Line of the Day

From Kevin Drum on the Speaker's reaction to Goldman Sachs' (notorious liberals they) report that the House spending cuts could reduce U.S. GDP by up to 2%.

"Boehner sure seems to have the traditional GOP mindset down pat: if inconvenient evidence is at hand, pretend it doesn't exist."

Social Security Is Not In Crisis

Just ask the White House Budget Director, Jack Lew. He points out in his USA Today Op-Ed,

"Social Security benefits are entirely self-financing. They are paid for with payroll taxes collected from workers and their employers throughout their careers. These taxes are placed in a trust fund dedicated to paying benefits owed to current and future beneficiaries.

When more taxes are collected than are needed to pay benefits, funds are converted to Treasury bonds — backed with the full faith and credit of the U.S. government — and are held in reserve for when revenue collected is not enough to pay the benefits due. We have just as much obligation to pay back those bonds with interest as we do to any other bondholders. The trust fund is the backbone of an important compact: that a lifetime of work will ensure dignity in retirement.

According to the most recent report of the independent Social Security Trustees, the trust fund is currently in surplus and growing. Even though Social Security began collecting less in taxes than it paid in benefits in 2010, the trust fund will continue to accrue interest and grow until 2025, and will have adequate resources to pay full benefits for the next 26 years."

FWIW, I tried to make this point in a discussion in the comments of a post at the Professor's blog, but didn't do it nearly as well (or with as much authority) as Mr. Lew. Of course, since Mr. Lew is a member of the Obama administration, my opponent in that discussion may not buy it coming from Mr. Lew either.
h/t TPM

Excerpt of the Day

Courtesy of Kevin Drum.

"Republicans, it turns out, actually spend a bit more money on social programs than Democrats, as the green bars in the chart below show (click for a larger image). The main difference? Democrats spend it on direct programs that largely serve "the elderly, the disabled, the unemployed, and the poor...ethnic minorities, racial minorities, and single mothers." Republicans spend it indirectly on programs that "are biased towards workers who are White, full-time, in large companies, and high-wage earners." But spend it they do."

Paul Krugman

On the same topic as the last post:

This brings me to the seventh word of my summary of the real fiscal issues: if you’re serious about the deficit, you should be willing to consider closing at least part of this gap with higher taxes. True, higher taxes aren’t popular, but neither are cuts in government programs. So we should add to the roster of fundamentally unserious people anyone who talks about the deficit — as most of our prominent deficit scolds do — as if it were purely a spending issue.

Another Example...

...of how so-called "deficit hawks" are really just "cut taxes for the rich hawks." From E.J. Dionne at the Washington Post -

"How do we know our difficulties stem primarily from a shortage of revenue? Consider what would happen if we allowed all the tax cuts scheduled to expire in 2012, including the ones enacted under Bush, to go away. That would produce nearly as much deficit reduction over the next decade - roughly $4 trillion - as all the maneuvers of the Bowles-Simpson commission put together. If you want to be serious about closing the deficit, ending the Bush tax cuts is a good place to start."

It's a good piece showing the hypocrisy of "deficit hawks" and also how the Democrats regularly get outflanked politically on issues such as this.

Is the Deficit a Crisis?

Kevin Drum gives the spot on answer for the Republicans.

Answer for Republicans: They don't think the deficit is a problem. If they did, they'd favor tax increases, Pentagon cuts, and Medicare cuts, since even the most dimwitted among them knows that cutting domestic discretionary spending won't make a dent in the deficit. But they favor none of these things.

Rather, they think federal spending on liberal social programs is a problem, and yammering about the deficit is a good way to force cuts to these programs. And there's nothing wrong with this. It's good politics. Why waste a crisis, after all? But anyone reporting on this issue really needs to be honest about what's going on. Republicans want to cut social spending. The deficit is just a handy cudgel to make this happen.

Another take on the Myth of the "Social Security Crisis"

According to Matthew Yglesias, it's got to do with how the Republicans favor policies that the rich like.

"For “you’re going to have to raise the retirement age for Social Security” to count as an “ugly truth” assumes that it’s true. And yet it’s not true. Closing the projected actuarial gap in Social Security requires some combination of more immigration, higher taxes, and lower benefits. Relative to higher taxes, lower benefits tend to be preferred by richer people. And of all the different ways to reduce benefits, raising the retirement age is the one that does the most to punish the poor and demands the least sacrifice from the rich. Christie, it’s true, isn’t saying “whatever the voters want to hear” but he’s not telling the truth either. What he’s doing is saying what rich people want middle class people to believe."

Social Security Solution of the Day

From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones.

"Social Security costs about 4.5% of GDP. That's going to increase as the baby boomer generation retires, and then in 2030 it steadies out forever at around 6% of GDP.

That's it. That's the story. Our choices are equally simple. If, about ten years from now, we slowly increase payroll taxes by 1.5% of GDP, Social Security will be able to pay out its current promised benefits for the rest of the century. Conversely, if we keep payroll taxes where they are today, benefits will have to be cut to 75% of their promised level by around 2040 or so. And if we do something in the middle, then taxes will go up, say, 1% of GDP and benefits will drop to about 92% of their promised level. But one way or another, at some level between 75% and 100% of what we've promised, Social Security benefits will always be there.

This is not a Ponzi scheme. It's not unsustainable. The percentage of old people in America isn't projected to grow forever. Lifespans will not increase to infinity."

Claims from those on the Right of a crisis in Social Security are not based in fact, but instead on ideological preference. They don't like the program and want rid of it. They use budget deficit hysteria as a convenient excuse to say we need radical cuts to Social Security.

Fixing the Budget Deficit

Kevin Drum has been beating this, uh, bongo for a while now. Here's the shorter version, which makes a lot of sense to me:

1. The budget deficit is big because the economy went in the tank.

2. The budget deficit will get smaller as the economy improves.

3. Medium term budgetary problems can be solved by letting the Bush tax cuts expire (all rates go back where they were under Clinton - hardly onerous levels).

4. Long term problems can only be fixed by addressing health care/Medicare.

5. I'd add - Social Security does not need major overhaul the way Medicare does. Claims to the contrary by conservatives actually indicate their ideological preference, rather than truth about the state of Social Security.

Government Shutdown

This article calls to mind my view of how Republicans both negotiate and play politics in one little scenario:

Republicans: "Compromise? No, either you take our version of the budget or you, the Democrat Party, are responsible for the government shutdown."

An Observation

From the Economist's DIA Blog - "But guess what? By far the strongest of the ideas currently on offer—and the one for which most Egyptians seemed to be clamouring these past few weeks—is none of the above. It is liberal democracy (emphasis mine)."

Notice the term is not "conservative democracy."

Getting Rid of the Penny/Paper Dollar

I concur with what Matthew Yglesias says about revamping the physical representation of our currency. On the one hand, this would save money. On the other hand, it moves everybody's cheese around. Which side to conservatives come down on? I'm genuinely curious.

Definition of the Day - Republicanomics

From the Economist's DIA blog.
Republicanomics - a vulgar, acontextual cartoon of Reagonomics.

They explain:
"Reagan met the specific challenges of the American economy in the early 1980s through tax cuts and tight money, among other things. Republicanomics transformed the policies of the Reagan administrations and the Volcker/Greenspan Fed into hardened ideology. "Reagan's embrace of a tight monetary policy in a high-inflation environment had hardened into a dogmatic insistence on tight money and anti-inflationary policies all the time," Mr Rauch writes. And thus:

At a time when most economists saw deflation and long-term, Japanese-style stagnation as a far greater danger than inflation, and when high unemployment and below-target inflation indicated that monetary policy was too tight, Republicans were hyperventilating about "currency debasement" and denouncing the Fed's efforts to expand the money supply."

Thank You. Thank You.

I listen to NPR Morning Edition on my way to work and All Things Considered on my way home from work. My home NPR station is WAMU, which means if I'm in the car during the middle of the day, I might hear the Diane Rehm Show or even Kojo Nnamdi. So I hear a lot of interviews with people - celebrities, politicians and regular people through the course of a week of radio listening. Here's something that's struck me and has begun to get on my nerves. At the end of the interview, the interviewer will say something like, "John Doe, from Raleigh, North Carolina. Thanks for your time, John." And then the interviewee will almost invariably say something like, "Thank you Mark." Whatever happened to saying "you're welcome," or even "my pleasure?" Why does a thank you have to elicit a thank you in response? I suspect this happens in interviews not on NPR or even in real life, but I think I only notice it when I'm captive in my car listening to NPR.

I say, if you have to thank the interviewer, your response to his or her thanks for the interview is to say, "It's my pleasure Mark. Thanks for having me on." Thank you is not a response to thank you. Quit taking the short cut people!

Federal Judicial Vacancies Reaching Crisis Point

The above is the title of a piece from the Washington Post detailing the state of the Federal judiciary. Of course the blame lies mostly with Republican obstructionism, but you have to give some blame to Democrats who consistently don't play this particular political game very well. The President needs to start pushing this as an issue instead of trying to be a centrist.

Sarah Palin...

...is a former half-term governor.

Ronald Reagan...

...isn't as bad as the Left says. I mean, c'mon, he raised taxes after all.

Line of the Day

In an article from the Economist's DIA blog:

The idea that sustainable-resource use and renewable energy is some kind of socialist hippy hobby is incredibly naive and frivolous, and extremely damaging to the American economy.

What he said.

EPA Decides to Limit Rocket Fuel in Drinking Water--Guess Who Objects?

The above is the title of an article at the Atlantic. Definitely an example of the government doing too darn much. The invisible hand would eventually make sure that the perchlorate didn't end up in your drinking water.

Monday Thought

If businesses can be considered people or citizens for purposes of allowing them to donate money in politics, shouldn't they also have the same civic responsibilities that people or citizens have in other areas? They shouldn't get to fall back selectively on the impersonal nature of "we're just a corporation so no one is individually responsible" or "we're a corporation so we have to do whatever (profits and plenty of them, please) our shareholders want."

Those Who Don't Study History...

...are doomed to repeat it. Or maybe the right idiom is the one about things coming full circle. My current band is currently working on adding a song I did in a band a looooong time ago. That's not a first for me, but it's interesting that the song in question is one of my old nemeses. Never fear though children, I'm leaving certain other banes of my singing existence in the dustbin of history.

As an aside, Neal Peart's a pretty good drummer. But I don't have to tell my reader that.

A Sad Story

You may have seen the blog Wade's World, written by the widow of a young Marine killed in Afghanistan. If you haven't seen it, check it out. It's a sad story and one that is all too common in the aftermath of the wars over there.

I originally went to the blog after a piece at Tom Ricks' blog The Best Defense. A good blog with occasionally excellent pieces. Today Mr. Ricks posted a follow-up to his original piece in order to highlight the back and forth in the comments section. The comments include appearances by both Mrs. Wade, the wife and Mrs. Wade(?), the fallen Marine's mother. A very good back and forth indeed.

Federal Judge Strikes Down Health Care Law

Even though I'm a lawyer, I probably look at the opinion from Florida federal district court judge Roger Vinson more in political terms than in legal terms. I haven't gone trolling over on the blogs of the Right to see whether there is exaltation over this decision. I'm interested, though, in the idea of whether anyone on the Right has commented on the idea of how this decision is an example of judicial activism. It's my impression that commenters on the Right become apoplectic when there is a decision by a judge which goes in the general direction of something the Left likes (Roe v. Wade, for instance). However, when the decision comes down on the side of the Right (different from the side of all that is right), then it's just the judge doing his duty. And no this is not something that both sides do - the rallying cry of "judicial activism" belongs solely to conservatives, except to point out their hypocrisy.

Notwithstanding the foregoing paragraph, it is interesting to note what lawyers and legal experts are saying about the opinion, rather than the politics of the opinion. One idea that's been roundly criticized is the fact that the judge did not sever the mandate (which he found unconstitutional) from the other provisions of the law. This apparently goes against standard practice:

In addition to declaring the mandate unconstitutional, Vinson declined to "sever" it from the rest of the law, and instead held that the entire law out should be thrown out. That goes far beyond standard practice, under which courts tend to defer to Congress and sever only the provisions of law that they find unconstitutional -- even if Congress didn't include a "severability clause" in the legislation.

"The lack of deference to Congress here is just breathtaking," said Washington and Lee University professor Timothy Jost.

So if you want to talk about judicial activism, it's pretty easy to get there when the opinion is criticized for not defering to the legislative body that created the law.
...
When I want to get in touch with what conservative legal commentators have to say about a legal issue or case, I usually go to Orin Kerr. He writes at The Volokh Conspiracy which is a good legal blog that also happens to be conservative. So Professor Kerr starts by saying that he likes the fact that Judge Vinson does a better job than the previous judge (Judge Henry Hudson of Virginia) of justifying his decision. He still ultimately comes down against Judge Vinson, saying "I think Judge Vinson’s argument on the Necessary and Proper Clause is not persuasive." He adds:

Now let’s return to Judge Vinson’s analysis of the Necessary & Proper Clause. The words of the relevant Supreme Court cases point to an extremely broad power, and Judge Vinson is supposed to be bound by those words. But Judge Vinson concludes that these words can’t be taken at face value because “to uphold [the mandate] via application of the Necessary and Proper Clause would [be to] . . . effectively remove all limits on federal power.”

This might work as a Supreme Court opinion that can disagree with precedent. But Judge Vinson is just a District Court judge....

Judge Vinson is reasoning that existing law must be a particular way because he thinks it should be that way as a matter of first principles, not because the relevant Supreme Court doctrine actually points that way....