The Sequester

The column inches are beginning to pile up on the latest budget standoff. It's the sequester this time. It has been over four weeks since the Boehner-led House voted to raise the debt ceiling on January 23. So we've been spared for a month, allowing us to concentrate on other matters.

If you're just starting to dip back in a good place to start is today's lead unsigned editorial in the New York Times, "Why Taxes Have To Go Up." The answer? The lasting damage of the Bush tax cuts and an aging population:

Contrary to Mr. Boehner’s “spending problem” claim, much of the deficit in the next 10 years can be chalked up to chronic revenue shortfalls from the Bush-era tax cuts, which were only partly undone in the fiscal-cliff deal earlier this year. (Wars and a recession also contributed.) It stands to reason that a deficit caused partly by inadequate revenue must be corrected in part by new taxes. And the only way to raise taxes now without harming the recovery is to impose them on high-income filers, for whom a tax increase is unlikely to cut into spending. 

Raising taxes at the top is neither punitive nor gratuitous. It is a needed step, both to achieve near-term budget goals and to lay the foundation for a healthy budget in the future. As the economy strengthens and the population ages, more taxes will be needed from further down the income scale, both to meet foreseeable commitments, especially health care, as well as unforeseeable developments, from wars to technological challenges. But there will never be a consensus for more taxes from the middle class without imposing higher taxes on wealthy Americans, who have enjoyed low taxes for a long time.

In today's offering, "Sequester Of Fools," Krugman says that Congress should repeal the sequester:

The right policy would be to forget about the whole thing. America doesn’t face a deficit crisis, nor will it face such a crisis anytime soon. Meanwhile, we have a weak economy that is recovering far too slowly from the recession that began in 2007. And, as Janet Yellen, the vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, recently emphasized, one main reason for the sluggish recovery is that government spending has been far weaker in this business cycle than in the past. We should be spending more, not less, until we’re close to full employment; the sequester is exactly what the doctor didn’t order.

And he warns against the false equivalence being peddled in the media (for a fine example one can cast his glance to the left of the opinion page and read David Brooks' column, "The D.C. Dubstep"). Krugman says,

As always, many pundits want to portray the deadlock over the sequester as a situation in which both sides are at fault, and in which both should give ground. But there’s really no symmetry here. A middle-of-the-road solution would presumably involve a mix of spending cuts and tax increases; well, that’s what Democrats are proposing, while Republicans are adamant that it should be cuts only. And given that the proposed Republican cuts would be even worse than those set to happen under the sequester, it’s hard to see why Democrats should negotiate at all, as opposed to just letting the sequester happen.

This is a political problem the source of which is Republican intransigence. Why do we have this problem? To find the answer all one has to do is consult the reporting of the excellent Jonathan Weisman. In a story yesterday, "GOP Resisting Obama on Tax Increase," Weisman, as always, lets his readers know that Republicans don't feel they need to compromise because they are politically invulnerable due to gerrymandering:

But House Republicans say they are feeling invulnerable in the current clash. Not only can they point to last year’s bills to replace the cuts, but redistricting has made most of them immune to political threats and entreaties. For many representing conservative districts where the president holds little sway, an attack by Mr. Obama is a badge of honor, senior Republican House aides say.

This is the neo-Dixiecrat GOP, a rump party holed up in the House of Representatives with majority status for the foreseeable future thanks to a radical Supreme Court hellbent on shredding all campaign finance law.

False Equivalence

Krugman's column today is an important one.  While ostensibly about Starbucks C.E.O. Howard Schultz's self-insertion into the fiscal cliff debate what Krugman is really after, besides outing the faux non-partisan Fix The Debt organization as a front group for prominent conservative and Blackstone co-founder Pete Peterson, is an illumination of the pervasive practice of false equivalence.

False equivalence as practiced by pundits featured in the mainstream media (like Tom Brokaw on yesterday's "Meet the Press") is the operating assumption that both parties are ideologically rigid and unwilling to compromise when the actual daily reporting — the historical record — is clear that it is one party, the Republican Party, particularly after the 2010 midterm elections, that is guilty of this.  This from today's Jennifer Steinhauer synopsis of the numerous fiscal showdowns of the last two years that led up to the cliff: "But a fundamental ideological chasm between the majority of lawmakers and an empowered group of Congressional Republicans — fueled by some Tea Party victories in both chambers in 2010 — has made it more difficult than ever to reach fiscal and budgetary compromises."

A reading of Jonathan Weisman's story today about the ongoing negotiations in the Senate reinforces the idea that it is foremost the Republican Party that is seeking to jam the process and foment discord:

Much of the umbrage was oddly discordant. Mr. Obama has long advocated for a permanent fix to the alternative minimum tax, which must be “patched” each year to keep it from applying to middle-income families. Until this weekend, both Democrats and Republicans appeared willing to let the across-the-board cuts take effect, at least temporarily, while a larger deficit deal is negotiated early next year.

Indeed, many Republicans were the loudest in protesting the cuts. Now that Democrats want them canceled, Republicans equate that position to raising taxes in order to spend more.

Elections are Supposed to Matter

I can't remember the last time I watched "Meet the Press."  And now I know why.  It's awful.

David Gregory, the moderator of the show, I used to think was a cut above the kind of corporate beltway reporter we've grown accustomed to the last several decades -- glib, superficial, completely lacking compassion for or understanding of people who have no bargaining power at work, whose job keeps him or her from homelessness and whose paycheck keeps shrinking. But I see no difference between David Gregory and any other facile shit bird who provides political opinions for the television networks.  His interview of Obama, who was competent and singularly unfiery, was peppered with petulant insinuations that the fiscal cliff impasse was somehow the fault of the White House. Why? Because in the end -- this is what I gleaned from watching the round table discussion following the interview -- it's all about results.  And if there are no results then the president cannot avoid responsibility because the president is afterall the president. This is what qualifies as expert analysis on the world's longest running television show. The round table consensus, kicked off by David Brooks, is that Obama is to blame, really, because he has not gone out of his way to engage all Republican points of view. This is known as false equivalence.  The corporate media treats both parties as equally culpable. Finally Doris Kearns Goodwin chimed in that Obama tried the "inside game" before and it didn't work; that's why he's going over the heads of congressional leadership now.

The point is that we're a democracy.  (We must try to believe this.) In democracies elections are supposed to matter. Obama won a historic election.The GOP lost -- Romney lost the presidential election; the Senate stayed Democrat despite ample predictions of a change in the majority; and while the GOP maintained control of the House, it lost seats there too.  Republicans refuse to acknowledge this, and this denial is sending us over the cliff.  In a democracy elections must matter.

At least Obama did a solid job explaining where we're at with two days left of the year. Either the Senate will cobble together a deal by this afternoon that both parties can agree on or Harry Reid will bring to a vote tomorrow a continuation of the Bush tax cuts for those who earn under $250,000 a year. Republicans must decide if their gerrymandering can keep them safe from voter wrath.