It is a recipe for another 10 years of depression. Yes, this is another episode of obvious things Ian wonders why he has to point out.
It is a recipe for another 10 years of depression. Yes, this is another episode of obvious things Ian wonders why he has to point out.
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Knute Rife
10 years? I think you’re being optimistic.
Ian Welsh
Yes, I’m usually optimistic. It irritates me to no end that people call me a pessimist.
anon2525
It is a recipe for another 10 years of depression. Yes, this is another episode of obvious things Ian wonders why he has to point out.
In that same vein of the What Ought to be Obvious, people should remember that legislation passed by one Congress&president does not tie the hands of any future Congress&president. So, looking backwards, in 2009 there was no reason that a Democratic House, Senate, and (nominally Democratic) president had to continue the tax policies of bush/cheney, but they chose to do just that, including extending those policies in December 2010.
No bill passed in the next few weeks must remain the law. Of course, the trend of the past thirty years has been for the republs to remove legislation passed by earlier Democratic Congresses and presidents, while Democrats refuse to un-do what the right wing has done.
rumor
This is tangental to your post, and I apologise, but may I suggest that ‘cynic’ might more accurately describe you (as it does me)? My preferred definition of the term is that a cynic grasps both what people are capable of (the optimist’s view) and what people typically, actually do (the pessimist’s view). (I came across this definition somewhere that I can’t now recall.) Cynicism is driven by the repeated observation of the former giving way to the latter.
Diana Prince
I has a sad 🙁
Notorious P.A.T.
Who cares about that? Rupert Murdoch hacked someones phone! RUPERT MURDOCH HACKED SOMEONE’S PHONE! Mr. Welsh, you need to keep your eye on what’s important. Didn’t you hear that Michelle Bachman’s husband said something homophobic? I’ll vote for anyone to keep her out of power! Priorities, people! Let’s focus here!
Diana Prince
I don’t think it should have gotten this far – as Krugman said several times, Obama should never have agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts at all – but especially never without making it conditional on increasing the debt ceiling. As he predicted, the Republicans would just use it as an opportunity to hold the country hostage. Personally, I think it was intentional because Obama is a Republican and wants austerity – because srsly! who couldn’t see that one coming from a mile away? 😉
However, giving Obama the Precompromiser-In-Chief the benefit of the doubt, wondering Ian (and everyone else) what you think about invoking the 14th amendment? I’ve read interesting stuff about the coin seignorage option too, but if he really wanted to talk tough (aka “Don’t call my bluff”) – shouldn’t he have just said, “if you do that, I’m going invoke the 14th amendment”? I think that would be the most obvious way to put the Republicans on the defensive and make it clear that they are putting the country at risk of a default – and as President he wouldn’t let that happen and wanted to assure everyone that there would be no question about anyone getting their Social Security check.
As we all know, it’s all theatre anyway – and that SS/Medicare have nothing to do with the deficit. However, it seems really mean and frankly dickish, to tell people that they should worry about getting their check if the Republicans don’t come to an agreement. He should have just said – I’m not going to let them do this. Protecting the interests of the people and the credit rating of the United States is “non-partisan”. Isn’t that the justification for the threat to the rating anyway – that our government can’t get it’s shit together enough to assure it’s creditors that it will not default?
Again – I think it’s all deliberate to justify cuts that he wants. But if people are still insisting that this is another example of Obama’s genius 11-dimensional chess moves that will make the Republicans look bad and obstructionist – it seems to me that it would have been better to tell people that he wouldn’t let the Republicans threaten the financial security of the most vulnerable, such as seniors who are on fixed incomes – and the economy of both the US and the rest of the world, especially since the taxpayer just footed the bill for the bailouts to save it?
sorry so verbose 🙁
Bolo
@Diana Prince: “However, giving Obama the Precompromiser-In-Chief the benefit of the doubt, …”
Hasn’t Obama been pushing for a more aggressive deficit reduction plan, aiming for $4 trillion instead of ~$2 trillion? The difference being that he wants to raise taxes a bit too.
I don’t see how you can give him the benefit of the doubt and wonder if he would use coin seignorage or the 14th amendment–all that would do is bypass the debt ceiling debacle. His agenda is still dead set on generating a decade long depression. He just wants to do it his way, not the Republican way.
Bolo
@Diana Prince:
Sorry, I really should read the full comment before replying… 🙂
“However, it seems really mean and frankly dickish, to tell people that they should worry about getting their check if the Republicans don’t come to an agreement.”
Basically, this. I think we’re in agreement that Obama is at least mean and dickish. I’d say that he’s a monstrous sociopath myself.
Notorious P.A.T.
“it seems really mean and frankly dickish, to tell people that they should worry about getting their check if the Republicans don’t come to an agreement.”
Not “seems”, “is”.
StewartM
Bolo:
Yeah, NOW he wants to raise taxes. Not in December, when he held all the cards and could force the issue.
Of course, the answer to the question, “Is Obama merely a clueless dupe with unlimited faith in ‘bipartisanship’ or a scheming closet conservative wishing to wreck the Democratic Party and the liberal brand for the foreseeable future?” is determined by just one observation:
Mitch McConnell offered as a compromise a clean debt ceiling bill. Yes, a clean debt ceiling bill also designed to give the Republicans cover by allowing them to vote against it while allowing it to pass, but a clean debt ceiling bill nonetheless. *Obama* was the one who rejected it in favor of an austerity “grand bargain”. Not those mean nasty Republicans.
Case closed.
The only hope now is that the Tea Partiers have spun out of the control of the corporate interests that brought them to power (fascists tend to be like that, you know, the same thing happened in the 1920s and 1930s). Because Obama’s a known Kenyan Muslim socialist who secretly hates white people, his having broadly embraced the “Gang of Six” proposals publically has made *that* very right-wing course unpalatable to the Tea Party, according to Mike Allen at Politico:
–A Senate Republican leadership aide emails with subject line “Gang of Six”: “Background guidance: The President killed any chance of its success by 1) Embracing it. 2) Hailing the fact that it increases taxes. 3) Saying it mirrors his own plan.”
Call it a vain hope, but some are saying it’s really already too late to craft any detailed plan that can get through. If Tea Party intransigence continues to torpedo anything like a compromise, and as pressure from Wall Street and corporate America grows on both parties to just raise the damn debt ceiling, the only course left to the (relatively) sane in the room is a clean debt ceiling bill. That’s the only thing that they can agree on and as much as Wall Street might like to lay hands on SS money, next quarter’s profits trumps everything with them. Send a clean debt ceiling bill to Obama and then *dare* him to veto it (as he claims he will) after weeks of him telling us how catastrophic a default would be.
The reason why it’s probably a vain hope is that this would mean progressive Democrats would need to show some spine themselves and not side with any last-minute austerity package to “save the country” no matters how much pressure they get from the White House. That way, if the Tea Party balks, people are saying there’ll not be the votes.
I don’t want a default, but if it comes to that vs austerity I think a default is preferable. I believe so because I think a default will be very short-lived, the pressure from corporate America will be enormous, and given an option to pass a clean bill as a way out I think it will be Obama will the one who blinks. Right now the public is blaming the Republicans for this mess. If Obama doesn’t sign a clean bill, then all that anger is transferred to him.
-StewartM
zot23
America’s new motto:
“The stupid will continue until morale improves.”
Just watch if it doesn’t (the stupid, not the morale)…
Diana Prince
“We cannot guarantee – if there were a default – that any specific bill would be paid,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said, seeking to leverage public pressure on negotiators from both sides who are headed back to the White House this afternoon.
President Obama also raised the specter of short-changing recipients of federal benefits, telling CBS’s Scott Pelly in an interview that “there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.”
More than 80 million Americans who receive benefits payments from the government each month could be at risk, the Treasury Department said. Most of those checks cover Social Security recipients, veterans and civil service retirees.
———————————–
I have to admit that when I read those quotes, I just thought “what an asshole”. They say it so casually – obviously completely oblivious as to what that check actually means to people on a fixed/low income. If you don’t get your check there’s literally no money for rent, food, medicine or anything else. You can lose your home/apt, be in medical danger or eat “catfood” (thus “Catfood Commission” ) – not to mention late fees. It could directly affect 80 million people immediately. Even if Obama is trying to get the cuts he wants (I think so) or really believes it’s needed (again yes, because he’s a Republican) – this is not the way to deal with it in a “responsible”, “grown up” manner. They have no comprehension that people literally need these checks to survive.
And it’s particularly disgusting as SS/Medicare have nothing to do with the Deficit anyway. We fucking pay for it. If the trust fund really had no money as they claim, then why the hell are they always trying to raid it? I think probably because it is actually solvent. It’s so Orwellian. And the apologists try justify all of this as “savvy” politics (srsly?) without even thinking about how stressful and frightening it is for the people who need it. It never occurs to them that it actually affects an enormous amount of people who are barely getting by. It’s obvious that none of these people know what it’s like living paycheck to paycheck or they would realize that 80 million people are worrying about how they are going to make rent and get food next month.
Sorry for the long quote – just thought it was relevant that this isn’t just a random quote that can get taken out of context. This is the official message of the White House – from the President and the White House spokesman. It doesn’t even occur to them that what they are saying is dickish and how shameful it is that they would put this on the table in the first place – and used as a bargaining chip – for no reason (fiscally or politically) – by a Democratic President – about a vote on the debt ceiling that is usually a formality, but he stupidly let the other party use to hold the country hostage because he extended the Bush taxcuts without making it conditional on the debt ceiling being raised (and because of his endless caving to their every demand). And it all gets decided by a Gang of Six rich dickheads (actually seven now – yay, another Republican) without the rest of Congress. Wtf?!? That’s hardly representative of the populace. These seven douchebags are literally dictating what will happen to changes in Medicare/SS, tax code etc – while risking the credit rating of the United States (not to mention the welfare of it’s citizens) – and an already fragile (raided by banksters) world economy.
sorry – verbose again 🙁
anon2525
More obviousness:
When unemployment stopped increasing, the people who had not yet lost their jobs watched warily, but stopped panicking and demanding that something be done. Now that unemployment is increasing, anxiety among the employed is increasing (“A recession is when your neighbor loses his job; a depression is when you lose your job”).
Also, September will change every politician’s focus to next year’s election. And it will get more intense at the start of 2012. If obama manages to get his $3 trillion spending cut passed, people are not going to care whether he closed loopholes on corporations and the wealthy. It would make for an interesting sixteen months.
Repeating Nader’s observation & prediction:
“Wait until October,” Ralph Nader said when we spoke this weekend. “That’s when the budget cuts will hit home. It is one thing to have the governors of Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida and the legislators saying we will cut this and that. We don’t know what will actually happen when the guillotines are put in place. You may have a different kind of surge of public resistance and protest.
“There will be more and more people in the streets, homeless and hungry,” he said of the looming cuts. “Babies will be sick. Everything will be overloaded from the free food to the clinics. You never know where the spark will come from. Look at the guy who robbed the bank for a dollar. That was not quite the spark, but that is what I am talking about. This is what you have to do to get health care. Let’s say 50 people did that. There are a lot of dry tinder piles like that.”
anon2525
It never occurs to them that it actually affects an enormous amount of people who are barely getting by. It’s obvious that none of these people know what it’s like living paycheck to paycheck or they would realize that 80 million people are worrying about how they are going to make rent and get food next month.
What is needed is for us to make it impossible for them not to know this. Simply voting and expecting politicians to represent our interests is too passive, and waiting until the next election is waiting too long. We don’t have any organization, so it looks as though some spontaneous uprising is going to be needed.
anon2525
…telling CBS’s Scott Pelly in an interview…
Pelly is partly to blame for this. His years of “training” on “60 Minutes” taught him to ask the sensationalist question that might get a scary answer. Where was the follow-up question: “The U.S. gov’t. pays billions of dollars to private companies using “no-bid, cost-plus” contracts from the bush/cheney era. These contracts pay out-sized salaries and significant guaranteed profits. Given the size of the federal deficit, what are you doing to replace these contracted services and products with lower-cost gov’t. employees and competitively-bid products?”
Tom Hickey
Lots of reasons why a global depression is baked in already.
The Raven
Me, just over a year ago:
Last month,
I see it, too. What do we do to get through the next 10 years?
Ian Welsh
If something like this passes Obama’s chances of reelection go way down. His ONLY hope is that the Republicans nominate someone completely and utterly and obviously unsuitable.
anon2525
I see it, too. What do we do to get through the next 10 years?
Either we get them to change the course, or a lot of us do not get through the next ten years.
Phil Perspective
Ian:
Is President Obama so in hock to Geithner that he doesn’t realize this austerity BS will seriously crimp his re-election chances?
The Raven
“His ONLY hope is that the Republicans nominate someone completely and utterly and obviously unsuitable.”
Well, that’s all right, then.
“Either we get them to change the course, or a lot of us do not get through the next ten years.”
Is there perhaps something we can do other than depending on moving our deadlocked governing elite?
anon2525
…wondering Ian (and everyone else) what you think about invoking the 14th amendment?
Democrat Barney Frank had some interesting thoughts on the use of this. It will be interesting to see if it comes to this.
He also addressed the issue of invoking the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling, something Bill Clinton said would use today.
“I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Frank. “First of all, I think that it lets the right wing off the hook — it lets them claim they were dead set against it. Secondly, I think it looks undemocratic.”
“I’ve been critical of the unitary executive,” he said. “It’s an accretion of executive power.”
But what if no agreement is forthcoming? Frank said he would support using the 14th Amendment “only after there was a bad result, and the predictable economic consequences came.”
anon2525
Is there perhaps something we can do other than depending on moving our deadlocked governing elite?
My hope, such as it is, is that once these spending cuts have been passed, the reaction that congresspeople face is the same one the house republs faced after they voted for the Ryan plan, only much worse. They don’t represent our interests and they live inside that echo chamber where they listen to lobbyists and each other. They’re going to have to be made to listen by having our voices be unavoidable. But we have no organization, and so far most people aren’t paying attention and might not until congress acts by voting.
Or, they might decide not to make the cuts, but the economy continues to slowly bleed jobs.
Diana Prince
He also addressed the issue of invoking the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling, something Bill Clinton said would use today. “I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Frank. “First of all, I think that it lets the right wing off the hook — it lets them claim they were dead set against it. Secondly, I think it looks undemocratic.”
—————-
I read this too – also about using a coin seignorage option and my basic understanding is that it wouldn’t be in legally questionable territory. Re the 14th amendment – I’m not fan of the unitary executive either – but then I think about how they have claimed the right to target American citizens for assassination – and nobody seemed real freaked about that. I don’t know if the coin seignorage would work because even if it’s legally unquestionable – I think some people would say they are just “printing money”. And even if you are allowed to do it (print money) because you have a sovereign currency (or at least that is my understanding because the gold standard is no longer used – I think) – but some people get tweaked by the gold standard stuff – so that’s why I was thinking that invoking the 14th Amendment just might be more straightforward.
I think Clinton said that essentially he would dare them to prove it in court. I think at some point during his presidency there was some concern that the Republicans would try the same thing (of course) so they had looked into it. Frankly, I think that’s why they never tried – because he would never let them get away with that and they know it. Just like they knew he would use his veto. It’s kind of similar to the “showdown” he had with Gingrich – and he won that one. I don’t know – but I feel like it would show more leadership and prove that he wants to take reform seriously rather than cram though some sketchy deal (with him giving more than the Republicans asked for – just like every other time). I like how Clinton put it in context of how it isn’t fair to let someone put the nation’s credit at risk. He’s right – and that’s exactly what pisses everyone off about this the most.
——————————-
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/07/19/272524/clinton-14th-debt-ceiling/
Sharply criticizing Congressional Republicans in an exclusive Monday evening interview with The National Memo, Clinton said, “I think the Constitution is clear and I think this idea that the Congress gets to vote twice on whether to pay for [expenditures] it has appropriated is crazy.”Lifting the debt ceiling “is necessary to pay for appropriations already made,” he added, “so you can’t say, ‘Well, we won the last election and we didn’t vote for some of that stuff, so we’re going to throw the whole country’s credit into arrears”
Diana Prince
also re looking undemocratic – neither does a gang of six rich guys deciding for everyone – after creating a fake crisis so they could hold the country hostage and then give themselves the authority to dictate policy.
Morocco Bama
It’s a fruitless exercise and a complete waste of time to analyze the machinations of the political process. There’s an entire industry surrounding this now….instead of NFL Today, it’s D.C. Today. By remaining glued to the machinations and the play by play, you miss the larger picture, and that is despite all the alleged strategy, it’s still heads they win and tails you lose, so why bother giving a shit about the process? And yet so many of you still do, as though blabbering on incessantly about it will somehow magically change the trajectory. I turned sports off, completely, several years prior for this very reason, and now that I look back on the stupidity of following it so closely, I realize I was brainwashed into finding it entertaining, when it actuality it is quite dull to the point of absurd. So much time and energy spent accomplishing NOTHING….and yet we whine and wonder why we are in this predicament. It’s this simple. We are in this predicament because of what we do every moment of every day. If political analysis gets you off, then you have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo because it fulfills some kind of perverted need for the useless back and forth many here have labeled “Kabuki.” Same goes for zealous sports fans….they are so singularly occupied and entranced by the play by play, the majority of what “life” has to offer passes them by and they go to their grave not even recognizing that sobering fact. It’s exactly this that makes me believe, actuarially speaking, that it is highly implausible the current trajectory will be altered voluntarily. The only thing that will stop it is a wall not of our making. It will look something like this, perhaps:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q35xHzjxB0