Scott Spiegel

In a controversial New York Times piece that’s been receiving attention from both the left and the right, former Reagan budget director David A. Stockman recently argued that the federal government’s activist role in manipulating our economy for the past eight decades is responsible for our current dire financial straits.

Stockman dissects the history of abuses carried out by the Federal Reserve and notes, correctly, that the Keynesian policy of endless money printing to stimulate demand and promote liquidity leads to long-term, permanent inflation and an erosion of our currency’s value.  He takes to task George W. Bush for recklessly expanding Medicare, Obama for his poorly targeted stimulus bill, and both for their role in the 2008 bank bailout.  He notes that even so-called fiscal hawks like House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan vastly underestimate the severity of our debt crisis and soft-pedal the steps needed to resolve it.

But Stockman gets a lot wrong, too, and the bulk of his error seems to stem from a renegade streak that reflects his desire to prove himself more sagacious than both left and right.  To wit: any analyst who finds equal economic fault in both parties—labeling the problem “bipartisan,” as Stockman does—misunderstands the situation.  Yes, the right deserves blame: Nixon decoupled paper money from gold; Reagan built up massive federal deficits; George W. Bush increased government spending more than any president before him.  But Stockman justifies holding both parties equally accountable by inappropriately coupling spending cuts with raising taxes as solutions to mitigate deficits.  Stockman falls into the trap—as do most liberals—of equating federal expenditures with tax cuts.  In the liberal worldview, both entities are equivalent, because each involves spending in different forms—one on government programs that largely help the poor and middle class, the other on tax breaks that largely favor the wealthy.

But lowering marginal tax rates on high-income earners doesn’t involve spending; it involves not taking money that isn’t the government’s in the first place.  Revealing either his confusion or his deliberate blurring of the issue, Stockman writes, “Washington is piling a soaring debt burden on our descendants, unable to rein in either the warfare state or the welfare state or raise the taxes needed to pay the nation’s bills [emphasis added].”  Cut massive wasteful federal spending, gouge the rich—it’s all the same to Stockman.

Similarly, he bemoans Bush’s “giant expansion of Medicare and a tax-cutting spree for the wealthy…  In effect, the G.O.P embraced Keynesianism—for the wealthy.”  In other words, Stockman thinks letting the wealthy keep their money in the hope they’ll invest and create more wealth is the functional equivalent of burying money and paying people to dig it up.

At times Stockman rails against the size of the entitlement state, but he’s inconsistent in denouncing it.  At one point he complains that Ryan’s “proposal for draconian 30 percent cuts over a decade on the $7 trillion safety net—Medicaid, food stamps and the earned-income tax credit—is another front in the G.O.P.’s war against the 99 percent.”  Is Stockman Reagan’s former budget director or a closet Occupy Wall Streeter?

Stockman betrays further obtuseness when he complains that our two stubborn political parties, caught in “stasis,” won’t resolve our fiscal crisis in one fell swoop, but rather “in carefully choreographed crises over debt ceilings, continuing resolutions and temporary budget patches.”  In other words, the country’s having to white-knuckle it through endless, panic-filled stopgap measures is equally the fault of Democrats who refused to pass a budget for four years and Republicans who desperately tried to get one signed into law during that period.  Neither party is more to blame than the other.

Showing further solidarity with the left, Stockman writes that not only should we end deposit insurance and inexpensive Fed loans for Wall Street, but banks should be “banned from trading, underwriting and money management in all its forms.”  So banks should have to shoulder all the risks inherent in their profession—a sensible idea—but government should arbitrarily restrict the scope and nature of their profit-generating activities?  Isn’t that just the inverse of the problem we have now?

But what really undercuts Stockman’s case is the solutions he presents to resolve our crisis.  While he suggests some sensible ideas involving smaller government, including reining in the Fed and replacing the welfare state with a modest means-tested safety net, he inadvertently reveals an odd, megalomaniacal desire for control.  Under his plan, for example, Stockman would demand “the abolition of incumbency”; he would order “sweeping constitutional surgery” that would require “providing 100 percent public financing for candidates; strictly limiting the duration of campaigns (say, to eight weeks)… [and] overturning Citizens United…”  Stockman is willing to throw out free speech—including our ability to spend money to advocate for political candidates and messages—in the process of saving the country.  Why don’t we just let Stockman pick our leaders right now and be done with it?

Anyone who sees so little difference between the ideological foundations and policy contributions to our economy of our two major political parties—and who botches so many of the specifics in his exegesis of our current woes—either doesn’t have a grasp of the situation or is trying to mislead us.  And Stockman’s restrictive, authoritarian solutions suggest that—as with Democrats and their congenital desire to manipulate other people’s wealth—he really just wants to tell us working-class schlubs what to do.

 Print This Post

Related articles

• Stockman Warns: The Bubble Will Burst Soon (valuewalk.com)
• David Stockman: So basically, the state has destroyed capitalism (canadafreepress.com)
• Reagan Budget Director: Republicans Are Leading Us To Another Massive Wall Street Crash (addictinginfo.org)
• David Stockman, Ex-Reagan Budget Director: George W. Bush’s Policies Bankrupt The Country (huffingtonpost.com)
• Stockman Warns of Crash of Fed-Fueled Bubble Economy (bloomberg.com)

The progressive Wisconsin-based Cap Times recently released a graph featuring Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers showing Wisconsin well below neighbors Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, and Illinois in job creation over the past two years.  Liberals have been tittering over the graph, because in 2010, Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker campaigned on the promise of creating 250,000 new jobs in his first term, yet the state has witnessed a net decline of 16,000 jobs since he took office in January 2011.

In defense of Walker, comparing Wisconsin unfavorably to Michigan and Illinois—two of the states with the highest unemployment rates in the country—is hilarious.  In December 2012, Wisconsin’s unemployment rate was 6.6%, compared to Illinois’s at 8.7% and Michigan’s at 8.9%.  (Iowa, with its Republican governor and House, is admittedly doing very well at 4.9%).

Remember that Walker promised to create 250,000 jobs by the end of his first term, which lasts until January 2015.  I think it’s a bit premature for liberals to gloat over the presumed economic fallout from the slight limitations he enacted on lavish taxpayer-funded union benefits via his Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill.  As anyone who grimaced while first-term President Reagan rode out the second half of a double-dip recession can attest, reform takes time to kick in.  There’s so much variability in the numbers of jobs Wisconsin’s neighbors have created over the past 24 months—from Minnesota’s 72,200 down to Iowa’s 18,600—that it’s way too early to tell whether Walker’s policies have worked.  And Reagan didn’t have to waste the first year of his presidency fighting a pointless recall election staged by powerful public sector unions.  (The Wisconsin recall election also set taxpayers back to the tune of 16 to 18 million job-killing dollars.)

Also remember that the change in Wisconsin’s net jobs includes not only private-sector jobs but government jobs.  Since Walker explicitly campaigned on a platform of cutting government spending, it’s safe to assume that several thousand of those “lost” jobs came from laying off pencil-pushing bureaucrats to save the state money.

In addition, Walker promised to create jobs via business expansion.  Yet Democrats have been doing everything in their power since he was elected to stymie his job-creation legislation.  Most regrettable is their effort to stop his mining bill that would open territory in the Lake Superior region for a gigantic $1.5 billion iron ore mine and create thousands of jobs in the mining, trucking, and housing industries.  Despite the bill’s recent passage after a year of Democratic stall tactics, the mine’s opening could be delayed for years due to environmentalist legal challenges.

But since Democrats want to draw comparisons, let’s take a broader view.  Crunching the numbers reveals that unemployment rates declined more across the country in red states—as defined by 2012 Electoral College votes—than blue states from January 2011 to December 2012: 20% on average in red states and 14% in blue states.

Unemployment increased in only two states over the past two years: New Jersey and New Hampshire—both blue.  Unemployment decreased by piddly single-digit percentages in New York, Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut, Maine, and Pennsylvania—all blue states. Similarly, decreases were 17% or less in blue states Michigan, Washington, Hawaii, Vermont, Rhode Island, Colorado, and D.C.

In contrast, unemployment plummeted for red states Utah (32%), Idaho (32%), Missouri (30%), Louisiana (29%), Texas (27%), Alabama (24%), Montana (24%), Oklahoma (23%), Kentucky (22%), West Virginia (22%), Wyoming (22%), Kansas (21%), South Carolina (20%), and Tennessee (20%).

Florida was a blue state in 2012—barely—but has a Republican governor, Senate, and House, and their unemployment dropped a whopping 33% from January 2011.  Swing state Ohio similarly tipped blue in 2012, but also has a Republican governor, Senate, and House, and their unemployment plunged 29%.

Red states also had lower average point-in-time unemployment rates in December 2012 than blue states—7.5% vs. 6.6%.  The following red states all boasted unemployment rates below 6.0%: North Dakota (3.2%), Nebraska (3.7%), South Dakota (4.4%), Wyoming (4.9%), Oklahoma (5.1%), Utah (5.2%), Kansas (5.4%), Louisiana (5.5%), and Montana (5.7%).  Seven of the ten states with the lowest unemployment rates in the nation are red.  The states with the four lowest unemployment rates are all red.

Meanwhile, these poor blue states all had miserable unemployment rates above 8.0% in December 2012: Rhode Island (10.2%), Nevada (10.2%), California (9.8%), New Jersey (9.6%), Michigan (8.9%), Illinois (8.7%), Connecticut (8.6%), D.C. (8.5%), Oregon (8.4%), and New York (8.2%).  Seven of the ten states with the highest unemployment rates in the nation are blue.  The states with the four highest unemployment rates are all blue.

So here’s some advice for Democrats who whine when Republican governors fail to fully implement their economic growth promises quickly enough: Stop saddling them with costly, time-consuming recall elections, and stop opposing every job-creation measure they propose.  They can create a lot more jobs that way—if that’s truly what you want.

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics

 Print This Post

Related articles

• Governor of state that’s 42nd on job creation brags that ‘the national outlook isn’t as bright’ (dailykos.com)
• Scott Walker’s Wisconsin is losing jobs while neighboring states are creating jobs (bluedownstate.wordpress.com)
• Is Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker trying to stimulate the Illinois economy? (bluedownstate.wordpress.com)
• Guess Where Chicago Landed On Forbes’ List Of America’s Most Miserable Cities? (b96.cbslocal.com)
• There was more to Gov. Scott Walker’s fight with public employee unions than speeches and protests (jsonline.com)

How far is the Obama administration willing to go to spread the meme that the budget sequester will wreak havoc on the populace and unravel the nation’s economy?

Telling lies in the abstract didn’t prevent the sequester, so the White House and its media allies have been trotting out specific cases of hardship to horrify voters.  But the devil is in the details, as any liberal politician who’s ever had to mask his policy intentions, then watched his popularity drop the more people learned about his plans, can tell you.  As The Washington Post’s Fact Checker Glenn Kessler wrote, “The administration may rue the day that it issued so many scary statistics with such specificity.  If sequestration remains in effect for the rest of the fiscal year, reporters will certainly attempt to check whether the administration’s predictions came close to reality.”

How far off have their predictions been?  On February 8, the White House posted an online sequester Fact Sheet that claimed that because of the sequester, “Federally-assisted programs like Meals on Wheels would be able to serve 4 million fewer meals to seniors.”  But Fact Checker gave this claim two Pinocchios, noting that states had broad discretion in using other sources of federal funding and charitable contributions to pay for the fewer than 2% of meals affected by the sequester.

In a speech on February 19, Obama reeled off a whole school of whoppers.  First he threatened that under the sequester, “Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go.”  PolitiFact labeled the claim Mostly False, explaining that, as with Meals on Wheels, program officials have wide latitude and ample flexibility to trim unnecessary spending and reallocate money to fund high-priority cases.  A Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed that “the Bureau of Prisons, which houses 218,000 federal prisoners, does not intend to let anyone go on March 1 because of the cuts.  She said that bureau personnel might be furloughed and that vocational education programs and others might be curtailed.”  Not exactly opening the floodgates and letting violent criminals run free.

Obama then made three wild claims in one paragraph.  First he warned that because of the sequester, “kids [would] not have access to Head Start.”  The White House’s sequester Fact Sheet concurs that “70,000 young children would be kicked off Head Start.”  Fact Checker gave the claim two Pinocchios, observing that Obama’s stimulus bill had permanently expanded Head Start, and that even with sequester cuts, the program would have more funds in inflation-adjusted dollars than in 2008.

A few sentences later, Obama declared that under the sequester, “Tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find childcare for their kids,” and that “Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings.”  PolitiFact labeled the child care and health care claims only Half True.  Indeed, administration officials admitted, when pressed, that “day care centers are almost certainly not going to be padlocked on March 1.”  And PolitiFact complained that Obama’s language on vaccinations and screening “was imprecise enough to suggest that people may lose their access to primary care doctors outright,” and noted that multiple factors “could make the estimate for immunization and cervical screening too high.”

Most infamously, Education Secretary Arne Duncan joined the fabrication bandwagon on Face the Nation with his claim that “[A]s many as 40,000 teachers could lose their jobs…  [T]here are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, who are getting notices that they can’t come back this fall.”  He continued the fraud a few days later by referencing supposedly sequester-induced cuts in Kanawha County, West Virginia.  But Fact Checker gave the claim four Pinocchios after discovering that the cuts were actually transfer notices and completely unrelated to the sequester.  PolitiFact rated the claim Mostly False, noting, “The other districts held up by education officials haven’t fired a single teacher because of sequestration.”  (Meanwhile, Media Matters gave the claim four Rigoberta Menchus.)

Two days later, Representative Ami Bera made the outrageous claim that because of the sequester, “There will be $50 million cut from firefighting funding…  People are going to be unsafe, homes are going to burn.”  (Across the nation, struggling Americans asked, “‘Homes?’  What are these ‘homes’ he speaks of?)  PolitiFact investigated, found Bera’s numbers to be enormously exaggerated, and called the claim Mostly False.

But the most egregious sequester fib came last Friday, when President Obama, frantic that Americans weren’t pulling their hair out over a 3% decrease in federal spending, announced that maintenance staff and security guards at the Capitol had received a pay cut: “Starting tomorrow everybody here, all the folks who are cleaning the floors at the Capitol.  Now that Congress has left, somebody’s going to be vacuuming and cleaning those floors and throwing out the garbage.  They’re going to have less pay.  The janitors, the security guards, they just got a pay cut, and they’ve got to figure out how to manage that. That’s real.”  Fact Checker gave the claim four Pinocchios, noting that Obama’s lie—which contradicted the sequester plan previously and publicly circulated by the Architect of the Capitol—had prompted the Capitol superintendent to e-mail panicked staff members to insist that Obama’s claims were “NOT true.”

How low will this White House go to win the sequester public relations battle and pretend that, throughout Democrat-induced fiscal cliffs and budget sequesters and financial crises, it cares about the little guy?  We have the answer: it will glibly frighten Capitol Hill janitors with vicious lies about Republicans cutting their pay and taking away their jobs.

 Print This Post

Related articles

• Does this White House have a ‘Truth Problem’ ? (vineoflife.net)
• WaPo Fact-Checker Blasts White House Sequester Scare Tactics (libertynews.com)
• ‘Half-truths’ about tomorrow’s budget cuts (news.yahoo.com)
• White House threatened Bob Woodward for Obama expose (examiner.com)
• Fact check: No, Mr. President, Capitol janitors not taking a pay cut due to sequester; Update: Plouffe blames Romney (twitchy.com)

The budget sequester, which President Obama opposed when it was passed in 2011, will hurt the economy, arbitrarily cut $85 billion in spending, and put hundreds of thousands of essential federal employees out of work; yet Republicans refuse to compromise to avert the crisis.

There’s nine lies right there, all in one sentence.  Let’s break them down for the “low-information voter”:

1. Obama opposed the sequester.  Obama swore in the fall of 2011 to veto any attempts to repeal the sequester his party had incorporated into the Budget Control Act as part of the debt ceiling compromise.  Democrats bet that in the sequester game of chicken, Republicans would flinch because they wouldn’t be able to stomach proposed defense cuts.  Democrats bet wrong.  Now they’re trying to rewrite history to make it look as though they didn’t underestimate determined Republicans.

2. The sequester scheduled to take place on March 1 will hurt the economy.  Minor spending cuts don’t hurt the economy; they show investors and employers we’re taking steps to resolve our debt crisis and avoid credit downgrades.  They also pave the way for federal tax cuts, which—from JFK to Reagan to Clinton to Bush—have stimulated the economy and promoted growth.

3. The sequester will put hundreds of thousands of federal employees out of work.  Given how these things usually unfold, the odds are that whatever time these workers spend off the job they will most likely be compensated for via the furlough appeals process or unemployment benefits.

4. If the sequester takes place, fires won’t be put out, crime won’t be stopped, air traffic will halt, meat will rot, etc.  All of the essential functions of government, and many more, will continue to be carried out under a sequester.  Most agencies under Obama have increased significantly in size since he took office; a return to roughly 2009 spending levels isn’t going to send them into a tailspin.  For comparison, look at the huge aviation disaster that didn’t happen in 1981 when President Reagan fired 10,000 air traffic controllers.

5. The cuts proposed in the sequester are capricious and arbitrary.  In 2011 the 12-member, bipartisan supercommittee hashed out the cuts that would form the sequester, half from domestic spending and half from military spending.  While neither side is happy with the balance, at least it’s clear how the division was arrived at.  But propagandists like Paul Krugman make it sound as though lawmakers started randomly targeting hapless federal employees to fire.  As George Will counters the sequester naysayers,  “[C]ritics are utopians if they are waiting for the arrival of intelligent government.  The real choice today is between bigger or smaller unintelligent government.”

6. Republicans refuse to compromise on the sequester.  No one considered the sequester an ideal solution.  However, at some point it dawned on the GOP that the sequester might be the only way to force Democrats to cut spending on anything, ever, other than the military.  Republicans are willing to take a haircut on defense if Democrats are forced to trim a whisker or two off the giant entitlement state.  How is that not compromising?  Also, Republicans did compromise with Democrats, just last month, on the fiscal cliff deal that postponed the sequester for two months, and whose $600 billion tax increase was much more consequential than the sequester.  Republicans also compromised with Democrats on the original deal to raise the debt ceiling that led to the sequester.

7. The sequester will result in large budget cuts.  The sequester cuts $85 billion, or 3% of projected $3.6 trillion federal discretionary 2013 spending—also known as a “budget” before Democrats came to power.  As The Washington Post admitted, “[S]ome White House allies worry the slow-moving sequester may fail to live up to the hype.”  Or, as healthcare lobbyist Emily Holubowich charmingly put it, “‘The good news is, the world doesn’t end March 2.  The bad news is, the world doesn’t end March 2…  The worst-case scenario for us is the sequester hits and nothing bad really happens.’”

8. The sequester will cut $85 billion out of the 2013 budget.  Actually, it will cut only $44 billion, or about half that amount.  The $85 billion figure references the cut in “spending authority,” the other half of which Congress will likely postpone indefinitely, then reverse once voters have forgotten about it.

9. The sequester will in fact cut spending.  Actually, the sequester will merely slow the baseline increase in spending.  Even with the sequester, the 2013 federal budget will exceed the 2012 budget.  The sequester will no more cut spending than shooting a bullet through shrubbery will reverse its course.

And one more:

10. Republicans can win the sequester fight.  Only if they stand up and make the above points—in clear, easy-to-digest language, with concrete examples, scathing refutations of quotes by Democratic fear-mongers, and relentless attacks on Obama for lying to Americans and treating them like children.

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics

 Print This Post

Related articles

• The Sequester is Coming! (blogs.barrons.com)
• Woodward: Obama owns sequester (politico.com)
• Welcome to sequester deadline week – Washington Post (blog) (washingtonpost.com)
• Woodward: Why is Obama still misleading everyone on the sequester? (hotair.com)
• What Scares Sequester Opponents the Most? That Spending Reductions Won’t Hurt At All (reason.com)

In his State of the Union Address last week, President Obama called for yet greater federal interference in the economy via a $1.75 per hour minimum wage hike, from $7.25 to $9.00, with additional increases tagged to inflation.

New York Times gossip columnist Paul Krugman opined that, “surprisingly,” increasing the minimum wage may be good policy: “Why ‘surprisingly’?  Well, Economics 101 tells us to be very cautious about attempts to legislate market outcomes.”  No, I didn’t make up that disclaimer; that’s just Krugman trying to sucker you in with a little false modesty.  Don’t worry—he still comes out all in favor of the wage increase.

And what an increase it would be: Raising the minimum wage $1.75 an hour would be by far the biggest single hike since the federal minimum wage was established in 1938.  The next biggest increase—of $0.70 an hour—occurred three times in 2007, 2008, and 2009, when newly sworn-in Democrats spiked the rate three years in a row.  Before the 2006 wave of Democrats rode into power, the minimum wage had never increased more than $0.50 at a time.

The proposed 24% increase would be the largest hike by percentage since 1974, when Congress raised it 25% from $1.60 to $2.00.

So what’s the argument for raising the minimum wage?  Proponents claim that raising it:

(1) Is moral, because workers at the bottom of the economic ladder will earn more;

(2) Helps the economy, because those workers will spend more and stimulate the economy;

(3) Increases employment, because more spending will lead to more hiring.

(Never mind that the employers who will supposedly do all that extra hiring will be the ones paying their workers to buy more of their products in the first place.)

In contrast, opponents argue that raising the minimum wage:

(1) Is immoral, because it restricts employers’ ability to hire low-wage workers, and thus reduces their employment;

(2) Hurts the economy, because it forces employers to direct financial resources in less efficient ways;

(3) Decreases employment, because small businesses can’t keep up with the need to increase all of their workers’ wages to maintain relative parity.

So what happens after minimum wage increases take effect?  Do employers hire more or less?  Does the economy improve or worsen?

To answer this question, I took a look at all federal minimum wage increases since World War II, to see what transpired after these hikes—in particular, what happened to the unemployment rate and the gross domestic product (GDP).

First I looked at the monthly U.S. national unemployment rate following the passage of each post-WWII federal minimum wage increase, to see what effect minimum wage legislation had on employment.  I found that the average unemployment rate during the first full month after each minimum wage increase, for all increases from January 25, 1950 to July 24, 2009, was 6.00%.  From three months out through ten months out, the average monthly national unemployment rate progressed as follows: 6.01%, 6.09%, 6.10%, 6.11%, 6.13%, 6.23%, 6.25%, and 6.33%.  So over the ten months following mandatory federal minimum wage increases, the unemployment rate steadily and reliably increased, on average a third of a percentage point from what it had been upon passage of the law.

Next I looked at the quarterly percent change in GDP following passage of each hike, to see what effect minimum wage legislation had on GDP.  The average percent change in GDP for all quarters from 1950 to 2012 was +3.31%.  In contrast, the average percent change in GDP during the first full quarter after each wage increase was +2.48%, almost a full point lower.  In the second quarter after the wage increase, the percent change was +3.00%, and in the third it was +2.63%.

These aren’t huge differences, largely because many factors besides minimum wage affect employment and GDP.  Other economists have done more detailed studies and isolated the deleterious effects of minimum wage laws.  But even my cursory analysis confirms that Krugman and his ilk are loons if they think that placing restrictions on employers’ hiring practices—which is what minimum wage laws do—will somehow increase hiring and strengthen the economy.  (Other pet theories of Krugman’s are that wearing leg irons helps you walk faster and having laryngitis makes you speak more mellifluously.)

Krugman pooh-poohs the detrimental effects of minimum wage increases: “Now, you might argue that even if the current minimum wage seems low, raising it would cost jobs.  But there’s evidence on that question…  And while there are dissenters, as there always are, the great preponderance of the evidence from these natural experiments points to little if any negative effect of minimum wage increases on employment.”

Krugman is such a pathological liar that when he says “the great preponderance” of evidence shows “little if any” negative effect, you know he’s brushing aside mountains of data contradicting his position.  Krugman cites just one paper titled “Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment?,” published by leftist D.C. think tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research, whose founder recently authored a book called “The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive.”

If liberals want a minimum wage hike, why don’t they just come right out and demand more redistribution of wealth from the bourgeois to the proletariat?  Could they spare us the act of dressing up their request in convoluted economic theories using data that can be manipulated to give them any results they want, and whose conclusions no one with common sense believes?

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics

 Print This Post

Related articles

• Paul Krugman: Raising The Minimum Wage Is ‘Good Policy’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• CHECKMATE: Paul Krugman Falls Into a Trap (economicpolicyjournal.com)
• Obama’s Higher Minimum Wage Will Hurt the Poor and Help the Unions (hawaiireporter.com)
• Should the Minimum Wage Be Raised? (usnews.com)
• The Awful Minimum Wage (forbes.com)

Democrats beat Republicans in the fiscal cliff standoff by pressuring them to agree to raise taxes on high-income earners with no accompanying spending cuts.  They argued, persuasively to the American people, that the revenue shortfall the federal government faced required such a move to make up the difference.

Raising taxes on the upper 2% of income earners isn’t nearly enough to plug our budget deficit, to say nothing of our long-term debt.  The only way to do so is to immediately enact drastic, painful, across-the-board entitlement spending cuts that slap us with the reality of our historically dire situation.

Naturally Democrats prefer to keep spending levels right where they are and raise more taxes.

Naïve political observers assumed that, once House Republicans had caved on the fiscal cliff, they would have some leverage in getting Democrats to agree to spending cuts in the upcoming battle over raising the federal debt limit.  Republicans, the thinking went, could insist that, since they had agreed to raise $620 billion in revenue from taxes, Democrats would have to give in and accept cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit.  House Speaker John Boehner in particular seeks a dollar-for-dollar spending cut-to-borrowing limit ratio.

But no—Democrats continue to display their congenital intransigence to cutting a single dollar from a single program anywhere, anyhow, anytime, except for the military.

We’ve come to the point in the evolution of the Democratic Party where there’s truly, fundamentally, literally nothing they’re willing to consider cutting.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.  Zip.  Niente.

Don’t believe me?  I’ll prove it to you.

Former House Speaker Democrat Nancy Pelosi, when recently asked whether her party would consider enacting spending cuts on Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, responded that we had already done so… by passing Obamacare.

As CBS News reports: “Asked if Democrats are ready to significantly reform entitlement programs to address the deficit, Pelosi said, ‘We already have,’ pointing to the Affordable Care Act’s $716 billion in Medicare provider cuts.’”

Everyone, including Pelosi, knows these cuts are fake, in that they: (1) limit Medicare’s growth rather than shrinking Medicare, (2) target insurance companies and hospitals, who will simply pass the costs on to consumers, and (3) won’t ever take place, because they’re slated to unfold over the next 10 years, and will be demolished by subsequent Congresses, as such future-situated cuts always are.

If Democrats are unwilling to shrink entitlement programs, how about altering the age at which people are eligible for them?  Off the table.  Pelosi “replied with a quick ‘no’ when asked whether she supports raising the Medicare eligibility age…  She also seemed disinclined to consider any cost of living adjustment that could reduce Social Security benefit payments, saying, ‘I do not think we should do anything to Social Security that reduces benefits to the beneficiaries…’”

So no cuts, no alterations, no adjustments.  Nothing that “reduces benefits to the beneficiaries,” which means nothing.

How about other non-military domestic spending programs?  Nope.  As the L.A. Times reports, “The president said he was open to seeking spending cuts generally as part of an effort to reduce the country’s deficit, but he stressed that such reductions can be made ‘without shortchanging things like education, job training, research and technology, all of which are critical to our prosperity in a 21^st century economy.’”

So no cuts to “education, job training, research and technology,” or anything that is “critical to our prosperity in a 21^st century economy,” which Democrats will argue is everything.

And on and on: Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray wants to preserve every penny of Head Start.  Mother Jones wants to maintain federal funding for food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, extended unemployment benefits, education grants and college loans, housing assistance, community health centers, heating bill payments, and milk for babies.  Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and White House spokesman Jay Carney cheerfully agree that Social Security does not contribute to our federal deficit, because apparently it’s free.

It’s finally starting to dawn on Republicans that Democrats have no intention of ever cutting spending.  As the Wall Street Journal notes in an interview with the Speaker on the fiscal cliff talks, “What stunned House Speaker John Boehner more than anything else during his prolonged closed-door budget negotiations with Barack Obama was this revelation: ‘At one point several weeks ago,’ Mr. Boehner says, ‘the president said to me, “We don’t have a spending problem…”’  Mr. Boehner says that after he recovered from his astonishment… he replied… ‘Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem.’ He repeated this message so often, he says, that toward the end of the negotiations, the president became irritated and said: ‘I’m getting tired of hearing you say that…’”

(Meanwhile, the shaggy, autistic homeless man named Paul Krugman argues that we could end the recession, if only we just wildly increased federal spending over the next two years to levels that would make Obama blush.)

Want to know how dire Democrats’ spending addiction has become?  It has even overpowered their abiding compulsion for raising taxes.

When Democrats agreed to the sequestration deal in 2011, they calculated that Republicans’ aversion to the deep military cuts that were to accompany the deal’s domestic cuts would give them a strong leverage point later on.  But inside sources suggest that Democrats now actually fear sequestration more than the GOP.  Democrats appear willing to forego tax increases for the sake of not having a single dollar cut from their beloved domestic programs.

Democrats love weakening the military and adore raising taxes, but both flirtations are now trumped by their giddy, rosy-cheeked infatuation with runaway domestic spending.

Related articles

• Pelosi: “Not enough” revenue in “fiscal cliff” deal (cbsnews.com)
• At this rate, it won’t be long before ‘Plan B’ seems like the good old days for John Boehner (dailykos.com)
• Boehner backing off debt limit threat: ‘Not the ultimate leverage’ (dailykos.com)
• McConnell Takes Taxes Off Table in Debt Limit Negotiations (bloomberg.com)
• Pelosi: Defend Medicare, Social Security (upi.com)

Part of the ongoing fiscal cliff negotiation involves deciding the fate of extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefits, which end on January 2 if a resolution isn’t reached.

In support of their goal of keeping Americans dependent on government, liberals have been trotting out a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report from November arguing that $1.10 in economic output will be created for every $1 spent on extended UI benefits.

As Ezra Klein squawked when Rachel Maddow let him sit at her desk over Christmas break, unemployment benefits are “Crazy stimulative!” and “Stimulus on steroids!”

The CBO report claims that extending UI benefits would result in “more consumer spending and increased demand for goods and services…”  For three of the four extension options the CBO considers, “economic output would be $1.10 higher per dollar of budgetary cost, on average, in 2013… and employment would be increased by six years of full-time equivalent employment per million dollars of budgetary cost” or about $166,667 per year of employment.

A note in their Summary Figure reads: “CBO’s central estimates… correspond to the assumption that the values that describe key parameters of economic behavior (in particular, the extent to which lower federal taxes and higher federal spending boost aggregate demand in the short term) equal the midpoints of the ranges used by CBO.  The ends of the lines represent estimates based on the full ranges that CBO uses for those parameters.”

That’s a lot of caveats packed into one disclaimer.  Unpacking them all reveals the CBO report’s central claim to be the utter nonsense it is.

First, the CBO admits it is making assumptions about “key parameters of economic behavior,” including “the extent to which lower federal taxes and higher federal spending boost aggregate demand in the short term.”  In other words, the CBO—whose report was commissioned by Democratic Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus, and whose conclusions are only as sound as the assumptions it starts with—is projecting the effect of extending UI benefits under the assumption that higher federal spending boosts demand.  This assumption is in turn based on the expectation that consumer demand will “boost overall output and employment in the short term.”

How will consumer demand boost overall output and employment?  Presumably employers will produce more goods and hire more people if they expect consumers to purchase more of their products.  And employers will anticipate a boost in purchasing if the government gives consumers more money to spend on their products.

But where will the government get the money to give consumers to spend on employers’ products?  From payroll taxes that federal and state governments impose on those same employers.

Employers don’t typically absorb the cost of higher payroll taxes—they usually pass it on to employees in the form of reduced earnings.  So if employees earn less because they’re subsidizing extended UI benefits, how exactly is it that they’re going to have more money to boost consumer demand?

The CBO is focusing only on increased consumer spending from UI benefits, and not the fact that consumers are the ones subsidizing those benefits in the first place.

The CBO acknowledges this effect when they write: “UI payroll taxes… change firms’ and workers’ decisions about employment…  [F]irms effectively repay the UI system for a portion of the benefits paid to workers whom they lay off.  Those repayments take the form of higher subsequent UI taxes that, when passed through to the employees who remain with the firm, reduce wages…”  Yet somehow this dynamic doesn’t factor into the CBO’s calculations.

At best, the CBO’s estimate is narrowly correct, in that extended benefits might cause output and employment to increase in the short term, before companies adjust long-term hiring plans and keep down wages to fund future benefits.  The CBO glibly references some mechanism whereby all of this chaos will be sorted out in the future: “As the economy improves, total UI benefits will automatically fall, and total UI taxes will automatically rise.  That evolution will help stabilize economic activity in the future.”  But this kick-the-can-down-the-road approach belies a tawdry motivation to boost employment in the short term for political gain at the expense of long-term employment.  To wit: even if we get $1.10 in GDP for every dollar of benefits in 2013, how much less in GDP will we get as a result of this economy-hampering policy in 2014 and beyond?

Second, the CBO admits that its estimates fall on a continuum where “[t]he ends of the lines represent estimates based on the full ranges that CBO uses for those parameters.”  The continuum for GDP ranges from 0.4 to 1.8.  In other words, the CBO acknowledges there’s a good chance, not just that the GDP multiplier effect could be lower than $1.10, not just that it could be lower than $1.00 (i.e. a money loser), but that it could be as low as $0.40.  That means it’s possible there would be only $0.40 in GDP per dollar spent on extended UI benefits.  There’s so much uncertainty in the CBO’s estimate that the upper limit of their confidence interval is 450% as high as the lower limit.

I don’t know about you, but I’m disinclined to believe rosy or even middle-of-the-road projections by federal government-sponsored studies, since those projections are almost always much more optimistic than reality.

The continuum for full-time-equivalent employment ranges from 2 to 10 years.  So the CBO admits there’s a chance that the employment index could lead to as little as two years of employment per million dollars spent, or $500,000 per year of employment.  Even their sunniest projection yields only ten years, or $100,000 per year of employment, which is more than twice median U.S. personal income.

The left likes to tug at our heartstrings with humanitarian appeals to institute or increase or extend various government benefits.  The flaws in those altruistic pleas are a story for another day.  But when liberals claim that spending money to keep people from working is a boon for the budget, they need to be exposed as the laughingstock they are.

 Print This Post

Related articles

• Two Million – That’s the Number of the Month (valkayec.wordpress.com)
• In 2002, CBO predicted 2012 U.S. debt would be 7.4% of GDP. In reality, it was almost 74% of GDP (aei-ideas.org)
• Unemployment Extension Would Add 300,000 Jobs, CBO Says (blogs.wsj.com)
• President Obama’s Legacy: $20 Trillion in Deficits for 2016 Victor (forbes.com)
• Fiscal Cliff / The Impact on American Jobs (jobmarketmonitor.com)

How many liberal myths can a mainstream news announcer cram into one innocent, 90-second, top-of-the-hour news briefing?  On WABC’s New York affiliate one recent December evening, I counted eight.

First the news reader (as they more appropriately call them in Japan) cheerfully announced that seasonal hiring—inventory control agents, sales clerks, deliverymen—was way up this year compared to last year; that increased holiday spending was a sign the economy was improving; and that goods being purchased in the U.S. are unfortunately being made more often overseas.

There’s three myths right there: (1) elevated part-time hiring reflects economic health; (2) consumer spending drives growth; and (3) trade imbalances are harmful.

(1) That retailers are hiring more temporary help isn’t a sign the economy is thriving; it’s a sign there are more underemployed workers taking part-time work below their skill level.  If permanent, full-time employment were stable, we wouldn’t see such a leap in short-term hiring during peak economic season.  Increased part-time hiring also reflects employers’ reluctance to take on “full-time,” 30-hour-a-week employees whom they must soon provide health insurance per Obamacare.

(2) Consumer spending does not drive economic growth; investment and production do.  There’s nothing to consume if manufacturers don’t have the capital and the optimism that investing in productive enterprise will be worth it.  And manufacturers don’t think production will be worth it if they’re saddled with confiscatory tax rates, burdensome regulations, and long-term uncertainty.  Consumer spending is the last step in the economic chain of production, not the first.

(3) Trade imbalances reflect the fact that some countries have more stable economies and reliable currencies than others, the latter of whom must depend more on tangible production efforts to demonstrate they have something of value to trade.  Trade imbalances also signal advanced nations’ capacity to provide high-tech, intangible services and sophisticated knowledge transfer that aren’t as concrete or visible as shiploads of dry goods.

After this trio of falsehoods, the announcer chirped that gas prices were lower than they’d been in months—a boon for the economy—but higher than this time last year, which could reflect rising wages.

There’s two more myths: (4) seasonal fluctuations in gas prices reflect economic growth; and (5) high gas prices reflect improving wages.

(4) Gas prices are always higher in the summer; this is a reliable, cyclical variation, and gas prices declining from June to December say nothing about comparative economic performance at the end of the year.

(5) Our current high gas prices are less likely a reflection of increasing income—which we know is at historically low levels—and more likely the result of instability in the Middle East (due to our President’s weak foreign policy), forecast scarcity of oil (due to drilling restrictions), and looming inflation (due to the Federal Reserve’s currency devaluation).

After a commercial break, the reporter referenced the recent renewal of the Kyoto Protocol and uncritically repeated the news that (6) scientists are alarmed because 2012 is on track to be one of the hottest years on record.

(6) The Met Office in Great Britain recently released a report showing global temperature the same in 2012 as it was in 1996.  The period over which no global warming has been taking place (1996-2012) is thus the same length as the period over which it was supposedly taking place (1980-1996).  But never mind: news outlets such as The New York Times inveigle us to “Bundle Up: It’s Global Warming.”

The announcer then mentioned Obama’s recent trip to Michigan to grandstand on the end-of-the-year fiscal showdown, and parroted his claim that (7) spending cuts must be balanced with tax increases to balance our budget.  The announcer concluded that (8) the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up slightly due to optimism over progress in the fiscal cliff talks.

(7) Liberals refuse to understand that revenue increases are not the same as tax increases.  One means more money going to the government; the other means a higher percentage of people’s income being taken from them.  Paradoxically, lowering marginal tax rates on high-income earners increases revenue, because then they don’t scale back their investment and hiring to avoid being gouged.  Cutting taxes increased revenue under JFK, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton.  Yet liberals forever believe Republicans want the government to run with no revenue.

(8) No one can say on any given day why the Dow is up or down, and analysts frequently project their prejudices onto such causal pronouncements.  It’s equally possible that the DJI is up because investors believe little progress is being made as the end of the year approaches, automatic budget cuts are going to kick in, and we’re finally going to start reining in spending.

At this rate, the mainstream media will soon be reporting flying reindeer sightings.

(For more liberal howlers, see Liberal Myths: Tax Day Edition!)

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics

 Print This Post

Related articles

• John Hawkins: 5 Myths Liberals Have Created About Themselves (conservativeread.com)
• The Deleveraging Myth: Why The U.S. May Be Headed For A Zero Growth Future (seekingalpha.com)
• Myths and Facts about Global Warming (wattsupwiththat.com)
• White House Data Debunks Myth Bush Cuts Built Deficit (treeofmamre.wordpress.com)
• Hyperinflation and the Pernicious Myth of Modern Monetary Theory: Dollar Vigilantes (jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com)

Democrats haven’t passed a budget in years, yet somehow it’s Republicans’ fault that the country is about to go over a fiscal cliff.

Harry Reid’s Democratic-controlled Senate has, for three consecutive years, refused to pass a federal budget or even bring a proposal to the floor as required by law.  In 2011 Reid announced that passing a budget would be “foolish” because of ongoing negotiations over other fiscal matters.  Senator Chuck Schumer declared that proposing budgets was “not the point” of the Senate.

Later in 2011, Nancy Pelosi claimed that when Democrats controlled the House in 2010, they didn’t pass a budget because Republicans would have filibustered it.  White House Chief of Staff Jacob Lew made the same claim.  In fact, both were lying: filibustering a budget is impossible, because budgets require only a simple majority to pass.

Earlier this year, Reid announced, “We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year — it’s done, we don’t need to do it.”  He was referring to the Budget Control Act of 2011—which is not a federal budget—that raised the debt ceiling, established the supercommittee that failed to agree on debt reduction, and set the country up for the fiscal cliff we face today.

Reid’s other excuse for not passing a budget in 2012 was that there was an election in November.

(Type “Democrats haven’t” into any browser’s search engine and see what auto-complete suggests.)

Now Senator Patty Murray, who seeks to chair the Senate Budget Committee next year, hints that the Democratic Senate won’t pass a budget in 2013, either.

Thanks to Democratic intransigence, Congress isn’t even required to pass a balanced budget, just a budget.  Is that so hard?

Meanwhile, Democrats’ inaction is forcing the country to white-knuckle it via an endless series of herky-jerky, over-before-the-ink-is-dry continuing resolutions and stopgap measures every couple of months.

Last year’s fiscal crisis resulted when the government was about to run out of money and needed its debt ceiling increased.  This year’s crisis has two parts: (1) Congress’s failure to address deficit reduction during last year’s debt ceiling showdown will trigger unpalatable, automatic, across-the-board spending cuts of $1.2 trillion over the next ten years; and (2) the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year, Congress is divided on whether to extend them for high-income earners, and taxes will increase for everyone if an agreement isn’t reached.

The debt ceiling debacle was demonstrably, entirely the result of Democrats’ failure to pass a budget anytime in recent history.  The Bush tax cuts are also Democrats’ fault, because a 2013 budget would have specified whether the cuts were to continue, and we would have had this discussion long before the end of November.  (It was also Democrats’ fault that the cuts weren’t made permanent or extended for more than two years in 2010.)

Since Democrats will control the Senate for at least two more years, yet show no inclination toward passing a budget anytime soon, they’ll probably set us up for another fiscal cliff after we avert the current one.  The U.S. is already set to hit its debt ceiling limit again in spring 2013.

Why do Democrats deliberately leave financial matters unresolved until the last minute?

Answer: So they can spread fear and leverage Americans’ anxiety to threaten Republicans into giving in.

Democrats’ M.O. for prevailing on fiduciary matters these days seems to be: irresponsibly and historically refuse to pass a budget for several consecutive years; dismiss the very requirement as an antiquated relic; continually lead us to a series of unnecessary, economy-rattling, bond-rating-threatening fiscal crises; then scream that Republicans are kamikaze pilots who want to take the nation down to score political points.

The site About.com lyingly describes the current standoff thus: “[L]awmakers have had three years to address this issue, but Congress – mired in political gridlock – has largely put off the search for a solution…”  No.  Republicans have been dealing with this issue all along, including proposing and passing budgets and debt reduction plans once they took control of the House.  Democrats have been obfuscating, stalling, and spinning their wheels, even when they controlled both chambers of Congress and were capable of passing a budget without a filibuster-proof majority.  It’s not gridlock when one party has the right of way and refuses to move.

To Democrats, fiscal stability is anathema.  Republicans plan long-term; Democrats thrive in crisis-filled environments—like the 2008 financial collapse—that allow them to charge in and claim we need more government.

Democrats traffic in panic, adrenaline, chaos; it’s their preferred currency.  Getting everyone all agitated at the eleventh hour gives them cover to toss out crazy ideas at random—like eliminating mortgage interest deductions—before the public can properly scrutinize them.  When things move too quickly for people to pay attention, there’s room for mistakes to be made, for cowardly Republicans like Lindsey Graham and Saxby Chambliss to slip up and later justify themselves by whining to constituents, “I had to do it.”  And Democrats know this.

Democrats not only pushed the country to the edge of the fiscal cliff, they invented the fiscal cliff.

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics

 Print This Post

Related articles

• Absolutely everything you need to know about the fiscal cliff, in one FAQ (washingtonpost.com)
• Harry Reid blames GOP for looming fiscal cliff, calls for higher debt ceiling (twitchy.com)
• More Democrats Are Now Saying Any Fiscal Cliff Deal Must Address The Debt Ceiling (businessinsider.com)
• Fiscal cliff: Will liberals jump? – The Star-Ledger (nj.com)
• WASHINGTON – A brewing side drama between the Senate’s Democratic and Republican leaders is testing their relationship as the two navigate tough negotiations on the “fiscal cliff” coming at the end of the year. (familysurvivalprotocol.com)

Can we please filibuster Democrats’ attempts to curb filibusters every time they control the Senate but don’t have a supermajority?

In anticipation of another two years of Congressional gridlock, Democrats are once again fervently trying to block Republicans from using the Senate filibuster to stop their horrific agenda.

The Senate filibuster is a longstanding parliamentary tactic, not mandated by the Constitution but used since 1837, to stop overzealous Senate majorities from doing things like nationalizing our healthcare system.  Both Democrats and Republicans have relied on it when they were the minority party.  Republican Senators used it to block President Wilson from arming merchant ships during World War I.  Left-wing populist Huey Long used it repeatedly during the Great Depression to push his redistributionist legislation.  Former Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond filibustered the 1957 Civil Rights Act for 24 straight hours, and a group of Democratic senators including Robert Byrd filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act for 57 days.

More recently Democrats used the filibuster threat in 2005 to block several of President George W. Bush’s Appeals Court nominees.  So Democrats aren’t exactly strangers to relying on the filibuster to get their way.

But now, having dodged Republican attempts to take back the Senate in 2012, yet still lacking a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority, Democrats are impatient to get back to the important task of turning the U.S. into a European-style welfare state.  And newly empowered Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will stop at nothing to achieve his first goal of letting the decade-long Bush tax cuts expire for high-income earners.

However, any Democratic Senators capable of thinking past the country’s end-of-the-year “fiscal cliff” showdown might want to consider how valuable that filibuster may be to them come January 2015.

Consider: Despite the wave of anti-Democratic sentiment that swept the country in the 2010 midterms, Republicans couldn’t manage to take the Senate, because the electoral map wasn’t as favorable to them as it was for the House.  In 2010, roughly equal numbers of Senators from both parties—13 Democrats and 12 Republicans—were up for reelection.

The Senate map was better for Republicans in 2012—15 Democrats vs. 7 Republicans—but Democratic Senators on the ballot were whisked through on the coattails of the reelected president (and comments about rape from two idiot Senators who refused to abandon their candidacies).

In 2014, the split is a whopping 20 Democrats vs. 13 Republicans.  And those 20 Democrats aren’t just solid lefties in deep-blue states or center-left candidates in light-blue states.  At least 9 of the 20 are potentially vulnerable Democrats in red states—Mark Begich in Alaska, Max Baucus in Montana, Mark Pryor in Arkansas, and Jay Rockefeller in West Virginia—and swing states—Mark Udall in Colorado, Al Franken in Minnesota, Kay Hagan in North Carolina, Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, and Mark Warner in Virginia.

In contrast, 12 of the 13 Republicans up for reelection are in deep-red states, the exception being Susan Collins, a moderate in center-left Maine who’s served for 16 years and will likely be reelected until she retires.

Odds are favorable that Republicans will hold onto every one of their 13 contested Senate seats in 2014.  If the GOP picks off just 5 of Democrats’ 20 available seats, then they take the Senate.  And note: (1) the party not in control of the White House typically gains seats in off-year elections, especially during reelected presidents’ second terms; and (2) this second-term advantage is even stronger for the Senate than for the House.  In fact, the party out of power picked up an average of 2.6 Senate seats for first-term presidents and 6.6 Senate seats for second- and third-term presidents over the past 100 years.

But back to the filibuster.  Republicans griped about Democrats’ use of it in 2006, since the tool had never before been used to block judicial nominees.  While I disagree with Republicans’ specific objections—I think the filibuster should remain an option to prevent the party in control from abusing its power via any of its Constitutional functions—at least Republicans weren’t trying to block the filibuster per se, just because they didn’t like the fact that Democrats were using it against them.

In 2006 Republicans’ argument was: “Democrats shouldn’t use the filibuster for this particular purpose, because it’s never been used for this particular purpose.”  In 2012 Democrats’ argument is about one step up from a toddler screaming to his mother: “Johnny won’t let me win!”

But Reid reassures us that, “We’re not going to do away with the filibuster, but we’re going to make the Senate a more meaningful place,” which he could presumably accomplish via scented candles and Barry White tunes.

Do you think Reid would ever consider making the Senate “a more meaningful place” by passing a budget for the first time in four years?

Republicans have reminded Reid that changes of the type he is proposing can be accomplished only via a two-thirds majority, per changes Democrats instituted in 1975.  Yet Reid is undeterred and is trying to use the so-called “nuclear option” of changing the rules via a simple majority.  Do you suppose Reid is interested in making the Senate “a more meaningful place” by following the Democrat-devised rules for changing Senate protocol?

The only reasons Republicans have been threatening so many filibusters for the past four years—and they’re good ones—are: (1) Reid’s insistence on blocking Republicans from proposing amendments to Democratic legislation, and (2) Democratic legislation.

Far from being an archaic, legalistic, outmoded scheme for abusing legislative power, filibusters are a godsend for stopping liberal Congresses from shoving through monstrosities like Obamacare, even if the floodgates don’t always hold.

If Republicans have any sense, they will install even more robust parliamentary roadblocks after they regain control of the Senate, even if it hurts them in the short-term, so that we can stall statist Democratic legislation from getting through for the next century.

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics



 Print This Post

Related articles

• Gagging The Teabaggers: Senate Majority Leader Pushes Filibuster Reform (addictinginfo.org)
• Dems short on votes for filibuster reform (thehill.com)
• Reid moves to limit GOP filibusters (washingtontimes.com)
• Harry Reid Moves To Limit GOP Filibuster (freedomoutpost.com)
• Harry Reid to Disarm GOP via ‘Filibuster Reform’ (ConservativeActionAlerts.com)