Kent Conrad’s Budget
The contrast between the volume of huffing and puffing Kent Conrad did when presented with the CBO analysis of Barack Obama’s budget and the changes he actually made when writing his proposal is a pretty telling Washington story. It’s not that Conrad didn’t change anything substantive (he did) or that he’s crazy to worry about long-term deficits (he’s not) or that there’s anything uniquely villainous about Conrad’s affection for the occasional budget gimmick (happens all the time), but someone who was genuinely alarmed by the fact that the CBO scored Obama’s plans as leading to large deficits in the final years of his ten year budget would not have “solved” this problem by abandoning Obama’s ten-year budget window switching to a five-year window. Similarly, re-inserting the “let’s pretend will use the AMT to raise taxes on the upper-middle class and then not actually do that” approach to budgeting, though now a time-honored trick of the Bush years, is not an actual deficit reduction measure.
Long story short, Senator Conrad cares about the deficit and is taking some action to make it smaller. But he also cares a great deal about being seen as a deficit hawk, the kind of guy who’s not afraid to take an axe to the president’s proposals. And in this instance the administration rather smartly eschewed a lot of this kind of pain free “virtual” deficit reduction, thus making it possible for interested Senators to deploy favored accounting patches on their own initiative and take credit for more reduction than they actually produced.
Meanwhile, a smart observer observed to me earlier that we’re at risk of missing the forest for the trees in terms of the growth projection. CBO has these big deficits because they’re foreseeing relatively slow economic growth. But that relatively slow growth is bad for many reasons that have nothing to do with the deficit. That slow growth may come about or it may not. But either way, it would make more sense for congress to think about avoiding the slow-growth scenario and not just about mitigating the budgetary consequences of slow growth.
26 Responses to “Kent Conrad’s Budget”
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March 25th, 2009 at 10:20 am
“That slow growth may come about or it may not.”
That’s some real faith in the President’s proposals…Perhaps we should simply fudge everything else, like for example, bombing Iran may or may not result in a wider regional war. Or, my personal favorite, spending a gazillion dollars on cap and trade may or may not significantly effect global warming.
Oh, and a bit off of the topic. I hope everyone had a good look at the NY Times editorial page today. One of those evil rich executives of AIG published his letter of resignation. I’d imagine that many of you will feel much better about yourselves after reading it.
March 25th, 2009 at 10:20 am
The “smart observer” may indeed be smart . . . but in this instance he’s just saying something that our Prez. said live on national tv last night.
I.e., the growth forecast is the real long-range variable, so our job at the moment is to make the kind of investments that actually foster growth.
March 25th, 2009 at 10:44 am
“The plutocracy has invented countless makeshift programs, such as generating enormous public debt that plutocrats know they will never be able to repay, levies on capital, taxes which exhaust the incomes of those who do not speculate, sumtuary laws which have historically proven useless, and other similar measures. The principal goal of each of these measures is to deceive the multitudes.”
–Vilfredo Pareto, “The Transformation of Democracy”
And yes, I know that I’m a lowly Class II residue for pointing this out.
March 25th, 2009 at 11:05 am
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.”
-Author unknown
March 25th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Jeez what a fucking fraud this is.
It is not about
“… mitigating the budgetary consequences of slow growth.”
It is about mitigating the causes of slow growth.
Repeat after me Matt:
There is no free lunch!
The CBO predicts slow growth because of the gigantanormous ObaDeficits.
Only in ObaLand can you say with a straight face that the guv’ment can invent trillion$$ out of thin air and pile atop trillion$$ more in debt service without devaluing the dollar and impeding growth.
And then for good measure you stick your fingers up your ass and say “La-la-la deficits don’t matter now anyway”.
Do you ever stop and think or do you simply luxuriate in the fact that most of your readers are as mindlessly Obamatic as you?
But I congratulate you on one thing:
You raise the art of Straw Men to Picasso-esque vapidity.
March 25th, 2009 at 11:35 am
The Czech President and current European Union President, Mirek Topolanek, savages Obama’s budget:
FROM: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7963359.stm
Money quotes:
Mr Topolanek said the biggest success of last week’s EU summit was its refusal to copy the US example….He attacked the US’s growing budget deficit and the “Buy America” campaign, saying “all of these steps, these combinations and permanency is the way to hell.”
Next up: Matt’s admiration for Europe will now take a U-turn.
March 25th, 2009 at 11:48 am
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March 25th, 2009 at 11:53 am
The CBO predicts slow growth because of the gigantanormous ObaDeficits.
This is backwards, and you are stupid. Do you really think folk sayings like “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” are an adequate substitute for actual economic arguments? Take your folk wisdom and shove it up your ass.
March 25th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
While we’re on the subject, I hate the term “deficit hawk”. I understand that it’s symbolic: those people are watching the budget like a hawk! But when people hear “deficit hawk” the first comparison that comes to their minds is to “war hawk”. This implies that a warlike foreign policy is fiscally prudent (false) and also gives undue symbolic advantage so-called “deficit hawks”, since nobody wants to be a “deficit dove”.
March 25th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Josh,
You’re either with us or you’re with the deficit.
March 25th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Re JT at 6: “There is no free lunch!”
—————-
Anybody remember JT ranting back when Bush and the Republican Congresses were running up $6 Trillion in federal debt?
Anybody remember JT ranting back when Bush and the Republicans Congresses were sucking the cocks of financial CEOs and “getting the government off the backs of the free enterprise system”? Kneecaping the regulatory agencies and CAUSING this economic collapse?
It seems to me Republicans are only criticizing Obama because they want to continue their past policies of “Borrow and Spend”. Steal $3 Trillion out of Social Security and give it to the Rich as tax cuts.
March 25th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Everybody knows Mirek Topolanek is a rightwing nut. His party has fallen in the Czech Republic, but they are letting him hang on so that he can finish out his term as EU president. Sarkozy is looking foresighted, when he warned against giving the presidency to some of the newer and, shall we say, less stable member states from Eastern Europe.
It would be like, say, Sarah Palin representing the public face of the U.S. Not that she and her daughter are untypical of a segment of the population – that segment which appears as guests on Jerry Springer.
March 25th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Kent Conrad is a douchebag Democrat. I heard him the other day wringing his hands about using the budget reconciliation process to avoid a Republican filibuster. It would set a very dangerous precedent he said – like when the Republicans used it to push through the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts!
March 26th, 2009 at 12:24 am
JT is a rude vile stupid republican who does not understand that our current leader is only trying to clean up a mess (illegal war), recession which started in 2007, and poor tax laws enacted and signed by that previous idiot republican president. The war alone has cost over 650 billion in Iraq which will end up being 3 trillion with interest. The recession which can be accredited to poor government oversight has cost America even more but as Bush and Cheney have said, “Who could have known?” Well the intelligent economists did. Bush and Cheney chose not to employ any of those people in their administration though. As for the tax laws and their trickle down effect it worked just as they planned. The middle class saw their incomes trickle down along with our economy and world standing. Bravo. And JT, you DUMBASS, don’t forget, Bush took Clinton’s surplus and turned it into a 6 trillion and counting debt.
Cheers
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