Zero
Barack Obama’s courting and compromising and so forth garnered him a grand total of zero votes from House Republicans in favor of his stimulus bill.
I would imagine the crude calculus is something like this. In 1993-94 the GOP minority relentlessly sought to obstruct a new president’s legislative agenda and were rewarded with a big electoral win in 1994. In 2001-2002 the Democratic minority relentlessly sought to compromise with a new president’s legislative agenda and were rewarded with a big electoral defeat in 2002. Simplistic lesson is that there’s no upside to cooperation.
The lesson I would hope the administration learns here is this: He needs to spend less time seeking political cover to mitigate the downside to possible policy failure, and more time trying to implement the best policies he can.
133 Responses to “Zero”
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January 28th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Agreed!
January 28th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Alright, I’ll take that, and I’ll bet that most, if not all, of the things they cut out of the bill will go back into the package in conference. Or gets put into some later appropriation bill. And in either event you’ll hear lots of rhetoric about how “Republicans didn’t live up to their end of the bargain.”
January 28th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Nah, let’s see how many vote for the REAL bill, the compromise version worked out by both houses.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
i don’t think he was trying to mitigate the downside to possible policy failure. this was his olive branch. “get with me on this necessary measure.” i think he knows it’ll be successful so he was trying for unity. he doesn’t need the votes, he knew it would pass. we’ll see in a couple months whether he compromised. he’s always be politically pitch perfect, i doubt this was any sort of capitulation.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Co-sign
January 28th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
It still has to go thru the Senate and then to conference. My guess is it will be changed considerably by then. So why not make a public effort to reach out to republicans with tax cuts for poor people, and then when they show the back of your hand, Obama can say he tried, and still pass any bill he likes. He has the numbers and will for the next two years, at least. It’s the moderates that will decide if those numbers get bigger or smaller, and they don’t much like roughshod governance from either side.
But I agree with concentrating on passing the legislation HE thinks will mostly likely succeed. I also think he knows this.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Yeah, it would appear that Republicans were never serious about cooperating on this. They acted in bad faith and tried (without too much success, frankly) to play Obama. Still, it was worth trying. Obama looks good and the Republicans look bad.
Not sure what the upside is for the Republicans. If the stimulus fails, sure, they can hit Obama over it, sure. But they could do that if they voted for it as well, just like the Dems did with Iraq. The credit–and the blame–lie with Obama. Mitch McConnell gets this, which is why he’s been somewhat conciliatory. House Republicans do not.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Matt, Obama expected this would happen. Do you really think he’s naive? He wants to be able to say he was for “bipartisanship” and then say, “see? we tried. bad faith and bad judgement on the other side.”
Any suggestions that Obama is politically naive are totally absurd. The guy just ran one of the 3 or 4 best Presidential campaigns of the last 75 years, and he’s 47.
Basically, the default assumption, based on history, is that Obama and company know what they’re doing strategically.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Over the course of his campaign I observed that President Obama is well aware that politics is a knife fight. He is very effective at sticking in the shiv while continuing to look just totally angelic.
To mix my metaphors, I would guess that he knew full well that this was likely (or even inevitable) and is looking a few moves ahead in the game.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
I would point out that so far Obama has only gotten snubbed by the House Republicans, and can still build on the compromises to bring a portion of the Senate minority on board.
This distinction is important because:
a) House Republicans have a history of being a lot more anal than their Senate counterparts (think back to immigration, the bank bailout, etc)
and
b) the minority in the Senate can do a lot more damage.
Which is to say I’m not ready to call Obama’s efforts at bipartisanship a waste just yet.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
So why not make a public effort to reach out to republicans with tax cuts for poor people,
Do you mean real tax cuts, or are you lying and pretending that “refundable tax credits” are tax cuts instead of welfare?
January 28th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
I would guess that he knew full well that this was likely (or even inevitable) and is looking a few moves ahead in the game.
I have to agree. I am pretty sure that Obama knows what the Republican calculus is on the matter regarding the benefits of obstruction vs. cooperation. I’m also pretty sure that the Republicans don’t know that Obama knows. In fact, the Republicans are likely high-fiving themselves at how they “played” Obama.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
yup, totally agree with all of that. this attempt at cooperation – I guess he couldn’t go off on a tear of partisan policy implementation without first having a round of “I’ll work with you if you’ll work with me” fail first. and now that this is what has happened, I hope he will work more on behalf of what he said he was going to do policy-wise, and less on the nicey-talk of BS ‘bipartisanship’ which if he keeps as a motto, will ultimately cripple his presidency.
there is no reason for him to tie himself to the modern-day Republican party. a vast majority of people actively do not want them to be making policy!
January 28th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
I bet your one of those GOP idiots that think the only taxes are the federal income kind.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
President Obama’s motto: if you can’t join them, beat ‘em. That works just fine for me
January 28th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
I’m not so sure Obama’s not getting anything out of this. Even with the House Republicans all voting against the stimulus, it remains very popular with the broader public. Remember, Obama only won with 53(4?)% of the popular vote. Had he come at the stimulus with a more partisan approach, we might have picked up some benefit on the margin, but I think it would have cost a lot more political capital.
We’ll see how it plays out, but I bet that Obama’s going to be in a much better position to do health care in three months now than he would have been if the stimulus process was a partisan affair outside of the U.S. House of Representatives.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
count me on the optimistic side. obama gets the stimulus bill and he gets clear evidence that the republicans put their interests above the country’s interest in solving the economic issue—smart republicans, if they existed, would have given him some votes. now, i think he will, when the time is right, thank them and then slice them, just as he did bush in the inaugural address.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
well, based on a lot of the comments here, a great deal will depend on what the Senate does with this bill. if the people here who claim that Obama is totally on top of this and looking several steps ahead are right, then surely the bill won’t end up with the silly compromises made with the Republicans in the House, when they all voted against it, right?
and if you’re not right, then what? the bill passes the Senate with like, 3 or 4 Republicans in favor, because the fact that every single R in the House voted against the bill will give cover to people in the Senate as well. the compromised bill will not be enough, tax cuts will be used by mega-corps to write off bad debt in a way that simply nullifies revenue the government would otherwise have collected, not much is done for achieving health care, which is now much more difficult to pass due to the perception that the stimulus was so huge, even though in reality it wasn’t enough. eek.
I’ll try to be less pessimistic. I think people will give Obama a chance to come back and do this bigger and better if it doesn’t work, and if its failure to work doesn’t precipitate a catastrophic crisis and make trying again impossible!
January 28th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Earlier in the day, the House Republicans voted pretty much as a solid bloc against Obama and the Democrats on the bill to extend funding and time for the digital television transition.
This after the Senate had given unanimous approval to the bill.
As I’ve noted, that Republican vote directly screws 6.5 million low income households. The Republicans toss $Trillions to Wall Street financial firms and the Superrich –but refuse to give a $40 rebate to a poor person after giving the Peoples’ Electromagnetic spectrum to large firms like Verizon.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
11 Dems voting no? I guess we conveniently leave that out.
Republicans voting no on all these money holes will pay huge dividends next election cycle.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
That Republican vote to block the DTV extension also established that the Democrats and Obama are weak.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Barack Obama’s courting and compromising and so forth garnered him a grand total of zero votes from House Republicans in favor of his stimulus bill.
It also garnered a display of preening, posturing, whining and kissing Limbaugh’s ass from the House GOP that, while it may have excited the cablenewsers as much as live car chase video, didn’t exactly cover them with glory.
So: let’s see whether the Maine senators or Arlen Specter want to be lumped in with the firm of Boner, Flake and Pence; and let’s also see what comes back from conference.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Re Nathan’s comment “Republicans voting no on all these money holes will pay huge dividends next election cycle.”
—————–
That’s two faced deceit. The Republicans are happy to toss $Trillions to the superrich — they just don’t want to give a few million to the poor. They harp on the “property rights” of the Superrich — but steal $Trillions from the average citizens and give it to their rich patrons.
I would have thought that would HURT the Republicans in the next election — except that the voters alternative is to vote for Democrats that are too cowardly to stand up for the average citizen. Too cowardly because the Democrats evidently are whoring for the same rich interests as the Republicans — the only difference being that the Democrats feel obliged to cover up and dissemble for appearances’ sake.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Obama expected this would happen… He wants to be able to say he was for “bipartisanship” and then say, “see? we tried. bad faith and bad judgement on the other side.”
Absolutely right. He sees the same polls as everyone else – he is the most popular, best-liked president since Reagan (if you discount the Bush father/son crisis poll bounces). The Republicans are a pack of unpopular losers, represented by the very tan visage of John Boehner, who cower like scared kittens when they’re criticized by a fat drug addict with a radio show.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
I tend to agree with MY, but then again whenever I said during the campaign, “He’s blowing it, why doesn’t he do X,” he had a great success. So I will wait and see.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
It is amazing that the pundits keep trying to score Obama based on the old playbook. They thought he was too soft on Hillary, and she went insane and sank herself. Then he wasn’t hitting McCain hard enough, and he went insane and sank himself. Now, he is being too nice to the House GOP. It is playing out all over again, even with the left blogosphere complaining that he isn’t being mean enough (Al Giordano has been on this from the beginning, some others are catching on).
He is not going to use this to quickly pivot to partisan attacks. He is going to continue to talk and act the way he has the first two weeks. The House GOP will continue to self-destruct. More importantly, Senators in pro-Obama states will distance themselves from their House colleagues and give Obama the votes he really needs.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
That Republican vote to block the DTV extension also established that the Democrats and Obama are weak.
Suspend-the-rules-and-pass requires a two-thirds majority. Unless you’re offering to provide oral relief to the closet cases of the GOP caucus in exchange for their votes, they’re going to behave like automata. The unfortunate consequence of the past two election cycles is that the remaining GOPpers in the House are wingnuts from wingnut districts: almost all the moderates are gone.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
rope a dope.
action vs inaction
credibility on the economy vs tax cuts and deregulation
Obama called them out to play for all to see, and they spun and spun and spun, and now they will drop.
the repubs look like lying churls.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
For once I’d kind of like to hear what Al thinks. If he thinks the GOP played this smart … well, you know.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
I bet your one of those GOP idiots that think the only taxes are the federal income kind.
No, I am not.
The plan would provide tax cuts totaling $275 billion, including a $500 payroll tax cut for individuals and $1,000 for families.
As long as it is portrayed as a payroll tax cut, and the lost revenues are calculated out of the “Social Security Trust Fund,” I am fine with that. (The problem, as I understand it, with the way we calculate the EITC is that we act as the refundable portion were an income tax refund, rather than a payroll tax cut).
January 28th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Don,
As I remember, it was mostly Democrats pushed by blind ignorance, Bush, Bernake, Paulson, et al. that voted on the TARP big banker give away. Keep rewriting history as you want, it makes for great entertainment.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Morons like Glaivester, a die hard supporter of slaughtering innocents abroad, put scare quotes around the trust fund(that Ronald Reagan set up as a scam to fleece the working class and mask the size of his gargantuan deficits) because they want everyone else to act as if this giant transfer payment from those who work to those who don’t does not really exist.
Given the incredibly cheap “loan” the working class have given the well-to-do, there is really no reason why this tax rebate should come out of the trust fund. Think of it as a very tiny bit of payback for fucking the economy so badly Glaivester.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Well, at least the GOP showed some guts and some unity. I was pretty anxious about the prospect of divide-and-rule, which is a real, imminent possibility given the weak state of the party.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Although I have been very happy about Obama’s foreign policy intiatives in the past week, his domestic agenda makes me feel frustrated. It appears that he tried to appease the Republicans with tax cuts while ignoring his supporters, who wanted more money spent on infrastructure and education. The end result is that the Republicans voted against his plan anyway.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Don’t hold up the Maine senators as reasonable Republicans. Please. Susan Collins issued a statement today that she will vote against the confirmation of Timothy Geithner, which is totally in character for her. Ten bucks says she votes against the stimulus. (I’m still waiting for $10 I laid down here that Lieberman would keep his chairmanship, BTW.)
January 28th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
I’m pretty sure everyone above is right that Obama is not so naive he thought he would get Republican support. That leaves two possible motivations for his actions that I can see:
1) He comes out looking to the sober moderate like he tried to be bipartisan, while the Republicans look dogmatic;
2) He comes out looking to his base like he wanted various progressive things in the stimulus without actually having to put them there.
Those aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, but the real compromises he made, and seems to be sticking with, are evidence of the importance of (2) rather than (1).
January 28th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Well, at least the GOP showed some guts and some unity.
This is the one thing I might actually agree with you about. atrios seems to have this right: the GOP stands for a bunch of things. They stand for opposing the stimulus. They should be upfront about that. And then they should lose until they find something more useful and intelligent to stand for.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
This does remind me very much of the campaign season. Obama comes with an open-hand, doesn’t take the cheap shot, and seeks to achieve consensus. Liberals wail that he is all wrong, that he needs to crush the enemy and make them bleed and never compromise. Republicans act completely foolish and implode. Obama glides in for the easy victory.
I am listening to Rachel Maddow now go on and on about how terrible a failure this whole effort has been and that the plan is also horrible. I will wait and see. She was often very wrong during the campaign and missed the forest for the trees, despite being a very smart woman.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
BTW, he did pledge to make most of those tax cuts during the campaign. There were lots of TV commercials and campaign speeches and such. It wasn’t really that long ago.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Sheriff BHO, “Here guys have some rope.”
Brer Barak “Oh please GOP, don’t throw me in the briar patch”.
He’s allowing them to present themselves as they really are and that’s a good thing. He is not getting in their way as they run towards the cliff of incredibility. BHO is removing any obstacles in the way of the GOP going over the cliff.
It may be time for the GOP to go the way of the Whigs, and Know nothings,
January 28th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Yes, Maddow’s constant whining about the Bradley Effect dashed my hopes for a credible thinker on cable news.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
If this stimulus package works, the Republicans will be covered in shit as a result. And with all the compromises and outreach thrown in, they won’t be able to say that they had to vote against it because it was a “Democratic bill” larded up with Democratic pork.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
In terms of pure partisan politics, the Republicans don’t stand to gain much in supporting the stimulus package.
According to estimates from Obama’s economic team, if the stimulus works as planned, unemployment rates will remain high for the next couple years. If the GOP is opposed to the stimulus plan and it has the results estimated, it’s not difficult to imagine the GOP railing against the “high-spending liberal Democrats” and their stimulus package that added nearly a trillion dollars to our debt, with only an unemployment rate of 9% or more to show for it. After all, it’s tough to argue in the public square that “Hey, if this didn’t pass…things would be even worse!” That relies purely on academic and technical theory, which isn’t all that popular on cable news and on the stump. And if it doesn’t even work this well, the GOP will only have more of an ability to attack the Democrats over it.
In the alternate universe where the GOP supports the stimulus and it doesn’t work out too well, they can’t blame the Democrats. Alternatively, it they support the stimulus and it does help in obvious ways, it will be hard to take much credit for it, as it will likely be seen as a Democratic/Obama plan.
This makes Obama’s late-night meeting with top Congressional leaders of both parties (booze included) all the more interesting. If he actually convinces GOP leader to eventually drop opposition, then maybe the man can stop rise of ocean waters. However, if today is any suggestion, that’s unlikely to happen.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Couldn’t agree more.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Remember the 1993 budget? Looks like the GOP is ready to stage a repeat performance.
Shall be exciting stuff.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
I called it a payroll tax cut, it is a payroll tax cut taken out of the Trust Fund before said trust fund is raided to pay for your dumbass war in Iraq. And the only people acting as though it’s a payroll tax cut are wingnuts like you who want the opportunity to call it welfare. Kind of like the CBO report that wasn’t.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
If this stimulus works, I will shit gold.
If the pundits make the natural recovery to be the result of the stimulus, well that’s just another day in American politics.
How nice is it to be a politician. When you had jack shit to do with a success you take all credit (surge anyone?). When it fails in a heaping mess, if only you had more money you could have saved the day (schools?). Utter incompetence all around.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
As soon as the Republican “leadership” finished voting against the President, they hightailed it over to the White House for cocktails & photos with the Prez.
The Dems must be planning a denouement down the road — maybe in committee, maybe in the management of the funds — but I’ll be darned if I know where. Still, I can’t help thinking there’s a silver lining — a campaign slogan? — in 100% obstructionism. (If only Chris Shays were still around.)
The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com
January 28th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
And the only people acting as though it’s (not) a payroll tax cut are wingnuts like you who want the opportunity to call it welfare.
Solly.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
This was a no-lose action by O. If they actually gave him some votes, he looks like he’s making that (bullshit) ‘post-partisan’ thing work. If the repubs act true to their neandertal nature, as indeed they are doing, he gets to say he tried, and gets to point out their idiot apposition on a critical, extremely popular attempt to apply cpr to the economy. as is happening.
meanwhile if the senate gives him something out of fear of looking like their idiot cousins in the house, then he wins both ways–gets some votes from them, still gets to blame the morons who wouldn’t give the economy even one vote.
obama might not be fdr, (we don’t yet know), but he is up against some true mental and moral lilliputians. so far, he’s way ahead.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
“According to estimates from Obama’s economic team, if the stimulus works as planned, unemployment rates will remain high for the next couple years. If the GOP is opposed to the stimulus plan and it has the results estimated, it’s not difficult to imagine the GOP railing against the “high-spending liberal Democrats” and their stimulus package that added nearly a trillion dollars to our debt, with only an unemployment rate of 9% or more to show for it.”
I guess we have to literally have this discussion each week or something. You don’t oppose something with nothing. The Republicans tried this exact same strategy in the 1930s (their playbook is literally the same), and it led to 35+ years in the political wilderness (assuming that you don’t consider Eisenhower a true Republican, which true Republicans didn’t and don’t). A president in a deep recession doesn’t have to solve the economic problems fully, he just has to act like he cares about it and is working on the problems. (That’s why you can’t oppose a something with a nothing.) This is not that difficult for a Democrat to do: FDR did it, Clinton did it (true, with a comparatively mild recession, but still….)and Obama will likely do it as well.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
“obama might not be fdr, (we don’t yet know), but he is up against some true mental and moral lilliputians. so far, he’s way ahead.”
Heck, even the 1930’s Republicans weren’t anywhere near this bad. I suppose that’s what purging the Rockefeller Republicans does to you.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
I definitely think Obama is winning this.
The way it is going, Obama should tackle a bunch of stuff that the public considers mainstream like the stimulus and DTV. Hopefully the Republicans all vote against this as a block after Obama tries to reach out to them.
Enough of these types of votes with all of the Republicans voting against it and the media meme becomes Obama proposes something moderate and those unreasonable Republicans all vote against it.
After that becomes the media’s conventional wisdom, move on to more liberal issues such as universal health care and card check. At that point, the public will ignore and dismiss the Republicans when they yet again all vote against those issues.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Obama’s got this, man. Look, has anyone been listening to the Republicans on TV? Give the American people a little credit – they got it right in the election. There are currently Republicans arguing that Hoover was a stimulus spender, like the Democrats today. There are Republicans arguing that business tax credits are the only way to save the economy; this after Obama spent 4 months of the campaign arguing, successfully, that tax cuts for the rich have failed us. Every time Boehner opens his mouth, Obama sounds more reasonable. People are used to bills being laden with “crazy” spending projects; it’s not a game changer for the electorate (if it were, John McCain would have been considered a vaulted economic guru).
January 28th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
If this stimulus works, I will shit gold.
Define “works”. If by “works” you mean return us to full employment and potential GDP by the end of 2009 (or ‘10 or ‘11 or ‘12…), then nothing would work. Nothing. But if you mean raise baseline GDP by 1-3 points for the next couple years, and lower unemployment by .5-1.5 points for the same timeframe, then it will work. Personally I “works” should be a bit more ambitious than the Obama administration seems to, but regardless any stimulus put together by baseline-competent people will soften the recession to some degree.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Matt,
If I read your post a year from now, or even six months, I’d probably agree with you 100%. Reading it today, though, I think you are misguided.
Obama campaigned for almost two years straight on the virtues of bipartisanship, working together, disagreeing without being disagreeable, etc. Now it’s not even the end of his second week of the Presidency, and you want him to completely reverse course and govern like Bush did? After one incident of it not working out? How do you think that would look to the many people who voted for him because they trust him and feel that he tries to live his values?
When Obama takes the unusual step of meeting with House Republicans for two hours and none of them vote for the stimulus bill, it’s not Obama who looks bad. It’s House Republicans. People know Obama doesn’t have to do it, and it makes him look good for trying.
Your point of valuing partisan good policy over bipartisan middling policy is good, but I don’t see that dynamic happening with the stimulus bill. I live in DC, and as much as I love new grass for the Mall, money for family planning, and money for the NEA, calling it good stimulus is ridiculous. I don’t mind that some of that has been taken out. It should be put in a different bill.
I think the Bush tax rebate has shown individual tax cuts is so-so stimulus at best, but they have other reasons for inserting them beyond trying to bring Republicans on board. I have problems with the stimulus bill, mainly it being not targeted enough and not big enough, but I don’t think Obama reaching out to Republicans is the maim reason for the bill’s flaws.
You’re a smart guy, so I’m willing to stand corrected if you can point to a major provision that was weakened solely due to Obama trying to get Republicans to come on board.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
I had to laugh when I read this post. I had just finished Al Giordano’s post making the opposite (and I believe, more accurate) argument
here.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
If the pundits make the natural recovery to be the result of the stimulus, well that’s just another day in American politics.
That’s just bullshit. You don’t have any idea what the “natural recovery” would have looked like. I will never know what it looked like either. Maybe if we did nothing, everything would be light and rainbows next month. Maybe if we did nothing we spiral down into a Japan scenario that lasts for decades.
The information simply isn’t there to judge the outcome of any of this, and it won’t be there no matter what happens. Events will unfold and maybe the stimuls saved 5% employment, no one is ever going to know because decisions will be made that preclude ever knowing what the alternative was.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
One can only hope that Obama’s determination to reach out and the Republican’s 100% political party-line stance will be seen for what it is: posturing at the expense of good government. It’s become hard to miss that the Republican brand is a zero-reality product.
Okay, it’s not likely that’s going to hurt them.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
I have to agree with Buford @ #8. If anyone has won a presumption of superior political skills, it’s Obama.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
So why not make a public effort to reach out to republicans with tax cuts for poor people
Because that’s not what Republicans want.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Matt, for all future posts you make concerning the stimulus package: remember – always attach an accompanying picture of Jessica Alba. Thank you.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Re Nathan’s comment “As I remember, it was mostly Democrats pushed by blind ignorance, Bush, Bernake, Paulson, et al. that voted on the TARP big banker give away. Keep rewriting history as you want, it makes for great entertainment.”
————-
What I remember about “history” is that the Republicans controlled the Congress and the WHite House from 2001 to 2007 and fucked things up so badly that George W Bush, Dick Cheney, and Hank Paulson all said TARP was needed to keep the economy from crashing into a Great Depression.
Or maybe Nathan wants to argue that Bush, Cheney,and Paulson are Democrats?
Maybe he wants to also argue that the economy has just been going great all through 2008?
Look at the 2004 and 2006 Reports of the Republican-Controlled Joint Economic Committee. People TRIED to warn Republicans Senator Bennett and Jim Saxby. ANd the fucking two-faced lying shithead reacted in the usual Republican manner — they dismissed Reality as Liberal Bias.
Now the same evil cocksuckers that have almost destroyed this country are doing everything they can to sabotage Obama’s attempts to fix the problem.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
President Obama did exactly the right thing. He needs the support of the American people, and they will tend to support reasonable people. The Republicans may be playing for a political win down the line, but it is a petty game, and I think most people know it. President Obama made a promise to dial down the politics. He kept up his end of the bargain, and came out the winner on this encounter. At some point the Republicans may realize they need to play to all the American people (by doing constructive things), not just their base, to keep up with President Obama.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Exactly. And that is now front and center for the world to see.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
re Nathan’s defense of the Republicans, let’s remember that $9 TRILLION of our $11.3 Federal debt was PERSONALLY APPROVED by the signatures of our last three Republican Presidents –even as they were telling the American people that they wanted to “balance the budget”. Almost $5 Trillion was run up just in the past few years when Bush was in the White House and the Republicans controlled Congress.
The Republicans stole $3 Trillion out of Social Security/Medicare so that they could give $2 Trillion in tax cuts to the richest people in the USA — to invest in China, not in American jobs.
They Republicans invaded Iraq on a lie — for the sake of Big Oil. At a cost to us of 4200+ dead, 30,000 wounded, and $2 Trillion.
Now we’re having to spend $Trillions to keep the economy from crashing — because Republicans were whoring for every rich special interest instead of doing their duty and governing the country.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
Remember from the campaign — Obama always lets the other guy throw the first punch.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Yeah, here we have quite the interesting juxtaposition.
Obama, as we have heard plenty of times in the campaign values bi-partisanship, solving the people’s problems and compromise. He may not get every detail right in his plans, but he goes about it in a reasonable, careful way.
On the other hand you’ve got Reps. seeming like ideolouges without alternatives and new ideas.
The Repugs pretty much treat this like they’re not even from the US…I mean record foreclosures, massive declines in stock market values, shocking job losses, credit crises? If ever there was a time that they ignored reality, it’s probably now. Obviously, the plan will cost $$$, but millions of Americans are depending on somekind of solution. If they want strict oversight, and no pork, than propose it and ask Obama to do it.
I think Obama ought to pay careful attention to what they eventually support(Defense spending, social policy foolishness)only to ridicule those things in comparison with the enormity of solving the economic problems.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
I hated those compromises, and hate the dead hand of Larry Summers, who is already shaping the bank bailout to continue in the Paulsen tradition of distributing welfare to the upper one percentile.
But I disagree about the political strategy here. When Obama publicizes his peacemaking gestures, and the GOP votes total zero, I think it isolates the GOP. It is one thing for liberals to say the GOP connsists of extremist droolers, and another thing for it to be demonstrated to the nation.
Reinforcing their Dixie base of lynchers and hate radio zombie is not gonna be good for the GOP. It will be good for Obama. There is a long four years ahead of us.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
it was an epic fail by obama
sad – getting dunked on by chumps like boehner is no way to go through a presidency
disappointing legislative starts doesn’t even begin to describe it
January 28th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
I assume Obama’s courting of the GOP was aimed not at them but at the voters. Even if he was dumb enough to think he would get some support from them on this issue it doesn’t matter because everyone now understands that he is Mr Bipartisan. On a market/economics board I frequent, where opposition to the StimPak is 99% there were two comments tonight about how disappointed they were, despite their almost rabid opposition, that partisanship still reigns supreme.
It may seem a small thing but to me it’s huge.
To one post expressing such disappointment I just replied,
You poor innocent lamb.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
The stimulus is the opening salvo, here. Wait for the budget to come down the pike. Republicans voted down the stimulus, to a man, because of cost; now watch them squirm when Obama slashes defense and rolls back the Bush tax cuts on the top 10%. And then there will be the transportation bill, the agriculture bill, the energy bill. Opportunity after opportunity to expand out the infrastructure and green spending, while the Republicans are rolling on the same log: no, no, no, no. They are going to be a parody of themselves by 2010, and their protestations will fall on deaf ears. But please continue to worry, because the more we add the liberal blogosphere into the pile on, the more bipartisan Obmaba will appear on each successive take down. This is strategy v. tactics, and after 8 years of Bush, it feels good to watch.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
To be clear, so far Mr. Obama has had nothing to lose. His press coverage is almost uniformly positive, and public support historically high.
However, the GOP must not buckle and fold. If it is to be a real party that determines the philosophical direction that America takes, it must not become a Democrat-lite, Rockefeller-Republican sort of part. It can’t just be a part that protests at every incoming liberal wave, only to demur at the last moment in time to protest the next one. It can’t just be the get-along-with-liberals party; it has to be the shaper and mover, not the shaped and moved.
It must be the party of solid, uncompromising conservatism, and for this, I applaud the courage, the unity, and the guts of the House Republicans, who without a single vote of dissent among their ranks, chose today to speak their collective voice as American conservatives. Years from now, history will look upon them, as it did upon the Republicans of 1993, as the hardy warriors of a hardy cause.
As the great Goldwater said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” I doubt that Republicans today are as much defending liberty as upholding their identity as immovable conservatives, but the point still applies.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
On a market/economics board I frequent, where opposition to the StimPak is 99%
Who the fuck cares? Seriously, internet economists are idiots. Notice the chirping of the crickets out of the real world? Did the Chicago School rise up in angry, academic, protest? Serious economists know better than your horde of Randroid, play-an-economist-on-the-internet, tools.
There is no powder left in their guns, none of this was even supposed to happen and the academics who might be expected to be up in arms are keeping suspiciously quiet.
January 29th, 2009 at 12:01 am
This is how we like to hear wingnuts talk. Carry on please!
January 29th, 2009 at 12:08 am
old joke recycled but even more so now:
what’s the difference between a republican and a terrorist?
you can negotiate with a terrorist.
bahdaboom bahdabing!
I am so fed up with the right wing in this country.
I am thinking they are all sort of a-holes.
mickster
January 29th, 2009 at 12:14 am
Don,
So where are you on eliminating the Federal Reserve, removing the ability of the government to deficit spend, and stating the powers enumerated to the Federal government when congress passes it’s next pet program? As far as I know, only Republicans have sponsored legislation this fundamentally powerful, and obviously correct.
You are confusing retarded jackass cowboys for Republicans, and conveniently ignoring the make up of the house, which by constitutional directive writes spending bills.
January 29th, 2009 at 12:14 am
Obama is playing chess while Matt is thinking about checkers.
January 29th, 2009 at 12:15 am
This is how we like to hear wingnuts talk.
Nah, my favorite is how occasionally they still bitch about “punishing success” regarding Wall Street and such. It’s like the fact that they didn’t just fail, but took out 40x leverage and failed and took the world into the toilet in their failure didn’t happen.
January 29th, 2009 at 12:48 am
Remember the 1993 budget?
Well, you don’t, since you were still potty-training at the time.
Years from now, history will look upon them, as it did upon the Republicans of 1993, as the hardy warriors of a hardy cause.
Or, alternatively, as a bunch of crazy ideologues and hypocrites who gave the last big heave in sending their party off a cliff. Really, Miley, you’re an unending source of absurdist comedy.
January 29th, 2009 at 1:32 am
Re: Mr. Limbaugh’s plan of splitting it up, how about this idea. The United States
were formed as a collection of, you guessed it, states – so let us let the states
decide how to spend the $$. There are currently states who receive less back from
the Feds than they send in to the Feds in the form of taxes. So here is my modest
proposal: Let’s give out the bailout $$ to the states in reverse order, that is the
state who currently gets the least in Federal spending per $ in Federal taxes will
get the most from the bailout, and the state who currently gets the most Federal
spending per $ in Federal taxes will get the least (if there is any $$ left by the
time you get to the end of the list. The non-partisian (actually right-leaning) Tax
Foundation compiles the #’s and has figured out rankings for the states.
Based on The Tax Foundations #’s that would leave us going NJ, NV, CT, NH, MN, IL,
DE, CA, NY, CO, MA, WI, WA, MI, OR, TX, FL, RI … notice a little trend in those
states that received less federal $ per $ in federal taxes???
Who did 17 of the 18 vote for President – Obama?
19 of the 25 “worst” states (States recieving more than $1.10 in Federal spending
per $1.00 in Federal Taxes paid), who did 19 of those 25 vote for? … McCain!!!!
You might call it rewarding people who voted for Obama, but I would call it
rewarding the people who have financed the welfare states that exists in Red State
America!
January 29th, 2009 at 1:39 am
I guess what annoys me about all the triumphalism in this thread is that people are acting like this is a nonstop campaign, where the only goal is to win the day or the news cycle. To put it another way, it seems to me that to say this is a good move, you have to argue that things would be worse without the cut provisions—either because they were bad provisions or because they would have led to an unacceptable political consequence. I don’t see it from here, but I’m willing to listen. Just to say “Obama sacrificed these valuable measures to win and it’s AWESOME!” is insufficient.
DTM, your points about the bill including more spending seem to miss the point, which is that it’s not clear why the Democrats couldn’t have that and the birth control and the Mall. Were Republicans going to vote against it twice? At the very least, why not hang onto those for bargaining chips on the Senate version, to prevent other compromises?
January 29th, 2009 at 2:34 am
Were Republicans going to vote against it twice?
Were they going to dick about for two weeks, grabbing all the cablenews airtime like a high-speed chase, and have moron anchors parrot them? Yeah. It’s the GOP that’s treating this as a win-the-day thing.
Obama talked about bipartisanship. He reached out to the GOP, and they’ve behaved like dicks. Not one vote on the package, which makes them the ideologues and obstructionists. You’d think that Boner-man would have been smart enough to release perhaps a dozen votes from the GOP conference to make the tactic look less obvious. As Al Giordano puts it, this was the running play to allow the passing play, given that the past two House cycles have seen moderate GOPpers leave and Blue Dogs come in, and Blue Dogs are often dumber than moderate GOPers.
January 29th, 2009 at 2:36 am
Evil Twin:
Morons like Glaivester, a die hard supporter of slaughtering innocents abroad.
Don’t call me names unless you are smart enough to actually research my positions. What the hell is “Evil Twin” talking about? When have I ever supported slaughtering innocents abroad? I hate the Iraq War and have spoken against it many times. I hate Bush as well.
Given the incredibly cheap “loan” the working class have given the well-to-do, there is really no reason why this tax rebate should come out of the trust fund.
If it doesn’t come out of the “trust fund,” then it isn’t a Social Security tax cut, so any portion that is refundable is not actually a tax cut. As long as people are going to argue that the “trust fund” is real because we can always raise taxes to the general fund to pay it back, then the “trust fund” should be calculated accurately, by not counting money that was rebated as a cut in some other tax if the rebate exceeded what the person was paying in non-payroll taxes.
Think of it as a very tiny bit of payback for fucking the economy so badly Glaivester.
Again, please explain yourself and refrain from assuming that I have any connection to “movement conservatism.”
What did I ever do to the economy? I didn’t support Bush’s mindelss spending on endless war abroad or on expensive projects at home (e.g. the Medicare drug benefit). I have long (since at least 2002) railed against the loose credit policies of the Fed that caused the housing bubble and the subsequent bust. If you want to rail against me, rail against Ron Paul-like policies or Austrian economic positions, not against movement crap that I don’t adhere to.
Evil Twin is a moron who seems to think that not to approve of Obama is to support Bush and his fetid cronies.
January 29th, 2009 at 2:43 am
Reminds me of the that childrens’ story, “The Little Red Hen”, with Obama playing the part of the hen, and the Republicans playing the part of every other asshole in the story.
“Who will help me pass this stimulus bill?” said Obama.
“Not I!” said John Boehner.
“Not I!” said David Vitter.
“Who will help me lower taxes on the middle class?” said Obama.
“Not I!” said John Boehner.
“Not I!” said David Vitter.
“After all this effort, I have something that’s shovel ready. Who wants a federally-funded highway project?”
“I do!” said Boehner.
“I do!” said Vitter.
“Go fuck yourselves with Milton Friedman’s rotten middle finger” said Obama.
(or so he should.)
January 29th, 2009 at 5:00 am
Image what will happen in a few years when the Republican Party completes its collapse and the Democratic Party is the only relevant political party and dominate politics. Congress will basically stop having hearings because everything will be so important that hearings will get in the way.
January 29th, 2009 at 5:45 am
With our economy collapsing around us, I doubt Boehner’s daily kvetching about the stimulus spending is playing that well with the public. I say the more he is on camera the better.
January 29th, 2009 at 6:21 am
Re: Do you mean real tax cuts, or are you lying and pretending that “refundable tax credits” are tax cuts instead of welfare?
Translation: only tax cuts for rich people are real. Or as Mel Brooks (as Louis XVI) said “Fuck the poor”
Re: Republicans voting no on all these money holes will pay huge dividends next election cycle.
Yep, the same dividend the GOP got in 1934 by opposing FDR during a crisis.
Re: That Republican vote to block the DTV extension also established that the Democrats and Obama are weak.
Actually, the bill passed, but for some bizarre reason it required more than a majority vote. I’ve never heard of House legislation needing more than 50%. What’s up with that?
January 29th, 2009 at 6:40 am
A lot of commentary by both Yglesias and Atrios fundamentally misses the strategy here.
Obama just successfully passed a huge stimulus package through the House. The package was mostly good, though it didn’t include some money for family planning and transit that we would like, and it did include some inefficient tax cuts. However, it was most of what we wanted, and what we didn’t get may be better addressed in future legislation (health care and transportation bills). In exchange for these compromises, the Republicans come away looking like none of their criticisms were offered in good faith and like they don’t have a plan for the economy. I’d say that’s politically effective.
Moreover, the good advice we gave to Democrats in the past is not the advice the Republicans need right now. Democrats needed to move out of an overly defensive crouch and develop a coherent message, but that isn’t the Republican problem. The Republicans have a coherent, sound-bite message (Lower Taxes, Family, and God). Their problem is that they don’t have any answers to any of the actual problems the nation faces, because they don’t understand policy at all.
A lot of people seem to think that the Republicans came out of this ahead. But they lost big time. They look like obstructionists and whiners. More importantly, their proposed solutions are so utterly stupid that it will be hard for them to run on them in 2010. Even if things are going badly, very little of the Country is going to say, “well, if we just had made those old tax cuts permanent, everything would be ok.” Or, “gosh, those Republicans were right to convince the Democrats to exclude birth control from the stimulus–I’ll vote Republican.”
It’s true that both parties would be well served by focusing on getting the policy right. Democrats need to focus more on that than looking bipartisan. But Republicans REALLY need to focus on that. Their policy is horrible, AND they don’t look bipartisan.
Finally, spending bills can always be nit-picked to death. But, as long as we have huge, good bills with lots of good provisions, losing a few of them each time won’t actually add up to much. If the Republican strategy is going to be to constantly heckle over small chunks of big bills, and the Democratic strategy is to give in on those and get the rest, we could make a lot of progress over the next few years.
January 29th, 2009 at 6:48 am
I’d also note — I think this did a very good job or preparing the way for the actually controversial legislation.
Most people think we need a stimulus. People know that Obama included a lot of tax cuts in the hope of winning over Republicans. People know that, when Republicans identified specific provisions as problematic, the Democrats removed them. Moreover, people who know the policy (sadly, not a lot of people) knows that the Republican suggested changes were mostly horribly ineffective stimulus which would explode the deficit (permanent tax cuts, etc.). Democrats acted fairly bipartisan, and Republicans didn’t even make a good faith attempt. After all of the Democratic efforts? NOT A SINGLE REPUBLICAN SIGNED ON!
Now, when we have actually controversial legislation–climate change, health care, etc–it’s going to be much harder for the Republicans to make the case that they are acting in good faith. They will whine and stomp their feet, but everyone will remember that they refused to work together on stimulus, so why should we treat their whining on these other issues seriously?
I think this set the stage well for the much harder bills we’ll be handling in the future.
January 29th, 2009 at 7:19 am
THoughts that Matt can’t conceive of: that some people might object to the “stimulus” on the grounds that they don’t think it will work – and that the additional deficits will be harmful.
But, Matt is all about narrow partisan tactics, and has no ability to conceive of political differences.
January 29th, 2009 at 8:32 am
the additional deficits will be harmful.
I believe we can pretty safely assume that this isn’t the reason for Republican opposition to the package.
January 29th, 2009 at 8:34 am
So did the Donner party.
January 29th, 2009 at 8:45 am
As the interest rates the govt has to offer on bonds goes up – as US debt starts to get less attractive – the crowd of triumphalists here will be utterly baffled.
January 29th, 2009 at 8:57 am
JonF:
Re: Do you mean real tax cuts, or are you lying and pretending that “refundable tax credits” are tax cuts instead of welfare?
Translation: only tax cuts for rich people are real. Or as Mel Brooks (as Louis XVI) said “Fuck the poor”
Will you please explain to me how a tax cut can be a “real tax cut” and not welfare if it results in someone getting back money that they did not pay in taxes? You seem to think that people do not need to pay a tax to get that tax cut and that it is bigoted against the poor to point out htat this makes no sense.
Robertson:
As the interest rates the govt has to offer on bonds goes up – as US debt starts to get less attractive – the crowd of triumphalists here will be utterly baffled.
Yes, I have a feeling that all of the people crowing here about how affordable additional debt is will be scratching their heads when (a) the economy does not improve, (b) interest rates go up and suddenly our debt becomes a lot more unmanageable than they surmised, and (c) the choice between default or hyperinflation actually begins to materialize.
January 29th, 2009 at 9:04 am
The tragedy is, this is hardly the first time a government has tried this. I’m reading Niall Ferguson’s “The Ascent of Money” right now, and it’s pretty illuminating.
The big question I have is this: The dollar is the world’s reserve currency. That’s allowed the US to pile up debt in ways that no other country could even consider. Eventually, the people who buy that debt are going to start questioning the proposition though. China is developing massive internal problems (because so much of their economy is geared towards exporting to the US). I expect they’ll be buying less US debt – not out of malice, but out of changed circumstances. Japan’s economy is in trouble as well, and they have a major demographic crisis – which means they’ll be backing off as well.
That leaves the oil producing states as buyers of last resort. So ironically, if the administration wants to keep selling debt, they had better stay massively reliant on foreign oil – because if that dependency goes away, so does the funding for the debt.
January 29th, 2009 at 9:05 am
I can just imagine the horror as they go above a half percent.
When people think it is smarter to lend money to the government for 0.5% interest than to lend it to private firms or individuals at 5%, the government should take constructive steps to make itself a less attractive borrower.
January 29th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Re Robertson’s comment “Yes, I have a feeling that all of the people crowing here about how affordable additional debt is will be scratching their heads when (a) the economy does not improve, (b) interest rates go up and suddenly our debt becomes a lot more unmanageable than they surmised,…”
————
And I think Republicans –whose last 3 Presidents personally approved $9 Trillion in federal debt — are being lying assholes when they express concern about spending. Recall that about $5 Trillion of that debt was incurred in just the past few years when Republicans controlled both the White House and the Congress.
You’re only bitching because some of the federal money might go to workers instead of your rich patrons.
My primary objection to Obama negotiating with Republicans is that he is lending Dignity to a pack of contemptible cocksuckers at a time when a good argument could be made that those cocksuckers should be swinging from the lampposts.
January 29th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Re James Robertson’s comment “The tragedy is, this is hardly the first time a government has tried this. I’m reading Niall Ferguson’s “The Ascent of Money” right now, and it’s pretty illuminating.”
—————
blah blah blah I don’t recall you objecting so vehemently back in 2001 when Bush was handing out that $2 Trillion in tax cuts to the rich.
Come to think of it, what ever happened to that $5 Trillion Federal SURPLUS Bush told us we would be enjoying right about now? Is it being kept in that same imaginary Republican warehouse that Saddam Hussein stored his nukes in?
January 29th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Re Nathan at 80: “You are confusing retarded jackass cowboys for Republicans,”
———
Oh, you mean that George W Bush and Dick Cheney were NOT Republicans? Gee, historical revisionism is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?
In that case, who did the Republican Party nominate as their Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates in 2000 and 2004?
Also the Republicans controlled Congress from 2000 to 2007 — who was leading them?
January 29th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Here’s the headline on an AP article this morning: “Obama seeks Senate GOP help for recovery bill”
Obama’s in a win-win situation right now. If he gets GOP votes, then he scores with bipartisanship. If he doesn’t, he can say “I tried,” and the GOP looks (correctly) like a bunch of obstructionist jerks.
If I were Jim Gerlach, I’d be very nervous right now.
January 29th, 2009 at 9:37 am
You know, it’s possible to object to the massive overspending of the Bush administration and the massive overspending of the new one. Some of us favor a limited government along the lines envisioned by the founders, not one that tries to be all things to all people, both domestically and overseas.
January 29th, 2009 at 9:54 am
That’s allowed the US to pile up debt in ways that no other country could even consider.
True, which is why it’s quite impressive that we don’t do that, compared to other first-world countries. Our national debt as a percentage of GDP is about 65%. France is about the same. Germany is about 67%, Belgium 90%, and Japan at 175%.
You know, it’s possible to object to the massive overspending of the Bush administration and the massive overspending of the new one.
Yes, it’s possible. However, such politicians have not really been anywhere to be seen over the past 8 years, which is why I’m pretty sure that the Republicans who voted against the bill aren’t concerned about the overspending issue at all. besides which, did you vote for Gore in 2000? Because he would have been the “candidate of fiscal responsibility” if that was actually an important principle to you. But as Jon Stewart said, “if you’re willing to compromise your principles, they’re not principles. They’re hobbies.” Objections to spending are nothing but an interesting hobby for Republicans, something they’ve decided to take up again after ignoring it for a long time.
January 29th, 2009 at 9:59 am
#106:
That’s great. Maybe you should uh, find yourself some local candidates and build a party based on cutting every program people like, because I can count on my fingers the number of Republicans in Congress that agree with that statement.
January 29th, 2009 at 10:30 am
I don’t recall you objecting so vehemently back in 2001 when Bush was handing out that $2 Trillion in tax cuts to the rich.
I’m fairly sure I voted for Gore and Kerry. And yes, I am a registered Republican. To lump the current Republicans into the same pile as Bush is a little bit too easy. I suppose I can call Obama another Jimmy Carter by the same assertions you are making.
January 29th, 2009 at 10:35 am
To lump the current Republicans into the same pile as Bush is a little bit too easy.
It’s easy because that’s the way they are. Jimmy Robertson made the ridiculous argument that Republicans were voting against the package because they were genuinely concerned about spending and deficits. I think we can be pretty sure, based on their behavior over the last 8 years, that this is not true. Jimmy Robertson and you might be projecting your own beliefs about yourself onto Republican politicians, but Republican policians don’t get “credit” for the supposed virtues of their blog-commenting voters, they only get credit or demerits for their own behavior, and we can be pretty sure that the reason for their votes is not because they’re concerned about overspending, since they were never concerned before.
January 29th, 2009 at 10:43 am
It is fact that Republicans as a block voted much more in opposition to the TARP bill than Democrats. Even when Bush was in office. My point is not just a projection of my own views, it is also represented in fact by the voting records.
January 29th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Nathan, listening to you and Jimmy Robertson, you’d think the past 8 years of massive Republican spending and ballooning of the deficit never happened. It must be nice to have a memory that only functions on a 6-month cycle.
January 29th, 2009 at 11:19 am
So the last 2 years when the Democrats controlled both houses was just a figment of my imagination?
The criticisms you are bringing forth is accurate in terms of someone arguing with Sean Hannity, or Rush Limbaugh who have claimed, and continue to claim that the Bush presidency was a wild success.
The current Republicans in the House and Senate are not nearly as lock step with the old guard, as we saw on the dissent to the 350 billion TARP giveaway. To blame Republicans for the “banker giveaway” when it was in fact sky is falling idiot Democrats that voted for the bill is ridiculous. Furthermore, it was those same Democrats that attacked Republicans for not doing “what was right” for the nation.
January 29th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
While I do agree with James and Nathan to some degree because the size of this is ridiculous, someone has to pay it and we don’t even know if it’ll work, I still believe that it needs to be done. It’s not the government being all things to all people, it’s the government being the lender of last resort. When credit isn’t moving, something’s got to get it going. Hopefully this does it, and I do have my doubts that it will.
On the other hand weren’t the Republicans arguing for the last bunch of years that deficit spending was no big deal? That it might even be good for the economy? Or does that apply only when Republicans are pounding us with debt?
AND someone brought up the fact that the Democrats were in power last year. True. But the BANKS… THE BANKS… cried Bush and Paulson. And Democrats gave them the money. Paulson literally made up a figure and told Congress it was “necessary.” And the Dems believed him. I blame them both, but don’t tell me that the $700bil approved was just the Dems.
January 29th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Whether Obama’s approach was good or bad as far as the politics is debatable. But the substance is that with the tax cuts he crippled the bill so that it is unlikely to wrok. This has seriously bad implications for the economy and all of our lives, and to make that call for the sake of a rhetorical stance is immoral, foolish, and poor long-term strategy, regardless of whether the stance itself is worth taking in isolation.
January 29th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
The Democrats were not the ones who failed to do their duty and let Wall Street put us in this fucking mess — it was the Republican Congresses championing “deregulation” and “getting the government off the backs of the people”.
The Republicans are happy to put a high percentage of poor people into prisons under the guise of “law and order”. But they will cut their mother’s throat before they will enforce the law against a rich campaign donor.
January 29th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Deregulation? Exactly what’s been deregulated in the US recently? There’s been increased regulation across the board. Heck, the main reason that the IPO space for tech companies dropped dead is Sarbanes/Oxley – it’s literally too expensive for small companies to go public.
January 29th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Notice how Nathan and James criticize the Democrats for trying to fix this DISASTER –but make NO criticism of the people who CAUSED this mess — Republican George W Bush, the Republican Congresses, and rich Republican campaign donors.
Next up:
Nathan and James lecture us on how Welfare Negroes need to accept personal responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
January 29th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Re James comment “Deregulation? Exactly what’s been deregulated in the US recently? :
————–
Ah, I MISUNDERSTOOD. The economy has collapsed because Wall Street and the Financial Services industry has been laboring under the heavy hand of government for the past 8 years.
I suppose it was the government that forced the banks to CREATE and BUY all those derivatives.
January 29th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
“You know, it’s possible to object to the massive overspending of the Bush administration and the massive overspending of the new one.”
Absolutely, but you don’t get to support the Republican party while doing all that objecting. We’re not asking for much, but we do at least reserve the right to compare your positions today with your positions in the recent past, and to make our own objections if your positions vary 180 degrees depending upon the party in power.
January 29th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
burritoboy – perhaps you’ve heard of the concept of “the lesser of two evils”. There are plenty of things I object to that that the Republicans have either done or advocated (or both). However, the Democrats are even worse from my perspective. I suppose you would be happier if I tossed my hands in the air and decided not to vote, but I’m not about to pick the Democrats when I see policies that look a lot like “if you liked the last 5 months of Federal activity, you’ll love the next 4 years”.
Thanks, but no thanks. Just what I need – increased regulation, higher deficits (and they were plenty high already), a complete misreading of how to deal with Afghanistan (more troops – like the British and Russian campaigns there never happened), and the sclerotic hands of government unions to suck the remaining vitality from the system.
January 29th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Now what makes you think we are anywhere near that upper bound? Seriously, explain to me, specifically and using facts and numbers, why you think the United States is getting close to having to default on its debt.
I will get back to you on that. I admit that I do not have specific numbers at this time.
January 30th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Re “I admit that I do not have specific numbers at this time.”
————–
Matthew had a good graph of US debt –by way of Megan — posted a week or so ago. See
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/01/question_for_stimuskeptics.php
Note the date when it last spiked like today. At a lower percentage of GDP
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