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“We’ve lost the CR battle,” Ross, referring to the continuing resolution to authorize government spending, said in an interview. “We need to move on and take whatever we can find in the debt limit.”
"Take whatever we can find." Are these people legislators or highwaymen?
Media like Bloomberg.com are presenting this quote as straightforward politics, a sign that even Tea Partiers are relenting on the shutdown as they look forward to the debt ceiling.
What they should be reporting on is the political dynamic on display. The Republicans took the government hostage, and Democrats didn't back down. So the Republicans "lost" that "battle." Now they're taking the debt limit hostage and hoping that Democrats will pay the ransom on that, instead.
It must be said again: if Democrats were shutting down the government and threatening the full faith and credit of the United States in order to force a Republican president to pass gun control and tax increases, Republicans would be calling Democrats terrorists holding the nation hostage. They would be accusing the left of treason and threatening armed revolt and murder in the streets. The press would perforce take up some of that language in their reporting.
What Republicans are doing is truly radical. It threatens the very foundation of the government, using the language and negotiating calculus of pirates, hostage takers and terrorists. At some point the traditional press needs to call it what it is.
Keeping in mind that most Americans have better things to do than follow the arcane business of government standoffs (and many think there's a difference between the ACA and Obamacare...) it's probably not a good idea to put too much stock in polls about all this. I would guess that most people retreat to familiar partisan corners. But this is sort of interesting, nonetheless:
The latest research from YouGov, conducted in the first two days of the shutdown, shows that half (50%) of Americans blame Republicans in Congress for the continuing shutdown. 11% blame Democrats in Congress while 29% blame President Obama for not ending the shutdown. This divides along partisan lines, with Democrats tending to blame Republicans and Republicans tending to blame the President or Democrats. Independents, however, are largely split, with 41% blaming Republicans in Congress and 33% blaming the President.
I’d find the narrow split among Independents unnerving, if I were the president. 33 percent blame the president for the shutdown and impasse? Given that he has already conceded sequester-level spending, and has cut the deficit in the last three years by the swiftest amount since the end of the Second World War, what else do they want him to do? If he were to abandon his signature domestic achievement after re-election, because of blackmail, we might as well give up on elections and representative government altogether.
Except, the fact is that Obama lost the independent vote in 2012 by 5 points. So, more of them are supporting him on this than voted for him.
But I do think the Democrats should probably curb their strutting around and stop declaring victory. I don't know what these lunatics will do when they're cornered, but it's unlikely they'll just start crying like little babies and quietly suck their thumbs. They tend toward the dramatic.
It's a good selling point. And considering that the final result of that was sequestration, he was right. When you look at the budget battles as one long running fight from 2011 on, you see that Democrats have achieved one thing: they allowed the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire, only two years late. I'd have to give the rest to the Republicans, although there are many Democrats strutting around taking credit for austerity in the midst of an epic economic downturn, so maybe they think they won too.
Update: This piece by Dave Weigel about the latest alleged GOP moderate rebellion in favor of a clean CR is very interesting. Seems they might not be on the up and up. Imagine that. He also claims that they don't believe the Democrats will provide enough votes for a clean CR, which I don't understand. Weigel says he's writing that up later today so I'll be interested to hear what he has to say.
In the meantime, don't get too excited by the Democrats marching around patting themselves on the back for being the big winners. They always do that. And a good part of the time they are wrong. Best to just wait and see what happens and hope for the best.
Update II: Speaking of blasts from the past, here's another one, just for kicks:
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Yes, they really want to do this
by digby
I don't think anyone considers Ezra Klein unconnected or hostile to the White House. So when he writes something like this, I assume they want it out there:
In my Bloomberg column today, I argue that the Obama administration is much more intent on reaching a deficit deal, and much less intent on making revenues a major part of it, than is commonly assumed. That’s led them to offer Republicans a deal that is not only much farther to the right than anyone had predicted, but also much farther to the right than most realize. In addition to the rise in the Medicare eligibility age and the cuts to Social Security and the minimal amount of revenues, it’d cut discretionary spending by $1.2 trillion, which is an absolutely massive attack on that category of spending.
This deal isn’t just a last-ditch effort to save the economy from the damage of a federal default. The White House would far prefer this deal to the McConnell plan, which would lift the debt ceiling without making any cuts at all. So why are administration officials so committed to striking a deal composed of policies they’ve mostly opposed? Here’s their thinking:
He goes on to say that they feel that if they can only get deficits "off the table" in a big way they will have the room to do other Big Things, that the only stimulus they can get is something small like extended unemployment insurance which is "better than nothing", we should want to have the Democratic President timing the massive cuts in this deal rather than grumpy Republicans in 2012 appropriations, it's good policy on the merits (really!) and finally, it will help Obama get re-elected, which is important because Mitt will make even deeper cuts.
To put all this slightly differently, White House officials believe a big deficit reduction deal would do them enough good, both politically and economically, that it’s worth making very significant compromises on the details of that deal. If you thought getting to $4 trillion in deficit reduction was a Republican goal, you’re wrong. It’s the White House’s goal, and the only reason it might not happen is Republicans won’t let them do it.
Christians need to engage in peaceful civil disobedience against President Obama’s signature health care law. The reason is simple and macabre: Obamacare enables U.S. taxpayer funds to pay for abortions for members of Congress and their staff. That’s right. Pro-life Christians will be forced to subsidize the slaughter of unborn children...
Devout Christians are obligated to oppose Obamacare — including those who champion social justice and universal health care. Christian teaching is crystal clear: The killing of innocent human life is wrong, a heinous transgression of one of God’s most sacred commandments. Abortion is murder; it is state-sanctioned infanticide. Obamacare is ensnaring Christians in its nefarious web, making them culpable in the killing of unborn babies. Their tax dollars will pay for the abortionist’s knife. Unwitting Christians will have the blood of innocent children on their hands.
This should come as no surprise. Progressivism is at war with traditional Christianity. Liberals seek to create a society without God. Their goal is personal liberation — the destruction of the family, Christian culture and all the other social bonds that act as bulwarks against radical individualism. Abortion clinics are liberalism’s Gulag Archipelago, death camps scattered across the landscape. For liberals, abortion is key to erecting a society without sexual consequences. If a pregnancy is unwanted, liquidate the baby. Secular progressives believe that nothing — including innocent human life — must stand in the way of the sexual revolution. It is genocide masquerading as “choice.”
Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide, more than 50 million unborn babies have been butchered. Hence, abortion has taken more lives than murderous dictators, such as Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin. Liberalism is responsible for more deaths than Nazism or Soviet communism...
Christians must wake up before it’s too late. There is a virulent prejudice still acceptable in America: Christophobia. For decades, liberal elites have sought to purge religion from the public square. Prayer has been banned from schools. The Ten Commandments have been taken down from courthouses. Same-sex “marriage” is becoming encoded in law, overturning marriage between a man and a woman as a sacred, unique institution. Pornography is rampant. The family is breaking down. Our culture is obsessed with sexual promiscuity and moral permissiveness. God and Christians are regularly mocked. Even in the military, Christians are now told to remain in the closet.
Enough is enough. America is a product of English and Christian civilization. Our Founding Fathers were Christian patriots, who understood that individual liberties stem from a higher power. The most important is the right to life. Christians must declare that their allegiance to their faith transcends that of the ideological, secular state. If Obamacare continues to insist that we subsidize abortion, then it’s time for Christians to march on the streets in peaceful opposition. Mr. Obama is not worth the loss of our souls.
Unfortunately, Obamacare doesn't actually subsidize abortion. Which truly is a shame. If you're going to be vilified as Hitler for doing it even though you didn't, you might as well do the right thing. Too bad.
We've known for a while that Apple has a mind-bogglingly large stockpile of cash: $147 billion, as of the latest count. On Tuesday, we learned that it's also a huge chunk of the total amount of cash held by U.S.-based companies overall, not including banks: About 10 percent, according to a report from Moody's.
The more interesting thing, though, is how Apple's domination reflects an increasingly unequal cash distribution across American corporations generally.
First of all, it's important to note that cash reserves have been rising steadily over the past five years, as corporations seek to shore up their reserves -- a behavior known as "liquidity preservation" -- in an uncertain economic environment...
Another factor may be the compounding effects of globalization. Companies are making more and more of their profits overseas, and lose a lot of it to the U.S. Treasury when they bring that cash back home, which they have to do in order to paying dividends and doing share buybacks. So they've tended to sit on it instead -- and now, 61 percent of the total stockpile is stored outside the U.S.
But the ballooning reserves haven't been equally distributed. The 50 richest companies accounted for 64 percent of the $1.48 trillion total cash pile as of mid-2013 -- up from 61 percent last year, 59 percent in 2011, and 54 percent in 2006...
Lane says rising inequality has a lot to do with the emergence of tech companies that are both extremely profitable and have relatively low staffing costs and capital expenditures (compared to, say, Walmart, which is number one on the Fortune 100 but has only the 28th-largest cash pile). They also tend to pay lower dividends and do fewer buybacks, keeping more of it to themselves.
I'm beating a dead horse here, but it has to be said again: old answers won't work to solve new problems. Capitalism as we understand it today worked fairly well with physical products and smaller economies of scale. Everything worth buying needed lots of people to produce it, and those people needed to paid well enough to buy other things. Non-material goods were at a minimum, and mass producing items in one part of the world to be sold in another was limited to mostly to trade goods like tea that could not be supplied at home.
So long as the worst inequalities could be tempered with social safety nets, the most basic universal services provided or subsidized by government, and wages buoyed by labor organizing, the system worked as well as any economic system run by human beings could be expected.
But few people are asking themselves what becomes of human economic organization when the world's most profitable companies sell intellectual rather than physical property, and employ only a small number of people? What happens when the companies that do sell physical goods automate most of their processes? What happens when the few previously skilled jobs humans can still do become low-skill routine, when booksellers become Amazon warehouse stockers and cab drivers cease to exist entirely in a world of self-driving cars? What happens when local labor unions are helpless to organize against employers because almost any product can be produced almost anywhere in the world in a globally integrated economy?
You get rampant inequality. Countries run by right-wing politicians suffer increasing barriers to entry between classes, social instability and horrific gaps in wealth, while more left-leaning countries protect their middle classes and safety nets at the expense of high cost of living, graying demographics, choking deficits and skyrocketing unemployment.
The symptoms of a global disease are everywhere, and the old cures won't work anymore. There simply isn't enough honest work that needs doing at decent wages--perhaps at all, and certainly not within the control of any one nation-state. Technology has allowed capital to become disconnected enough from labor that the foundation of our economic systems needs serious re-examination.
So the president said this to the Business Roundtable on September 18th. Not that he hasn't said it before (during the campaign he was much more vague calling it "a balanced approach") but it's probably important to recognize that he's still saying it:
So here’s where we are -- and I think this is the bottom line, and I want to make sure everybody is clear here. I have presented a budget that deals with -- continues to deal with our deficit effectively. I am prepared to work with Democrats and Republicans to deal with our long-term entitlement issues. And I am prepared to look at priorities that the Republicans think we should be promoting and priorities that they think we should be -- we shouldn’t be promoting. So I’m happy to negotiate with them around the budget, just as I’ve done in the past.
What I will not do is to create a habit, a pattern, whereby the full faith and credit of the United States ends up being a bargaining chip to set policy. It’s irresponsible. The last time we did this in 2011, we had negative growth at a time when the recovery was just trying to take off. And it would fundamentally change how American government functions.
He's right about not creating a habit or a pattern of bargaining with the debt ceiling. Thi is simply unsustainable. But once he says he'll deal, and they agree to take what he's offering, it's just a matter of timing the announcement isn't it?
From one perspective, Grover Norquist's little victory lap yesterday is understandable. After all, government funding has dropped to near Ryan budget levels due to sequestration, and it appears that more damage may be done soon as the result of some kind of new "grand bargain" over the debt ceiling. Norquist assumes there will be another Republican president in the near future and that Ryan budget spending levels will be solidified, so it's worth it to trade sequestration items for long-term cuts of earned benefits programs. With an intransigent House and a Democratic president keen on deficit reduction, it would be hard to blame Norquist for his bullish attitude. He certainly does appear to be winning in the short term.
But that perspective overlooks a few very important facts.
The first is that among the general public, Norquist is losing the argument badly. Republicans fare extremely poorly in public opinion polls, and Republican ideology fares even worse. Large majorities want higher taxes on the wealthy, and almost no one wants cuts to Social Security or Medicare. The successful implementation of Obamacare will only make matters worse for conservatives looking for broad national appeal.
The only reason Norquist is in a position to declare victory at all is quirky happenstance: a Republican wave driven by a poor economy and Democratic missteps in 2010 happened to coincide with a redistricting year, delivering a House of Representatives nearly structurally unable to fall into Democratic hands. The districts have become so gerrymandered that Republican House members are more afraid of losing their seats in a primary challenge than to a Democrat. That is a happy accident for them, but an accident all the same that only intensifies the problem of epistemic closure on the Right.
It's important to remember that in 2012, 1.4 million more votes were cast for Democratic House candidates than Republican ones. That's in addition to President Obama's smashing victory over Mitt Romney. Under normal circumstances we wouldn't be talking about grand bargains and government shutdowns today: we would be talking about gun control legislation, an equal pay amendment or some other progressive priority. That Norquist is even in a position to chortle is due to temporary good fortune for the Right.
It's also a product of being willing to use the most extreme hostage-taking measures to secure their legislative aims. Norquist cheers sequestration, but it's important to remember that sequestration only happened because Republicans took the government hostage and no one actually believed they would follow through. This time is different, which is why we are seeing much stiffer spines from Harry Reid and the White House. It's always possible that Democrats will capitulate once again when Republicans hold both the debt ceiling and the budget hostage, but Democratic talking points are already fairly firm that they will not "negotiate" under those conditions. Nor is it credible that Republicans will continue to get concessions from Democrats via hostage taking, year over year, budget after budget, debt ceiling after debt ceiling, for the next nine years (assuming Democrats control at least one of the Senate or Presidency--a likelihood given the unpopularity of Republican tactics themselves.)
And there's greater danger ahead for conservatives. With every act of contempt for good governance Republicans make themselves even more unpopular. Norquist is counting on a GOP president taking office someday soon. But there's no indication that such an event is likely, at least within the next 11 years. It's not clear that any of the current GOP frontrunners can touch Hillary Clinton, or even Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren for that matter.
Finally, there is demographic change. Every year, national elections become that much tougher for Republicans. Every year, solidly conservative states become purple, and purple states shade into blue. This isn't just a factor at the Presidential level: states that used to reliably send two Republican Senators are shifting blue as well. Demographic changes aren't just a nakedly partisan issue, but ideological as well. Millennials have just as positive an impression of socialism as capitalism. Most minority populations do not have hostile views of government. The older, white, mostly male base of the Republican Party is dying out. With Republicans still afraid of primary challenges from the right, their chances of appealing to the emerging majority of much more progressive voters are essentially nil.
Analysts often roll their eyes at the long-term demographic arguments. What matters is the short term, they say. Anything can happen in the long run, they say. True. And on any given night, it's impossible to know if the championship team will beat the cellar dweller in professional sports. That doesn't mean the odds aren't stacked against team with the worse roster.
Anyone looking for an example of how this shift takes place need look no further than California, home of Ronald Reagan and governor Pete Wilson just a couple of decades ago. It didn't take long for a combination of minority and young voters to change the face of state politics. A non-partisan redistricting law sealed Republicans' fate here. When demographic changes come, they come slowly and then reach a tipping point. Once that tipping point is hit, look out below. Republicans failed to shift with the demographic winds, and are now a near forgotten irrelevance in California politics. The same thing can and will happen nationally, absent dramatic changes.
Norquist and his allies can feast now on their temporary gains. But 9 more years of Republican dysfunction combined with demographic changes and redistricting in 2022 mean that whatever wins he notches are almost certain to be short lived.
Remember: budgets are easily changed. Spending levels are easily massaged. Indexing rules are easily altered. But once is a conservative voter ages out of the electorate and is replaced by a progressive one, that's much harder to change.
Given the extraordinary circumstances under which Norquist's ultimately Pyrrhic victories have come, he would be unwise to display such hubris about the future.
Brian Beutler is reporting that the GOP is getting the message that the White House isn't prepared to deal with a gun to its head:
After struggling for weeks and weeks in stages one through four, Republicans are finally entering the final stage of grieving over the death of their belief that President Obama would begin offering concessions in exchange for an increase in the debt limit.
The catalyzing event appears to have been an hour-plus long meeting between Obama and Congressional leaders at the White House on Wednesday. Senior administration officials say that if the meeting accomplished only one thing it was to convey to Republican leaders the extent of Obama’s determination not to negotiate with them over the budget until after they fund the government and increase the debt limit. These officials say his will here is stronger than at any time since he decided to press ahead with health care reform after Scott Brown ended the Democrats’ Senate supermajority in 2010.
Top administration officials say that President Obama feels as strongly about this fight as he has about anything in his presidency. He believes that he will be handing his successor a fatally weakened office, and handing the American people an unacceptable risk of future financial crises, if he breaks, or even bends, in the face of Republican demands. And so the White House says that their position is simple, and it will not change: They will not negotiate over substantive policy issues until Republicans end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling.
That's awesome. Except the GOP still has the hostages. They aren't just throwing their guns to the ground and stomping off in a huff. And they aren't going to do that.
Here's Greg Sargent with reports that Boehner's signaling he won't allow a default ... but he will need some concessions:
Multiple reports today inform us that John Boehner is privately telling colleagues that in the end, he won’t allow default and will even let a debt ceiling hike pass with mostly Dem votes if it comes down to it. Plenty of folks are rightly skeptical about this development. But it’s not entirely without significance.
The Post’s account points out that this may be a trial balloon designed to gauge how this will play with conservatives. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Boehner has been reiterating that Boehner does not intend to allow default, even as that spokesman is simultaneously reiterating that he will expect concessions in exchange for raising the debt limit, anyway.
I suspect that what's happening is that a deal is being made about the deal. After all:
The White House says that their position is simple, and it will not change: They will not negotiate over substantive policy issues until Republicans end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling.
You'll notice they aren't saying they won't negotiate.
It's absolutely true that the White House must make it clear that you cannot hold the world economy hostage over wingnut bullshit every year. And I'd guess the GOP leadership is happy to have them make that point --- the Tea Party faction is too stupid to understand such an abstraction when it's explained to them. But there is no way the Republicans are prepared to just tuck their tails between their legs and run off into the woods. They can't. Sooo, what seems to be happening is that we are doing some kabuki dancing around the shutdown and the debt ceiling while a deal is being quietly made outside the process.
We don't know if the wingnut faction will go along, but it's not impossible that after this freakshow, Boehner will be able to corral enough semi-sane Republicans to get over the hump and, more importantly of course, save his job. But he'll have to give them something for their trouble. We don't know what that might be because it's all on the QT, but I'd put my money on Norquist pegging this one right:
I think the original plan for the Republicans was to move the continuing resolution past the debt ceiling and then to sit down with Obama and decide whether he would be willing to trade some relaxation of the sequester for significant reforms of entitlements. That was something Obama might well do. Democrats in the House and the Senate are very concerned about caps and limits in sequestration. Republicans could get significant long-term entitlement reform -- all on the spending side, I’m assured by leadership -- for some relaxation of sequester.
A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that the program was intended to help, according to an analysis of census data by The New York Times.
Because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans that have declined to participate in a vast expansion of Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor, they are among the eight million Americans who are impoverished, uninsured and ineligible for help. The federal government will pay for the expansion through 2016 and no less than 90 percent of costs in later years.
Those excluded will be stranded without insurance, stuck between people with slightly higher incomes who will qualify for federal subsidies on the new health exchanges that went live this week, and those who are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid in its current form, which has income ceilings as low as $11 a day in some states.
People shopping for insurance on the health exchanges are already discovering this bitter twist.
“How can somebody in poverty not be eligible for subsidies?” an unemployed health care worker in Virginia asked through tears. The woman, who identified herself only as Robin L. because she does not want potential employers to know she is down on her luck, thought she had run into a computer problem when she went online Tuesday and learned she would not qualify.
Feature, not bug.
I'm going to guess that the Republicans may think this is a good way to drive a wedge between the Democrats and this loyal voting bloc of poor people. But I doubt it will work unless they literally die. Which may actually be the plan. They love human sacrifice.
Rep. Tim Griffin, political black ops professional first out of the gate
by digby
So the first words out of Arkansas congressman (and Karl Rove protege) Tim Griffin's mouth, just minutes after the shooting incident at the Capitol, was this repulsive drivel:
Griffin is a professional GOP political hit man from way back. He knows from violent rhetoric. This is from the 2000 campaign when he was a major player in the black oppo research team for George W. Bush:
And so - on the night of the first debate - we see a pumped-up Tim Griffin (deputy head of RNC Research) barking orders to his large team of "oppos." Lehrer tosses Gore the question about him having cast doubt on whether Bush has sufficient experience to lead. Gore demurs and parses his response. Griffin leaps into loud action. Within minutes his team have tracked down an obscure Gore quote buried within the transcript of a lengthy speech. Gotcha! "It directly contradicts what he just said in the debate! He just lied!" crows Griffin. Seconds later Griffin has fed the contradiction to the Associated Press. This is beyond post-debate spin. This is play-by-play impeachment. And incredibly effective.
Moments later the topic is the Balkans. Gore speaks of how the First World War started there and says "my uncle was a victim of poison gas there." The RNC oppo staff giggles at this and Griffin bellows: "This family stuff is killing me... let's check his uncle! Let's see if it's Witt Lafont. He's under investigation for drug-trafficking..." There is a flurry of activity and history books being consulted - and then palpable disappointment that Gore's uncle really was a gas victim. "OK so that is not a lie..." Griffin grimaces and phones the bad news to a waiting colleague: "Hey... we confirmed the uncle tear-gas story...."
But when Gore makes what turns out to be his misstatement about visiting Texan fire sites with James Lee Witt (Director of FEMA) - Griffin senses blood. "Have Jeanette take a look at that!" he cries. And his hunch is right. Gore has transposed dates or people. And that gives Griffin another opportunity.
The BBC cameras catch him on the phone exulting to a colleague: "You know what this would be perfect for is... Get one of these AP reporters or somebody on it for the next few days and then we get a lie out of it... and roll a few days with a new lie!"
And "LIE" was what they got. The New York Post trumpets LIAR LIAR on its front page - and the post-debate spin cycle becomes about Gore's perceived chronic character flaw. And so it has gone every week since the debates. The image is enshrined.
Was the fact that Gore DID visit Texan firesites - but on that occasion with another FEMA executive relevant? Did it matter that he had made other visits to Texas with James Lee Witt? Were Gore's words a misstatement or a lie? What would have been the benefit in intentionally lying about such a trivial fact? Was it important either way?
To Griffin it is all very simple:
"If there's something really good that we can attack on then we will... Research is a fundamental point. We think of ourselves as the creators of the ammunition in a war. Research digs up the ammunition.. We make the bullets."
Arkansas Congressman Tim Griffin, a Republican, said he had “tweeted out of emotion” on Thursday after appearing to blame Democrats for a shooting on Capitol Hill.
“The victims and their families are in my thoughts and prayers,” Griffin said in a text message to BuzzFeed. “The shooting today is a terrible and inexcusable tragedy and an act of terrorism. No one but the shooter is to blame.”
“We are still processing information about this shooting, but as I have been saying for days, we all need to choose our words wisely because violent rhetoric only coarsens our culture, creates an atmosphere of incivility and is not helpful. I tweeted out of emotion but agree that the timing was not helpful,” Griffin said.
WW II veterans were and are essential personnel. The WW II Memorial should be considered their place of work.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) October 2, 2013
House Republicans have already started probing the decision by the Obama administration to close off Washington’s World War II monument in an effort to turn the videos of veterans in wheelchairs pushing past barriers to visit the site into a defining image of the government shutdown.
House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa is “in the early stages of examining it,” spokesman Frederick Hill told POLITICO. “I don’t think we’ve sent any letters or requests at this point, but they’re possible.”
Senior House Natural Resources Committee Republicans sent their own letter Wednesday to National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis to ask him to “take steps as necessary to keep and not destroy documents related to the decision this week to restrict public access” to open-air memorials and monuments in the Washington area, including those honoring veterans of multiple wars, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.
The committee is “considering an oversight hearing in the near future,” wrote Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings and Public Lands and Environmental Regulation Subcommittee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah).
"How do you look at them and ... deny them access?" said Neugebauer. He, with most House Republicans, had voted early Sunday morning to pass a funding measure that would delay the Affordable Care Act, a vote that set up a showdown with the Senate and President Barack Obama. With the parties unable to agree on how to fund the federal government, non-essential government functions shut down Tuesday.
"It's difficult," responded the Park Service employee.
"Well, it should be difficult," replied the congressman, who was carrying a small American flag in his breast pocket.
"It is difficult," responded the Park Service employee. "I'm sorry, sir."
"The Park Service should be ashamed of themselves," the congressman said.
He's the head of the GOP campaign arm. He was speaking to donors who were evidently wondering just what he hell was going on inside their Party:
“Listen, we have to do this because of the Tea Party. If we don’t, these guys are going to get primaried and they are going to lose their primary.”
I wonder if these donors who have paid for all the propaganda the conservative movement has produced over the past 30 years feel good about their investment now?
Dylan Matthews interviewed Michael Linden of Center for American Progress about the Democrats' adoption of the Paul Ryan Budget numbers:
The continuing resolution (CR) that the Senate passed, the one that's ostensibly the Democratic position in this dispute now, spends $217 billion less on discretionary programs than Obama's budget would have. Break that number down for me. Where's it coming from?
Surprisingly, while it's a little bit more of a cut for non-defense spending, it's not all non-defense. Some of the difference is defense as well. The Obama budget had $600 billion in it for non-defense discretionary spending, and the Senate CR says $467 billion. It's a $133 billion difference. But that leaves a big chunk in the defense as well.
And it's mostly coming because of sequestration.
It's sequestration but also the Budget Control Act's cap. One of the things that's interesting about that chart is that the Senate budget resolution is a pretty far move from the initial democratic position. At that point, we were already pretty far away from where Democrats started.
When you mention the "original" Paul Ryan budget, which one are you referring to?
The one we were using was the one they released when they took over, in early 2011.
So we've been cutting spending at a faster pace than Paul Ryan wanted to when Republicans took over Congress.
On discretionary spending at least, that's right. And that's what we're pointing out. We've already essentially adopted that Ryan budget, and obviously that was not seen at the time as a moderate approach to government spending.
One hates to point fingers, but back in the first term, austerity was all the rage in the administration and among its institutional allies you'll recall. They were fighting with the Republicans over who could be the biggest deficit cutter in town. And that includes CAP. And here we are now with the Paul Ryan proposing to hold the debt ceiling hostage for even more cuts.
Read the whole interview. You will find that this is even more batshit crazy than you thought. The arbitrary budget caps are different in each house and yet if the numbers were in any way fairly obtained we wouldn't even be hitting the caps under sequestration. It's that looneytunes.
I am actually getting a little bit frightened that the revelation of this budgetary malpractice (which is the only thing you can call it) is going to be the thing that finally scares investors out of buying our bonds. This country is clearly being run by charlatan's and fools and one of the main ringleaders is named Paul Ryan. And the Republican Party nominated him to be the Vice President a couple of years ago. Doesn't bode well.
Anything you want to touch on before we wrap up?
Just how remarkable it is that we're having a budget shutdown and there's been very little discussion of the actual budget. The Republicans have shut down the government over Obamacare and Democrats have not made a very concerted effort to highlight just how bad the levels of funding in the CR really are. What they're trying to do is keep the government open, so I understand that, but we're not having a debate about if this is the right investment in NIH, or schools, or health inspectors.
No kidding. But that is by design. Ezra spoke with Grover Norquist about all this and Grover has an interesting perspective. He's not happy with Ted Cruz because Cruz didn't go along with his devious plan:
Ezra Klein: So, do you think a shutdown is good for the issues and ideas you’re trying to push?
Grover Norquist: Not necessarily. I think the original plan for the Republicans was to move the continuing resolution past the debt ceiling and then to sit down with Obama and decide whether he would be willing to trade some relaxation of the sequester for significant reforms of entitlements. That was something Obama might well do. Democrats in the House and the Senate are very concerned about caps and limits in sequestration. Republicans could get significant long-term entitlement reform -- all on the spending side, I’m assured by leadership -- for some relaxation of sequester.
Look at what Linden said above and you will see that he's likely right about that (and that this is what Ryan has to trade over and above raising the debt ceiling.)
He's really feeling his oats. Ezra asked him about the end game.
GN: Republicans have their principles. Let’s have health-care be more consumer-oriented, let’s not raise taxes, let’s reform government. I could imagine many things that would work inside those principles, but I’m not in Obama’s head. I don’t know how he values those things.
If I were him I’d trade some money off the sequester today for reforms in entitlements that take place a long time from now. Those reforms will be done by somebody. You might as well get something for them. Someday Republicans will hold the White House and the Senate and they’ll pass the Ryan plan. You might as well get something for it.
EK: One aspect of this that you mention quite a bit, but that’s been somewhat lost in the debate, is that Republicans have really managed to hold the spending levels in the CR down. They’re below the original Ryan budget, for instance, and well below what President Obama and the Senate Democrats wanted. Yet Republicans feel like they’re failing because they’re focused on Obamacare. Do you think Republicans are winning on spending?
GN: Yes, absolutely. We won in 2011 and then again with the president making 85 percent of the Bush tax cuts permanent. We really did get caps and sequestration that limits government spending. If we just went home and put the government on autopilot it would be a win. This Republican Congress has made a fundamental shift in the size of government equation.
Sequester is the big win. It defines the decade. You still have to fix long-term entitlements, but the other team isn’t willing to do that. So you either wait for a Republican president and the Ryan plan or you get people so concerned about sequestration that they’re willing to come to the table and fix entitlements long-term.
Mr Norquist? With all due respect, please take your "fix" and stick it where the sun don't shine.
Remember that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. The Dixiecrats fought to keep slavery. They lost. The Republican Party fought to prevent Social Security and to deny the New Deal. They lost. The Republican Party fought against Medicare. They lost. The Republican Party fought to stop Obamacare. They lost. The Republican fought to stop marriage equality and gay rights. And they're losing.
It may take some time, and it may take a lost generation economically to seal the deal. But they're going to lose this fight, too, as they've lost all the rest. Their revanchism will ultimately be short-lived.
If, in the broad arc of American history, the civil rights movement inevitably spawned the Reagan Southern Strategy backlash, which in turn must be undone by the same Millennial generation that Reaganism bankrupted, then so be it. It will have been worth it. We'll suffer our lives with a worse economy and worse prospects than our parents, but all the while we'll gladly dance at gay weddings on the interred remains of the political ideologies that caused the mess while giving our own children a better future. Let the Koch brothers' fortunes comfort them when worms are eating the remnants of their bodies and their souls await whatever punishment a potential afterlife might have to give, even as their descendants are taxed on their inheritance by a generation of happy warriors who will gladly cast their greedhead parents as the villains of history.
And we'll give a happy salute to all the amazing members of the previous generations like this grandfather, who stood and fought the good fight their whole lives even as their square conservative counterparts tried and failed to drag the nation into the mud. In the end, this child and his grandfather will shape the future even as his mother's cruel, narrow beliefs are despised and ultimately forgotten in the sands of time.
House Republicans tell me Speaker John Boehner wants to craft a “grand bargain” on fiscal issues as part of the debt-limit deliberations, and during a series of meetings on Wednesday, he urged colleagues to stick with him.
The revelation came quietly. Boehner called groups of members to his Capitol office all day, taking their temperature on the shutdown and the debt limit. It became clear, members say, that Boehner’s chief goal is conference unity as the debt limit nears, and he’s looking at potentially blending a government-spending deal and debt-limit agreement into a larger budget package.
“It’s the return of the grand bargain,” says one House Republican, who requested anonymity to speak freely. “There weren’t a lot of specifics discussed, and the meetings were mostly about just checking in. But he’s looking hard at the debt limit as a place where we can do something big.”Beyond Boehner’s office, the leadership is sending out a similar message through its emissaries. The House GOP’s top fiscal strategists, Dave Camp and Paul Ryan, are reassuring nervous members that the shutdown may be painful in the short term, but a budget deal is in the works.
During Wednesday huddles, Ryan and Camp, along with members who met with Boehner, talked about what kind of concessions they could potentially win from Democrats on the debt limit, should Republicans hang together. Per sources, entitlement reform, an elimination of the medical-device tax, and delays to parts of Obamacare are all on the table.
Ryan and his allies believe Democrats want a delay of aspects of sequestration and, of course, a clean CR and debt-limit extension. Instead of making separate deals on each front, Ryan, and now, it seems, Boehner are looking at combining the different issues into a single pact.
It's very hard to know exactly what this means, but whatever it is if it includes the Chained-CPI it's bad.
If we wanna do more deficit reduction, I’ve already– put out a budget that says, “Let’s do it.” I’m willing to reform entitlements. I’m willing to– you know, cut out additional waste that may be there. And I’m spending time, even without pressure from Congress, trying to figure out how we can cut out waste in the system.
He did say that he thought there should be some corporate taxes too. But I'm hearing that Democrats would be willing to deal if they can reverse some of the sequester cuts. No mention of tax hikes --- which would be the one poison pill that would kill the Grand Bargain for the Republicans (again.)
So...game on.
If they do this I'm sure everyone will be lauded as grown-ups. So there's that.
Most House Republicans privately concede they’re fighting a battle they’re unlikely to win, and to avoid a prolonged shutdown and a disastrous debt default, Washington has to create a package so big that lifting the borrowing limit and funding the government is merely a sideshow.
[...]
“I want to get a budget agreement,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told POLITICO on Wednesday. “That’s what we’ve been about all along. So yeah, we think the issues are converging — [the continuing resolution] and debt limit — and from the get-go, we wanted to get a budget agreement to grow this economy and get this debt under control, especially before the Federal Reserve starts raising interest rates. I think it’s in our nation’s interest to do that. And that’s one of the things we’re fighting for in addition to relief from Obamacare — or fairness from Obamacare.”
[...] White House officials remain deeply skeptical that a grand bargain can be reached as long as Republicans refuse to raise tax revenue. But there are fresh signs Republicans would consider new revenue if they are not raising tax rates, and key Republicans told POLITICO that they would be interested in some of the items discussed by Boehner and Obama in 2011.The collision of a number of factors has sparked renewed talk of a grand bargain.
[...]
So with government shut down and the debt ceiling rapidly approaching in the next two weeks a large number of Republicans see a grand deficit compromise as the only plausible way out.
Members throughout the House Republican Conference are sounding a new tune on a potential deal. Republican Rep. Steve Stivers, a close Boehner ally from the Columbus, Ohio, area, said “guys like me” would consider revenue in a potential deal.
“We’re getting closer to the point that everything’s intertwined — government funding, the debt ceiling and spending — and so the best way out, I believe, and the only way for everybody to find an acceptable long-term solution is a big negotiation of everything that includes something on entitlements, tax reform, something on a spending level and wrap it in one box,” Stivers told POLITICO.
But what about Democrats? Aren’t they planning to use the debt limit as leverage, too?
Yes. But here again, the difference in how each side is using it as leverage again requires Dems not to give ground.
Republicans suggest — again, without saying so outright — that the debt limit gives them leverage because their refusal to raise it threatens a level of harm to the country that Dems will not be able to accept. They suggest (with varying degrees of candor) that because of this, Dems will make unilateral concessions to them that otherwise they wouldn’t have to make. (Remember: In agreeing to raise the debt ceiling — and enabling the U.S. to pay debts already incurred – Republicans would not be conceding anything; they agree it must happen to preserve the country’s full faith and credit.)
By contrast, Democrats say the debt limit gives them leverage in the sense that it will mean Republicans will ultimately have to drop their demand for unilateral Dem concessions. Because Republicans ultimately will not allow widespread harm to the country, goes this reasoning, they will in the end have no choice but to stop asking for a reward in exchange for averting it. Get the difference? One side is dangling the threat of widespread economic harm (again, without clarifying whether they’re actually willing to let it happen) to extract concessions from the other. The other side is evoking that awful prospect in order to rebuff efforts to use it to extract concessions from them.
I’m hardly the first to point out this basic imbalance. Jonathan Chait, Steve Benen, Brian Beutler, James Fallows, and others have all done so at length. And yet, no matter how many times it is outlined, Republicans and their sympathizers, and even some neutral commentators, refuse to acknowledge the basic dimensions of the situation. In the end, the only way to clarify it adequately may be for Dems to simply refuse to give in, no matter what the consequences.
What Republicans are doing isn't negotiating: it's hostage taking. Republicans know the government can't stay shut down for long, and they know that America can't default on its debt. If this is "negotiating", it's a new form of "negotiating" that is largely unprecedented going back to the American Civil War. As Digby noted today, it's simply the latest in a long line of novel interpretations of political negotiating practiced by Republicans in recent decades.
But endless investigations into nothingburger "scandals" and impeachments over sexual acts are mere politics, if unnervingly brutal. Shutting down the government and defaulting on the full faith and credit of the United States in order to achieve legislative goals are something else entirely.
I hate to use the word because of its consequences, but it must be said that taking the government hostage in this way comes very close to bordering on treason. It's not all that different from actually holding a gun to the President's head and demanding legislative ransom. The Republicans would not hesitate to use that word if Democrats were holding the government hostage in order to achieve, say, gun control legislation or Eisenhower-era tax rates on the wealthy from a Republican president.
Again, that's not to say we should start throwing out terms like this lightly. But it's hard to fully explain the enormity of what the conservative establishment is doing here without using words that sound like hyperbolic exaggerations.
Republicans know that they cannot achieve their goals through standard democratic means. Their tactics have become more extreme with each passing year. Already "mainstream" pundits are coming to say the same things about the conservative establishment that only dirty hippie progressive bloggers were saying five to ten years ago.
If some of us are starting to use more and more alarmist words to describe what's going on now, it's because there's serious cause for alarm. This isn't politics as usual: it's a revolutionary revanchist movement for which the ends clearly justify any means necessary. That sort of thinking is very, very dangerous not just to everyday people and to economies, but to democracy itself.
U.S. news reports are largely blaming the government shutdown on the inability of both political parties to come to terms. It is supposedly the result of a "bitterly divided" Congress that "failed to reach agreement" (Washington Post) or "a bitter budget standoff" left unresolved by "rapid-fire back and forth legislative maneuvers" (New York Times). This sort of false equivalence is not just a failure of journalism. It is also a failure of democracy.
When the political leadership of this country is incapable of even keeping the government open, a political course correction is in order. But how can democracy self-correct if the public does not understand where the problem lies? And where will the pressure for change come from if journalists do not hold the responsible parties accountable?
The truth of what happened Monday night, as almost all political reporters know full well, is that "Republicans staged a series of last-ditch efforts to use a once-routine budget procedure to force Democrats to abandon their efforts to extend U.S. health insurance..."
But the political media's aversion to doing anything that might be seen as taking sides — combined with its obsession with process — led them to actively obscure the truth in their coverage of the votes. If you did not already know what this was all about, reading the news would not help you understand.
What makes all this more than a journalistic failure is that the press plays a crucial role in our democracy. We count on the press to help create an informed electorate. And perhaps even more important, we rely on the press to hold the powerful accountable.
That requires calling out political leaders when they transgress or fail to meet commonly agreed-upon standards: when they are corrupt, when they deceive, when they break the rules and refuse to govern. Such exposure is the first consequence. When the transgressions are sufficiently grave, what follows should be continued scrutiny, marginalization, contempt and ridicule.
In the current political climate, journalistic false equivalence leads to an insufficiently informed electorate, because the public is not getting an accurate picture of what is going on.
But the lack of accountability is arguably even worse because it has the characteristics of a cascade failure. When the media coverage seeks down-the-middle neutrality despite one party's outlandish conduct, there are no political consequences for their actions. With no consequences for extremism, politicians who have succeeded using such conduct have an incentive to become even more extreme. The more extreme they get, the further the split-the-difference press has to veer from common sense in order to avoid taking sides. And so on.
It's hard to see how any of this gets fixed in the next nine years. As long as the districts are adequately gerrymandered, there will be little electoral accountability for the bad behavior of Republicans. If the press actually tells the truth about what is going on, a few more moderate voters will be swayed, but it likely won't be enough to boot Republicans out of the majority in the House and the right will feel more emboldened to fight against the "liberal media." Most of the pressure on Republicans will still come from the right, which will descend further and further into its echo chamber with little to no tether to reality.
This is why the parallels to the 1850s and 1860s keeping popping up. In a normal democracy, a delusional 35% of the public shouldn't be able to hold the other 65% of the country hostage. But if you gerrymander the districts enough, enforce a 60-vote threshold in an unrepresentative body that emphasizes rural states; if you allow enough corporate money in elections; and if you create an entirely separate media echo chamber for that 35% to live in, you just might get it done.
I don't see the mechanism by which any of this improves. The best bet is for activists in contested congressional districts to work their tails off to pick off as many seats as possible, while blue states make Obamacare and other liberal priorities work in order to create contrasts with red states. Over the next nine years, angry progressives need to focus on winning back statehouses so that the gerrymandering can be reversed in 2022 alongside major demographic shifts. We already saw this work in California.
If those things can take place, then we may be in for a very long nine years. But at least we have a hope of waking from the nightmare at the end. The only problem is how much damage the dead enders will be able to do in nine years. An entire generation's prospects will be ruined, and it will probably be too late by then to reverse catastrophic climate change.
Following up on David's post below, with which I strongly agree, I would just like to point out another problem with the coverage: lack of context. For instance, even among journalists who ostentatiously reject the direct he said-she said, the impulse is to go to some length to qualify it by saying that while this particular crisis is clearly the fault of the Republicans, the larger picture is much more mixed with the Democrats having to take responsibility for their own actions that led to this. In other words, both sides are guilty --- the Democrats provoked this by doing whatever. (Passing the ACA without Republican votes, etc.)
This is nonsense. I'm sure it's true that Democrats have angered the Republicans by using legislative maneuvers to pass their agenda and I'm sure the Republicans are upset that theirs is not getting passed. But you really need to take a step back and look at the big picture. For 20 years the Republicans have openly and energetically been defying political norms. Ever since the Gingrich revolution we have careened from one violation of these norms to the next, from the 95 shutdown to the impeachment to off year redistricting to filibuster abuse to vote suppression and beyond. This is the story, not the fact that Democrats used a sharp maneuver that one time and it made the Republicans really, really mad and they vowed revenge.
The last two decades have been a systematic whittling down of every precedent, regulation and rule that had kept the government running even in times of great political disagreement. It's vitally important that the media convey this context because when you look at that litany of GOP actions over the years you will see that defaulting on the debt is completely plausible. They could very easily do it. They have adopted a revolutionary posture and they make no bones about it.
As anyone who reads this blog knows very well, I do not let Democrats off the hook. In a million ways they have enabled the GOP and allowed this huge shift to the right over the past few years. But they have not engaged in the destructive, radical usurpation of democratic norms that has become the hallmark of the Republican Party and which has led us to this critical moment. The last 20 years of GOP radicalism is not business as usual.
York also says the GOP should declare victory with the Ryan budget levels and go home. (And a sweet victory it is ...)
In any case, we are now fully into freakshow mode with a full fledged hissy fit in the making about Democrats hating the troops or some such nonsense:
"The Obama administration has decided they want to make the government shutdown as painful as possible, even taking the unnecessary step of keeping the Greatest Generation away from a monument built in their honor," Priebus said. "That's not right, and it's not fair."
Veterans from Missouri, Illinois and Michigan entered the closed memorial on Wednesday, Day 2 of the government shutdown. National Park Service spokeswoman Carol Johnson told ABC News that the Honor Flights are being granted access to the memorial "to conduct First Amendment activities."
"These soldiers gave everything in fighting for our freedom and the thought that they would not be allowed into their memorial because of the partisan divide in Washington is beyond the pale," said Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who visited with the Illinois veterans at the memorial.
Hopefully, we will not see this morph into General Betrayus levels of hyperbole with Democrats scurrying in all direction over nothing. I doubt it will --- this is just too pathetic. But you can never go wrong underestimating the Democrats' willingness to prostrate themselves before the Republicans the minute "the troops" are mentioned. (Which has put us into a deeply unfair bind, as Dday writes today in Salon.)
Regardless of all that, it would appear that we have gone beyond the obsession with shutting down Obamacare, which I heard someone describe as the Republicans' desire to have one last "Pickett's charge" before the law went into effect. And that is pretty stunning, if true:
Pickett's Charge was an infantry assault ordered by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee against Maj. Gen. George G. Meade's Union positions on Cemetery Ridge on July 3, 1863, the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. Its futility was predicted by the charge's commander, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, and it was arguably an avoidable mistake from which the Southern war effort never fully recovered psychologically. The farthest point reached by the attack has been referred to as the high-water mark of the Confederacy.
You'd think the neo-confederates, if anyone, would be aware of this. But they've probably been brainwashed into thinking the Union stole their rightful victory by conning the troops into giving up or something --- right along with every other lie they've been taught in right wing bizarroworld.
Honestly, I can never get over this one small fact: the Republicans are having a full blown hysterical meltdown because Democrats passed a law to help people get health care. Health care! The good news is that unlike the national political media, it appears local news is just reporting reality rather than process mumbo jumbo about the GOP hissy fit:
CONNECTICUT: Health Care Plans Begin: 28,000-Plus Go Online To State Marketplace [Hartford Courant]
GEORGIA: Enrollment Sites Are Swamped On First Day [The Augusta Chronicle]
IDAHO: Idaho Health Exchange Launches With Few Hiccups[Idaho Statesman]
INDIANA: Insurance Marketplace Draws Strong Early Interest[Journal and Courier]
KENTUCKY: Kynect Opens To High Demand [The Courier-Journal]
MAINE: Insurance Marketplace Opens To Flood Of Interest[Bangor Daily News]
DELAWARE: Off And Running In New Market: Website Overwhelmed On First Day Of Access [The News Journal]
MICHIGAN: Insurance Exchange Debut Draws Millions [The Detroit News]
NEW MEXICO: Obamacare: Plenty Of Interest, A Bevy Of Computer Snags [Carlsbad Current-Argus]
COLORADO: Heavy Traffic Slows Health Website On Debut Day [The Durango Herald]
FLORIDA: Website Are Overwhelmed As Many Log On, But Optimism Is Voiced [Tampa Bay Times]
ARIZONA: Health Markets Swamped On Day 1 [The Arizona Republic]
CALIFORNIA: Millions Try To Enroll [The Bakersfield Californian]
CALIFORNIA: Healthcare Exchange Off To Busy Start [Los Angeles Times]ALABAMA: State Insurance Marketplace Swamped With Consumer Interest[The Anniston Star]
RHODE ISLAND: Strong Interest On First Day Of R.I. Exchange[The Providence Journal]
SOUTH CAROLINA Health Insurance Website Overwhelmed On First Day[The State]
VIRGINIA: Markets Open For Business [Daily News-Record]
WISCONSIN: Insurance Exchanges Slowed By Demand [Green Bay Press-Gazette]
WISCONSIN: Wis. Residents Flood Exchanges [Stevens Point Journal]
OHIO: High Volume, Glitches Mark ACA’s First Day [Dayton Daily News]
PENNSYLVANIA: A First-Day Rush On Health Care [The Philadelphia Inquirer]
NEW YORK: Overloaded Website Delays Health Exchange Enrollment [The Epoch Times]
NORTH CAROLINA: Heavy Demand Stymies Health Care Law Rollout [The Fayetteville Observer]
Texas: Texans Sign Up Through Exchange [The Brownsville Herald]
I can vouch for the fact that here in Southern California the news coverage has been very straight forward: millions are interested, the rollout has a few glitches, but all in all it's going very well. The horror, the horror.
Meanwhile, Michelle Bachman is clinging to 80 year old WWII veterans like a Tiberian bat trying to pretend she is helping them in some way byshutting down the government. Rabbit hole, meet Alice.
Remember when we all assumed that sequestration could never hold and they'd just have to pull the plug and negotiate a reasonable budget when the going got tough? Yeah, that's worked out for us. I'm going to suggest that we all (myself included) stop assuming that reality must bite and start to figure out where this is actually likely to lead.
Senior House Republicans are increasingly persuaded the government shutdown could last weeks and will only be resolved in a major bipartisan accord involving a funding bill and a debt-ceiling increase.
On the first day of the shutdown, President Obama and Senate majority leader Harry Reid only hardened their unwillingness to negotiate with the GOP. For example, Obama threatening to veto rifle-shot funding bills, to keep specific branches of government funded, backed by dozens of Democrats on the House floor.
In the meantime, despite a small bloc of moderates indicating they would happily vote for a “clean” continuing resolution to fund the government without any preconditions, the House GOP conference is remaining steadfast.
At a closed-door conference meeting earlier today, Speaker John Boehner gave a pep-rally-style speech signaling he isn’t about to fold his hand.
“We’re in this fight. This is the moment. We all talk about doing something for our kids and our grandkids. If you want to do something for them, now is the time. We have to work together and win this fight,” Boehner told members, according to a Republican in the room.
“I can’t imagine we’re going to resolve” the shutdown before the upcoming fight on raising the debt ceiling, Representative John Campbell of California says.
“Think about it — if they decided they were ready to talk by next week, you’re not going to negotiate the thing overnight. It’s going to take a little time,” he adds.
“The real problem is, we may have gotten ourselves into a position where we can’t budge on a clean CR and they can’t budge on Obamacare. Then what do you do?” says Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho, a top Boehner ally. When I ask how long he expected the shutdown to last, Simpson says “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I don’t know.”
As I've been asking for a while now, what would they settle for if they wake up to the fact that they can't get their holy grail? I personally think they might settle for cutting social security and medicare without any tax increases, which I would guess will be presented by the Democratic leadership as a small capitulation. After all, they are the ones who offered up the cuts in the first place.
Maybe that's not good enough for the Republicans anymore. They seem to have convinced themselves that they have super-powers so they'll hold out for Obama's resignation. Still, if I had to guess, I'd say that 2011 deal without the revenue is probably going to end up being on offer if this thing drags out.
It looks like I'm not the only one worried about that:
(Washington, D.C.) --- Members of the Social Security Works and the Alliance for Retired Americans will join the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Thursday for a Human Chain press conference in opposition to the Chained CPI Social Security benefit cut. The event will take place this Thursday, October 3 at 10 a.m. (EST)at the House Triangle on the east side of the U.S. Capitol.
With the U.S. government shutdown, the President and some members of Congress will see this as an opportunity to press ahead with the chained CPI, a cut to our Social Security benefits in order to re-open the federal government. At age 75, a senior's benefits would be cut by about $660/year (on average). At age 85, those benefits would be cut by about $1,150/year, and at age 95, by about $1,600/year. For more on what the CPI would do, go to this Social Security Works Fact sheet.
This Human Chain press conference follows the success of nationwide Human Chain events organized by the Alliance for Retired Americans in conjunction with our coalition partners on July 2, 2013. Those events took place in more than 50 cities with support from the labor movement, Social Security Works, and other allies. More than 20 Members of Congress have agreed to participate on October 3, including the Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs: Reps. Keith Ellison (MN) and Raul Grijalva (AZ).
Who: Reps. Keith Ellison (MN); Raul Grijalva (AZ); Mike Honda (CA); Jim McDermott (WA); Steven Horsford (NV); Sheila Jackson Lee (TX); Barbara Lee (CA); John Conyers (MI); Elijah Cummings (MD); Gwen Moore (WI); David Cicilline (RI); Mark Pocan (WI); Louise Slaughter (NY); Cheri Bustos (IL); Jan Schakowsky (IL); Jerrold Nadler (NY); Lois Frankel (FL); Janice Hahn (CA); Paul Tonko (NY); Yvette Clarke (NY); and Judy Chu (CA); Social Security Works, and Members of the Alliance for Retired Americans
When: Thursday, October 3, 2013 at 10:00 AM
Where: House Triangle, U.S. Capitol, Washington, DC
Keep in mind that the president has been saying all along that he's "eager" for more deficit reduction. And Paul Ryan, who's the prime mover at this point behind the debt ceiling showdown, knows it:
I asked Ryan if he believes President Obama’s steadfast vows that he won’t negotiate over the debt ceiling. His reaction? You’ve got to be kidding me.
“Oh, nobody believes that. Nobody believes that. He himself negotiated Bowles Simpson on the debt limit with Democrats. That was Kent Conrad’s requirement. He himself negotiated the Budget Control Act with the debt limit.
Paul Ryan knows Obamacare isn't going to be repealed or delayed. They've already agreed to use his miserly budget numbers. So, what does he want now?
