The Deficit Deal: A Yellow Dog D becomes a Yellow Dog I
Half Moon Bay, Calif.: Jeff Clark's Mavericks Surf Shop 5/16/10
Mike Allen reports at Politico.com (7/31/11 at 1238) on the shape of the Republican triumph on social policy. The only positive for the Democrats is that the nation does not have to go through the debt ceiling farce again until after the 2012 election.
We are reminded that if things don’t work out, President Obama can refuse to extend the Bush II tax cuts in December 2012. But at the root of the stunning list of domestic defeats the president has led us into over the past nine months was his failure – despite his pledges – to do just that in December 2010.
Allen quotes a ‘Well Wired Republican’:
If the ‘special committee’ actually produces tax reform that eliminates preferences in return for lower rates, [the deal] will be total victory. … [F]or Rs, that is the real opportunity. The cuts and reversal of the stimulus/pump priming approach are part of the [Democrats] surrender. The real win is tax reform (that’s the Marshall Plan).…
‘Tax reform’, ‘starving the beast’ has always been the end here, so long as the beast was Democratic.
As many on my side of the argument have noted, Obama has given up the only proven method for countering unemployment in favor of a strategy of tax cuts and safety net eliminations that has not worked anywhere at any time. No where; never.
If you want some hint of how ugly the future looks absent a ‘stimulus/pump priming approach’, contemplate the great depression in the US of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It is the responses to that depression — the Progressive Era reforms from environmental and health regulations to graduated taxes according to means – that are the ultimate Tea Party Targets.
For truly, truly I say unto you, ‘Deficits don’t matter’ – to the Rs. Back to Allen again:
HOW THE DEBT GREW (graphic above fold of Boston Globe):
–President Obama: $2.4 trillion (includes $1.1 trillion in stimulus and tax cuts)
–President George W. Bush: $6.1 trillion (includes $1.5 trillion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other defense spending, plus $1.8 trillion in tax cuts)
–President Clinton: $1.4 trillion
–President George H.W. Bush: $1.5 trillion
–President Ronald Reagan: $1.9 trillion
–Prior to President Reagan: $1.0 trillion
–Total: $14.3 trillion http://bo.st/pnnmAK
The Harvard Law Review has never had a stupid Editor. Until now I have been willing to stifle my mounting ire about economics and torture and wars of choice in at first the belief, then the hope, that the President saw more deeply than I, had plans not shared with us, that would assuage my fears.
I deluded myself.
I come from a long line of ‘Yellow Dog Democrats’: D’s who’d rather vote for a yellow dog – and they don’t mean a Golden Retriever – than for a Republican. But the national Democratic leadership has left me just as Napoleon abandoned his Grand Army to the snow and guerillas as it retreated from Moscow.
In two weeks I will change my voter registration. Call me a ‘Yellow Dog Independent’.
Comments
Comment from Pat Colt
Time 2011/08/01 at 08:48
For many Democrats and independants President Obama has been a huge dissappointment. We saw a brilliant man who sought to bring reason to our political discourse, we saw a black man who reaffirmed our belief that America could be a place where race was not a critical factor, we saw in Obama the opportunity to really change the direction of recent American politics. We were wrong on at least two out three of these issues.
I am reminded by his experience of those dear dead days when I was raising my family. I thought for awhile my children needed to understand why we cleaned our rooms, washed the dishes, or mowed the lawn. Then it dawned on me that all our discourse was based on their desire not to do those things regardless of the merits of the case. I adopted a different stance which was “After the lawn is mowed I will gladly explain why we mow it but until it is mown I will not discuss it and your life is going to be very spartan”.
Obama needed to use every bit of power he had to push America in the directions traditionally sought by the Democratic party. I see that as moving towards higher taxes on the rich, greater protection of working class people, and demonstrating that our government can be a positive and central force in our society.
In the absence of being able to do those things he should have at least made it clear that he wanted to do them and would have done them if he could have gotten any cooperation from the Republicans. He has not even done that. His presidency affirms our misgivings about Obama the candidate who had never had any leadership experience in the usage of power.
Comment from Peter Hunt
Time 2011/08/03 at 14:21
Can you just imagine how LBJ would have handled this? First the tax cut extension would have had a hard quid pro quo attached to it and it would have been publicized so there would be no backing out.
It would likely been in writing using the blood of Republicans House and Senate. Beyond this he would have been on the phone with simple promises of veto’s or phenomenal stallings on specific pork barrel appropriations on a district by district basis.
I can hear him now talking to a Tea Party member ” You know son, once you announce that pork barrel program you should note that there will be a three to five year waiting period for the EIS to be approved. The EPA has a lot of these ahead of your little program as beneficial as you may see it. It is going to take some real time I suspect and we may be closing some of those post offices in your district since the economy is so tight. I’d make sure your people know about it as I would hate to have to announce it myself when I get down your way and have it a surprise along with the bank closings By the way, I was sorry to hear your wife found that bill for your office credit card and is going to leave you. Or was that the Representative from your neighboring district? Anyway, I sure would like to have your support on my position on this budget bill.”
Real world – real politics – and not some mamby pamby newbie who wants to be loved and admired. Ou want to play screw around? Let me show you how it’s played.
Comment from Peter Kinder
Time 2011/08/03 at 14:36
As Uncle Pat would say, ‘You got that right!’
Negative as they are, Robert Caro’s three volumes left me admiring Johnson’s achievements. He never forgot his people and most particularly his parents. As a Vietnam era student, I sure never thought I’d say that.
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