A blog about politics, poetry, sports and music.
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We were able to coax Sophie into the car, but Rosie pulled away with a surprising amount of power for a 30-pound pup.
They've been in the car a few times -- three times since Sunday -- but they're still afraid.
If anyone has any suggestions, we'll be glad to listen.
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In unveiling the 134-page volume that outlines his spending priorities, Obama acknowledged that his proposal would "add to our deficits in the short term to provide immediate relief to families and get our economy moving." But he argued that the economic crisis should not be used as an excuse to delay costly investments intended to modernize the nation's economy, enhance its workforce and, ultimately, reduce government spending.
"What I won't do is sacrifice investments that will make America stronger, more competitive and more prosperous in the 21st century -- investments that have been neglected for too long," Obama said. Citing the need to "break free" from foreign oil, reduce "crushing health-care costs," and improve public education, Obama said: "These investments must be America's priorities, and that's what they will be when I sign this budget into law."
With its immense scope and bold prescriptions, Obama's agenda seeks to foster a redistribution of wealth, with the government working to narrow the growing gap between rich and poor. It is likely to spark fierce political battles on an array of fronts, from social spending to energy policy to taxes.
Alice M. Rivlin, a Brookings Institution economist who served as former president Bill Clinton's budget director, called the plan "gutsy and quite good."
"It has a strong flavor of the Obama philosophy, which is tilting the playing field away from upper income and toward the rest of America," she said.
It calls on lawmakers to enact major new programs across the government, including one that would establish a national infrastructure bank to prioritize federal investments and another that would set new mandates on employers to enroll millions of workers for the first time in voluntary retirement savings accounts.
The budget seeks approval of a cap-and-trade program to curb U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 14 percent by 2020. The program, similar to one used to slash emissions that cause acid rain, would auction permits to companies that emit greenhouse gases and allow them to trade those allowances.
The administration is counting on the program to produce a big new stream of revenue, amounting to $646 billion over the next decade. About $15 billion a year would be set aside to pay for "clean energy technologies" while the rest would go toward making Obama's signature "Making Work Pay" tax credit permanent. The tax credit, worth as much as $800 a year to low- and middle-income workers, was enacted in the stimulus package.
In what the president called an "historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform," the budget proposes to create a $634 billion reserve fund that lawmakers could use to finance a major expansion of health coverage for the uninsured.
The fund would include savings from proposed efficiencies in Medicare and Medicaid, the federal health programs for the elderly and the poor, as well as $318 billion in new taxes on families in the highest income brackets, who would see new limits on the value of the tax breaks from itemized deductions.
That proposal is a fraction of the new taxes Obama proposes to heap on the nation's highest earners. Individuals who earn more than $200,000 a year and families who make more than $250,000 would also lose the tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration, meaning their top income tax rate would rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent, their investment income would be taxed at 20 percent rather than 15 percent and their deductions for mortgage interest, state and local taxes and charitable contributions would be reduced.
If Obama's tax plan is approved, a family making $500,000 a year would see its annual tax bill rise to nearly $132,000 from about $120,000, a 10 percent increase, said Clint Stretch, managing principal of tax policy at Deloitte Tax.
Hedge fund managers would take an even bigger hit. Much of their multimillion-dollar earnings would be taxed as regular income rather than capital gains, causing their tax rate to rise from 15 percent to as much as 39.6 percent. Oil and gas companies would be asked to pay an extra $31 billion over the next 10 years through an excise tax on offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico as well as new fees for drilling on federal land. Corporations that operate overseas could expect to pay $210 billion more over the next 10 years as a result of new limits on their ability to defer taxation on foreign earnings.
President Obama's first budget -- with its eye-popping $1.75 trillion deficit, a health-care fund of more than $600 billion, a $150 billion energy package and proposals to tax wealthy Americans even beyond what he talked about during his campaign -- underscores the breadth of his aspiration to reverse three decades of conservative governance and use his presidency to rapidly transform the country.
But in adopting a program of such size, cost and complexity, Obama has far exceeded what other politicians might have done. As a result, he is now gambling with his own future and the success of his presidency.
William A. Galston of the Brookings Institution cited three parallels to Obama's far-reaching program: Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1932 New Deal blueprint, Lyndon B. Johnson's 1965 Great Society agenda, and Ronald Reagan's 1981 call to dramatically limit the size and power of government, which set the framework for public policy debate ever since.
"A consequence of the economic events of the last two years has been to blow up that framework," Galston said. "It has lost substantial public credibility. President Obama now has his chance to make his case for a fundamentally different approach."
"This legislation promises economic growth and it will deliver the exact opposite," said Arnold Cohen, project director of the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey.So, the housing won't get built -- which is good news for towns like Hopewell and Cranbury, or good news for the people in those towns looking to keep affordable housing out -- even as more and more people experience a falling standard of living. That makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?
"There is nothing in this bill that would force the developers to spend one penny of the money returned to them on any future development in New Jersey," Cohen said. "In contrast, the $13 million in the hands of the towns that collected the money will create homes people can afford, stimulate the construction industry and put people to work."
Corzine said that the state would have little impact on how the money is spent -- the bulk come in the form of Medicaid and unemployment aid -- but that lawmakers will have to sort some infrastructure dollars. The president has told governors that he expects money to be spent on shovel-ready projects that are chosen via an open process, Gov. Corzine said.But I also know that nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.
We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet, it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient. We invented solar technology, but we’ve fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea.Ambitious, though not perfect (clean coal?).
Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders – and I know you don’t either. It is time for America to lead again.
Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years. We have also made the largest investment in basic research funding in American history – an investment that will spur not only new discoveries in energy, but breakthroughs in medicine, science, and technology.
We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country. And we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills.
But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.
As for our auto industry, everyone recognizes that years of bad decision-making and a global recession have pushed our automakers to the brink. We should not, and will not, protect them from their own bad practices. But we are committed to the goal of a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win. Millions of jobs depend on it. Scores of communities depend on it. And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.
You see, the flow of credit is the lifeblood of our economy. The ability to get a loan is how you finance the purchase of everything from a home to a car to a college education; how stores stock their shelves, farms buy equipment, and businesses make payroll.
But credit has stopped flowing the way it should. Too many bad loans from the housing crisis have made their way onto the books of too many banks. With so much debt and so little confidence, these banks are now fearful of lending out any more money to households, to businesses, or to each other. When there is no lending, families can’t afford to buy homes or cars. So businesses are forced to make layoffs. Our economy suffers even more, and credit dries up even further.
That is why this administration is moving swiftly and aggressively to break this destructive cycle, restore confidence, and re-start lending.
”I am as a member of Congress deeply concerned about levels of federal debt,” he said.The bill's size was an issue, he said, adding that "he would have preferred a stimulus package like the alternate proposed by Republican Whip Eric Cantor, a $500 billion package equally divided between stimulus spending and tax credits."
“I always vote my conscience and voted my conscience on that piece of legislation,” he said.
road map under which the federal government could, if it wanted to, demand a major and possibly a controlling stake in systemically important banks like Citigroup and Bank of America.
The 20 biggest banks will be required to undergo a new “stress test,” starting Wednesday, which is intended to determine whether each bank has enough capital to survive if the economy spirals down even more than most forecasters already expect.
Treasury officials plan to introduce details of the stress test on Wednesday, and it is expected to take several weeks to complete.
If a bank comes up short, Treasury officials said on Monday, the government will require it to raise more capital. If the bank cannot get that money from private sources, the government will demand that the bank swap out the government’s existing, nonvoting preferred shares — issued during the first phase of the Treasury’s $700 billion financial bailout program last September — and replace them with new preferred shares that are convertible to common stock with voting rights.
The requirements will apply both to banks that receive additional money in the months ahead and to banks that have already received money.
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Gov. Jon Corzine yesterday confirmed New Jersey's popular property tax rebate program is among the items that may be cut or curtailed as he tries to balance the upcoming budget.The property tax rebate program has always existed on somewhat shaky ground, the product of a political compromise that was unsustainable as the state's budget difficulties ran headlong into the national recession.
"Everything is on the table, and that's where it will stay" until the budget address March 10, Corzine said.
Corzine said a "suspension of the property tax rebates would be a better way to talk about it," but quickly added, "there's a purpose to providing property tax rebates.
"Property taxes are a heavy burden. It's not a gimmick program. It's meaningful. We're not anxious about making these decisions," Corzine said, speaking to reporters at Kean University in Union Township, where he addressed high school students attending a leadership conference.
With diminishing options for cutting the budget, Corzine is preparing plans to severely curtail or eliminate the rebates for the coming year, The Star-Ledger reported yesterday.
The rebate checks to homeowners and tenants, which cost the state about $1.7 billion last year, represent one of the largest remaining nonessential spending items in the budget Corzine will present to the Legislature next month. He has estimated the spending plan at $29 billion, down from the $32.9 billion budget originally passed this year.
"We have to make tough decisions. The people expect us to be prepared to make the tough decisions," he said.
We are not talking about fears that leftist radicals will expropriate perfectly good private companies. At least since last fall the major banks — certainly Citi and B of A — have only been able to stay in business because their counterparties believe that there’s an implicit federal guarantee on their obligations. The banks are already, in a fundamental sense, wards of the state.
And the market caps of these banks did not reflect investors’ assessment of the difference in value between their assets and their liabilities. Instead, it largely — and probably totally — reflected the “Geithner put”, the hope that the feds would bail them out in a way that handed a significant windfall gain to stockholders.
What’s happening now is a growing sense that the federal government, in return for rescuing these institutions, will demand the same thing a private-sector white knight would have demanded — namely, ownership.
"Some of our schools are just getting by now," said LuElla McFadden, president of a parents group in Jersey City. "Now they're going to add more tests they know the kids can't pass. It's going to increase the dropout rate and violence in schools from sheer frustration."Is this defeatist? Not necessarily. The reality is that you can't expect performance to improve just by announcing a test or by saying that standards have been elevated. You have to improve teaching and provide better school environments -- things that cost money. If the state wants to improve test scores, it has to find a way to recruit the best teachers to the worst schools and to replace decrepit buildings and improve safety. That is more likely to ge the job done that new tests.
Currently, New Jersey residents who favor allowing same-sex marriage outnumber those who oppose it by a 48% to 43% margin. Opinion among registered voters is slightly more supportive of same-sex marriage – 50% of voters favor it to 40% who are opposed.
Opinion on this issue breaks down along party lines: most Democrats support same-sex marriage (58% favor to 35% oppose), most Republicans are against it (37% favor to 54% oppose), and independents are split (46% favor to 43% oppose).
New Jersey polls conducted by Eagleton-Rutgers both before and after the state’s civil union law went into effect found similar levels of overall support among the general public – 50% to 44% in June 2006 and 48% to 45% in October 2007. However, all these polls mark a significant change from September 2003, when only 43% favored allowing same-sex marriage compared to 50% who opposed it. Prior polls have also shown strong (65%) support for the state’s current civil union laws.
oppose amending the state’s constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a women. Another 41% favor a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Among registered voters, 52% oppose such an amendment while only 38% support it.
This marks a decrease in support for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage from October 2007 when more residents supported (47%) than opposed (44%) it. It is a return to June 2006 levels when just 40% were in favor and 52% were opposed.
The plan has three basic components. One would help homeowners who continue to make loan payments on time, but are paying high interest rates and would otherwise not be able to refinance because they do not have enough equity or their houses are worth less than they borrowed. A second would assist people who are at risk of foreclosure by providing incentives to lenders to alter the terms of loans to make them substantially more affordable to struggling homeowners. The third would try to assure there is plenty of credit available for mortgages by giving $200 billion of additional financial backing to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-controlled mortgage finance companies.Acorn's Bertha Lewis, writing on OpenLeft, praised the president, saying his anti-foreclosure plan likely would have a greater impact on the economy than even the stimulus plan would have. The $75 billion plan "is a welcome initiative," she writes, "especially in the wake of the 2 years of inactivity and neglect from the Bush Administration."
I would argue that in terms of addressing the specific genesis of our present crisis - the toxic assets crippling the financial sector - the announcement today is of greater magnitude. For without a plan to address the predicted 8-9 million foreclosures over the next 4 years, that's in addition to the 2.3 million that occurred in 2008 with a total estimated cost to the economy of over $850 billion, attempts to spur an economic recovery will fail. There can be no long-term solution without addressing the immediate foreclosure crisis.That's the key thing to understand. We have to help homeowners if we are to have any shot at stabilizing the housing market and easing the credit crunch. If housing values continue to fall, this can only continue to get worse.
In response, state officials are planning two unpaid furlough days for state employees, one each in May and June, saving $35 million. State Treasurer David Rousseau said the furloughs can be done without the consent of public worker unions, which have already objected to a proposed salary freeze.And things are not likely to get better by the time the governor unveils his fiscal year 2010 budget,
In all, Corzine announced there will be an additional $472 million in budget cuts, $550 million in additional funds from the federal stimulus bill and $335 million in extra funds from state surpluses and trust funds.
The state also plans a tax amnesty program, which will need legislative approval, that would bring the state an additional $100 million.
This year's deficit now exceeds 10 percent of the original budget adopted last summer. It includes a $2.8 billion shortfall in revenue, a $600 million increase in spending -- including a $270 million deposit into the depleted unemployment fund, to avoid an automatic tax hike on businesses -- and $135 million extra to repay debt.
"That comes with difficult choices and real pain in a lot of places," Corzine said.
Revenue in the current budget is forecast at $29.5 billion. Collections for the upcoming fiscal year, beginning in July, are now $28.5 billion, meaning another group of budget cuts can be expected in Corzine's March 10 budget speech.This is why, when revenue is pouring in during good times, you have to sock some away. To do what the state has done -- under administrations of both political parties -- is to court disaster when things turn bad.
Of course, the plywood doesn't fit in the RAV4, which I hope is not a sign of bad things to come.
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We put them on the bed last night with Annie while I finished watching something in the living room. I promptly fell asleep. two hours later, when I retrieved them from the bed, they were comfortable and cried when I put them in the pen for the night. Rosie, of course, was loose this morning and came to wake us up.
Puppies!
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We've taken to calling her Houdini dog.
Poor Carlo, our friends' son who comes over in the afternoons to walk them. He's been the one to find her greeting him at the door. No damage aside from some -- how to say the politely? -- puddles and a pile.
What are we going to do? We'd prefer not to crate them, but it's still too soon to let them roam free.
I guess she's lucky she's cute.
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"It became clear to me to me that it would be very difficult day in and day out to serve in this Cabinet," Gregg said in a press conference late Thursday. He added that in the days since he was nominated he realized that to be "part of a team but not 100 percent with the team" was an untenable position.
In his written statement, Gregg cited recent developments regarding the economic stimulus package and the decision to have the next census director report directly to senior White House officials as evidence that he and President Obama were too different ideologically for the pairing to work. "This was simply a bridge too far for me," Gregg said of his decision.
As I said, Gregg is the guy who voted for almost every single corporate-written trade policy in the last generation. He's a guy who took to his state's largest paper to deride efforts to reform the proposed Colombia Free Trade Agreement (that Obama says he opposes) - an agreement that includes no labor, human rights or environmental provisions, and would reward a right-wing government that colludes to execute union leaders.
In a very real sense, the appointment of Gregg is the equivalent of the Bush administration hiring people to government offices they had previously worked to destroy. Gregg not only voted to eliminate the Commerce Department he now heads, he will run the trade enforcement agency he has worked to undermine.
Had Obama traded the Commerce slot for a Democratic senator, there might have been a case that the Gregg appointment was understandable - even in the context of trade. You could have argued that with another Democratic vote in the Senate, it would have been that much easier to pass new fair trade reforms. But the fact that that's not happening as part of the deal, means the Gregg appointment is just a straight-up sell out on all the issues that Commerce oversees - trade being one of the biggest. The idea that there's no one better than a radical free trader to head up the Commerce Department in the administration of a president who campaigned against free trade is preposterous.
As you can see, the per-gallon price is now at $1.75.9. I paid $1.69.9 last week at the same BP station.
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With backing from only three Republicans - Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania - the Senate yesterday passed an $838 billion stimulus bill that calls for about $108 billion less in spending than the House version. Unfortunately, the Senate plan eliminates $40 billion in state aid, much of it targeted for education. The same three Republicans who voted for the Senate plan also helped draft it and took the money out.The reason, The Globe implies, is that the GOP has taken control of the narrative.
The point of the stimulus bill is to keep money moving through the economy - by blunting the impact of the recession upon individual families, and by creating jobs through public investments that produce long-term benefits. Yet to GOP critics, if it's not a tax cut, it's pork.Pork, of course, is a bad word in politics, but "One person's pork is another person's beef." The cuts in aid to states for a variety of state-level programs made by the Senate at the expense of new tax cuts have triggered a backlash among governors, leading Republicans like Arnold Schwartzenegger and Charlie Crist -- one of John McCain's closest allies -- to get behind the new president.
he introduced Obama at yesterday's town hall meeting in Fort Myers, Fla. "This is not about partisan politics. It's about rising above that, helping America and reigniting our economy," Crist said.The states, as most governors admit, "play a crucial role in reigniting the economy," but most face budget shortfalls -- some that make New Jersey's look like pocket change.
If the federal government doesn't come through for them, state workers will lose their jobs and state services will continue to decline, hurting the most vulnerable.Obama, as The Globe writes, needs to take control of this debate, especially with negotiators from both house of Congress hacking away at the package in an attempt to come to a compromise.
An unfettered Federal Reserve will pump an unprecedented amount of liquidity into the financial system to unlock money and credit markets. The TARP fund will be deployed more broadly to shore up the still-fragile financial system, and another much larger and comprehensive foreclosure mitigation program is needed to forestall some of the millions of mortgage defaults that will occur otherwise. Finally, another very sizable economic stimulus plan is vitally needed.According to Moody's, the House package offered "a very good starting point." While the costs to the Treasury will be substantial, Moody's said, the potential negative consequences "are problems for another day."
Increased government spending provides a large economic bang for the buck and thus significantly boosts the economy. The benefits begin as soon as the money is disbursed and are less likely than tax cuts to be diluted by an increase in imports. The most effective proposals included in the House stimulus plan are extending unemployment insurance benefits, expanding the food stamp program, and increasing aid to state and local governments. Increasing infrastructure spending will also greatly boost the economy, particularly as the current downturn is expected to last for an extended period. Most of the infrastructure money will be spent on hiring workers and on materials and equipment produced domestically.At the same time,
Tax cuts generally provide less of an economic boost, particularly if they are temporary; on the other hand they can be implemented quickly. A particular plus for individual tax cuts included in the House stimulus plan such as the payroll tax and earned income tax credits is that they are targeted to benefit lower- and middle-income households that are more likely to spend the extra cash quickly. Investment and job tax benefits for businesses are less economically effective, but are not very costly and more widely distribute the benefits of the stimulus plan.
Moody's offers a nifty little chart (chart taken from Open Left), which assigns value to each element of the stimulus plan:
I know a mediocre bill is better than no bill, but a failed bill likely will lead to retrenchment and blame and the end of the public's limited tolerance for government intervention.
Public Service Electric and Gas Co. has asked state regulators to approve a $773-million plan to bring solar power to communities and customers throughout its service territory.This appears -- at least at the moment, before the DEP and others have a chance to get into the nuts and bolts -- to be a huge step in the right direction, diversifying our energy sources in a way that should cut costs down the road and reduce our reliance on dirty fuels.
The proposal, filed today with the Board of Public Utilities, calls for the installation of solar panels on 200,000 utility poles – the largest such project in the nation – as well as on schools, municipal buildings, low-income housing and brownfield sites.
The panels would produce electricity that would be fed into the utility’s power grid.
I'd love to just hang out with them in the yard all day, especially because they seem so calm and well behaved at the moment. It's been a bit of a rough patch of late, most of which is our own fault. We've -- or at least I've -- been allowing frustration to show, forgetting that they are still just 16 weeks old and have not been taught some of the things we think they should know. But we'll get it and they'll get it -- with the help of a trainer, some patience on our part and some much-needed sleep.
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Rep. Bruce Braley, an Iowa Democrat, will officially announce the formation of the caucus later this week, with 21 founding members -- all Democrats. The initial purpose will be to influence legislation from within the Democratic caucus, but Braley did not rule out opening the group to Republicans.
Braley said that the caucus will give voice to the populist anger created by the plummeting economy and opaque bank bailout.
"As someone who has been out holding town hall meetings and getting a faceful of that populist rage, I know that it is real, it is a force that needs to be dealt with, and it needs to be given a voice," said Braley.
It won't be all pitchforks, though, Braley said. "We want to give voice to those cries and at the same time work constructively with other individuals in Congress to craft policies that are going to respond to those concerns."
The Populist Caucus will make its first major play by advocating for the inclusion of a "Buy American" provision in the stimulus package. Fair trade, healthcare and middle-class tax policy will also dominate the caucus' agenda, said Braley, a sophomore member.
Jon Stewart knows how to do slashing comical commentary. He weighs in on what's happening, such as the media's bizarre coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death.So, why am I writing about a show that disappeared into rightful obscurity 18 months ago? For an answer, I'll quote a press release I received earlier today from Richard Viguerie, a pioneer of the conservative movement:
David Letterman knows how to do slashing comical commentary. He takes President Bush's awkward speeches and contrasts them with the lasting words of John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt.
Fox News Channel does not know how to do slashing comical commentary. The channel debuts "The 1/2 Hour News Hour" at 10 p.m. Sunday and repeats it at 10 p.m. Feb. 25. This show was meant to be a conservative version of "The Daily Show." It is a botch.
"The 1/2 Hour News Hour" does not comment on what is happening; it simply takes swipes at people. These people include Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama and Ed Begley Jr. Other joke topics are the ACLU, Time magazine, children's books and global warming.
Laughter, of an awfully canned variety, greets all the gags. Nothing happening on screen justifies these outbursts.
Hey, I'm all for a good dig at the high and the mighty. But these satirists fall short of hitting their targets with wit, timeliness or punch.
ConservativeHQ.com is launching a new daily comic strip that is the conservatives' answer to political comics like "Doonesbury" and the strip-turned-animated-cartoon "The Boondocks."Seems fair. Except that the strip -- like the 1/2 Hour News Hour -- just isn't funny.
"Liberal comedians and cartoonists have expressed great anguish at the rise of Barack Obama to the presidency, because having a perfect president makes it impossible to make fun of Washington," says Richard Viguerie, chairman of ConservativeHQ.com. "'The Gentleman from Lickskillet' is conservatives' response."
"The strip is for people who can't help but laugh at the politicians in Washington," says Viguerie.
"The Gentleman from Lickskillet" is the first conservative comic strip to interweave humor and satire with continuing storylines and a large cast of characters. The strip runs daily, Monday through Saturday. A Sunday version is set to launch next month.
The strip stars Randall Dill, a member of Congress; his family, including his wife (an assistant district attorney) and their young daughter; his congressional staff; his friends and constituents back home; and the politicians, bureaucrats, and politically correct people that they encounter in the course of their adventures.
The strip, which appears at ConservativeHQ.com, began unofficially three weeks ago with a sequence satirizing the inauguration of the new President. The current week, with a link to the complete archive, can be found at http://conservativehq.com/lickskillet/.
What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?The centrists, however, are only partly at fault. President Barack Obama has earned his share of the blame by trying to be all things to all people -- including those who wanted nothing to do with him whatsoever. So rather than being bold, Krugman notes, and pushing "a really strong stimulus plan, reflecting both the economy’s dire straits and his own electoral mandate," he has "offered a plan that was clearly both too small and too heavily reliant on tax cuts."
A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.
Even if the original Obama plan — around $800 billion in stimulus, with a substantial fraction of that total given over to ineffective tax cuts — had been enacted, it wouldn’t have been enough to fill the looming hole in the U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to $2.9 trillion over the next three years.
Yet the centrists did their best to make the plan weaker and worse.
Because he wanted the plan to have broad bipartisan support, and believed that it would. Not long ago administration strategists were talking about getting 80 or more votes in the Senate.The debate reminded me of something I learned while working retail -- I managed a tuxedo shop -- in my early 20s: Never undersell a potential customer. If a customer were to come in looking for a tux, we were taught to put him in the most expensive one in the store. Let him direct you downward. If you start with the cheap suit, you'll never get him in the more expensive ones, no matter how much nicer they might be.
So Mr. Obama was reduced to bargaining for the votes of those centrists. And the centrists, predictably, extracted a pound of flesh — not, as far as anyone can tell, based on any coherent economic argument, but simply to demonstrate their centrist mojo. They probably would have demanded that $100 billion or so be cut from anything Mr. Obama proposed; by coming in with such a low initial bid, the president guaranteed that the final deal would be much too small.
Such are the perils of negotiating with yourself.
The price tag for the Senate plan is now only slightly more than the $820 billion cost of the measure adopted by the House. Both plans are intended to blunt the recession with a combination of tax cuts and government spending on public works and other programs to create more than three million jobs.Josh Marshall, on Talking Points Memo, offers a pretty fair summary of what happened this week:
But the competing bills now reflect substantially different approaches.
The House puts greater emphasis on helping states and localities avoid wide-scale cuts in services and layoffs of public employees.
The Senate cut $40 billion of that aid from its bill, which is expected to be approved Tuesday. The Senate plan, reached in an agreement late Friday between Democrats and three moderate Republicans, focuses somewhat more heavily on tax cuts, provides far less generous health care subsidies for the unemployed and lowers a proposed increase in food stamps.
To help allay Republican concerns about the cost, the Senate proposal even scales back President Obama’s signature middle-class tax cut. The Senate plan also creates $30 billion in tax incentives to encourage Americans to buy homes and cars within
the next year.
So Senate Republicans invoked the threat of a filibuster. And the 'centrist' group has leveraged that threat to add more tax cuts that won't accomplish anything and cut out a lot of spending that would.John Nichols, in The Nation, sounded a mournful note in considering the trade offs that appear to have won "the votes of two Republican (Maine's Susan Collins and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter) and perhaps another (Mainer Olympia Snowe) that were needed to undermine the threat of a GOP filibuster," a deal in which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "surrendered $86 billion (in) proposed stimulus spending."
In doing so, the Democrats agreed to cut not just fat but bone, and to warp the focus and intent of the legislation.Ouch. Nichols continues:
The Senate plan is dramatically more weighted than the House bill toward tax cuts (which account for more than 40 percent of the overall cost of the package). This is despite the fact that there is a growing consensus -- among even conservative economists and policy makers -- that tax cuts will do little or nothing to stimulate job creation in a country that lost almost 600,000 positions in January alone. As French President Nicolas Sarkozy, no liberal, said Friday of countries that opt for tax cuts rather than stimulus: The approach "will bring them nothing" in the way of economic regeneration.
The Senate's increased emphasis on tax cuts comes at the expense of the aggressive spending in key areas that might actually get a stalled economy moving.
Spending for school construction that would actually have put people to work -- while at the same time investing in the future -- has been slashed. (Almost $20 billion slated for school construction is gone.)
Money for Superfund cleanup, Head Start and Early Start child care, energy efficiency initiatives and historic preservation projects -- all of which create or maintain existing jobs -- has been cut. Supplemental transportation funding has been hacked.
The House's proposal to help unemployed Americans maintain their health benefits has been chopped down.
In every sense, the Senate plan moves in the wrong direction.
At a time when smart economists are saying that a bigger, bolder stimulus plan is needed, Senate Democrats and a few moderate Republicans have agreed to a
smaller, weaker initiative.
And Republicans are still delaying passage. It could be Sunday, even Monday, before a vote is taken. And who knows what more will be lost -- in time and stimulus spending before President Obama signs a bill.
These are the fruits of bipartisan fantasies and the compromises that follow upon them. President Obama, who should have been on television addressing the nation and doing everything in his power to rally support for a sufficient stimulus plan, will be lucky if he gets anything by the President's Day deadline he set. (Even after the Senate measure passes, a difficult process of reconciling the very different House and Senate bills must take place. Then there will be more votes before any legislation gets to the president's desk.)
The White House still wants to advance this measure, as do Senate Democratic leaders. And, considering the urgency of the moment, they are probably right to try to do something. But if the final "stimulus package" proves to be insufficient to jump start the economy -- and if what is left of public confidence in the prospect of turnaround collapses as a result -- this Friday night compromise will be remembered with pained regret.
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"Now it's a sin and it oughta be a crime
You know it happens buddy all the time
Try to make a living, try to have a little fun
Held up without a gun, held up without a gun"
Early in the morning factory whistle blows,New Jersey once was a manufacturing mecca. Led by the urban northeast, in particular, Paterson, and the cities along the Delaware River, the state made everything from bandages and bologna to wallboard and water pipes.
Man rises from bed and puts on his clothes,
Man takes his lunch, walks out in the morning light,
It's the working, the working, just the working life.-- Bruce Springsteen
"Factory"
Management would not confirm the number of layoffs but a union representative said more than 170 workers were affected.Of course, all decisions like this are painful -- but far less so for the people making them. The people feeling the pain are the ones who will be forced to look for work next week -- some of whom have been at the Florence factory for decades.
"This was an extremely painful decision and action to take," a company statement read, citing the failing housing market and decreased demand for the ductile iron pipe used in construction as reasons for the downsizing. "Our Florence employees are our top priority at this point."
A small number of workers, fewer than 20, will be kept on to help run the distribution center that will replace the iron pipe manufacturing operation, but even the promise of full-time employment is of little comfort to those losing their original, often well-paying jobs.
"I've worked here for 37 years, but now I'm being downgraded and displaced to a lower-paying job," said John Richardson, a maintenance engineer from Trenton. Due in part to his seniority, Richardson will not lose his job next Thursday like so many, but will take a major salary cut when he moves to the new shipping department.There is fear among workers, according to the story, though some are hoping that "President Obama's proposed economic stimulus plan will reignite the country and state's demand for iron pipes."
He expresses bitterness toward the company he believes is turning its back on hardworking, longtime employees.And yet, we still don't have a stimulus plan, because Senate Republicans -- and make no mistake, it has been held up by Republicans pushing the false promise of a tax-cut led recovery -- refuse to budget. Some cracks may be forming -- the two Maine senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, arguably the most moderate of the remaining GOP members, are working with Democrat Ben Nelson to pare things back, though though it is too early to know what that will mean in practice.
"This company made profits this year, but they're still closing down. I'll be here, but some of these guys are not going to make it," he said. "What would happen if I did get laid off? I'm 59 years old. Who would hire a guy who's 59 years old?"
In a series of votes on amendments to the bill on Wednesday evening, Senate Democrats easily beat back a number of efforts by Republicans to vastly change the stimulus measure by stripping out spending programs and broadening the tax cuts.The president is still pushing his plan and is considering a Monday night address should the stimulus remain stalled. He contiues to express a "willingness to compromise," but he has "warned critics of the stimulus bill that they were standing in the way of his agenda, and he urged Congress to act fast."
In a number of those votes, the Democrats were joined by Ms. Collins and Ms. Snowe, as well as Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and George V. Voinovich of Ohio.
“I’ve heard criticisms of this plan that echo the very same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis, the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems, that we can ignore the fundamental challenges like energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive,” he said.But, as Big Tent Democrat writes on Talk Left, writes
“I reject that theory,” Mr. Obama continued, “and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. So I urge members of Congress to act without delay.”
Fred Hiatt and the WaPo Editorial Board and the typical Beltway "bipartisan" BSers not only feel no sense of urgency -- they simply have no grasp of the magnitude of the problemwhich really should not be a surprise.
Rome is burning and the Neros of the Beltway insist on fiddling to no effect. Today's jobs report is expected to show another half million jobs lost in January. But the Beltway wants "hearings." Disgraceful.Yes. Disgraceful.
