Yesterday, House Republicans came up with a novel idea to fund only the parts of the government that people would notice – things like the Veterans Administration and national parks – in an attempt to point the latest in a series of fingers at the opposition for their cruelty in ignoring important priorities. Democrats thundered back that such piecemeal efforts are “not serious” and “no way to fund a government.”
But that is exactly how one part of the government was funded just before the September 30 deadline. Without fanfare on Monday night, President Obama signed the “Pay Our Military Act,” ensuring paychecks throughout the government shutdown for all members of the armed forces, including active-duty reserve members, along with civilian personnel and contractors who happen to “provide support” to armed forces operations.
How can I put this delicately? This is wrong.
It’s a slap in the face to 800,000 federal workers, who do not deserve unfair treatment because their uniform is a different color, and their service to the country in a different form, than members of the military. The words of Senator Ted Cruz – “the soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines who risk their lives for this nation should not have their paychecks held hostage to any government shutdown in Washington” – apply to every member of the federal government, and singling out service members for hero worship is as pernicious for our foreign policy as it is for our budget debate.
To pre-empt the inevitable “why do you hate our troops” criticisms, the question is not whether men and women dodging bullets overseas or defending America’s shores and skies deserve to have to work without pay for as long as Congress denies a government funding resolution. The question is whether everyone else who serves the public does.
Category: Politics As Usual
Good, I guess
Passing these bills would decrease Democratic leverage:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama would veto any “piecemeal” legislation that would restore funding only to certain parts of the government like national parks, veterans programs and the District of Columbia rather than a broad federal spending bill, the White House said on Tuesday.
“These piecemeal efforts are not serious, and they are no way to run a government,” spokeswoman Amy Brundage said in a statement, noting that the White House wants the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to pass a bill that would continue funding the federal government without any unrelated policy measures attached.
“The president and the Senate have been clear that they won’t accept this kind of game-playing, and if these bills were to come to the president’s desk, he would veto them,” she said.
Notice anything?
I’ve really been too depressed to write about the shutdown in much detail, because the Democrats have already sold us out, just as I’ve predicted for months. Via Digby:
Last night Steny Hoyer shouted this on floor during one of the debates: “This is not a negotiation — we’re taking their number, and we would hope that they could also take their number so we can keep the government open.”
You see? The Democrats already folded. Sequestration is now the ongoing law of the land and Paul Ryan’s budget wet dream is considered the “clean” continuing resolution. Huzzah.
And yet, they were not satisfied. (You’ve heard the old saw “give ’em and inch and they’ll take a mile,” right?) Here’s one view of the “Willimsburg Accord” from the more radical (yes, more radical even than Heritage Action) Madison Society from a few months back:
Back in January, a number of conservatives rendered themselves irrelevant in the fight for liberty by signing onto an incomprehensible agreement with leadership, known on Capitol Hill as the ‘Williamsburg Accord’ (yes, everything in Washington has to have a silly name). That agreement was aptly hatched at the GOP Retreat in Williamsburg. They agreed to suspend the debt ceiling law for 4 months and vote for a CR that funds Obamacare on condition that leadership keep the sequester and pass a 10-year balanced budget. The idea was to pass an amazing budget blueprint for everyone to support, and fight for it in return for lifting the new debt ceiling in May or June.
Let’s ignore the fact that the sequester was already a fait accompli, as Republicans would have been forced to succumb to tax increases in order to overturn it. Let’s ignore the fact that leadership forced the Democrat Violence Against Women Act down their throats with Democrat support. Let’s ignore the fact that there was nothing new in this year’s Ryan budget to improve upon last year’s budget other than $3.3 trillion in new tax revenue.
Let’s look ahead to the future. We’ve been playing this game for two years. If Boehner is going to buy into the notion that the debt ceiling is off limits, why in the world would the Democrats feel the need to agree to any aspect of the Ryan budget, much less defunding Obamacare? How could Boehner make this comment while he is concurrently telling his conference that he will demand dollar-for-dollar cuts in return for raising the debt ceiling – whatever that means?
Hence, the conservatives who signed onto this deal were punked – unless they also buy into leadership’s claim about default. If Republicans were really serious about dealing with this issue, they would pass Tom McClintock’s Full Faith and Credit Act (H.R. 807), which prioritizes payments for interest on debt. All of those conservatives who agreed to the Williamsburg Accord are co-sponsors of this bill? Why don’t they force leadership to vote on their bill ahead of the May 18 debt ceiling deadline?
It’s clear now that the vote to suspend the debt ceiling for 4 months had nothing to do with their desire to push for a balanced budget, rather it was an expression of fear – the same expression they are evincing to Obama ahead of the new debt ceiling deadline.
We are looking for new candidates who will not be possessed by this incorrigible fear during a time that calls for intrepid courage on the part of conservatives. I’ve already found several promising candidates, and will not rest until we find an army of new savvy contenders who plan to play by a different set of rules. The way we approach elections is not working. The movement is not doing enough to change the face of the Republican Party. And by voting to suspend the debt limit and funding for Obamacare in the CR, conservatives are making it harder for us to run against the moderates, obviating our ability to send them reinforcements. As we’ve explained this week with regards to taking down the rule on bad bills, we have failed to even match the passion and commitment of the ’94-era Republicans.
This must change.
Over the next few weeks, at the Madison Project, we will be updating our index scores for the 112th Congress and our hall of shame, which is comprised of liberal members in conservative districts. Sadly, it’s a long list. You can email me with suggestions of new candidates at Daniel@madisonproject.com. We can either complain or we can take action.
That is the alternate universe in which these grassroots/teaparty/lunatics dwell.And yet this fact is all too real: they’ve got the Ryan budget already. And they’ve already moved on to the debt ceiling, which all the Fox freaks were going on about last night. Krauthammer suggested they could get Obamacare defunded if they are willing to hold out. They all believe the consequences of a default are phony concerns made up to force them to back down and they are having none of it. That threat to back primary challenges in those gerrymandered districts against those who deviate from this dangerous delusion is quite real (or these members of congress believe it is, anyway.) So, they are going to play this all the way out.
But why wouldn’t they? With the exception of some chump change from millionaires in the last round, the Democrats have been losing on policy every step of the way since these budget battles began, even as they seem to be winning the politics. What could be more telling than the fact that the numbers in Paul Ryan’s budget are now considered the starting point in any new negotiations to end the shutdown.
Who’s being played here?
Well, us. Obviously!
Superman to the rescue
http://youtu.be/V1DiXE9Rs_k
Yep, that’s it. By sheer force of character and personality, America will be saved! Bipartisan superhero Gov. Chris Christie explains how he would have stopped the government shutdown by throwing himself in front of the doorway and shooting laser beams from his angry eyes:
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Monday blamed President Barack Obama for “not bringing people together” during the government shutdown debate and said the president would be ultimately responsible for a funding stoppage.
“My approach would be, as the executive, is to call in the leaders of the Congress, the legislature, whatever you’re dealing with, and say, ‘We’re not leaving this room until we fix this problem, because I’m the boss, I’m in charge,” Christie said.
“When you’re the executive, if you’re waiting for leadership from the legislative branch of government, whether you’re the governor, or whether you’re the president or you’re mayor, you are going to be waiting forever, forever because they’re not built to lead and take risk.”
This, from the man who was afraid to sign the same-sex marriage bill because he didn’t want to upset the Taliban extremists he needs to win the Republican primary!
Continue reading “Superman to the rescue”
‘Saving’ our schools
Remember, money “invested” by hedge funders in education “reform” almost doubles its value in tax credits over ten years! So when they start talking about how much they care about the kids, keep that in mind:
Remember how some of us were saying that as soon as the “shock doctrine” of manufactured budget crises put the fork in any hope of reviving Philadelphia’s public schools in any way, that the vulture capitalists would be diving in to pick over the carcass?
Don’t bother, they’re here. In fact, they’re everywhere, they’re everywhere! When we weren’t looking, someone apparently decreed that Monday, Sept. 30, 2013, shall be hereby known as Crush A Teacher Day in the city of Philadelphia.
It only takes $50,000 to participate!
On Monday, wealthy donors interested in the future of public education will gather for a two-day conference at the Union League: “All of the Above: How Donors can Expand a City’s Great Schools.”
Attendance is restricted to those who make $50,000 in charitable donations per year. One might hope, given the apocalyptic state of Philly’s resource-starved public schools, that they are here to plot a campaign to reverse deep state budget cuts — or, at the very least, to cut a check to rehire some laid-off school counselors.
Instead, they will meet with self-described school-reform activists who want to move yet more students out of the same “government schools” they have defunded and into privately-managed charters — and even straight-up private schools. The entirely broke School District of Philadelphia estimates that each student who attends a charter costs it an additional $7,000. That existential fiscal challenge posed by charter expansion will not, it seems, be on the agenda. Nothing about the sector’s rampant corruption and lack of state or local oversight either.
The cast of characters includes some of the usual suspects: Jeremy Nowak, who caught a fever during his brief tenure as head of the William Penn Foundation, and the only way he can scratch it is with more cowbell corporate education reform, and something that calls itself Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust), that is basically funded these days by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates.
Critical thinking skills
I was saying to a friend this weekend that many people simply can’t understand really complex situations, so they’re rather hear the wrong (but easy to understand) explanation than the accurate one. Because the accurate one makes them feel stupid.
And then last night, another friend said that a lot of human brains didn’t evolve to handle critical thinking skills as the world got more complex.
Which current events would seem to confirm.
Baby Blue
For Walter White and his special love:
Silver lining?
If the dollar is no longer the preeminent reserve currency, then countries will dump much of their dollar holdings, pushing down its value in currency markets.
A lower valued dollar will cause exports to soar and imports to plummet, creating millions of new manufacturing jobs. Millions more jobs would be created in other sectors due to the multiplier effect. This could well bring us back to full employment — a goal we may not otherwise achieve until the next decade.
Does this mean that all good people should be cheering for a debt default? Not quite. First, the financial market fallout will not be pretty. It’s hard to say exactly what would happen because it is uncharted territory. It would be best not to explore this terrain.
However the other reason is that there are no guarantees about the dollar losing its status as the reserve currency. Remember, we’re hearing this from people who couldn’t even see an $8 trillion housing bubble, their knowledge of the economy is not especially reliable. It is entirely possible that we go through the financial crisis associated with a debt default and the dollar still ends up being the world’s preeminent reserve currency. In that case we get the pain but no gain.
So we are probably best off if there is no default. But we should remember; if the dollar loses its status as a reserve currency as a result of default, that’s a good thing.
Hillary bio-pic
Was torpedoed by both sides. I’m sad knowing it was Charles Ferguson who was going to make the film, because he is great on financial stuff and we should all know what presidential candidates are up to.
Oh dear, we can’t do a thing!
Barack Obama on the options for asserting his power on the debt ceiling.