QandO

Archive for the ‘Democrats’ Category

Jay Cost at the Real Clear Politics blog takes on the emerging liberal canard about America suddenly becoming “ungovernable”:

Recently, some analysts have suggested that the lack of major policy breakthroughs in the last year is due to the fact that America has become ungovernable. Ezra Klein argued that it was time to reform the filibuster because the government cannot function with it intact anymore. Tom Friedman suggested that America’s “political instability” was making people abroad nervous. And Michael Cohen of Newsweek blamed “obstructionist Republicans,” “spineless Democrats,” and an “incoherent public” for the problem.

Nonsense. America is not ungovernable. Her President has simply not been up to the job.

Cost goes on to lay out, in some pretty good detail why he claims Obama hasn’t been up to the job. And I think he does a pretty thorough job. Be sure to read it all.

He also mentions something in there that I think is lost on the left and sometimes the right. While for many of us, we’ve seen government grow well beyond what we find acceptable or prudent, we actually could be worse off. And one of the reasons we’re not is the inherent design of the system of government we have. The same design many on the left now find frustrating and obstructive.

Let’s acknowledge that governing the United States of America is an extremely difficult task. Intentionally so. When designing our system, the Founders were faced with a dilemma. How to empower a vigorous government without endangering liberty or true republicanism? On the one hand, George III’s government was effective at satisfying the will of the sovereign, but that will had become tyrannical. On the other hand, the Articles of Confederation acknowledged the rights of the states, but so much so that the federal government was incapable of solving basic problems.

The solution the country ultimately settled on had five important features: checks and balances so that the branches would police one another; a large republic so that majority sentiment was fleeting and not intensely felt; a Senate where the states would be equal; enumerated congressional powers to limit the scope of governmental authority; and the Bill of Rights to offer extra protection against the government.

The end result was a government that is powerful, but not infinitely so. Additionally, it is schizophrenic. It can do great things when it is of a single mind – but quite often it is not of one mind. So, to govern, our leaders need to build a broad consensus. When there is no such consensus, the most likely outcome is that the government will do nothing.

The President’s two major initiatives – cap-and-trade and health care – have failed because there was not a broad consensus to enact them. Our system is heavily biased against such proposals. That’s a good thing.

So, as Cost points out, governing America is hard. But that’s a feature not a bug. It is intentionally hard because within that system is a means for the minority to be heard. That’s a critical feature. Because of that feature, the majority isn’t able to ram through legislation that isn’t acceptable to a broad base of the voting constituency. Health care reform and cap-and-trade represent legislation that has been found wanting in that regard. So the left, who used it like a Stradivarius when they were in the minority, now want that check eliminated in the Senate (kill the filibuster) and pine for the good old days of elite rule when, they claim, ramming through major legislation was so much easier.

No real surprise there.

Which brings me to Richard Fernandez’s take on this subject. He agrees with 99% of what Cost says, but says there is 1% where he’d differ:

The Left doesn’t want to govern, it wants to rule given the chance. It is as always willing to leave its own Big Tent behind at the decisive moment. The continual calls from the Democrat Left for Obama to ‘grow a spine’ are really coded calls to say that the moment is now; that the President must ‘’seize the day, seize the hour”. It’s not as Cost imagines, a call to compromise. It’s a call to say that the time for compromise is over. They can drop the mask; they can hoist the Jolly Roger.

I think Fernandez is right. Remember “I won” soon after Obama’s assumption of power? That bit of gloating was a moment the mask dropped.

The left would much rather rule than govern. It is certainly easier. And it tends to agree more with their authoritarian bent.

Governing is a messy and hard business in which they must listen and react to constituents. It means they actually are servants to the public. On the other hand, ruling means the elite choose what the constituency should live with since it is believed by them that the elite know best what that should be. Those they represent exist only to justify the presence of their rulers. The only difference between our left wing and that which founded the USSR is ours haven’t ever had the chance to effect the change those in Soviet Russia did. To this point, our system has mostly prevented it. But redistribution of income, more government intrusiveness and more government control are certainly the obvious desired results of most of the left’s agenda.

And, much to the frustration of the left, the system is preventing it again (with the stipulation that the GOP doesn’t find a way to cave and pass the unpopular bills cited above).

I’m not sure what Barack Obama thought he’d be able to do in terms of “ruling” instead of “governing”, but I’m sure that those who supported his “hope and change” agenda weren’t looking for a ruler. However it is clear, per Cost’s article, they’ve not gotten someone who can govern either (back to the leadership problem again). And, somewhat surprisingly, Obama doesn’t seem to understand the situation he’s put himself in as he doubles down on the leftist agenda he’s allowed liberal Congressional Democrats to craft. He, like so many deluded politicians, is convinced the problem with lack of popular support for the agenda is to be found with the message’s delivery, not with the message itself.

Cost concludes with an answer that I think fairly well destroys the “ungovernable” canard:

This remains a divided country, which creates complications in a system such as ours. The President should have recognized this, and governed with a view to building a broad coalition. But he has not.

America is not ungovernable. Barack Obama has so far failed to govern it.

Here’s to further frustration to the left and their agenda by the “ungovernable” among us.

~McQ

The GOP has every reason to be wary of and, in fact, refuse to participate in the televised “bi-partisan” health care reform summit the President is calling for on NPR unless a number of preconditions are met. The reasons are many, but perhaps the primary one has to do with the fact that this isn’t a summit proposed to begin bi-partisan talks on reforming health care, but instead, an attempt to shame Republicans into supporting the present Senate bill passed. The president refuses to abandon it and reset the health care reform debate at the beginning.

After months of behind closed door negotiations, it’s suddenly “sunshine” time. Why in the world wouldn’t Republicans be suspicious?  It’s hard not to conclude (especially after the results of the televised meeting at the GOP retreat) that this is nothing but political theater designed to show the Republicans as “obstructionists” and the “party of no”.

What the televised “summit” will likely consist of is Obama and the Democrats pushing for acceptance of the same bill now pending and the Republicans saying “no”. The desired outcome is to have them say it right there in the open on TV.  Of course they’d love to have enough Republicans submit to the pressure and commit to passage as an outcome. That’s most likely not going to happen. The most likely scenario has the Republicans say “no” and Democrats claim “see we tried to include them, but they refuse” and use that as a justification for reconciliation. As Democrats see it, it would be a win-win for them with a chance to make the GOP look bad.

The House Republican leadership has sent a letter to the President in which they question all of this. You can read it here. My favorite part of the letter comes after a series of very pointed questions are put to him:

Your answers to these critical questions will help determine whether this will be a truly open, bipartisan discussion or merely an intramural exercise before Democrats attempt to jam through a job-killing health care bill that the American people can’t afford and don’t support. ‘Bipartisanship’ is not writing proposals of your own behind closed doors, then unveiling them and demanding Republican support. Bipartisan ends require bipartisan means.These questions are also designed to try and make sense of the widening gap between the President’s rhetoric on bipartisanship and the reality. We cannot help but notice that each of the President’s recent bipartisan overtures has been coupled with harsh, misleading partisan attacks. For instance, the President decries Republican ‘obstruction’ when it was Republicans who first proposed bipartisan health care talks last May.

The questions mentioned address reconciliation, starting over and other important ones. It’s a letter that makes it clear that the House GOP leadership is very suspicious of the intent of the so-called summit – and rightfully so.

Of course that doesn’t mean they won’t end up playing along. The possibility that the summit would turn into a “bash the GOP” event is something they just won’t be able to stand and will show up in an attempt to avoid that.  Instead, they’ll just play into Democratic hands.  If I were them, I’d instead issue a statement saying that the GOP has concluded there is no good faith attempt on the behalf of the administration or the Democrats toward bi-partisanship in the summit citing their refusal to reset the debate and include the GOP from the beginning. As a consequence the Republicans see no utility in trying to make a silk purse out of the sow’s ear of legislation they already universally oppose.

I don’t know about you but I’d respect them much more if they did that than if they show up and play along in a bit of political theater that is designed primarily to cast them in a bad light for the benefit of the opposition.

UPDATE: White House (non)response to the GOP’s letter.

~McQ

A bunch of interesting polls have emerged today.  One finds Obama at his lowest job performance rating yet.  Of course, as you might expect, Republicans mostly  disapprove of his job performance.  Democrats, on the other hand, generally approve.  But what gets his job approval rating to 44% approval, 47% disapproval in this Marist poll are the independents.  They’re very dissatisfied with his performance – only 29% approve while almost twice that number, 57% disapprove.

Remember it was the independents who put Obama over the top in 2008. Also remember it was they who put Scott Brown over the top in MA and were key in the elections in VA and NJ.

As for Obama’s personal popularity, that too has suffered.

And while GOPers strive to avoid attacking Obama personally, for fear of offending voters who see him in a favorable light personally, even that aura of invincibility is wearing off. Independent voters view Obama negatively, too, by a 39% favorable to 52% unfavorable margin. All registered voters still see Obama favorably by a 50%-44% margin, but that’s down 5 points in just 2 months.

However, there’s more to this than just Obama’s job approval and personal ratings. Also found in this poll is a strong trend toward anti-incumbency:

Meanwhile, members of Congress should brace for a difficult election year. 42% of registered voters said they would back their current member of Congress, while 44% said they would support someone else — a drop of 9 points in support of the incumbent in just 2 months.

Rassmussen has a poll out that begins to flesh out why that trend is building. Three-quarters of the public, according to his latest polling data, express some level of anger at the policies of the federal government. That’s up 4 points from November. It is also why I call the Tea Parties the “tip of the populist iceberg”. There are a whole lot of unhappy voters out there.

So how does it break down? Well, not as Jacob Weisberg and the “ignorant, childish voters who want to live in Candyland” crew would have you believe.

Part of the frustration is likely due to the belief of 60% of voters that neither Republican political leaders nor Democratic political leaders have a good understanding of what is needed today. That finding is identical to the view last September, just after the tumultuous congressional town hall meetings the month before. But only 52% felt this way in November.

And, as time goes by, this trend continues to grow. Note that the leaders of both parties are identified as being clueless by this 60%.

So this week let’s revisit the comparison between the Political Class and the Mainstream (you proles in flyover land) voters. And as we saw last time we checked it out, the PC bunch is totally clueless:

The divide between the Political Class and Mainstream voters, however, is remarkable. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Mainstream voters are angry, but 84% of the Political Class are not. Those numbers include 57% of Mainstream voters who are Very Angry and 51% of the Political Class who are not angry at all.

But then 68% of Mainstream voters don’t think the leaders of either major political party have a good understanding of what the country needs today. Sixty-one percent (61%) of the Political Class disagree.

By comparison, the majority of Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliateds don’t believe the current political leaders have a good handle on what is needed today.

Older voters and higher-income voters share that belief most strongly.

Thus the Tea Parties and the very negative reaction by the PC to them. They simply don’t get it. Which is why we’re suffering through this spate of leftist pundit tantrums in which they damn the people, democracy, and the opposition for being unwilling to roll over and submit to their sublime enlightenment, ability to know what is good for us and benevolent despotism. We’re seeing laments about how the good old day before the damned internet, talk radio and 24 hour cable let the enlightened elite do as they wish.

Look around you my friends – to this point that’s worked out just wonderfully hasn’t it?

Rasmussen lists a bunch of reaction which pretty much outline what you’re hearing from the most vocal of the Tea Partiers:

Most voters oppose the now-seemingly-derailed health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats for months. They continue to have very mixed feelings about the $787-billion economic stimulus plan approved by Congress last February.

Looking back, most voters still don’t approve of the multi-billion-dollar government bailouts of the financial industry and troubled automakers General Motors and Chrysler.

Forty-nine percent (49%) worry the government will try to do too much to help the economy, while 39% fear it won’t do enough.

As the economy continues to stumble along, 59% of voters believe cutting taxes is better than increasing government spending as a job-creation tool, but 72% expect the nation’s elected politicians to increase spending instead.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of Americans say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.

Voters have consistently said for months that they have more confidence in their own economic judgment than that of either the president or Congress.

Charles Krauthammer calls this “The Great Peasant Revolt of 2010″. And in a very real sense it is. What Republicans haven’t yet grasped is this revolt is pretty non-partisan. The reason Republicans seem less threatened by it is because of their fiscally conservative, limited government philosophy. Democrats, on the other hand, suffer more because of their tendency toward fiscal profligacy and government expansion. The problem for Republicans, however, is the country is no longer in a mood to see them give fiscal conservatism and limited government lip service.  If you don’t believe me, take a look at this Iowa poll:

A third of Iowans from across the political spectrum say they support the “tea party” movement, sounding a loud chorus of dissatisfaction with government, according to The Des Moines Register’s new Iowa Poll.

Neither party has a lock on these restless advocates of limited government and fiscal control, according to the poll. However, their conservative leanings appear to give Republicans a greater opportunity than Democrats to make gains at the dawn of a volatile election year.

Is the GOP listening?

It should be clear to both sides that we’re moving into an era of “do what you say or be gone”. The days when incumbents only left office when they assumed room temperature, as did Jack Murtha today, are coming to an end.  What the Tea Parties signal is a much more connected, networked and activist population which has been empowered by the communications technology of today – much to the chagrin of the elitists.

The fun is just beginning. Barack Obama and the Democrats may not realize it, but the era of big government is over.

UPDATE: Gallup also has polling numbers out today. They run different approval ratings for Obama on 9 different issues.

At 36%, Americans give President Barack Obama his lowest job approval rating yet on his handling of the economy. By contrast, the president’s 51% approval rating on handling foreign affairs is up slightly from last month.

As I’ve noted any number of times, the foreign policy’s crisis is yet to come.  2009 was a year of checking out the new president and assessing his strengths and weaknesses.  2010 will be the year that actually tests his foreign policy skills and abilities.

On domestic issues, Obama’s approval rating is in the tank  at 36%.

Most interesting though was the fact that in the list of 9 issues, both foreign and domestic, independents did not once give Obama a majority approval rating, again making the point that indies are not at all happy with his administration.

~McQ

That’s the buzz going around some liberal blogs about a Rasmussen poll which claims that a plurality of Republicans polled would rather see tax cuts and a deficit than a balanced budget and tax increases (one supposes the increases would be used to balance it.  The history of our government says otherwise).

Of course I’m of the opinion there’s a third choice.  Cut spending commensurate with the tax cuts and reduce the size of government until you’re able to balance the budget.  Then start reducing the debt.  Apparently that wasn’t one of the choices however.

On to the poll.  Here are the results with which the left has decided it can use to deride the right as lying no-good deficit lovers:

Fifty percent (50%) of conservatives are comfortable with a budget deficit if taxes are cut versus 63% of liberals who favor a balanced budget with higher taxes. But then 50% of conservative voters also think the federal budget can be balanced without a tax increase. Sixty-one percent (61%) of liberals say that’s impossible.

Ah, ha! Apparently my choice is in the mix, albeit hidden – what do you supposed those 50% who think the federal budget can be balanced without a tax increase mean?

So let’s recast the findings – 50% of “conservatives” want tax cuts and can live with deficits, 50% of “conservatives” say a blanced budget can be done with spending cuts and 61% of “liberals” believe the only way to balance the budget is to increase taxes (apparently eschewing any spending cuts).

Fair recap?

Now here’s the shocker for you (ok, sarcasm again):

Sixty-two percent (62%) of the Political Class prefer a balanced budget with higher taxes, compared to just 26% of Mainstream voters. Forty-six percent (46%) of Mainstream voters would rather see a budget deficit with tax cuts.

Those in the Political Class are twice as likely as Mainstream voters – 70% to 35% – to believe it is not possible to balance the federal budget without raising taxes.

This is a clever way Rasmussen has of letting us know what our political betters think about those questions vs. what you the mainstream voters think (Proles! When will you wise up?).

So what this portion of the poll tells us is if the “Political Class” ever actually gets serious about debt and deficit reduction, you can throw the “cut spending” mantra right out the window (along with tax cuts) and bend over while grabbing your wallet.  At the rate they’re spending right now though, “serious about the deficit” is lightyears away from being considered.  Lip service, however, will be extravagent, since it’s politically cheap.

But it is, as usual, instructive to see how out of touch the “Political Class” is with it’s voters. 

And speaking of our policial masters and referencing the story about Joe Biden below, here’s the public’s answer to Bidenomics:

Fifty-three percent (53%) of voters believe decreasing the level of government spending will help the U.S. economy. Sixty-one percent (61%) say cutting taxes will boost the economy, the highest level of support since May.

What are the administion’s plans?  Increased government spending and higher taxes, of course.  If you want to see the “deficit of trust” Obama spoke about in the SOTU, read through the entire poll results.  It tells the story of the rise of the Tea Parties with percentages.

And we’re suposed to be the ‘ungovernable’ ones?

~McQ

Progressives like to talk about “progressive taxes”. It’s code language for screw the rich. That’s precisely what President Obama is proposing in his budget proposal. Now to be clear, none of this is new or a surprise – he said this is what he planned on doing all along. However that doesn’t make it “progressive” or sustainable. His budget proposal includes plans to:

—Raise the top two income tax rates for individuals, from 33 percent and 35 percent, to 36 percent and 39.6 percent, respectively. Unless Congress intervenes, those rates will rise next Jan. 1 when Bush’s tax cuts expire. That government would reap $365 billion over the next decade.

—Limit the itemized tax deductions high earners can claim for charitable donations, mortgage interest and state and local taxes, raising about $210 billion for the next decade.

—Increase the top capital gains tax rate from 15 percent to 20 percent for families making more than $250,000 a year and individuals making more than $200,000. The proposal would raise about $105 billion.

Of course we’re back to the old “static” analysis model here. These numbers hold if none of those effected do anything to protect their earnings and assets (or the market doesn’t research and find loopholes which allow such protection of assets) over the next decade.

So the chance of this revenue stream remaining intact and at the level suggested here is highly unlikely if you know anything about human nature and how markets work. Look at the UK for instance where the same sort of nonsense is happening:

Mike Warburton, senior tax adviser at Grant Thornton, one of Britain’s biggest accounting firms, said that clients were pursuing four main ways to avoid paying half their salary in tax: bumping up this year’s pay; storing up pay in their firm to be drawn down at a later date; leaving the country; or choosing to pay it to charity rather than the taxman.

“People are taking obvious avoidance measures because they are not prepared to pay 50 per cent tax,” Mr Warburton said.

It is unlikely they’ll be any more “prepared” to do so here than there.

Also unlikely are cuts in spending which are really what are needed. Once Congress sees this revenue stream established, even for a year – heck, even hypothetically – they’re likely to spend what is promised in the outlying years and use it in their PAYGO justifications.

Then there’s the aspect of his proposals which use the tax code to punish businesses or encourage them to not do business here at the level at which they are now engaged:

—Change the way profits made by investment fund managers are taxed, raising an additional $24 billion over the next decade.

—Impose a “financial crisis responsibility fee” on large financial institutions, raising $90 billion over the next decade.

—Restrict the ability of international companies to defer taxes on profits made overseas, raising about $26 billion over the next decade.

—Impose a total of about $39 billion in tax increases on oil, gas and coal companies over the next decade.

The tax on oil, gas and coal will simply raise the price at the retail level for all consumers, giving lie to the Obama promise that taxes won’t go up “one dime” for 95% of Americans. Additionally, the tax on the energy companies, passed on to consumers, will affect the poor much more than others. There are other ways to extract that pound of flesh than through income taxes and the administration knows that only too well, whether or not Obama supporters want to admit it or not.

And both he and they will have difficulty making that claim at all if this remains in the budget:

According to a report by The Hill President Barack Obama is seeking to end a middle-class tax break he once said would be permanent.

The $3.8 trillion budget request rolled out by the White House on Monday would renew the Making Work Pay tax credit for fiscal 2011, but then would have it sunset

Yes, that’s right, instead of making that middle class tax cut permanent as he promised, he’s proposing it “sunset” (i.e. go away) after FY 2011 (just before the 2012 election and the tax prep season so it won’t effect voters till after the election).

All in all, taxes would increase $1.1 trillion (again, assuming no person or no business effected does anything to avoid these taxes) over a decade.

Yes, that’s a lot of money – but then we’re running a deficit this year of $1.6 trillion, of which 40 cents of every dollar spent is borrowed. So while $1.1 trillion seems enormous, it’s really a drop in the ocean when looking at the promised spending over the next decade.

So listen carefully to soothing promises of fiscal restraint and concern about the deficit (and debt) in the coming weeks as the administration and Congressional Democrats give lip service to PAYGO and spending restraint. Then review this chart. The chart is their plan. If you can find any spending restraint or real deficit or debt reduction in there, please point it out. This budget and the outlying budgets are a plan for fiscal ruin. We now, for the first time, owe more than our entire GDP is worth, and the Obama administration apparently plans to see if it can double that in the shortest time possible. Any doubts about where this is headed?

And: are you beginning to understand what the Tea Parties are about yet?

~McQ

I’ve been wondering for a while about a contradiction at the heart of the Democrats on healthcare reform. If they really thought it was so important, necessary, and right, why didn’t they get it done earlier? In particular, why didn’t they get it done before Scott Brown’s election?

A correspondent at The Corner has been wondering the same thing, which got me thinking some more about it. There are really only two possibilities:

1. Some set of Democrats really didn’t want it to pass, but at the same time they didn’t want to be seen as stopping it from passing.

2. The Democrats are utterly incompetent politicians.

As the person at The Corner points out, if you’re a pro, you better not assume your party has an election for an open seat in the bag. For all you know your candidate could drop dead a week before the election.

Plus, the Democrats started the entire process with two senators with one foot in the grave each: Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd. It simply doesn’t make sense to dawdle under those conditions.

Of course, Obama didn’t want to. He was setting his deadlines, because he clearly understood this. It’s beyond my capacity to believe that Democratic leaders didn’t also understand the reasons for the urgency, and transmit them downstream to all the Democrats in Congress.

Yet, here we are, with healthcare reform on life support, and the Democrats are in worse position to pass it than they’ve been since Obama took office.

So what happened? Option 2 above is just for completeness. The Democrats can’t possibly be that unprofessional as politicians.
I don’t think Reid and Pelosi are the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they got to their positions for a reason.

The only possibility, really, is option 1. Some set of astute Democrats figured out along about April or May of last year that healthcare reform as envisioned by Obama, Reid, and Pelosi was an electoral disaster for them personally, and perhaps for their party in general. I’d like to think that at least some of them had qualms about the effectiveness of the monstrosity that evolved too, even if they favored healthcare reform in general, but that was probably a side issue. Whether it’s establishment Democrats or establishment Republicans, a threat to their power is about all that would really force them to go against their party’s official position.

However, preserving power and position is not just about staying in office. At the federal level, you also have to keep your position within the party heirarchy, and not damage your prospects for moving up over time.

This was especially tricky in the Senate. A House member might bargain with Pelosi to vote against a healthcare bill, because she had votes to spare. Senators had no such option. It became apparent last summer that the likelihood of getting some Republicans to provide cushion and the cover of faux “bipartisanship” was not good. So every Democratic senator was a potential blocking vote.

In these circumstances, an uncompromising public stance against healthcare would have marked a Democratic senator for being scalped by his own base, and even if he survived, he would have been likely relieved of power within the party. Yet, being seen as a supporter of this particular monstrosity carries big risk for electoral defeat, especially in certain red or purple states.

So I believe that Landrieu, Nelson, and others from those states walked the high wire doing a delicate balancing act for the last year. They threw just enough sand in the gears to slow things down, all in the name of “improving the bill” and such. Heck, they might have even believed their own bullsh!t. But they were no more interested in seeing the thing passed than we were. At various points, when pressed to the wall and being given all the ridiculous stuff they asked for, at least in some form, they finally voted for a bill, hoping that it couldn’t be reconciled with the House, or something, because they really didn’t want it to pass.

If this supposition is correct, it explains why healthcare is dead in the sense of a chicken with its head cut off. It’s still flopping around, but the outcome is pre-ordained. There are just too many Democrats who really don’t want it to pass, but can’t come right out and say so.

It also explains the bribes to Nelson and Landrieu. They didn’t really want the bribes. They probably asked for them to give them a face-saving way to continue to oppose the bill and draw out the process. They knew that it would be politically unpopular for the Democrats to put such obvious bribes in the bill, so they hoped it wouldn’t happen. Then Reid, realizing the situation was getting desperate, gave them the bribes anyway, estimating that the risk of the bribes was less than the risk of not getting the bill passed.

I don’t know how close this armchair analysis is to being correct, but I can’t think of any other reason for the comedy that has played out over the last year. The Democrats can’t be that incompetent as politicians.

Not a day after the President’s speech telling us how important deficit reduction is, Democrats in the Senate have successfully passed a bill which will raise the debt limit by 1.9 trillion. And it was passed because Senator-elect Scott Brown hasn’t yet been seated and Teddy Kennedy surrogate Paul Kirk, cast the deciding 60th vote.

Senate Democrats needed all the 60 votes at their disposal Thursday to muscle through legislation allowing the government to go $1.9 trillion deeper in debt.

Democratic leaders were able to prevail on the politically volatile 60-39 vote only because Republican Sen.-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts has yet to be seated. Republicans had insisted on a 60-vote, super-majority threshhold to pass the measure. An earlier test vote succeeded on a 60-40 vote.

The measure would would put the government on track for a national debt of $14.3 trillion — about $45,000 for every American — and it served as a vivid reminder of the United States’ dire fiscal straits.

And that after all the happy talk about the serious need for deficit reduction and how committed the president and, one assumes, his party was to that goal. How serious is he? Remember this?

Now, I know that some in my own party will argue that we can’t address the deficit or freeze government spending when so many are still hurting. And I agree — which is why this freeze won’t take effect until next year when the economy is stronger. That’s how budgeting works. But understand –- understand if we don’t take meaningful steps to rein in our debt, it could damage our markets, increase the cost of borrowing, and jeopardize our recovery -– all of which would have an even worse effect on our job growth and family incomes.

The usual presidential double talk – deficit reduction is important, but I’ve decided it is more important to spend more money this year despite my claim we have to reduce the deficit. I’m sorry but that quote is word salad. We must address the deficit and freeze spending but we can’t address the deficit or freeze spending even though not doing so may “have an even worse effect on our job growth and family incomes?”

Wha?

Oh, that effect won’t be until after next year’s freeze?  Oh, ok – spend away.

Do you see how asinine this explanation is?

And, as expected, that 15 to 25 billion “freeze” is all he mentioned as his attempt to address the deficit – again, not at all the actions of someone serious about deficit or debt reduction. More smoke and mirrors with the final act being a claim he’ll veto any bill that tries to melt that freeze. Meantime he and the Dems are raising the debt ceiling by 1.9 trillion and we’re supposed to ignore that and buy into his piddling deficit reduction scheme which doesn’t even start until next year.

Don’t know about you, but this debt increase sounds like the perfect time to wield that veto pen to me. I mean if he’s actually serious about deficit and debt reduction as he claims.

~McQ

But apparently, Barack Obama still thinks it does.  Unfortunately, for him, many Democrats in Congress don’t agree.  Mary Landrieu for one:

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said health care reform “is on life support, unfortunately,” and the president should have been more specific with how Democrats should move forward.

“He should have been more clear, and I am hoping that in the next week or two he will because that is what it is going to take if it is at all possible to get it done,” Landrieu told reporters. “Mailing in general suggestions, sending them over the transom, is not necessarily going to work.”

Obama’s been mailing it in for a year. Leadership in this particular case is when someone takes the lead in giving direction to the legislative product and process so when it ends up in Congress, the kinks have been worked out on both sides before they vote and enough are happy with the product that it is able to pass both chambers. Presidents have been involved in that sort of leadership since there’s been a presidency. However, it seems it’s a foreign concept to Mr. Obama. It appears he believes that Congress should take his nebulous and sometimes contradictory musings and mumblings and put a coherent bill together which is satisfactory to all sides. The “from on high” pontificating that apparently some scribes at lower levels are supposed to faithfully record and from which they are to somehow fashion acceptable legislation that will quickly pass doesn’t seem to be working, does it?

That’s not how presidents in the past have lead and it certainly doesn’t appear the Obama brand of non-leadership is having much success. Landrieu is trying to be as tactful as possible with her “mail it in” comment, but it is apparent that they have seen nothing in terms of presidential leadership on this issue (or others). So they keep wandering in circles fighting among themselves (something else a leader would attempt to stop vs. standing at a podium and chastising them for his lack of leadership) and have produced a monstrosity of a bill which they can only pass via parliamentary tricks.

The “sidecar reconciliation” is one such trick which, unfortunately for them, seems to have a show stopping Catch-22:

“Neither the House nor the Senate have figured out how to pass a reconciliation sidecar first,” one senior Senate aide says. “We are being asked to pass a piece of legislation that amends another piece of legislation which does not exist yet. We are having problems with the CBO and parliamentarian on that front.”

Got that? The House (Democrats) doesn’t trust the Senate (Democrats) to fix the Senate bill they are currently being pressured to pass. Therefore the House wants the fix passed first so the Senate can’t renege on it. But, you can’t pass a fix on something that doesn’t yet exist. So here they sit, in a parliamentary stew of their own making and with presidential leadership simply not present – except for speechifying and berating everyone else but himself for the failure of his leadership.

It’s an amazing performance.

~McQ

Marion Berry, Democratic Representative from Arkansas, has decided to retire from Congress voluntarily instead of chancing an involuntary retirement via the ballot box. Berry is considered a “blue dog” Democrat and is from a nominally conservative state whose voters have made it clear they don’t support the policies or agenda of this Congress or this president.

Berry relates an incident that struck me as the ultimate in hubris and arrogance:

Berry recounted meetings with White House officials, reminiscent of some during the Clinton days, where he and others urged them not to force Blue Dogs “off into that swamp” of supporting bills that would be unpopular with voters back home.

“I’ve been doing that with this White House, and they just don’t seem to give it any credibility at all,” Berry said. “They just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’ We’re going to see how much difference that makes now.” [snip]

What got me laughing was how badly that statement may come to haunt Obama. They certainly have him, but as the political stars are aligning right now, “me” may end up in worse shape than did Bill Clinton. He’s already seen a super-majority go by the boards in the Senate – something Clinton never had – and it isn’t at all impossible that what most people would consider prohibitive majorities in both houses of Congress could be significantly reduced or, possibly, flip – although the latter is unlikely.

The only reason it wouldn’t be like ‘94 is because there are enough Democratic safe seats to prevent the flip. But then, after Massachusetts, one has to wonder how many really safe seats there are. And what if the GOP trots something like this out in the interim?

In a recent interview with Diane Sawyer, President Obama said:

“I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.”

There is a third option which he obviously avoided. He could end up being a very mediocre and Carteresque one-term president the way things are trending.

~McQ

President Obama is about to do what the pundits love to describe as a “hard pivot”. What that really means is he’s going to try to change th subject enough to divert attention from his troubles and give the impression he’s doing something for the people that they actually want. The first part of the hard pivot was his attack on banking and Wall Street. Meeting with a modicum of populist success there and in the wake of the message from Massachusetts, he’s decided it is now time to focus on jobs, the middle class and, of all things, spending.

Well sort of. He’s going to address run-away spending fostered by a Democratic Congress (don’t forget – its been a Democratic Congress for the last 4 years that has increased spending by $900 billion over the last 3 years) by asking for a 3 year spending freeze. Wait. A 3 year spending freeze on non-security discretionary spending.

Make sure you understand that. Congress is quietly trying to raise the debt ceiling another 1.9 trillion dollars and Mr. Obama decides for a symbolism over substance move to address the deficit spending. The result?

The payoff in budget savings would be small relative to the deficit: The estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits the government is expected to accumulate over that time.

Or put another way, we will “save” less over 10 years than we’re presently running up a month in deficit spending.

Wow.

Don’t get me wrong here – any spending reduction is good news. But this spending cut – or spending freeze, because it isn’t really a cut – doesn’t at all address the problem of runaway deficit spending. It is another example of the smoke and mirrors for which this administration has become so famous. No one who is seriously concerned about the depth of our deficit spending habit is going to take this piddling $25 billion a year freeze on spending as a serious attempt to cut the deficit. This is a reaction to public concern over the debt. And while it may sound good to the uninformed in the State of the Union address, it is a trivial drop in the public spending bucket.

Obama likes to say that he doesn’t want to “kick the can down the road” when it comes to domestic issues. Well he’s not only kicking the can down the road when it comes to domestic deficit spending, he’s making it bigger too boot. While he’ll tout the “savings” on this end, the spending on the other end will increase dramatically.  You are required to “suspend disbelief”, ignore the increased spending and pretend this is an earnest attempt to reign in the deficit.

If he wants to be seen as serious about this, he can cancel the rest of the stimulus, which had done next to nothing to help relieve joblessness. He can ask Congress to cancel the omnibus spending bill which was passed earlier this year and return the money that hasn’t been spent. And he can return what is left of the TARP money to the Treasury. And if he’s really interested in not kicking the can down the road, he can address the real drains on the budget – Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. But we all know that’s not going to happen – in fact, he and the Democrats are trying to grow two of those three programs as we speak.

So while this will be described by the adoring media as part of that “hard pivot” to address the public’s concerns, it’s really a bone (and a tiny one at that) thrown to try to buy off those who really don’t pay close attention and to give the impression he’s serious about the deficit and the debt. Don’t be fooled – he’s serious about neither, and that’s been obvious since he was the junior Senator from Illinois. Nothing has changed since he ascended to the presidency.

~McQ