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Obama wants this deal for his legacy
Paul Krugman explains the problem for all of the deficit scolds trying to use the fiscal it’s-not-a-cliff cliff as a forcing mechanism to cut the social safety net.
The fiscal cliff poses an interesting problem for self-styled deficit hawks. They’ve been going on and on about how the deficit is a terrible thing; now they’re confronted with the possibility of a large reduction in the deficit, and have to find a way to say that this is a bad thing.
Precisely. Cutting the deficit has been discussed in terms of a moral imperative for the past two-plus years. But now we’ve arrived at a situation where the deficit would get cut a significant amount, and budget analysts make the obvious, inconvenient case that this would throw the economy back into recession. All the alternative explanations from the deficit scolds – a lack of confidence, the threat of higher interest rates – have nothing to do with the fiscal slope. It’s just that it would pull back on federal spending and raise taxes to such a degree that the economy would suffer.
I think the way elites plan to handle this is to not handle this, and merely say a bunch of contradictory things all at once, in the hopes nobody but maybe Krugman will notice. And he can be easily ignored, especially if the rest of the media plays along, hyping the “fiscal cliff” as a dread scenario for which a deficit reduction deal is the only prescription, even though the “fiscal cliff” is, in fact, a deficit reduction deal. Consider Saxby Chambliss, the preposterously named Senator from Georgia, and this bundle of words:
We have a tendency as a body to just push things down the road. We can’t do that any longer. I was watching the news this morning and looking at Greece. That’s exactly where we’re headed. There are riots in the streets. It’s either going to be done by us, using this opportunity we have now, or the people we sell our bonds to are going to [respond]. You could see riots in the streets of the United States if we don’t do this right. We have the opportunity right now, and it’s imperative that we do, primarily through a $4-5 trillion package over 10 years.
There are riots in Greece precisely because they have engaged in long-term austerity measures, the equivalent of, I don’t know, cutting $4-5 trillion from the budget over ten years. In particular, the Greek rioters object to raising the retirement age, an exact parallel for the potential grand bargain measure of raising the Medicare eligibility age.
In the hands of someone who didn’t want a bargain on the deficit, this would be the ultimate teachable moment. “All those people telling us for years we have to cut the deficit, suddenly don’t want to cut the deficit,” that leader would say. “They’re warning people of the dangers of cutting the deficit, and saying we have to put a deficit plan together to avoid cutting the deficit!” But Obama wants this deal for his legacy. So he’s not going to disabuse anyone of the confusion over the fiscal slope.
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We need the Dems in heave D+ districts to block this.
#notconfident
I agree with Saxby. We are just like Greece: we are ruled by an elite consisting of tax-evaders
who have stashed their ill-gotten fortunes offshore.
Austerity / privatization = fascism repackaged.
Here’s Krugman’s 2003 deficit rant:
FROM: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/opinion/11KRUG.html
“… last week I switched to a fixed-rate mortgage. It means higher monthly payments, but I’m terrified about what will happen to interest rates once financial markets wake up to the implications of skyrocketing budget deficits….
Last week the Congressional Budget Office marked down its estimates yet again. Just two years ago, you may remember, the C.B.O. was projecting a 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. Now it projects a 10-year deficit of $1.8 trillion.”
Got that? $1.8 trillion over 10 years, a terrifying $180 billion/year.
Not sure if I agree with this. I thought the Grand Confusion was a cowardly response from Obama and and the Dems to the austerity plans put forth by the GOP. Maybe I was wrong, but I believed this was an attempt to force legislators to do the ‘right(wing) thing’ and cut all our necessary services while smiling and shaking hands and toasting one another for their ability to compromise. A true defender of the peoples needs would insist that the GOP back off entirely, and that we pump more money into rebuilding infrastructure and massive green energy projects. Hello Obama???? (…sound of crickets…)
I know it will create mass chaos, painful for many, and I also know it is Veterans Day but in the spirit of Armistice Day, if this is the only way we can start to cut down the war budget for the military beast that is destabilizing the whole planet for ExxonMobil et al then I say “Go ahead, over the cliff we go!”
Can I make one observation?
The US can borrow money at historically low rates. If you are a business and can get almost free $, you borrow as much cheap money as you can to build infrastructure that will pay you a high rate of return for years to come (allowing you to repay the borrowed money).
This is so elementary. Why wold US even want ot pay down debt right now?
Greece, Spain, they pay a fortune in debt servie, so cutting their deficit actually frees up $ currently wasted paying interest.
But not US. US needs two things, desperately: 1) jobs, 2) modernized infrastructure.
If you borrow $ to build the modern infrastructure you create WPA type jobs. The increased profiability from that modern infrastructure allows the rapid paydown of the debt.
We are able to borrow the $ that would lead to our next boom, and these pinheads don’t want to do that!
Deficit-scolding itself is an austerity program. Now if one in ten Americans knew what the word meant, we’d be on our way.
Oh, and Uppers have renamed it the “fiscal curb”
Friend, it’s not “the US.” It is the ruling class. Please don’t include me in that construct!
Although there is a clear class interest (not my class, obviously) in using the Deficit Scare as an excuse to cut social programs and maintain the bulk of the tax cuts of the past quarter century, I don’t think one should discount sheer stupidity on the part of the press and the elite, who have simply stopped listening to economists who tell them what they don’t want to hear (Krugman, Stiglitz, Akerlof, and company). I was listening to a business new show the other day in which the talking blondes once again explained how not solving the Fiscal Cliff would wreck the economy because of the effect on business and consumer ‘confidence.’ You have to ask where this hare-brained idea comes from and why it is so solidly ensconced in the official mentality, which goes right to the top.
The Confidence Fairy is as real as the Great Pumpkin. I guess that probably explains why so many people believe in her.
Krugman had an adjustable-rate mortgage?
Nuff said.
Kafka. Take an econ course. Interest rates will surely come up if the economy comes back, but not before. The so-called risk premium you are so afraid of implies the existence of an alternative asset where people who are afraid can hide their money until the risk goes away. What is that asset? Euros, Yens? Pounds Sterling? Ren min bi? Green stamps? There is no place to hide, unless they stuff it in their underwear. This risk business is a red herring. There is a lot of risk out there, but it is risk due to the overhang of sub-prime lending and speculative hedges in derivatives, not the risk of inflation or US government default.
(Pulling out hair in despair!)
“But Obama wants this deal for his legacy. So he’s not going to disabuse anyone of the confusion over the fiscal slope.”
And the wisdom of voting for the “lesser of two evils” already pays dividends. Now that’s a return on investment.
“‘And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.”
“Chris Matthews considers it urgent and essential that President Obama and House Speaker Boehner reach what they call a “Grand Bargain” that would impose an austerity budget and begin to unravel the safety net. Why is it essential? Matthews provided no analysis or discussion… “
They inhabit the bubble. But they also polish its exterior.
Sadly, its not just the ruling class. A lot of people do not understand that a country’s economy does not function like a household budget in any way, shape or form, nor should it.
While we fight for reframing though I would say that we use the fact that the first step to creating a household budget isn’t slash and burn but an establishment of priorities. The fact that our defense budget is more than the next 10 nations beneath it combined could be the starting salvo. The people who take point on this ought to be veterans that understand that the military is not just one big budget but a bunch of budgets and that taking money from the defense department does not nor should it mean taking money out of the pockets of people who have sworn their lives to protecting ideals like freedom. There is no need for 70 bright shiny new toys that become obsolete the moment they actually exist per general and there is no need to blow the world up 700 times over.
Of course our chances that the bloated military budget is where we start is about one million to one. Why? The Democratic Party also has a stake in ensuring defense contractors get their graft from tax dollars.
I don’t get your post. I know you didn’t get mine.
That was the argument from 2001 to 2006 – borrowing is getting cheaper and cheaper as interest rates go do, so individuals and corporations and government should just borrow and spend because the lower and lower interest rates are the market telling everyone to borrow and spend.
The market is telling everyone to expect a free lunch.
Tax cut after tax cut after tax cut funded by borrowing will make everyone rich.
More and bigger spending on wars on individuals will create millions of great jobs for the security state – look at the TSA government jobs program Bush set up. The Republican version of the CCC – the number of jobs is comparable.
So, how did borrow and spend based on the market telling everyone to borrow and spend work out for you in 2007-2009?
How is the borrowing going to be repaid?
Borrowing makes sense if you put in place the means to service the debt.
No one is saying we should pay for servicing the debt.
Instead, the advocates of more debt are saying the debt can be serviced with debt and the debt can also be increased, as if the debt increasing exponentially is sustainable.
Hoover and FDR jointly increased the debt the US carried, but they also hiked taxes to unheard of levels on everyone. And the taxes remained high until the 70s with the economy booming.
Since Reagan, the conservatives have taken your view that borrowing should be used to cut taxes and increase spending to create jobs. Reagan like Bush created government jobs for the security state. That decade did not end well. Bush and Clinton hiked taxes and balanced the budget producing progress for everyone, small progress, but lots of focus on debt and deficits. Then Bush came in and borrowed and spent with the decade ending like the 80s, except ten times worse.
Borrowing without taxes to service the debt is not the solution.
I believe kafka’s point was that all the quibbling is over a really small amount when you look at the numbers without buying into the hype that a 1.8 trillion is an insurmountable number that means we need to start slashing now,now, now.
180 billion a year is practically nothing to a government that spent between 1 and 1.5 trillion in one year on their defense budget.
You think the workers of defense contractors should lose their jobs but not become unemployed because the commit suicide? Or that defense contractors get paid billions but don’t have any paid workers, just slaves in chains.
The Republican version of the CCC and WPA is military spending. Cutting defense spending does not cut the need for higher taxes to do the things you want, which includes creating jobs.
We run society for the sake of business and the result is production oriented class room and busywork lives. This approach fails on stability, sustainability and desirability.
Business and business culture need to be ‘reformed.’ Trade, commerce and commercial speech can’t be at the front of the line, No more money for the sake of money approach to society, because that like promoting coercion for the sake of coercion. It’s time to look at money as coercive speech- if its speech it’s certainly not free speech. Its again time to tax based on the social usefulness of the activity. If this were done there would be no austerity fraud being foisted right now.
Austerity is a way of passing on the costs of recklessness, of socializing the costs. A Conservative mantra is that “you can’t stop costs from being passed on.” This is completely false. Their is a risk, if government is sloppy, that capital flight will occur but the CA auto insurance rate regulation shows that passing on the cost can be stopped. We can also stop things like the FEMA coverage of beach front homes. It also must be recognized that Austerity is the result of Bush Administration’s plan to realize Norquist’s plan for drowning the safety-net.
I find it, uh… revealing that Krugman didn’t use the word Democrat or Democratic even once.
Of course, he mentioned Ryan (without commenting on Democrat Erskine Bowles admiration for Ryan’s budget http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbzpuqWo6yU) and the G.O.P. and he mentioned Pete Peterson (without commenting on how close Peterson is to the Obama WH). He did finally mention Erskine Bowles at the end of his piece and I’ll assume that not mentioning he’s a Democrat and underscoring that he’s Obama’s appointed hitman on “austerity” was based on the assumption that everyone knows already…
and it’s best not to remind Obama voters of what they already knew…
Absolutely agree with this but taxes will not go up in any significant way in this 1% controlled Government/Economy. This is why “austerity” is being rolled out even though no one can cite where a recession has been reversed by using austerity.
180 billion cut from defense amounts to 2 million newly unemployed.
Arguing that paying 180 billion in welfare transfers (SS, Medicare-caid, etc) will immediately give those people jobs is obviously absurd, but yet you don’t address the point that government spending does create jobs far more effectively than transfer payments (welfare), and the jobs created are usually much better. A job making bombs is going to be better compensated than a job helping the elderly and poor as a home health aid, even when the latter is harder and requires more skills.
Something to repeat over and over …. to smear it into the ground: The Grand Bargain is a Grand Lie: we don’t have a government debt problem, we have a public investment and jobs problem.
Part of the fiscal cliff is $45B in defense cuts. George Mason University did a study:
You should do a larger post on this point. And then, it should be front paged.
The market isn’t telling anyone anything. People are going to project onto it what they want.
The truth is that a budget is supposed to be a blueprint that gets you from point to point and establishes your priorities. As a nation though we have yet to have a real discussion on those priorities or where point b is. In some instances it may make sense to invest and spend the money and pay it back over time and in others notsomuch.
First though there’d need to be honest discussion rather than political posturing on issues like defense or social spending and if you believe the majority of the people in DC are capable of that I’ve got a bridge to sell you. What sells as discussion is calling people who call for defense cuts unpatriotic or calling people who believe we have some sort of responsibility to care for people who are unable to do so for themselves commie pinkos. Not exactly what I’d call good jumping off points.
I think defense contractors waste a lot of money. Strike that, I know the defense department wastes a lot of money.
I spent over a decade serving and I got to watch firsthand how people were told to spend money they didn’t need to to ensure they’d get that money the following year. I’ve watched as the government would order a toy under someone’s command only to have the next guy come along and scrap it for something else.
It’s time for some of these folks to retrain.
I’m sure the loss of village blacksmiths was hard for village blacksmiths back in the day. That didn’t mean we kept them around though.
We have no need to spend more than 10 nations underneath us on defense. It’s obscene.
You’ve tried peddling this before.
It’s from a report prepared for and paid for by the Aerospace Industries Association.
Next.
He is getting boring, relentlessly boring.
Actually most of “welfare spending” dollar for dollar has high yields for the economy as does unemployment. It creates a ripple effect. Would I rather see people unreliant on the government for these things? Sure. That’s require an honest assessment of the minimum wage too though. What do you figure the odds are that a bunch of cheapskates that don’t even want to help cover the costs of their workers health care are going to sign on to higher wages without screeching about $300 hamburgers? My guess would be slim to none.
A big part of the problem is not that the conservatives live in an information bubble but that the MSM buys into that bubble. There were no talks of austerity when Bush busted the budget and ran the deficit and the debt up. This only becomes a problem when a Democrat is in office. The reason is that the ravings from inside the right wing bubble are bought into by the MSM.
If there is a deficit under a Republican administration it’s no big deal, under a Democratic administration it’s the end of the world.
If dozens of people are killed at American embassies during a Republican administration, well shit happens. If there is the same sort of activity during a Democratic administration it’s a scandal and proof that the Democratic president is incompetent.
If the lunatics inside the right wing information bubble say that something is a problem/scandal then the MSM repeats the lunacy as if handed down from on high.
I keyed on that same phrase from Dday. Sounds like preznit thinks his mandate is the opposite of what his voters think his mandate is.
Here’s what Heilemann thinks:
The rest of his column is reform advice for Republicans. Why should anyone buy the bullshit Heilemann is selling?
wow. thanks!
jeebus, I just saw Dday already posted this exact same quote a couple hours ago on his his later thread about Woodward’s leak.
We can drop the bombs on the sick and elderly? Is that your plan?
Do you think you won’t have an economic impact if you were to cut 180 billion from any program? Do you really think that if you cut Medicaid and Medicare that it somehow won’t effect the health care sector?
The truth is that cutting is going to cost jobs no matter where you take it from. You can’t cut a budget and not have a cost to that.
China spends about 160 billion on defense. We, on the other hand, spent between 1 and 1.5 trillion. Our budget allows the Defense department to police itself to the detriment of taxpayers.
Which doesn’t make it incorrect.
The Congressional Research Service tends to agree.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42763.pdf
Inforum/University of Maryland produced estimates for the National Association of Manufacturers on the employment effect of reduced DOD spending under the BCA.16 Using its Long-Term Interindustry Forecasting Tool (LIFT).
A $48 billion nominal decrease (6.7%) in defense expenditures compared with LIFT’s baseline budget for 2013 was estimated to reduce defense-dependent employment in the calendar year by 907,000 jobs. The total includes 152,000 direct DOD civilian (50,000) and military (102,000) positions as well as 91,000 direct jobs at defense contractors; 135,000 indirect jobs at suppliers to contractors; and 376,000 induced jobs due to reduced spending by those formerly in direct and indirect jobs.
This is why a discussion on priorities and where we stand is so important. Over and over again the American people have said that they’d prefer military spending cuts to cuts in the social safety net.
DD has covered this coming “austeritization” better than anyone and I haven’t read a post which says it won’t happen. Unless something happens from outside the beltway to change course we are in for a crash because it won’t/can’t work. Isn’t this correct. A second reDepression will happen because the PTB can’t be stopped. The election was a choice of who would you rather be fired by and nothing else is different.
Ostrich, meet sand.
from Bill Black recorded just before the elections:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9057
I’ll ask you the same thing I asked mulp. Do you honestly believe that making cuts to Medicaid and Medicare wouldn’t have a similar impact on the health care sector?
The GOP wants to cut the budget. Fine. We’ll start with the part of the budget that is larger than 10 other nations combined.
The 1% poured more money that anyone could imagine into defeating Obama and electing their own 1% president, but they failed because the 1% don’t control the 99%.
Yet in electing Obama who talked from the beginning on higher taxes (and think about the pillaring Gore got on a suggestion of hiking the gas tax, and the beating Clinton took for hiking taxes in 1993 and how he was president because the Republicans split in attacking HW for hiking taxes.
So, Obama stood up to the 1% and got broad support for hiking taxes, yet you won’t stand up and say – “hey, the 99% can beat the 1% and elect a Congress committed to tax hikes!” It is easy to elect a tax hiking Congress – defeat everyone who took the “no tax hike pledge”. If the 1% could not defend their 1% candidate from the 99%, how can they defend their 1% no tax hike pledge candidates from the 99%?
And in California, Gov Brown campaigned on tax hikes and not only did the voters support tax hikes directly, the voters elected Democrats who were attacked as tax and spenders by Republicans. Where are the 1% richer and more powerful than California? Texas, maybe, but the Texas 1% failed to defeat Obama, so how powerful are they really.
I expect the problem is you don’t want higher taxes, so you are fine with being represented by a Republican promising you a free lunch tax cut.
If you are not happy with the Republican tax cutters, why are you not going out and saying “we need higher taxes, because I should not get a tax cut when I want government to do more for me and my future!”??
I don’t think you understand the difference between borrowing to create capital assets–infrastructure, which repays itself many times over through time–and borrowing for unproductive uses like the service of debt. This is precisely the distinction that Ms. Kouril is making. Countries aren’t business or households–they have both nature and collective human labor and much longer horizons to draw on. But if you’re a prisoner of the “national economy” as constructed for the modern First World nation state this is hard to see. Investment in infrastructure points you back to use value, which is hidden by our notions of profit and loss. As it stands, we service our debt for with no repayment.
Ass, meet hole
The “Fiscal Cliff” is yet another instance of the shock doctrine. The 1% are trying to use a manufactured crisis to usher in an austerity program. It’s that simple.
According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), if we simply let the Bush tax cuts lapse, the national debt-to-GDP ratio will stop. And letting them lapse, require no bargaining at all. Obama simply must put his infamous pen away. It’s that simple, and Obama knows it. But he has another agenda. He desperately wants to implement Bowles-Simpson Catfood recommendations.
Medicaid cuts impact in IL
http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/hospitals-have-79b-economic-impact-state-medicaid-cuts-loom/2012-02-22
In LA
http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/medicare-medicaid-cuts-threaten-hospitals-economic-impact/2011-09-26
That’s just two states. Let’s not pretend that the defense industry is the only sector that employs people. Any cuts are going to result in sector losses. I prefer the losses occur to a sector whose objective is to blow people up and has *ahem* almost ten times the resources of its closest competitor, China.
But that has been the attack on private sector road crews standing around doing nothing on tax funded projects.
But those are workers getting paid, and you can consider it waste, but it is a job that pays. That waste is not done by slaves or Chinese coolies.
Hey, businesses in the US have been ruthless in cutting “waste” which has resulted in 20-30 million people out of work, working far below their skills, working part-time, working for low wages. Hey, you must be cheering the fact that 20-30 million more people are suffering in this economy than in the 90s because there was just way too much waste in the 90s.
A focus on cutting waste just means higher unemployment and lower wages because you are not focused on doing more with the the currently wasted workers who are unemployed. Cutting military spending will not increase spending on infrastructure, but is more likely to increase the pressure to cut taxes is you do cut military waste.
By the way, it was the privatization of military jobs to reduce waste that reduced the number of active soldiers who would rotate into duty and limit tours to one or two, so that the past 12 years have seen the waste increase as the defense contractors extract money from taxpayers which deprived soldiers of money and resources for themselves. It would be better to have a military that was twice the number of soldiers wasting away as screwups instead of for-profits doing those jobs and the screwups out on the streets unable to find jobs because they are wasted, and unwanted in society and military because their repeated tours broke them.
All the waste you point to today is a consequence of the attack on waste in the 70s and 80s – the “end of waste” merely moved it around and put more power in the hands of lobbyists. The soldiers in the logistics or cooking meals or running laundries or building shoddy buildings had no lobby other than the communities who wanted the military bases, but today, the corporations doing those jobs have thousands of lobbyists pushing for very expensive waste.
I haven’t seen any road crews standing around doing nothing. They blow the mountainside up on a weekly basis here in SW Virginia. I guess your miles may vary depending on the state you’re in though.
I disagree with your assessment that cutting defense spending would not result in infrastructure spending or with the assessment that it would result in higher taxes. You are making assumptions and projections that may or may not see fruition. I also disagree with your assessment that cuts to defense need to come out of the hides of active duty, retired or veterans. It can come out of PRIVATE defense contractors(the very people you point out cost us money.)
I don’t know many soldiers that had limited tours of one or two during the Iraq and Afghanistan war although I do agree with your premise that privatization may cut costs short term but often increase costs long term since profit making entities will always seek profit and the government, unlike a business is not a for profit entity-it’s purpose is to promote the general welfare.
I’m well aware of lobbyists and yes, military folks have them too by the way. I’m a veteran (as is my spouse)and get quite a few solicitations from their ranks.
“We have no need to spend more than 10 nations underneath us on defense. It’s obscene.”
The US can either find out a way to do this proactively and positively, or we can wait until the destructive consumption of this endeavor buries us. As every state and member of Congress is inextricably tied into this racket we mistake for a perpetual motion machine, and seeing that the track record for empires when they reach this point is abysmal, the latter outcome look more likely.
I know the difference; do you? A capital asset that has no revenue associated with it is not a capital asset.
A war is an investment only if it is funded by taxes as something individuals are paying for to accomplish a personal shared value of liberty, human rights, justice, or if it is a society committed to pillage and plunder. Jackson’s Indian Wars were for pillage and plunder. WWII was paid for with very high taxes and sacrificed consumption for “truth, justice, liberty,…”.
Building roads and bridges and schools and water and sewer when I was a kid in the 50s and 60s were always predicated on the taxes to service the bond issues. Hoover, Eisenhower, Reagan, HW Bush, Clinton hiked the gas tax – “a Federal takeover of the entire road building industry” if we apply the Sarah Palin logic. With each of the tax hikes came the spending to (re-)build the roads.
LBJ was forced to back a war tax in 1968 which really made war unpopular, but that was the last time – since, every war has been coupled with tax cuts as the policy to sell the voters on going to war. To bribe the voters to support war.
I find myself alone in calling for tax hikes when commenting here and other forums.
Ms. Kouril did not call for borrowing and hiking taxes to service that debt because doing so would lead to calling for tax hikes to service the debt incurred over the past 12 years, and now the spending gets a lot harder.
The borrowing is easy, but arguing returning to the Clinton 2001 tax law is not high enough taxes because it does not support the borrowing she calls for, and she needs to call for the Clinton taxes plus doubling the gas tax, adding a carbon tax or cap and tax, and a VAT to deal with the exported jobs that went to nations with VAT and lower corporate rates.
The priority is hiking taxes. Once you commit to tax hikes that you pay, then you can get support from me for borrowing based on those taxes.
Agree.
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While most of us agree that the war budget must be cut first, and cut deeply, we should all be aware that it will not happen. The military has become an extension of the oil companies (and other corporations) and the people do not matter. Our govt is not controlled by the people, it is controlled by a tiny sliver of plutocrats who direct, and profit from, the military. Soldiers who join up thinking they are protecting the American people are just poor deluded fools.
There is a very small possibility that people will realize this as climate catastrophes demand a more military style response (for rescue), but Americans have not proven themselves too bright or willing to connect the dots between oil companies, rampant militarism and climate change. And the pols will keep on doing the will of their corporate masters.
Agree it’s important to abandon pointless appeals to Obama and go after Dem congresspeople. Find out if they’ve signed Bernie Sanders letter pledging not to support SS cuts.
For comic relief, Harry Shearer on Le Show presented B Rock’s Grand Bargain Barn. We make the best deals possible. And we pass the pain and hardship on to you. How do we do it? Simple. We deal in volume. That’s right! We’re louder than anyone else.
We have an obligation to fight the fight even if we have a likelihood of losing. As you have pointed out the impact of simply allowing stasis is too great.
Soldiers who join up thinking they are protecting the American people are young and idealistic. Having ideals isn’t a bad thing and time usually cures that youth thing. Speaking as a person who served, I never would have seen anything outside of my own little prism had it not been for my time in service. So the military is often a mixed bag for the member even if the mission itself is rife with the hypocrisy of our foreign policy perspective.
Ye gods, what would we do? The military is not just all that we make anymore; it is what we do, it is who we are. We have been at it non-stop for 70 years (or 236 depending on where one puts their marker). It is our reason for being. It is our identity. American Exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, and the inevitable, God-sanctioned spreading of Freedom and Democracy have to go with it. To set the kind of priorities that would make significant cuts to the US military budget would require a transformation of our character. How does a society decide that they are not who they are anymore?
20 Democratic Senators and 13 Republican Senators will be facing re election in 2014.
The electorate should start preparing to challenge any one of these shmucks that thinks reneging on the social safety nets and balancing the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable is a game plan.
It’s my hope that progressives are already considering who to field against Warner, who is point man on these cuts from the Democratic side.
It is also my hope that by 2014 that some more of the party faithful will be willing to jettison party ideology and look outside the box for solutions instead of pushing the idea that a third party is pie in the sky. You’ll notice the plutocrats have no problem using a third party to thwart activists within the party. Activists need to learn to be ruthless and do the same to further their self interest.
Oh I agree.
In 2011 they was still hemming and hawing because the size is so massive that it is practically impossible to provide oversight for it. When something becomes that large you HAVE TO DO SOMETHING.
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-02-25/politics/defense.department.audit_1_dod-annual-audits-government-accountability-office?_s=PM:POLITICS
This was in 2011. 285 billion over 3 years in waste. That’s over half what would need to be cut during the same period if the projection is 180 billion a year over 10 years.
There is no way you can or should avoid something like that in a budget. Not if you want to be taken seriously anyway.
Cuts are the road the GOP says it is committed to.
If that is the case the defense industry is as good as any industry to start with.
Perhaps with a little less money to spend they’ll be able to make a managable paper trail for an objective third party auditor to follow.
If after defense we still need more I’m thinking we look at Agriculture or Oil subsidies next(I’m thinking these two industries should try some rugged individualism on for size since it’s constituents appear to preach it often enough to individuals.)
The program that keeps 1 out of every 5 of the elderly out of poverty is way, way ,way down on my list. I’m betting we get to 180 billion or that the GOP cries uncle way before then.
FORWARD to the 1500′s. Peasants need very little so we have to shift from a consumer driven economy to …..????
Cut the deficit to save us all? Is that what you are saying? Yeah sure, that’ll work for sure.
“The 1% poured more money that anyone could imagine into defeating Obama and electing their own 1% president . . .”
Not hardly. Some members of the 1% backed Romney, others backed Obama. If we look at donations above $500 (to the degree that amount might be an indicator of 1% support), Romney comes out about $50 million ahead. If we look at donations over $2000, the Romney spread is about $90 million, or a difference of less than ten percent of all the campaign money for the entire Presidential election. The entire 1% in no way backed Romney, nor was their spending on Romney more than anyone could imagine relative to the total costs.
For one: http://www.fec.gov/disclosurep/pnational.do
Nice on Veteran’s day. The military, contrary to your asinine assertion, is not populated by “Screwups”, and to make a claim such as that simply proves you are screwed up. You a vet? You must base your specious libel on something.
Of course, my good friend Cwaltz has labeled me as a “Whiner” for taking exception to people such as yourself for attacking veterans and troops. Perhaps you can get together and think up some clever insults. Have a great day defaming veterans.
Wow!
Since we don’t loot the countries we conquer, defense spending is economically unproductive, while infrastructure spending is not. We can build high speed rail and millions of energy jobs with that money – if we have the will.
I have worked with dozens of injured Vets from Vietnam era to present and while some have become “screwed up” due to untreated PTSD and other issues related to combat I have never met a finer group of people (and that includes some officers :). The waste in the military happens at the pentagon level and we will never do enough for our Veterans no matter what we do.
I don’t recall calling you a whiner.
I am a veteran. As is my spouse. As for needing you to defend our service, don’t bother. If I had to pick and choose I still would choose to defend a person’s first amendment right , even if I chose to disagree with their framing. But hey whatever.
The system is not set up to challenge things from the inside so soldiers essentially have to follow policy even if they disagree with it. Even challenging valid abuses is incredibly difficult because the people in charge of you are usually the ones who are the problem and they have the ability to make your life a living hell in the interim it takes things to go up the chain of command.
I used to like to see debate on things when I was in the military. If someone could protest it meant that my job was fulfilling its purpose and the right to dissent was still alive.
Cynthia, I do humbly and respectfully suggest that you would benefit from a quick course in Modern Money Theory (MMT). (Try neweconomicperspecitves.org with a roster of economics writers that includes William K. Black, Stephanie Kelton, L. Randall Wray and FDL’s own “letsgetitdone” — Joe Firestone.) The issue is never the federal government’s “borrowing” — not in a country like ours where the government has a monopoly as the issuer of a fiat sovereign currency, in which all its “debt” is denominated. That is why our government does not actually “borrow” money in the sense that Greece and Spain do (which do not issue their own currency), and why the U.S. can never default on its debt or go bankrupt — unless it chooses to.
The confusion about our government’s “borrowing” leads to such questions as commenter mulp’s response to you: “How is the borrowing going to be repaid?” Again, the U.S. government can fail to repay its “borrowing” only if it chooses to. Moreover, the idea that a government must not spend more than it taxes ignores the accounting fact that without a government deficit (and/or trade deficit), the private sector cannot run a surplus (savings). But I’m not the one to be instructing others in any detailed fashion, so I do strongly suggest you check out MMT.
Mulp, please see my comment at 72 in response to Cynthia. I think you would also find the MMT perspective an eye-opener.
Regards.