The White House essentially argues “Don’t worry, be happy. Republicans won’t accept this anyway.” The president is just showing that he is reasonable, willing to negotiate and demonstrating how extreme Republican obstruction is.
No question the Tea Party-dominated Republican Party is still in the midst of its Inquisition phase. But the White House strategy of preemptive concessions is remarkably wrong-headed.
It abandons arguments that the public should be hearing. The president is right to be arguing about jobs, even though Republicans dismiss him out of hand. And he should also be railing about global corporate tax dodges, and demanding that corporations as well as the rich pay their fair share.
Worse, eventually an agreement must be reached in the coming months to keep the government open and to lift the debt ceiling. The Republican would-be Torquemadas demand that the price of lifting the debt ceiling is repealing Obamacare. That is preposterous.
So the Republican leadership (something of an oxymoron these days) will have to cobble together an agreement that likely will depend on Democratic votes to pass the House.
They are likely to offer the president some mix of measures that he has endorsed in one negotiation or another – revenue-neutral corporate tax reform, a chained CPI that will cut Social Security benefits, raising the eligibility age on Medicare, means-testing Medicare, accepting a one-time “fee” for corporate profits stashed abroad – a massive tax break – and using the money to reduce the more ridiculous sequester cuts (particularly for the Pentagon). Then they’ll demand further concessions.
Every concession becomes the starting point for that final deal – from which Republicans then inflict further pain.
The president is right to make the case again and again for the investments we need to generate jobs now and build the foundation for a stronger economy long-term. But his call for a “grand bargain” and his pre-emptive concessions are a miserable way to set up the brutal face-off that will begin once more this fall.
Category: Politics As Usual
Quote of the day
“If you’re asking me if I am optimistic that he’s going to come down here and fight and give the Republicans an offer they can’t refuse — no. The president is not a fighter.”
Cory Booker
He’s a corporatist motherfucker who shouldn’t be anywhere near the U.S. Senate. Naturally, he’s a shoo-in.
‘He’s not a leader, he’s a bully’
Smart move. It drives me bonkers that so many of the New Jersey voters I know have fallen for Christie’s “I yam what I yam” schtick (despite terrible economic policies), and it’s got to help if the SEIU gets on board with the smart and progressive Barbara Buono:
For leaders of the nation’s largest union, Democrat Barbara Buono’s selection of union leader Milly Silva to run for lieutenant governor transformed New Jersey’s governor’s race into a national referendum on working class issues and the labor movement. That belief was reinforced by the Christie campaign’s dismissal of Silva yesterday as “wholly unqualified” and a “special-interest organizer.”
George Gresham, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1199 Healthcare Workers East, to which Silva belongs, pledged that the SEIU would go all out raising money and mobilizing volunteers to support Buono and Silva, the first labor leader to run for statewide office in New Jersey in 70 years.
“We see this not just as a New Jersey race, but as a national election focused directly on the needs of working people, especially now that we have a labor leader on the ticket who is a working mother and a Latina and understands the needs of working families,” Gresham said in an interview after Silva gave a rousing speech to a hotel ballroom packed mainly with union people.
Continue reading “‘He’s not a leader, he’s a bully’”
‘Grand bargain’
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama is extending a new proposal to Republicans that he hopes will break the political gridlock on budget negotiations, offering to cut corporate tax rates in exchange for job investments.
White House officials say just because they’re at an impasse with congressional Republicans over a grand bargain on reducing the deficit doesn’t mean they shouldn’t look for other areas of agreement. So Obama plans to use a trip to an Amazon.com distribution center in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Tuesday to propose a “grand bargain for middle-class jobs.”
Blue America chat with Barbara Buono
Who’s running against Chris Christie. Join in the discussion here.
Amash-Conyers
I’ve been trying to explain to people why I see it as a win, but this article does a better job than I did.
Yet another reason
To vote for someone who isn’t Allyson Schwartz!
Save the bees
Tell Congress to stop the use of pesticides that are killing bees.
If you’re after getting the honey
Then you don’t go killing all the bees…
Joe Strummer, “Johnny Appleseed”
Allyson Schwartz
Why would any progressive support her?
Look, this is a tough one. One of the worst features of Pennsylvania politics is our state’s dismal track record in electing women candidates, so a female governor would be a giant breakthrough. Still, if your goal is to make Pennsylvania a more progressive place, it would be less important to elect a woman than to elect someone who is actually progressive.
Schwartz’s mediocre track record make you think that she is not that person. Instead, she comes across as one of a new disturbing new breed of uptown/suburban politico — typified by New York’s Michael Bloomberg and his likely successor as mayor, Christine Quinn. They are 100 percent true-blue liberal on social issues like gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose, but take pro-business stances that aren’t helpful to the struggling middle class, and don’t seem much troubled by creeping police-statism to protect what the affluent have in 21st Century America.
Yesterday was rock-bottom for Schwartz, as she joined with a rag-tag army of Republican neo-conservatives and some Obama-loyal flip-floppers in defeating a House amendment that would have defunded the Natural Security Administration’s spying overreach on Americans’ phone records, a measure that would have been a dramatic statement that Congress is listening to the voice of the people who are tired of the growing power of the surveillance state. You can run for higher office as “a progressive” — or you can support a government that operates in violation of the 4th Amendment. I don’t understand how you can do both.
And Schwartz’ unprogressive vote on the NSA might be excusable is it were a one-time thing — but there are other questions. In a time when fracking is ruining the rural environment across Pennsylvania, Schwartz has taken a surprisingly business-friendly (and future campaign-contributor friendly?) stance. Upon taking office in 2005, Schwartz had a choice between the Big Banks or the middle class on a bankruptcy bill — and she voted with the banks. She’s a leader of something called the New Democrat Coalition — which ProPublica recently described as “a group of 69 lawmakers whose close relationship with several hundred Washington lobbyists makes them one of the most successful money machines since the K Street Project collapsed.” Again…ugh. Democrats do have other choices.
One candidate whose energy level has been remarkable, and who has taken consistently progressive stances on the issues facing Pennsylvania, is the former Environmental Protection commissioner, John Hanger. Hanger is also problematic — he’s completely lacking in name recognition, and he’s also not perfect. But the point is that Schwartz’s bad vote yesterday on government spying is another reason why Democrats would be smart to have a real primary, and not a coronation. The fact that Corbett couldn’t be elected Harrisburg dog-catcher right now means that Dems can relax and focus on the best candidate for a change, and not try to guess who they think will win (which never works, anyway). If progressives are determined to vote for Allyson Y. Schwartz, they should stop and ask themselves…why?