members who refused to vote for the debt compromise bill

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What the fuck, Tea Partiers? What the fee-fi-fo-fuck? You control less than one-half of one chamber of Congress, and yet have somehow convinced everybody they’ve gotta slash trillions in spending because of the ‘deficit crisis.’ Many Republicans supported extending the largest contributing policy piece to our deficit — THE BUSH TAX CUTS!!! — take the win!

What are you so angry about? TAKE THE WIN! What are you still angry about? Yes (sardonic) — government still exists. We still have traffic lights. We’re sorry. Not everybody defines ‘freedom’ as ‘the ability to not pay taxes.’ Government isn’t perfect, but some people wish it was better — not gone. This whole process has been like, you’re in a bank, it’s a negotiation where you got some hostages, and after getting everything you wanted, you’re still like, ‘Hey — I still get to kill the hostages, right?

JON STEWART, on petulant Tea Party members who refused to vote for the debt compromise bill, on The Daily Show.

Fuck the Tea Party.

(via inothernews | image: theinquietude)

The video clip:


Five things liberals can like about the Debt Deal

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As Jay Newton-Small argues, if we lived in a world where the teaparty didn’t exist, this wouldn’t be a good deal. But the teaparty does exist — at least for now — and when you look at things a little closer, some of this deal is pretty okay:

  1. The 2012 budget: At one point in the negotiations, the 2012 budget was to be slashed by $36 billion. The final number of cuts: just $7 billion. And just to ensure we don’t have another bruising government shutdown fight over cuts in September, the deal deems and passes the 2012 budget. Yes, that’s right, the old Gephardt Rule or Slaughter Solution, is back. What’s deem and pass? It’s a legislative trick that essentially means that Congress will consider the budget passed without ever actually having to vote on it.
  2. The trigger: This is counterintuitive, but the trigger is actually pretty good for Democrats. For all that MoveOn thinks that it would force benefit cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, it actually wouldn’t trigger benefit cuts to any entitlements. The only cuts it would force would be a 2% or more haircut for Medicare providers. And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, along with most Democrats, has never opposed provider cuts. Not only that, most progressives actually want the Pentagon cuts. So if the committee deadlocks and the trigger is pulled, Democrats won’t be miserable.
  3. The commission: Again, for all the liberal carping about a “Super Congress,” the commission of 12 members — three from each party in each chamber — set up to find the second phase of $1.5 trillion in cuts by Thanksgiving is actually rigged to force some revenue increases. Yes, the Bush tax cuts are off the table. But there are plenty of loopholes, subsidies and other corporate welfare programs that are on the table. And with such a strong trigger, it’s hard to imagine at least one Republican not voting to kill corporate jet subsidies over slashing $500 billion from the defense budget – even if the revenues aren’t offset. The question is: who are Republicans more afraid of, Grover Norquist or the joint chiefs? Democrats’ money is on the joint chiefs.
  4. The immediate cuts: It may seem like a lot, but the $917 billion in the first phase of cuts were carefully negotiated by Vice President Joe Biden and his group. They include $350 billion in Pentagon cuts – a win for liberals. They don’t touch entitlement benefits, another win. And they set top line numbers for the next decade of budgets that aren’t draconian. It still cuts where liberals might prefer to spend, but most of the savings are backloaded to avoid extreme austerity in next few years of fragile economic recovery.  Just $7 billion would be cut in 2012, and only $3 billion in 2013. And of that combined $10 billion, half would come from the Pentagon. On top of that, the discretionary spending caps on budgets in future Congresses are subject to revision by those bodies.
  5. The debt ceiling: Raising the debt ceiling through 2013 will not be contingent on the second round of cuts. There will merely be a vote of disapproval. This avoids another messy fight in January and another round of painful forced cuts.

Maybe someday, say after the 2012 elections, the teaparty will be a bad memory. That’s something everyone can help make possible — if they just vote this time.

Josh Marshall: what exactly is everyone complaining about? (Especially those who didn’t vote in 2010)

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Josh Marshall’s take on the arguments over the budget / debt deal:

From TPM Reader RW …

Let me get this straight. The President kept revenues on the table, did not touch the sunset provisions in the Bush tax cuts, ensured that military cuts keep the GOP honest, protected Medicare by adding in only provider cuts in the trigger, made the reduction apparently enough to stave off a debt downgrade, got the debt ceiling raised, wounded Boehner by demonstrating to the world that he is controlled by the Tea Party caucus, took out the requirement that a BBA be passed and sent to the states and got the extension through 2012? What exactly is wrong with this deal?

The fact that there are cuts? If people don’t like that, why in God’s name didn’t they turn out to vote and bring back our Congressional majority? Once these nut jobs were in there, it was inevitable that this crap was going to happen. Whether or not it is advisable to cut spending, what exactly was going to stop this from happening? My experience is that the primary factor in all negotiations are the facts on the ground. The complaints center on a ridiculous notion that if the President had only said “no” harder, that these guys would have caved in. This isn’t negotiating over who gets the side of the bed near the A/C. This is a complex matter involving 3,000 members and staffers. Negotiations in these situations don’t work like this. That’s why I’m irked by the constant parade of people comparing the negotiations to movies and card games. These comparisons obscure more than they reveal.

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It’s the single-payer health reform argument all over again. It’s not perfectly progressive, so it’s a “shit sandwich.” OBAMA IS JUST LIKE BUSH.

Public Enemy #1 (federal employees) have some questions

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Wonder if the feds who voted GOP in 2010 (or didn’t vote) have any regrets?

Q. If this bill does not pass soon, what do we do Wednesday morning?

A. Eric Yoder: Good point. The bill hasn’t passed yet and might not come up in the House until tomorrow. If it doesn’t pass by the end of the day tomorrow, show up for work unless your agency has told you not to. – August 01, 2011 12:57 PM

Q. What does this deal mean for the chances of a shut down show down over the 2012 budget? Did they get enough settled in this fight, or will there be another fight this fall or winter.

A. Eric Yoder:Well, the 2012 pie is going to be smaller than people were hoping/expecting. What does that suggest to you? – August 01, 2011 1:09 PM

Q. Joe, How will this deal affect federal workers immediately? Are there any departments that may be immediately downsizing?

A. Joe Davidson:We have no information about immediate hits on federal employees. The debt deal itself does not directly affect feds, but the budget cuts, of course, could affect them as agencies decide how to get by on less money. – August 01, 2011 1:02 PM

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