GOP Doesn't Do Fiscal Responsibility
The following all happened just this week:
Item 1. The Conrad-Gregg commission, which needed 60 votes in the Senate, was defeated 53-46. The amendment creating the commission would have been adopted 60-39 if all of the GOP senators who co-sponsored the amendment voted for it. Instead, seven of the Republican co-sponsors withdrew their co-sponsorship the week before the vote and then voted against it.
Item 2. All Senate Republicans voted against re-establishing the pay-as-you go rules, which would have required that, with certain exceptions, any new mandatory spending or revenue legislation not increase the deficit. The rules were adopted with only Democratic support.
Item 3. With the Conrad-Gregg commission killed, congressional Republicans have been heavily critical of the commission the Obama administration may create by presidential order to consider ways to reduce the deficit. There are growing indications that the GOP House and Senate leadership, each of which would get to appoint three of their own members to the commission, may refuse to name any in the hope that the panel's deliberations will be stopped dead in its tracks without them or that the Democrats will proceed on their own. The stated reason for the GOP opposition is that there's no guarantee that a presidential commission's recommendations will be taken up by Congress even though there's even less of a chance if it's not created.
Item 4. Republican Chairman Michael Steele is saying so often that Republicans are against cuts in Medicare that it's starting to sound like a mantra. Add to that their stated opposition to revenue increases (see #1 above), military spending reductions, homeland security reductions, and the extremely low possibility that, if Medicare is too hot to handle, they'll go anywhere near Social Security, and the deficit reduction math becomes totally impossible.
What's most infuriating about this is that the GOP is even blocking what used to be the easiest thing for everyone to agree to do -- budget process changes. In fact, the saying among budget aficionados in Washington used to be that when Congress couldn't or wouldn't do anything about the budget, it did something about the budget process. Now, however, because of GOP opposition, even budget process changes that wouldn't impose any immediate changes in spending or revenues, are becoming, or have already become, impossible to adopt.
Not Wrong, But One-Sided...
Stan,
You criticisms aren't wrong, but they are incomplete and one-sided.
You go after Republicans for voting against the commission. But an equal number of Democrats voted against it.
You go after the Republicans for not supporting PAYGO. But do Democrats really deserve praise for this version of PAYGO -- considering the trillions in exemptions?
More importantly, PAYGO is supposed to be a companion to discretionary spending caps. That way both sides of the budget are being addressed in tandem.
Senator Sessions put forward an amendment which instituted such caps -- and not even that drastic ones. Claire Mccaskill cosponsored and a few Dems voted for it. But most of them voted against. How is that fiscally responsible?
You criticize Republicans, rightly so, for making it their mantra to not cut Medicare. But when McCain presidential campaign adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin said that they intended to find savings in Medicare and Medicaid -- the Obama went after them hard. Using the same type of rhetoric that some outside groups used against Obama this time around.
And it isn't as if the Dems are proposing Medicare cuts to slow the growth of that program and thus reduce the deficit. They are proposing cutting them to finance new entitlement spending. (granted, both pieces of legislation will reduce the deficit as a whole -- but not nearly by the amount that they cut Medicare and Medicaid costs; and at least over the next two decade, both bills would increase entitlement spending on net).
Now you are right to be disappointed with the Republicans. Their party mantra supposedly calls for fiscal responsibility, yet few of them adhere to that. And since they tend to take taxes off the table a lot more quickly than Democrats take spending cuts off the table (although sometimes they do), it makes it very hard to work with them or take them seriously.
But lets not pretend the Democrats are angels.
GOP
You are so on it. Whne it comes to the over spending problem the Republicans are the big problem.
Hyperpartisan Spin?
Re: "GOP Doesn't Do Fiscal Responsibility," it is absolutely legitimate and far from hyperpartisan to call the 7 Republicans out on their hypocrisy. The illusion of taking the high road
in situations like this is common, with comments like "Oh, blaming those 7 isn't productive," or "Stop dwelling on the 8 years of mis-management that got us here, we need to look forward," but I would submit that in the interest of a complete and thorough discourse, "it" is what is counter-productive and partisan.
Further, the argument that the ops rationale is flawed because Democrats also voted against it is also a partisan argument, and sounds ridiculous to anyone able for a moment to must an objective viewpoint. Whether it passed or failed, 7 co-sponsoring Republican's later voted AGAINST their own bill BECAUSE the liberal President came out for it. Those, ladies and gentlemen, are games and not leadership, and everyone of the constituents of those 7 should think very careful about what type of person they may end up sending back to Washington. We do have the power as the American people, if only we'd stop getting our own personal opinions from others and think for ourselves.
Stan, You seem to be
Stan,
You seem to be implying that it is only -- or at least mostly -- Republicans who are to blame for Washington's lack of fiscal responsibility.
Re: GOP Doesn't Do Fiscal Responsibility Item 1. The Conrad-Gregg commission...would have been adopted 60-39 if all of the GOP senators who co-sponsored the amendment voted for it.
So the commission that you not only opposed but repeatedly went out of your way to ridicule along with its supporters was defeated, and as you wrote just a few days ago "The defeat was absolutely bipartisan: 22 Democrats plus Independent Bernie Sanders (VT) and 23 Republicans voted against it", yet now you portray it as clear evidence that the GOP (as opposed to both parties, by implication) "Doesn't Do Fiscal Responsibility". I'm completely disgusted by those 7 Republican senators, as I expressed the day after the vote -- see http://economistmom.com/2010/01/proud-of-my-senators-for-their-votes-on-... -- but I don't think its legitimate or helpful to engage in hyperpartisan spin by pinning the blame on the Republicans as opposed to those at the ideological extremes of both parties (and "extreme" these days seems to refer to a substantial portion).
Re: Republicans have been heavily critical of the commission the Obama administration may create by presidential order...The stated reason for the GOP opposition is that there's no guarantee that a presidential commission's recommendations will be taken up by Congress even though there's even less of a chance if it's not created.
First, I'm not sure that's the stated reason of Republican opponents in general, although it is Gregg's stated reason and perhaps that of others who supported the statutory Congressional commission -- and Conrad, the Democrat behind the push for the Conrad-Gregg commission amendment also vigorously opposed a presidential commission as a substitute for the statutory commission he sought precisely for that reason (the lack of guarantee that the commission's recommendation would come to a vote, in particular an up-or-down vote), and he says he only voted for the increase in the debt limit because he received written assurances from Pelosi and Reid that it will come to a vote http://dmarron.com/2010/01/28/the-debt-limit-is-a-tax-on-the-majority/#c...
Second, if not for the opportunity to use this matter to bash Republicans, you would almost surely have used this lack of a statutory guarantee that any recommendation will come to a vote to once again ridicule the idea of a budget commission -- as yet another sign that there is supposedly no chance of any (or any meaningful) legislation resulting from a budget commission.
This has been apparent for some decades...
Obama was quite...delicate...in pointing out this hypocrisy in his meeting with Republicans.
We came out of WWII with a debt of 120% of GDP.
Over the next 35 years--under supposedly profligate Democratic administrations--we steadily and responsibly worked it down to 35% of GDP.
Then in 1980--surprise--it started rising, and it's been rising every since (except briefly under Clinton, despite his craven embracing of small-government demagoguery). We're now approaching 100%.
http://home.att.net/~rdavis2/debt10.jpg
How dare these people call themselves conservatives? They've spent the last 30 years borrowing money abroad and from our children, and using the money to buy votes here with the world's most transparent pander: "I'll cut your taxes!"
And all that time, blaming the deficits on others.
Reaganomics was not an economic strategy, but a political one. (When Cheney said that Reagan proved deficits don't matter, it was not an economic statement, but a political one--people complain about deficits, but they vote for tax cuts.)
And that strategy really, really works.
If Obama won't or can't change the narrative, nobody will. Depressing.
Really Stan?
1. Maybe the 7 Republicans bought your argument here
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/stan-collender/1432/brad-delong-get...
2. The "certain exceptions" in the PAYGO law among other things exclude most of the Bush tax cuts, the AMT, and a host of spending items. It is possible to conclude that this version of PAYGO is more a Congressional fig leaf than a serious budget exercise.
3. See 1. If you are going to make these arguments, it would be appropriate to admit that you've changed your own mind regarding a commission. And if you want to argue "growing indications" and be taken seriously, you might want to say what those indications are. For a while, there were "growing indications" that President Obama was going to pivot to the center. I didn't see that happen, did you?
4. The Republican behavior on Medicare cuts is reprehensible but no more so than the behavior of Democrats around SS reform when it was tried or the behavior of the out of power party any time any reductions in spending are in play.
It's infuriating to me so see you say the GOP is blocking budget process changes. They blocked PAYGO and, in my opinion, that was right. It's a piece of swiss cheese and PAYGO on part of the budget is useless. The commission vote, with which I disagree but I would have thought you would have liked, was a bipartisan rejection.
Brooks, what he's saying is.........
that 7 Republican co-sponsors of the bill DIDN'T vote for their own bill!!! Does that not infuriate you?? There's no intellectual honesty in voting against a bill you introduced. Don't you get it?? They are political pawns of the GOP!!
"Yet Another..", First, Stan
"Yet Another..",
First, Stan is making a broader point than the narrow one you describe. Second, it's beyond me how anyone could have read my comment here (let alone have read the other comment of mine on the topic to which I linked) and have any doubt that I appreciate and feel strongly about the particularly shameful, convictionless and selfish nature of the votes of those 7 senators, so the only thing I "don't get" is why you would think I "don't get it".
The Democrat record speaks for itself
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/q=ZjZmOWU0MGUxMDRkNWU4ZDI1Nzc5MWY2...
Fact-Checking the President in Baltimore [Daniel Foster]
In this video, a bemused President Obama responds to a claim by Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas) that monthly deficits under the Democrat-controlled Congress exceed the annual deficits accrued by Republican Congresses from 1996 to 2007:
Obama calls for "independent fact check" of Hensarling factual statement
Beginning at about 3:33, the president says: "When you say that suddenly, I've got a monthly . . . deficit that's higher than the annual deficit left by the Republicans . . . that's factually just not true. And you know it's not true."
At 5:08, the president says "I am happy to have any independent fact-checker out there take a look at your presentation versus mine in terms of the accuracy of what I just said."
Obama is right. Monthly deficits under the recent Democratic Congresses don't exceed annual deficits under those Republican Congresses. But they come pretty darn close.
Hensarling's comments likely emerged from a release issued by the Republican Study Committee just yesterday, showing that the total accumulated deficit from Republican-controlled budgets from FY 1996-FY 2007 (and factoring in the substantial surpluses run from 1998-2001) stands at just under $1.246 trillion. The deficit run by Democratic-controlled Congresses in just three years — starting with FY2008 and including the latest CBO projections for FY 2010 — is already $3.222 trillion.
That means that over twelve years of Republican rule, there was an average annual budget deficit of about $104 billion. Compare that with an average annual deficit since 2008 of $1.074 trillion — or about $90 billion per month.
No need to trust the GOP document either. The CBO has all the data in a handy downloadable spreadsheet.