Category Archives: Obama

Deficit Peacocks, Debt Ceilings, and Indefinite Detention

22 Wednesday Dec 2010

Posted by in budget, Congress, Constitution, economy, financial regulation, health care, Obama, Obama administration, Politics, Taxes, Unemployment, war on terror

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In a January 20 article at the Center for American Progress, Michael Linden differentiated between those who are serious about addressing our fiscal problems–the deficit hawks–from those who posture and preen about it—the deficit peacocks. Here’s how he defines a peacock:

“Deficit peacocks like to preen and call attention to themselves, but are not sincerely interested in taking the difficult but necessary steps toward a balanced budget. Peacocks prefer scoring political points to solving problems.”

This is one of Linden’s ways to spot a peacock:

“…people who now claim to be concerned about our fiscal future even though they recently supported massive budget-busting legislation…When someone supports a deficit commission one day and votes to use another $100 billion of red ink on tax cuts for the rich the next, it is perhaps an indication that his or her commitment to real deficit reduction leaves something to be desired.”

Cases in point:

“Sens. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) on Monday said they will introduce a bill early next year based on the report from President Obama’s deficit commission.

Warner and Chambliss have been meeting with a group of 18 senators on finding a way to balance the budget, and said they have concluded the debt commission’s proposal is the best basis for bipartisan talks.”

The rest of the “Gang of Eighteen”:

“Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Mike Johanns (R-Neb.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Jean Shaheen (D-N.H.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska).”

Fifteen of the eighteen, including both Chambliss and Warner voted for the tax cut extension last week. Only Wyden, Hagan, and Mark Udall have any credibility here. The rest are peacocks.

The vehicle Chambliss and others plan to use to get their desired spending cuts are negotiations over raising the debt ceiling limit (aka the next hostage situation), another can kicked down the road yesterday with passage of a Continuing Resolution to fund the government through March 4.

“Chambliss said on the call that an impending vote in Congress to raise the government’s debt ceiling…will be an important turning point. “It gives us a deadline to look to from the standpoint of getting some meaningful decisions mad …If we can use that as leverage that’s an ideal scenario,” Chambliss said.”

Ezra Klein has more on what this could mean for the future of health care reform and financial regulation reform:

“The good news is that law will keep the government’s lights on until early March. The bad news is that the law does it by extending 2010’s funding resolution — and that resolution didn’t include provisions for implementing the bills that were passed as the year went on.

…this is bad news for the health-care bill and the financial-regulation bill. There’s been a tendency to assume that the universe of options for passed legislation was binary: Either they went forward, or they get repealed. But with an angrily divided government, we may find ourselves in that little-known middle category: The Republicans can’t repeal them and the Democrats can’t fully fund them, and so rather than simply going forward, they limp forward.”

Klein doesn’t address it, but another question would be what does this does to unemployment benefits? Could the 13 month extension become 3? I guess we’ll find out in March.

Finally, this is what’s so confounding and confusing about the Obama administration. They take one step forward, with the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and then take two steps backward with this:

“The White House is preparing an Executive Order on indefinite detention that will provide periodic reviews of evidence against dozens of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, according to several administration officials.

The draft order, a version of which was first considered nearly 18 months ago, is expected to be signed by President Obama early in the New Year. The order allows for the possibility that detainees from countries like Yemen might be released if circumstances there change.

But the order establishes indefinite detention as a long-term Obama administration policy and makes clear that the White House alone will manage a review process for those it chooses to hold without charge or trial.

Nearly two years after Obama’s pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo, more inmates there are formally facing the prospect of lifelong detention and fewer are facing charges than the day Obama was elected.”

*Sigh*

A “Good Deal” For Who?

18 Saturday Dec 2010

Posted by in budget, Congress, economy, Obama, Politics, Taxes, Unemployment

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Now that President Obama’s “good deal” has been signed, sealed, and delivered thanks to the warm and fuzzy “spirit of compromise” floating around D.C. this holiday season, let’s take a look at who got goodies in their Christmas stocking and who got a lump of coal.

Republicans went into the lame-duck session with a letter to Majority Leader Reid, signed by all 42 Republican senators, stating that “any bill brought up before votes to extend the Bush-era tax cuts and a stop-gap funding bill to keep the government operating will be filibustered.” Those were their two main objectives—tax cut extension and stop-gap funding. They went two for two. As a bonus they also got a lower than expected estate tax.

The president gave them the first, after being, ahem, “forced” into it. Just as an aside, does anyone else find it strange that the tax cut extension got more votes in a Democratic-controlled House that the original Bush tax cuts did in a Republican-controlled one in 2001, 277–-240? But I digress.

Reid gave them the second on Thursday after another episode of Lucy and the football in which Republicans (surprise, surprise) reneged on their support for the omnibus spending bill. The result will likely be a short-term continuing resolution lasting a couple of months. At which time Republicans will control the House and demand ransom for their next “hostage”—the debt ceiling limit. Dave Dayen at Firedoglake:

“Republicans will have a chance in February of next year to set spending levels…And if anyone thinks that the result will not be a slashing of vital social safety net spending, take a look at how Reid folded last night, trading other priorities. The “stimulus” from the tax cut deal is GONE. It’ll be gone by February, at least. Republicans are fulfilling the Norquistian promise of lowering taxes massively, and then using that lack of revenue as a pretext to cut social spending. That’s what’ll happen in February. And the debt limit vote provides just another opportunity.”

But, as Laura Bassett at the Huffington Post points out, the cuts to safety net spending won’t have to wait until Republicans take over the House. Along with the working poor and the 99ers, there were others stiffed by the grand compromise:

“…federal funds for the Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF) program have entirely dried up for the first time since 1996, leaving states with an average of 15 percent less federal funding for the coming year to help an ever-increasing number of needy families.

TANF, the federal program that replaced welfare under the Clinton Administration, provides a lifeline for families and workers who have exhausted all of their unemployment benefits. According to a new report by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, “more homeless families will go without shelter, fewer low-wage workers will receive help with child care expenses, and fewer families involved with the child welfare system will receive preventive services” now that Congress has passed legislation that will end funding for the TANF Contingency Fund in 2011.”

Other parts of this “deal” are that the GOP will supposedly allow the passage of DADT repeal and START. Don’t be surprised if Lucy makes another appearance before that gets done. Republicans also promised to allow the confirmation of four of President Obama’s nominees to the federal bench. Four out of 38.

What shrewd traders.

Senate Caves, House Soon to Follow

14 Tuesday Dec 2010

Posted by in budget, Congress, Democrats, economy, Obama, Taxes

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The Senate voted 83-15 yesterday to invoke cloture on President Obama’s sell-out compromise on the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%. Nine Democrats and Bernie Sanders voted “no.” The nine were: Jeff Bingaman (NM), Sherrod Brown (OH), Russ Feingold (WI), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Kay Hagan (NC), Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Pat Leahy (VT), Carl Levin (MI), and Mark Udall (CO). One of the poster children for duplicity and hypocrisy, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who previously said that the deal “borders on moral recklessness,” voted “yes.” I’m shocked.

The president is happy:

“For Mr. Obama, the Senate vote offered affirmation that his administration had made the most of what seemed to be a rough political predicament, in which it was [BS Alert] forced to negotiate a tax agreement with the Bush-era tax cuts set to expire at the end of the month and Congressional Republicans empowered by their big victory in the midterm elections.

“This proves that both parties can in fact work together to grow our economy and look out for the American people,” Mr. Obama said.”

Absolutely. Those tax cuts have done such a wonderful job growing the economy in the past decade, no reason to expect that won’t continue for the next decade and beyond. Oh, but I forgot. The president is going to fight to end these cuts in two years. And if you’ll buy that….

“Mr. Obama said he understood that there were lawmakers unhappy with parts of the plan on both sides of the aisle, and he and his aides have made clear in recent days that he [BS Alert, Part Two] still fiercely disagrees with the Republicans over extending the lower tax rates on annual incomes above $250,000 per couple or $200,000 per individual.”

Co-president Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is also pleased:

“This bipartisan compromise represents an essential first step in tackling the debt — because in keeping taxes where they are, we are officially cutting off the spigot,” Mr. McConnell said in a floor speech.”

Cut off the spigot, aka starve the beast. Straight out of the Grover Norquist playbook for making government so small it can be drowned in a bathtub.

Don’t expect the final outcome in the House to be any different, after the dog and pony show, that is:

“By all indications, the anger and opposition to the deal among House Democrats shows no sign of abating. At the same time, however, House Dem leaders have sent very clear signs that despite their own unhappiness with the deal, they believe it would be irresponsible to sink the compromise and have no intention of thwarting the President’s will.

Here’s the challenge for House Dem leaders right now, as I understand it: Come up with a way for Dem members to vent their disapproval of the deal, so they don’t feel too stiffarmed and marginalized by the process, without it resulting in changes significant enough to cause Republicans to walk away.”

Heavens no. Let’s be sure we don’t do anything that might piss off the Republicans. Appeasement at all costs.

“The result could be a situation in which Dems hold a vote on amendments to the bill that are likely to fail… Dem leaders could hold a vote amending that provision, allowing Dem members to register disapproval. But the amendment would likely be opposed by almost all Republicans and some moderate Dems. So it would likely lose.”

Like I said. Dog and pony show.

Sen. Gillibrand had this to say:

“Although this deal includes important measures I have fiercely advocated for, extending Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy will saddle our children with billions of dollars of debt. With unemployment near 10 percent and a growing budget deficit, every dollar in this deal should be spent in a way that creates jobs and gets our economy growing, and tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires do not create jobs and will not help our economy grow.”

Creating jobs and getting the economy going. Not with more trickle-down bullshit, but the way China is doing it. Yes, China:

“The Chinese have doubled their spending on education – with stunning results – and continue to build the world’s best infrastructure. Reuters reports that Beijing is contemplating a plan to invest $1.5 trillion over the next five years in seven crucial industries. The targeted sectors are alternative energy, biotechnology, new-generation information technology, high-end equipment manufacturing, advanced materials, alternative-fuel cars, and energy-saving and environmentally friendly technologies…While China spends its money to invest in long-term growth, it lends us cash so that we can give ourselves [well, not all of ourselves, just the chosen few] one more big tax break. Someone in Beijing must be smiling.”

Not just smiling, laughing.

President Obama to Meet With Corporate CEOs

13 Monday Dec 2010

Posted by in budget, economy, Foreclosures, Obama, Politics, Social Security, special interests, Unemployment

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*Sigh*

“President Obama will host a roundtable with about 20 corporate chiefs on Wednesday, according to the White House, part of an attempt to ease strained relations with business.

Expected for the session at the Blair House, across the street from the White House, are executives from a range of industries, including American Express, Cisco Systems, Dow Chemical, Google, Motorola, Intel, UPS and PepsiCo, according to people involved in the planning. But the White House said it would not divulge attendees until the meeting.

With the mood for the meeting already lightened by his recent announcements of a trade deal with South Korea and a compromise on tax cuts with Congressional Republicans, Mr. Obama and the executives will discuss a variety of issues, said Jen Psaki, the White House deputy director of communications. Among the topics will be deficit reduction, an overhaul of the tax code, government regulation, export promotion, public-private investments in areas like technology and clean energy, and efforts to improve education and job skills, Ms. Psaki said.”

How about this “roundtable” Mr. President. How about meeting with the long-term unemployed—the 99ers—asking them how they intend to get by on the big, fat zero your “compromise” did for them? What about meeting with the firefighters and police who have been laid off due to state budget cuts, like in Camden, NJ where half of the police and a third of the firefighters are headed out the door.

What about meeting with the Social Security recipients who haven’t had a COLA increase in two years, and the federal workers whose pay you propose to freeze? Ask them how they’re going to handle rising gasoline prices, which could reach $3.50 a gallon by spring, and home heating oil prices, which are 13% more than last winter, brought on by Fed Chairman Bernanke’s “quantitative easing.” I guess they’ll have frozen homes to go along with their frozen pay. Ask the victims of foreclosure fraud how they feel about being denied legal aid by Treasury Secretary Geithner.

What about “easing strained relations” with these people? Or don’t they matter? Probably not. The unemployed, the laid off firefighters and police, Social Security recipients, and those facing foreclosure don’t write the checks with enough zeroes on them to finance that billion dollar re-election campaign like the CEOs do.

Senator Sanders on the Class War

11 Saturday Dec 2010

Posted by in budget, Clinton, Congress, economy, Financial Crisis, Obama, Politics, special interests, Taxes, too big to fail, Wall Street

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Just one small segment of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ marathon speech on the floor of the Senate yesterday, dealing with the class war and the winners and losers in that war:

“…in the year 2007, the top 1 percent of all income earners in the United States made 23.5 percent of all income. The top 1 percent earned 23.5 percent of all income–more than the entire bottom 50 percent.”

“From 1980-2005, 80% of all income went to the top 1%.”

Not much question who the winners are, and not much question now whose side President Obama is on. Charles Ferguson, director of Inside Job, wrote in Salon:

“It is…overwhelmingly clear that President Obama and his administration decided to side with the oligarchs — or at least not to challenge them. This raises the question of why they have made this choice, and whether it is a correct (in the sense of rationally self-interested) calculation on their part.

As to the “why,” several explanations have been proposed. One is that the president, as a matter of individual psychology, is extremely conflict-averse, preferring to avoid fights no matter how important. A second hypothesis is that the president is simply doing the most he can, given the political climate and the furious lobbying effort with which he is confronted. This explanation, however, is belied by [his] personnel appointments, among other evidence.”

The latest example of this is in President Obama’s choice for director of OMB. The new one, Jacob Lew, came from Citigroup. The old one, Peter Orszag, went to Citigroup. More Ferguson:

“A more disturbing possibility is that the Obama administration has simply codified a new strategic equilibrium in American politics, one first devised by the Clinton administration, in which both parties are supine with regard to the financial sector and the wealthy.”

President Obama brought out former President Clinton yesterday to endorse his “deal.” Bill Clinton, whose “bi-partisan outreach” during his administration left two ticking time bombs in the economy in the form of the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which created “too big to fail,” and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned the regulation of derivatives.

Sen. Sanders brought up the subject of free trade. Just last week President Obama signed the South Korean version of NAFTA. I hear Ross Perot’s giant sucking sound again.  All you need to know about the South Korean “deal” it is that it got two thumbs up from those two staunch defenders of the middle-class and working people–the Chamber of Commerce and Mitch McConnell.

As good as it was to hear Sen. Sanders’ speech yesterday, I fear he is just a voice crying in the wilderness. The president’s “deal” is now being loaded up with enough pork to buy enough votes to win passage. In short, the fix is in, the wealthy and powerful will win again. We keep going back to George Carlin, “It’s a big club and we’re not in it.”

Today on Let’s Make a Deal

09 Thursday Dec 2010

Posted by in budget, Congress, economy, Obama, Politics, Taxes

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The latest on “The Deal”:

President Obama at Tuesday’s press conference: [I]t’s a big, diverse country, and people have a lot of complicated positions, it means that in order to get stuff done we’re gonna compromise…This country was founded on compromise.”

Yesterday:

“Vice President Biden told House Democrats on Wednesday that the tax agreement the White House struck with Republicans was essentially final, forcing the divided caucus to decide whether to press its fight for changes in the package. “It’s up or down,” Biden told the caucus in a closed-door meeting, according to Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.).

“So far as the administration is concerned, it’s take it or leave it,” Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), one of the most vocal critics of the tax deal, told The Hill after the meeting. “I would say [Biden] was pretty specific about that.”

[…]

“It’s fair to say that he said, ‘We’ve negotiated with the Republicans, but we’re not going to negotiate with the Democrats,” Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) said in paraphrasing the vice president.

Larry Summers is saying, ‘One wrong move and the economy gets it.’

“One of President Obama’s top economic advisers warned on Wednesday that the nation could slip back into recession if Congress did not pass the administration’s tax cut deal with Republicans, as the White House sought to press Democrats into backing the plan.

“Failure to pass this bill in the next couple weeks would materially increase the risk that the economy would stall out and we would have a double-dip” recession, Mr. Summers told reporters at a briefing.”

But in September:

“Maintaining tax cuts for top wage-earners should take a back seat to other more pressing measures, White House economic advisor Larry Summers said…”With deficits looming as seriously as they are, why is now the right moment to lock in several hundred billion dollars of tax cuts for 2 percent of the population when we could be using those revenues to strengthen incentives for investment in the country’s future?”

What a difference 3 months makes.

President Obama’s Republican “friends” are making clear their intentions on the so-called “temporary” reduction in Social Security payroll taxes:

“Republicans acknowledged that the expiration of the tax holiday will be treated as a tax increase. “Once something like this goes into place, a year from now, when it expires, it’ll be portrayed as a tax increase,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). So in a body like Congress, precedents matter and this is setting a precedent. I think that certainly is going to create some problems down the road if it passes.”

“Once you bring a rate down, if it goes back up, people will feel that. They’ll feel their paycheck being less and that argument” — that letting it expire amounts to a tax hike — “eventually is bound to be made,” said Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.).

[…]

Lamar Alexander, the Senate’s number-three Republican, also said that reform of Social Security should be tied to moving that tax rate back up. “My personal hope is that it doesn’t become permanent unless we deal with a way to make Social Security solvent over the long term,” he told HuffPost. “You have to remember, the payroll tax funds Social Security and I like the idea of a lower payroll tax contribution, but we’ve got to make sure Social Security is solvent, which we should be doing this next year as the first order of business.” The way to make the program “solvent” and keep taxes low, of course, is to reduce benefits.

On a related note, this is what happens when you go down the road of giving in to the demands of “hostage takers.” The line starts to form:

“Here’s what Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that she needs to support a full Senate debate on the defense authorization bill (the vehicle for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal): 15 guaranteed votes on amendments (10 for Republicans, and 5 for Democrats), and somewhere around four days to debate the bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid already promised her the 15 amendments, but his initial offer was for a day or two of debate. Here’s her response to reporters tonight, after a Senate vote.

“The majority leader’s allotment of time for to debate those amendments was extremely short, so I have suggested doubling the amount of time, assuring that there would be votes, and making sure that the Republicans get to pick our own amendments as opposed to the Majority Leader.”

“If he does that I will do all that I can to help him proceed to the bill. But if he does not do that, then I will not,” she added.”

Reaction of a Sanctimonious Purist

09 Thursday Dec 2010

Posted by in budget, Congress, economy, Obama, Politics, Taxes

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In response to President Obama’s Tuesday hissy fit press conference:

Mr. President,

At the risk of going all sanctimonious and purist here, and not wanting to sound like an ungrateful pie-in-the-sky idealist who fails to recognize your greatness and the magnitude of your accomplishments, excuse me for being so bold as to assume I have even a smidgen of your knowledge and grasp of the issues and humbly offer a few points of “hope”fully constructive criticism.

The overall problem with your Grand Compromise is not so much the parts but the sum of the whole. You have surrendered to (oops, I mean compromised on) the Republican notion that tax cuts somehow equals economic stimulus. If that were true….well, no need to beat that long-dead supply-side horse.

You say that you were forced into this “deal” because Republicans pretty much had you backed into a corner and were holding middle-class tax cuts “hostage.” Maybe if you hadn’t waited until the last 2 weeks of this session of Congress to do something about the expiring Bush tax cuts (you were aware of the expiration date prior to this month, I assume) that wouldn’t have happened.

You said that your Republican “friends” (those “friends” who have stated their top priority as doing everything in their power to make you a one-termer) had to “swallow some things they didn’t like” in this deal. What would that be? The goal of most Republican policy in oh, say the last 30 years or so, has been two-fold—look out for the rich and….look out for the rich. Seems to me with the permanent temporary extension of the Bush tax rates on income, capital gains, dividends, and the unexpected gift of lower estate taxes thrown into the pot, they just about achieved their nirvana.

The overall numbers might look like you got the best of your “friends,” but on closer examination, not so much. The tax cut measures you wanted total out to $216 billion as opposed to the $125 billion in cuts the Republicans got. But that $125 billion goes to 1% of the people and the $216 billion gets divided among the other 99%. We get a few hundred, they get a few hundred thousand, if not more.

Obviously, you’re still not over the public option debate, and how your sellout of compromise on that aspect of health care reform was somehow misinterpreted by the “purists” as a sign of weakness and not an accurate measure of your “core principles.” Maybe if you hadn’t continued to voice your support for it months after cutting a secret deal with hospitals and insurance companies to not include it in the final legislation, we might have had a better idea of what those “principles” were and taken that into account in the search for “purity.”

Speaking of that, sir. You seem to not miss an opportunity and take great pleasure in browbeating and chastising members of your own party and those who supported you in 2008. I guess it gives you a warm, fuzzy, bi-partisany feeling all over. Good luck with that strategy paying off in 2012.

Mammoth Cave Straight Ahead

03 Friday Dec 2010

Posted by in Congress, Democrats, economy, Obama, Politics, Republicans, Taxes

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The old Mammoth Cave:

The new Mammoth Cave:

“White House negotiators and congressional Republicans have the outlines of a deal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts and federal unemployment benefits, which would end a partisan stalemate on Capitol Hill. Under the prospective deal, all the Bush tax cuts would be extended for two years and unemployment benefits would be extended for one, according to congressional sources.”

But the extension of unemployment benefits comes with a caveat:

“Senior Senate Republican aides said that an extension of all the income tax cuts was a foregone conclusion, but that a deal on jobless aid was possible if Democrats agreed to cover the cost.”

So Democrats agree to extend the tax cuts for 2 years in exchange for an extension of unemployment benefits–provided the unemployment extension is paid for. No mention of paying for the tax cuts. What great negotiators those Democrats are, huh?

This comes a day after the House Dems take what they admit was a “symbolic” vote on only extending tax cuts for those making under $250,000 (a vote Senate Democrats are expected to take today) so as to make Republicans go on the record as being protectors of the rich—a month after the mid-term elections. A vote they refused to take before the election.

With strategery like that it’s hard to understand why they lost 60+ seats in the House.

There are some Democratic dissenters:

“I am opposed to extending any tax breaks for anybody over $250,000, period. That’s where I am,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). “I would hope that the president would stand firm on what he campaigned on in Iowa.”

Hold on to that hope, Tom. Personally, I’m hoping to get a pony for Christmas. I think we have equal chances of having those hopes fulfilled.

What E.J. Dionne said:

“…every signal out of the White House is that it is prepared to cave in to Republican demands for a temporary extension of all of the Bush tax cuts, including those for millionaires…What we are witnessing here is the political power that comes from the Republican Party’s single-minded focus on high-end tax cuts and the strategic incoherence of a Democratic Party that is confused and divided — and not getting much help from its president.

Obama seems to have decided that showing how conciliatory he can be is more important than making clear where he stands. The administration’s strategy is rooted in a fear of what the Republicans are willing to do, which only strengthens the GOP’s bargaining position.”

Heckuva Job, Mr. President

30 Tuesday Nov 2010

Posted by in budget, Congress, economy, Obama, Politics, Republicans, Taxes, Wall Street

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Good call, Mr. President. You’ve hit on the reason for the $1.3 trillion deficit. Nothing to do with the crooks savvy businessmen on Wall Street or wars that never end or tax cuts for the top 2 percent. It’s the Social Security Customer Service Reps making $35,000 a year. It’s the USDA Agricultural Inspector making $30,000. It’s Correctional Officers making $46,000. It’s those greedy Air Traffic Controllers pulling down the astronomical sum of $93,000 a year.

They all just make too damn much money, and denying them a whopping 1.4% increase is surely the solution to all our budget woes. Never mind that their health insurance premiums are scheduled to go up 7.2% next year so that a wage freeze amounts to a wage cut, not a freeze.

But hey, the Republicans love you for it, and apparently that’s what matters most. They always love it when you start making concessions before you even get to the bargaining table. A tactic that paid off so well in health care reform, why not use it again when it comes to deficit reduction.  Oh, by the way, what did you get in exchange for conceding this issue to the GOP? Absolutely nothing—as usual.

This just in, sir. Republicans don’t give a flying pile of horse manure about reducing the deficit. If they did, they wouldn’t be insisting on an extension of the Bush tax cuts which, given the prior record of your negotiating skills, I fully expect to see happen to some degree at today’s capitulation session bi-partisan meeting with Republican leadership.

Here’s an early “heckuva job” on that, too.

Shorter Frank Rich: ‘We’re Screwed’

29 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by in Campaign Financing, Democrats, economy, Obama, Politics, special interests, Wall Street

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This quote by Virginia Senator Jim Webb referenced in Frank Rich’s op-ed yesterday entitled, “Still the Best Congress Money Can Buy” says all we need to know about our broken, corrupt, two-party system:

“Webb has pushed for a onetime windfall profits tax on Wall Street’s record bonuses. He talks about the “unusual circumstances of the bailout,” that the bonuses wouldn’t be there without the bailout.

“I couldn’t even get a vote,” Webb says. “And it wasn’t because of the Republicans. I mean they obviously weren’t going to vote for it. But I got so much froth from Democrats saying that any vote like that was going to screw up fundraising.”

More from Rich:

“Now corporations of all kinds can buy more of Washington than before, thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and to the rise of outside “nonprofit groups” that can legally front for those who prefer to donate anonymously. The money laundering at the base of Tom DeLay’s conviction by a Texas jury last week — his circumventing of the state’s post-Gilded Age law forbidding corporate campaign contributions directly to candidates — is now easily and legally doable at the national level.

[…]

The story of recent corporate political donations — which we may never learn in its entirety — is just beginning to be told. Bloomberg News reported after Election Day that the United States Chamber of Commerce’s anti-Democratic war chest included a mind-boggling $86 million contribution from the insurance lobby to fight the health care bill. The Times has identified other big chamber donors as Prudential Financial, Goldman Sachs and Chevron.”

How do Democrats plan to combat this influx of corporate cash? By playing the same game:

“Since the election, the Obama White House has sent signals that it will make nice to these interests.”

Such as:

“President Barack Obama is preparing new overtures to business that may start with a walk into the headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a retreat with corporate chief executive officers, according to people familiar with his plans.”

And:

“To address corporate criticism, Obama is also contemplating bringing business leaders into his administration. Unlike his two immediate predecessors, Obama hasn’t had a prominent corporate leader in a high-level administration job.”

That was kind of the whole point of “change,” wasn’t it?