Jon Kyl threatens to quit the supercommittee in a huff? Well, boo-hoo!

Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl: If he quits the supercommittee, that would be a good thing, wouldn't it?

by Ken

Jon Kyl: I'd quit supercommittee over defense cuts

By CHARLES HOSKINSON | 9/8/11 1:42 PM EDT Updated: 9/8/11 4:27 PM EDT

It has only met once, but Sen. Jon Kyl is already threatening to quit the deficit busting supercommittee if the panel pushes more defense cuts.
“I’m off the committee” if there are deeper cuts to the military, Kyl warned at a forum sponsored by several conservative think tanks, including AEI, the Foreign Policy Initiative and the Heritage Foundation.

The supercommittee met for the first time Thursday but made little progress other than giving opening statements and passing its own internal rules.

Kyl, an Arizona Republican, who is speaking for many defense hawks in trying to stave off deep cuts to national security, told the forum Thursday that “my point of view is that defense should not have any more cuts.”

Kyl and others are also deeply worried about the so-called trigger in the debt-limit law passed last month. If the supercommittee fails to reach between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, there will be automatic cuts in defense spending and Medicare.

The trigger was built into the debt-limit deal in order to force serious action from the supercommittee, but Kyl and others are already promising to rewrite the law to water down the trigger if the deficit panel fails to reach a deal by Thanksgiving.

If the “trigger” is pulled, “I would do my best to see to it that it never took effect,” Kyl said.

I'm sure I'm missing something here, but Jon Kyl threatening to quit the supercommittee in a huff (or a minute and a huff), this is excellent news, isn't it? Shouldn't someone be trying to persuade him that merely quitting the supercommittee isn't enough, he should quit the Senate, if not this earthly vale of tears altogether?

You have to feel for the senator -- well, just a little. After all, it wasn't that long ago that he could stand tall as a political primitive, confident that there was no one, or hardly anyone, in the Senate of a more knee-merk reactionary bent than his sad self. Now when you look at the kind of right-wing riffraff they're letting in the joint, he must feel like not much more than an ancient dung beetle staggering that last lap to the finish line. (Oh, I don't suppose dung beetles do laps, or have a finish line. So maybe it's not the world's most accurate, let alone elegant, metaphor.)

Still, when it comes to threatening to do his best to prevent laws from taking effect, aren't there some laws on the books to cover the situation? I can't think of a more fitting way for a useless turd like Senator Kyl to crown his career in public life than by dying in prison.


MAY WE GUESS THAT THE PRINCIPAL BUSINESS OF THE
SUPERCOMMITTEE IS BUSINESS -- CAMPAIGN BUSINESS?

Fanfare, please: The supercommittee is now in business, co-chaired by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX). Aren't these the 12 people you would pick to right the government's budgetary course?

I've lost the link, but this morning I had one to a piece about bonanza-like fund-raising activities of the Super 12, the senators and representatives their respective leaderships deemed their supergiant repositories of budgetary wisdom to solve the impasse that even a less lily-livered manner of congressional Democrats probably couldn't have finessed over the conspiracy of the criminality and cretinousness that now constitutes Your Republican Party.

Meanwhile, as the Christian Science Monitor's Gail Russell Chaddock reported today:

Unlike any other congressional committee, the deficit reduction panel's mandate potentially covers every aspect of federal taxing and spending. That’s why public interest groups – and the protesters evicted from Thursday’s first meeting – are pushing so hard for public access to committee deliberations.

So far, the panel has committed only to Thursday’s public organizing session and a public hearing on Sept. 13 on “the history and drivers of our nation’s debt and its threats.” The co-chairs of the panel, Sen. Patty Murray (D) of Washington and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R) of Texas both noted in their opening statements that many deliberations will be closed to the press and public.

I think it's safe to say that if there's anything the Super 12 don't want to know, we're not going to know it -- unless some enterprising journalistic sleuths are the beneficiaries of hostile leaks, or until people start writing their memoirs.

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A Brief Comment On The Standard & Poors Downgrade

Some people want to blame Boehner and Cantor. Others say it's McConnell's fault. Or the GOP's or the screwed up political system, or the fault of the out-of-whack social system that's become less and less fair in the last few decades. But I'd say this video get's it just about perfect:




UPDATE: Bernie Sanders

Good someone noticed! "I find it interesting to see S&P so vigilant now in downgrading the U.S. credit rating. Where were they four years ago when they, and other credit rating agencies, helped cause this horrendous recession by providing AAA ratings to worthless sub-prime mortgage securities on behalf of Wall Street investment firms? Where were they last December when Congress and the White House drove up the national debt by $700 billion by extending Bush's tax breaks for the rich?”

Not Even Many Bright Shiny Objects For The Base

The ruling elite didn't even have the decency to throw in an extension of unemployment benefits as a sweetener to cowed Democrats in Congress. I guess they figured they could use that as a backup if too many House Democrats decided to follow their consciences... instead of their Conservative Consensus president who already lost them their majority last year and is guaranteeing they won't win it back in 2012. That won't be necessary though, will it?

Yesterday MoveOn asked its members if the organization should support the sugarcoated Satan Sandwich or not.

As you've probably read, Republicans are holding our country's credit hostage and demanding major spending cuts to critical programs without ending tax breaks for the wealthy. If a deal isn't reached by tomorrow night-- or a short-term extension isn't passed by then-- the nation will default on its debts.

President Obama just announced an agreement with congressional leaders. We want to see what MoveOn members think of the deal. (For more information on the details of the deal, see below.) 

Supporting the deal means we would encourage Congress to vote for it and avert default. Opposing the deal means we would encourage members of Congress to vote no and demand that the deal be improved before it's passed.

Can you let us know what you think? Should MoveOn support the deal to raise the debt ceiling?

Progressive Members of Congress, led by Bernie Sanders in the Senate and Raul Grijalva in the House, have been adamantly opposed, although the Democratic Party's ultimate corporate shill and suckup, Steny Hoyer, immediately promised to provide however many Democrats Boehner needs to make up for GOP defections. As Steve Benen, normally a dependable voice for the White House point of view, raged in his column yesterday, the deal can't even be called a "compromise."

The debt-reduction framework isn’t a compromise; it’s a ransom. If one were to draw up two lists-- one with all the concessions Democrats made, the other with the concessions the GOP made-- the one-sided image would be striking. Of course, that’s what happens when one party has a gun to the head of its hostage-- in this case, the nation and its economy-- and the other party wants to prevent their rivals from pulling the trigger.

...[T]here’s nothing in this deal to promote economic growth and nothing to create jobs. We’re still stuck in the wrong conversation, focusing on a crisis that doesn’t exist, and ignoring the immediate crisis that confronts the nation. Indeed, all available evidence suggests the agreement will make the economy and job losses worse, not better. That Republicans wanted to take a huge step backwards, and Democrats negotiated to make it a more modest step backwards is cold comfort.

Two and a half hours later Benen was paraphrasing Neil Young: The ceiling and the damage done, and seemingly absolving Obama from all blame for this hideous deal he could have prevented.

The United States, thanks entirely to the right’s breathtaking stunt, is now seen as a less-safe bet and a less-attractive place for investment. The nation is now seen as more dysfunctional and less responsible. We’ve been made to look like fools on the global stage, and China has sought to exploit the Republican crisis, to the GOP’s indifference.

I’m reminded of something Felix Salmon wrote a few weeks ago: “The base-case scenario is, still, that the debt ceiling will be raised, somehow. But already an enormous amount of damage has been done: the US Congress has demonstrated clearly that it can’t be trusted to govern the country in a responsible manner. And the tail-risk implications for markets are huge.”

I don’t know if Republican lawmakers are aware of any of this. Worse, I also don’t know if they care. But American leadership on the global stage rests on certain pillars that took generations to build and strengthen-- credibility, reliability, stability, the integrity of our institutions, sound judgment. The Republican Party severely undermined these pillars in the Bush era, most notably in areas of foreign policy and the use of military force. The Republican Party is now severely undermining them again.

The world has been watching and thanks to GOP madness, the sanity of the world’s greatest superpower is very much in doubt.

The White House has been pushing back with a pathetic effort to make Democrats think the deal Boehner, Grover Norquist and Eric Erickson are pimping is great for ordinary working families. It's really sad. Time gave them a platform for their fumbling excuses:

Here’s why some liberals are actually happy with this deal:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Happy yet? No? Well, the White House is also promising to back same sex marriage to shut some people up and insisting that insurers must cover birth control with no copays. Nice... but nothing will ever change the fact that Barack Obama, whose most salient personality defect is his fear of losing a fight, which prevents him from ever getting into one-- has been an absolute catastrophe for ordinary working families in this country. Here are two typical statements from progressive activist organizations. First from the Center for Community Change:

This deal worsens the serious imbalance in this country between wealthy Americans who get to retain their huge tax breaks while lawmakers slash spending on the backs of working Americans.

“There is no attempt at shared sacrifice in the debt plan, nothing that addresses how to create more jobs in this country, and this plan offers only more insecurity to families already on the brink of financial catastrophe, rather than offering any type of assistance to them,” said Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change.

In thousands of house meetings held last month across the country, Americans fed up with waiting for elected lawmakers to help turn the economy around came together to talk about ways to create jobs to help rebuild the country.

“Washington is clearly broken and our elected officials are playing only petty political games,” Bhargava said. “Together we can succeed but it would be a lot easier if Congress would just listen to their constituents who want the rich to pay their fair share, pass serious legislation to create jobs and protect those most vulnerable from cuts to critical programs.”

And then, from Justin Ruben, Executive Director of MoveOn: “This is a bad deal for our fragile economic recovery, a bad deal for the middle class and a bad deal for tackling our real long-term budget problems. It forces deep cuts to important programs that protect the middle class, but asks nothing of big corporations and millionaires. And though it does not require cuts to Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid benefits, it opens the door for these down the road via an unaccountable Congressional committee. We surveyed our 5 million members and the vast majority oppose the deal because it unfairly asks seniors and the middle class to bear the burden of the debt deal. Congress should do what it should have done long ago and what it has done dozens of times before-- pass a clean debt ceiling bill.” And, in case you haven't heard, Blue America won't be endorsing or raising money for any incumbents who vote for the SatanSandwich. We haven't had an Olbermann Special Comment for quite a while; it's time:

Will Progressives Abandon Obama... Even With Fascists Burning Down The Country (Literally)?

We have our own brand problems now

Earlier today, Digby started a brilliant post explaining what's gone down in the debt ceiling kabuki by quoting a jubilant George Will:

"Conservatives are saying it's imperfect, to which one must say, the Sistine Chapel is probably in some sense imperfect."

This morning Paul Krugman was on ABCNews with Christiane Amanpour. He'd sure make a better leader-- or poker player-- than Obama. He sees the same thing Will sees, although his reaction is more sympathetic to the victims of Austerity, most of us:

"From the perspective of a rational person-- in other words a progressive-- we shouldn't be talking about spending cuts at all now. We have 9% unemployment. These spending cuts are going to worsen unemployment. It's even going to hold the long-run fiscal picture because we have a situation where more and more people are becoming permanent long-term unemployed... We used to talk about the Japanese and lost decade. We'll look at them as a role model. They did better than we're doing. this is going to go on. I have nobody I know who thinks the unemployment rate will be below 8% at the end of next year. With the spending cuts it might be above 9% at the end of next year. There is no light at the end of this tunnel. We're having a debate in Washington, all about, 'Gee, we'll make the economy worse, but will we make it worse on 90% of the Republicans' terms or 100% of Republicans' terms?' The answer is 100%."

I'm a happy guy; I don't let things get me down. Nothing depresses me. Last night at dinner, 3 savvy progressives asked me what country I thought would be best to move to after the 2012 elections. (I lived in Europe during the Nixon/Vietnam War years.) I ain't movin' anywhere again. This time I'm staying and fighting.

Last night, right after the outline of Obama's complete surrender to the Far Right came out, someone tweeted that the White House was denying that there's a deal. Let me see if I can find it. Ah... there it is: a tiny little hope in the firestorm:


Turns out to be a false hope. As John Conyers pointed out, it was Obama who put Social Security cuts on the table for the corporate overlords, not the Republicans who want it so badly but are too (wisely) scared. And it's been Obama who has been feeding their hated anti-Medicare mania. Another scrap of hope-- a really far-fetched one this time:


Obama didn't win California's 55 electoral votes in 2010 because of the one I, on a leap of faith, cast for him. 8,274,473 Californians voted for him, more than 3 million the number who came out for John McCain. If Obama can't win California without my vote, he's not going to come close to winning in states he needs, like Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and New Hampshire. How many more progressive Democrats, like me, have made up their minds to withhold their votes from Obama next year-- not in California, where it is easy to take the high ground, but in the swing states, where an election is decided? Today's NY Times sees a problem with the base if Obama is really signing on to this dreadful deal the Republicans have forced him into. This morning Jackie Calmes wrote about the rightward tilt and the party rift.

However the debt limit showdown ends, one thing is clear: under pressure from Congressional Republicans, President Obama has moved rightward on budget policy, deepening a rift within his party heading into the next election.

Entering a campaign that is shaping up as an epic clash over the parties’ divergent views on the size and role of the federal government, Republicans have changed the terms of the national debate. Mr. Obama, seeking to appeal to the broad swath of independent voters, has adopted the Republicans’ language and in some cases their policies, while signaling a willingness to break with liberals on some issues.

That has some progressive members of Congress and liberal groups arguing that by not fighting for more stimulus spending, Mr. Obama could be left with an economy still producing so few jobs by Election Day that his re-election could be threatened. Besides turning off independents, Mr. Obama risks alienating Democratic voters already disappointed by his escalation of the war in Afghanistan and his failure to close the Guantánamo Bay prison, end the Bush-era tax cuts and enact a government-run health insurance system.

“The activist liberal base will support Obama because they’re terrified of the right wing,” said Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the liberal group Campaign for America’s Future.
But he said, “I believe that the voting base of the Democratic Party-- young people, single women, African-Americans, Latinos-- are going to be so discouraged by this economy and so dismayed unless the president starts to champion a jobs program and take on the Republican Congress that the ability of labor to turn out its vote, the ability of activists to mobilize that vote, is going to be dramatically reduced.”

Borosage is a friend of mine but I disagree with him. Members of he liberal activist base, or at least many of them, are abandoning Obama despite the false threat of BACHMANN!!!!!-- which the Republican Establishment will never let happen. Pawlenty was supposed to knock her out of the primaries in return for the Romney VP nomination. T-Paw turned out to be the biggest political dud since Fred Thompson... so they recruited Texas dullard, Rick Perry-- yes, dumber than Bush-- to do the job for them.

Obama, in his failed effort for greater deficit reduction, has put on the table far more in reductions for future years’ spending, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, than he did in new revenue from the wealthy and corporations. He proposed fewer cuts in military spending and more in health care than a bipartisan Senate group that includes one of the chamber’s most conservative Republicans.

To win approval of the essential increase in the nation’s $14.3 trillion borrowing ceiling, Mr. Obama sought more in deficit reduction than Republicans did, and with fewer changes to the entitlement programs, because he was willing to raise additional revenue starting in 2013 and they were not. And despite unemployment lingering at its highest level in decades, Mr. Obama has not fought this year for a big jobs program with billions of dollars for public-works projects, which liberals in his party have clamored for. Instead, he wants to extend a temporary payroll tax cut for everyone, since Republicans will support tax cuts, despite studies showing that spending programs are generally the more effective stimulus.

Even before last November’s election gave the Republicans control of the House, Mr. Obama had said he would pivot to deficit reduction after two years of stimulus measures intended first to rescue the economy and then to spur a recovery from the near collapse of the financial system. With Republicans’ gains in the midterm elections, that pivot became a lurch. Yet Congressional Republicans say Mr. Obama seeks a debt limit increase as “a blank check” to keep spending.

“The Republicans won, and they don’t know how to accept victory,” said Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

...“The president’s proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare has the potential to sap the energy of the Democratic base — among older voters because of Medicare and Medicaid and younger voters because of the lack of jobs,” said Damon A. Silvers, policy director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “And second, all these fiscal austerity proposals on the table will make the economy worse.”

Mr. Obama’s situation has parallels with the mid-1990s, when President Bill Clinton shifted to the center after Republicans took Congress and battled them on deficit reduction and a welfare overhaul. Many Democrats were angered by his concessions, by a sense of being left out of negotiations and by a fear of alienating Democratic voters. Mr. Clinton was re-elected in 1996.

But Mr. Obama is likely to face the voters with a weaker economy and higher unemployment than during Mr. Clinton’s era. Still, his advisers express confidence that voters will reward Mr. Obama either for winning a bipartisan deal, if that were to happen, or for at least having a more balanced approach that does not remake Medicare and Medicaid and asks for more revenue from the wealthy. And they suggest another potential parallel with the Clinton years of divided government: that Republicans risk a voter backlash with their uncompromising stands.

There are going to be a lot of people aliented from "mainstream" politics now, even as the radical-- now fascist-- right turns more and more to crap like this:

Fire officials in La Crosse are continuing to investigate a Saturday blaze that destroyed the regional offices of We Are Wisconsin, a union political action committee (PAC) that has pumped millions of dollars into supporting Democratic candidates in the upcoming recall elections.

The La Crosse Tribune reports that the cause of the fire, which started at about 9:30 a.m., remains unknown. Firefighters thought they had the blaze under control in the afternoon, however, that wasn't the case and it continued into the evening, the newspaper reported.

We Are Wisconsin used the building at 432 Jay St. to oversee its efforts in the 32nd Senate District recall election, which will be held Aug. 9. Incumbent Republican state Sen. Dan Kapanke is being challenged by Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Shilling in that district.

A spokesman for the group told the La Crosse Tribune that the group's office was a total loss.
We Are Wisconsin is a political action committee made up by a coalition of unions that has spent more than $2 million supporting Democratic recall candidates around Wisconsin, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

Today House Republicans Try To Sneak Through Ryan's Kill Medicare Plan Again

This time they've got some new wrapping paper for the thoroughly discredited Ryan budget: Cut, Cap & Balance in the House and a Balanced Budget Amendment in the Senate. And both are actually even worse than Ryan's budget! So while Republican Party hostage takers and terrorists continue to threaten to crash the economy again if they don't get their way on whatever they want this week-- and with a new poll showing that 71% of Americans have no confidence in how Boehner, Cantor, Ryan and their House cronies are handling the debt crisis-- the latest right-wing gimmick will be voted on later today... before disappearing just as Ryan's ridiculous budget did. One measure would seek to limit federal spending at 18% of gross domestic product and the other at 22%. As the Center for American Progress points out, "the last time federal spending dipped under 18% of GDP was 1966, nearly half a century ago. Things have changed quote a but since then." Please click on their infographic to enlarge it:


Like Ryan's rejected and disdained budget, this "plan," would basically gut Medicare, Medicaid and threaten the existence of Social Security and public education. Of course those are all long-cherished goals of the far right. It would virtually guarantee the country's rapid and probably irreversible decent into the ranks of the Third World. Remember Grover Norquist's raging nonsense about drowning the federal government in a bathtub? They're trying it again.

The White House pointed out that the House plan “would undercut the Federal Government’s ability to meet its core commitments to seniors, middle-class families and the most vulnerable, while reducing our ability to invest in our future,” while imposing “unrealistic spending caps that could result in significant cuts to education, research and development, and other programs critical to growing our economy and winning the future.” It would “lead to severe cuts in Medicare and Social Security” and said the Balanced Budget Amendment “will likely leave the nation unable to meet its core commitment of ensuring dignity in retirement.”

The front-runner in the GOP presidential freak show, Michele Bachmann, of course, loves it. I wonder how many of her supporters have the capacity to figure out how badly this would devastate their standard of living. The Democrats on the House Budget Committee put it like this:

The Republicans’ newly introduced “Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011” (H.R. 2560) is yet another attempt to enact the policies they approved with their budget resolution this spring-- to end the Medicare guarantee while continuing tax breaks for special interests and the wealthy. It requires immediate and steep spending cuts starting this October that will put more Americans out of work while the country is still recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression. It caps total spending-- including mandatory spending programs, such as unemployment benefits, that are designed to grow when the economy is bad-- for fiscal years 2013-2021 at lower percentages of the economy (Gross Domestic Product, or GDP). More immediately, it requires passage of a specific type of a so-called “balanced budget” constitutional amendment by both the House and the Senate before the debt limit can be increased. This new hurdle makes it even harder for Congress to increase the debt limit by August 2, which it must do to avoid fiscal calamity and higher interest costs for consumers and the government alike.

Listening in on a White House press briefing yesterday by Jason Furman from the National Economic Council and Obama's Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer it was clear the White House sees right through the GOP silliness with this new tact to get Ryan's kill-Medicare proposals passed. Pfeiffer:

[I]t’s important also to understand that what this Cut, Cap and Balance plan does is it essentially enshrines into the Constitution the Ryan plan on steroids. Unless House Republicans are willing to raise revenues, significant revenues, something they have refused to do, it would require much deeper spending cuts than in the Ryan plan. This would result in even more devastating cuts to clean energy, education and health care for children and people with disabilities.

The Ryan plan would force a senior to pay more than $6,000 for health care. The plan being considered by the House would require even further Medicare cuts, making health care for seniors much more expensive and less accessible.

And it goes after Social Security. And the whole basis of an American middle class and a progressive middle class society... forever. Furman:

The legislation being considered today, though, goes well beyond the Ryan budget, because it also includes a requirement that both houses of Congress pass a balanced budget amendment before the debt limit can be raised. Now, first of all, this is basically holding the debt-- the equivalent of holding the debt limit hostage to an extreme agenda that’s well outside the bounds of anything that could pass the Senate and likely even anything that could pass the House with the magnitude needed for an amendment of this type.

And the reason for that is clear, is that this balanced budget amendment is essentially historically unparalleled. In the past, balanced budget amendments required you to balance the budget, period; left it to Congress to figure out how to do it. What this balanced budget amendment does-- these balanced budget amendments would do is, number one, add in spending caps. And the spending caps in the balanced budget amendment that are referenced in the legislation and would be consistent with what the legislation requires would require cutting spending by $400 billion per year relative to the Ryan budget.

So the spending caps in these balanced budget amendments that are referenced in the legislation have literally, over the next decade, trillions of dollars of spending cuts above and beyond what would be required in the Ryan budget. It’s almost inconceivable that you would be able to do spending cuts of this magnitude absent dramatic reductions in Social Security and Medicare.

For example, if you exempted defense spending, you would need a 12 percent cut in all spending, including Social Security-- that would be a $2,000-per-year reduction in average benefits-- and a 12 percent reduction in Medicare.

The other reason that those cuts would be virtually guaranteed by the balanced budget amendment is because, unlike previous balanced budget amendments, it has a two-thirds supermajority to raise taxes. That would make it virtually impossible that you would get any additional revenue, which would guarantee that you would need to balance the budget at the expense of spending.

It’s important to understand that you don’t need a balanced budget amendment to cut spending, you don’t need a balanced budget amendment to get the deficit under control. And, in fact, the Ryan budget itself has deficits of over 1 percent of GDP and nearly 2 percent of GDP in most years. So even the Ryan plan would fail the test being put forward in the extreme, radical, unprecedented balanced budget amendments that are contemplated in this legislation.

For all those reasons, the President has said he would veto legislations of this nature, and at the same time, wants to pursue a responsible course that’s both balanced, that’s consistent with economic recovery, and that doesn’t shortchange critical priorities like infrastructure, education, clean energy and Medicare.

Will Rick Perry Ride To The Rescue?

The Republican Establishment is determined to roll the dice on Mitt Romney. He's rich; he has rich friends; he's vanilla and predictable, doesn't look like a freak and, most important, it's "his turn," always an important consideration in a dead-end bureaucracy like the Republican Party. But there's a problem: other than fellow Mormons and fellow vulture capitalists, no one likes him-- and the religious right just hates him. Sure, Republicans think he's better than Obama and many other people think he's no worse than Obama-- which is a helluva lot more positive than, say, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin or any of the other dwarves offering themselves up for the task. But still, there's something uncomfortable in everyone's craw about Romney. He's trying desperately to come off like an everyman, but he's even less successful at it than David Cameron was in the U.K. But if not Romney, who?

Enter Governor Rick Perry of Texas, either as a candidate of the religionist nuts in his own right (no one in the early states cares much about him yet) or as the one who can derail the dreaded Bachmann. No doubt some people do like him for some reason. I won't speculate on that and everyone I know in Texas just hates his guts-- but that's probably a good indication of why he's popular, or even just potentially popular, among Republicans, especially of the far right-wing variety. He's not as unpopular as Rick Scott, Republican governor of Florida, or Scott Walker, Republican governor of Wisconsin. And his July 11th polling numbers were actually even a point above Obama's. Let me go off on a little tangent for a minute and I'll circle back to Rick Perry in a moment. The tangent is Karl Frisch's brilliant analysis yesterday about how the deadbeat congressional Republicans manufactured the default crisis for their own political ends.

During the previous dare not speak his name presidency, both parties increased the debt ceiling so that we could pay our creditors for money borrowed to fund things already approved by Congress and the President. Nothing new there, the debt ceiling has been raised 72 times over the past half century.

Now, with Republicans in control of the House and with a filibuster in the Senate, suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of a debate, this time under President Obama. Which only goes to show you that nothing Obama does will be met without controversy from conservatives. He could take his young daughters ice-skating for Christmas and the right would accuse him of imitating Jesus by walking on water.

A group of 235 economists-- six of them Nobel Prizers-- have written Congressional leaders imploring them to promptly raise the debt ceiling, or risk “substantial negative impact on economic growth at a time when the economy looks a bit shaky. In a worst case, it could push the United States back into recession.”

Pair that warning with comments by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell that the “most important thing [Senate Republicans] want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president” and things begin to smell rotten.

If you doubt the penchant of Republicans to hold our economy hostage, perhaps Kentucky Senator Rand “Libertarian Magic Dust” Paul can change your mind. He threatened to filibuster everything in the Senate until there was a floor debate on the issue. Now, he never made it clear what he wanted to debate, but Majority Leader Harry Reid gave him that opportunity anyway by introducing a bill doing what he’d requested and wouldn’t you know it? Paul and 21 others voted against allowing debate on that bill. See, he’s so serious about the filibuster, he’ll even filibuster what he wants.

Republicans are banking on back-to-back economic collapses-- the first because of their Bush-backed policies, and the second because of partisan inaction-- but there couldn’t be anyone in their midst angling to benefit from the inability to act, could there?

Meet House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who has invested thousands of dollars with his friends on Wall Street in a fund that stands to make serious bank if we default on our obligations.

Cantor is betting against the American government, which I guess shouldn’t be all too surprising since Republicans have been betting against the government for generations. Heck, nearly every GOP campaign is premised on attacking the government. And when they do wrestle control away from the Democrats, Republicans govern in a way that would make anyone question our government’s purpose.

Current Beltway Republicans are just like their Bushian predecessors that got us into this mess in the first place. If we fail to meet our debt obligations, we will lose our perfect credit rating, which would, in turn, add billions of dollars to our debt each year in the form of increased interest. Talk about economic conservatism.

Well, talk about economic conservatism and talk about things Bushian and how could Texas not come to mind? Conservatives like to point to Texas-- Bush's and Perry's Texas-- as the model for how to do it the right way. Well... it may be how to do it the right wing way, but the correct way? That's a joke-- and Texans know it better than anyone.

For all the controversy over the national debt ceiling, here's a surprise: Since 2001, the debt load in conservative Texas has grown faster than the federal debt.

Texas has been borrowing more than most other states, too. And local entities, from cities to school districts to transit authorities, have been piling up even more debt.

From 2001 to 2010, state debt alone grew from $13.4 billion to $37.8 billion, according to the Texas Bond Review Board. That's an increase of 281 percent. Over the same time, the national debt rose almost 234 percent, with two wars, two tax cuts and stimulus spending.

The sets of numbers are not easily comparable, and not just because one is counted in billions and the other in trillions. National figures exclude some obligations, and the Texas total includes so-called conduit bonds, for which the state is not necessarily liable if the borrowers default.

Still, the trend is undeniable. While Texas lawmakers have refused to raise taxes-- and often criticize Washington for borrowing and spending-- the state has been paying for much of its expansion with borrowed money.

That's not a bad thing, if everybody can handle the debt service and spend the money prudently. Texas' population grew almost twice as fast as the nation's in the past decade, so it needs new highways, schools, prisons and more.

Local borrowing accounts for almost 85 percent of public debt in Texas, because the government is so decentralized. Combine state and local borrowing, and Texas ended fiscal 2008 with $216 billion in total debt, up from $98 billion in 2001, according to census figures. (The latest census data for local debt is 2008.)

The borrowing isn't slowing. New issues expected for 2011 include $2 billion for transportation, $434 million for water projects and $235 million for cancer research. All those are paid from the state's general fund.

Much more borrowing is planned for debt that's supported by revenue and user fees. And local borrowing dwarfs all the categories.

...Conservative writer Christopher Chantrill presents publicly available data on government finances and his estimates. Measured as a percentage of state product, he ranks Texas among the lowest on state debt and among the highest on local debt. Combine state and local, and in 2010, he estimates that Texas had debt of $8,943 per person, $380 more than the average for all the states. In 2001, the Texas debt load was $4,608 per person-- and $843 lower than the states' average.

Meanwhile Perry's in the news today-- not because of his secessionist/Confederate leanings but because he's being sued by a religious freedom group "in an effort to block his promotion of and participation in an all-day Christian prayer event to be held Aug. 6, arguing that it violates the constitutional separation of church and state."

The Freedom From Religious Foundation, which claims more than 16,000 members, including 700 in Texas, filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday in Houston, contending that Perry’s actions violate the Constitution's Establishment Clause by “giving the appearance that the government prefers evangelical Christian religious beliefs over other religious beliefs and non-beliefs.”

“We always say, beware prayer by pious politicians,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, who co-directs the group with her husband, Dan Barker, a former evangelical Christian minister who is now an atheist.

“Nothing fails like prayer,” she said. “It’s the ultimate political cop-out.”

The lawsuit, which comes as Perry flirts with joining the field of GOP presidential contenders, notes that the plaintiffs are “nonbelievers who support the free exercise of religion, but strongly oppose the government establishment and endorsement of religion, including prayer and fasting, which are not only an ineffectual use of time and government resources, but which can be harmful or counterproductive as a substitute for reasoned action.”

...“The answers for America’s problems won’t be found on our knees or in heaven, but by using our brains, our reason and in compassionate action,” Barker said. “Governor Perry’s distasteful use of his civil office to plan and dictate a religious course of action to ‘all citizens’ is deeply offensive to many citizens, as well as to our secular form of government.”

Perry has mixed religion with politics before. In April, he called on all Texans to pray for rain for three days as most of the state battled an extreme drought that led to massive wildfires that scorched more than a million acres this year, claimed the lives of two firefighters and destroyed nearly 400 homes.

It didn't work. Instead he called Obama and begged for relief for parched Texans.

Rummaging around among the disclosure forms of the House GOP plutocrats and debthounds

Is Paul "How to Marry a Millionaire" Ryan going to teach us all how to marry a mining heiress?

Frederick Deligne, in Le Pèlerin (France)

by Ken



Wednesday, you may have noticed, was Disclosure Day, when congressmembers' annual financial disclosure forms were made public, listing income, assets, liabilities, and other data. The Washington Post's David A. Fahrenthold and Karen Yourish focused on "the firebrand class of Republican freshmen" and found heavy concentrations of Richie Riches and debthounds. They found "at least 24 new millionaires," joining "a Congress that already had plenty." At the other end of the spectrum, however, they found:

Among the 87 new GOP members of Congress, the documents show, at least 30 had liabilities totaling $50,000 or more in 2010.



Those debts included large mortgages on investment properties, as well as student loans and credit card balances. At least seven freshmen had credit card debt exceeding $15,000.

As the WaPo reporters note,

The newcomers have helped press a simple GOP message about the public debt: The country has too much and must reduce its burden immediately.

"Among those with credit card debt," Fahrenthold and Yourish report, "was Rep. Blake Farenthold (Tex.) [presumably no relation to reporter Fahrenthold], who has pressed for major action to control the national debt."

Earlier this year, Farenthold issued a statement rejecting any increase in the debt limit without major spending cuts.



“Like the rest of America,” the statement said, ‘the government needs to tighten its belt and work within its means.”



Farenthold’s 2010 disclosure forms show credit card debt of $45,000 to $150,000. A spokeswoman for the congressman said she could not comment, because she had not located his accountant to discuss the filing.

SPEAKING OF THOSE CONGRESSIONAL MILLIONAIRES . . .



Meanwhile reporter Fahrenthold teamed with Paul Kane to look at the House plutocrats, starting with the ones who run the place: "House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.) , the GOP leaders who rode to power on the grassroots wave of tea-party activists, are multi-millionaires with financial investments in some of the nation’s largest corporations."

OF COURSE HOUSE DEMS AS A CLASS

AREN'T EXACTLY POVERTY-STRICKEN EITHER



As Howie has been pointing at DWT here for years, this has been a cornerstone of the caucus's electoral strategy dating back at least to the reign of Master Rahm Emanuel at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, whose practice was to look wherever possible for "self-funding" candidates, whose personal wealth, and willingness to spend it to get elected, constituted a gift that would keep on giving: not just providing a campaign war chest, but offering strong assurance that in the event of success the newly minted incumbent would faithfully uphold and defend the interests of the plutocrats. Win-win is the technical term, I believe. As the old saying goes, "Money talks, everybody else f**k off."

And then there's the extra-special case of the Man Who Would Be America's Economic Mastermind, at least if the rising-star class of Republicans have their way. (Remember the "Young Guns"?)

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), the House Budget Committee chairman whose 2012 budget has dominated the congressional agenda recently, has practiced what he preaches in his personal finances in terms of shrinking the mounting federal debt. The 41-year-old is worth at least $1 million, much of it from his wife’s family holdings in an Oklahoma mining company and an Oklahoma gravel company. Ryan’s own investments include holdings in Apple (at least $1,000), Berkshire Hathaway ($1,000), Google ($1,000), McDonald’s ($1,000) and Phillip Morris ($1,000). [Emphasis added.]

Now as we've been pointing out ever since Paul "How to Marry a Millionaire" Ryan emerged from whatever rock he crawled out from under, the man is an economic ignoramus -- and that's not a slur, just a simple statement of fact. His tiny brain is apparently so muddled that it's impossible to distinguish the point at which the ignorance and delusion give way to plain old lies. HIs economic "insights" come from the burblings of Ayn Rand, a writer so stupid and ill-informed that she would have had to be smartened up by an order of magnitude to qualify as a moron.



I don't think "ironic" is quite the word to describe the situation where the man anointed as the great economic thinker who has been charged -- by himself, anyways -- with restructuring the U.S. economy is a total tool of . . . well, why don't we just say a total tool? I suppose it's touching to learn that the Ryans, concerned parents, "have already invested more than $150,000 in college savings plans" for their three young children. What a tender tribute to their parental caring! But we need to bear in mind that this is the economic perspective of the man charged with carving up a new version of the American economic pie, whose idea of "equality of opportunity" is heavily weighted toward the children of men who marry into mining fortunes.



Do we need to ask him specifically how he feels about that "second Bill of Rights" President Franklin Roosevelt enumerated in his 1944 State of the Union address? (The last of the rights he enumerated as having already "become accepted as self-evident," by the way, was "the right to a good education.") I doubt it. After all, it's people like him who have been denouncing FDR and the New Deal since it was being formulated, and now see its dismantling within their greedy grasp.

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