Boehner did the bare minimum not to turn the US economy into a flaming wreck. I’ll give him credit for that. I will not, however, go beyond a bare minimum of credit for his (a) inability to lead any more than one third of his party and (b) manage to get the votes to continue in his job.
You seem to think that Boehner pulled a rabbit out of his hat. I think he pulled a hat liner out of his hat, which isn’t impressive at all.
This failure to control his caucus, in fact, explains his squalking now about the “Obamaquester”; it’s a dog whistle for his defense contractor sugar daddies not to blame him when their gravy train is interrupted. If he could end the sequester he would, but doing that would mean resigining his speakership.
A total oversimplification of this, I believe, is as follows:
Doing nothing would lead to automatic cuts to the military, no cuts to non-military programs, taxes would stay the same, and people would blame the Republicans.
Reaching a deal would keep military spending the same, would involve cuts to non-military programs, taxes would increase, and neither side would see a change in approval rating.
So let’s look at this in terms of “political points” for both sides.
Democrats/Senate/Reid/Obama:
Republicans/House/Boehner:
If the sequestration goes through (+2 Democrats, -2 Republicans)
If a deal is reached (0 Democrats, 0 Republicans)
If both parties keep the status quo (0 Democrats, 0 Republicans)
Looking at it in terms of pure political points, Republicans’ best course of action is to either reach a deal or keep the status quo. And by “best”, I mean they’re in the same place as they were before but are at least unharmed.
Democrats are in the same place as they were before if a deal is reached or the status quo is kept as well. But they are benefitted if the sequestration happens. Their best course of action would be to get on network TV (which Obama can do whenever he wants but Boehner can’t), to paint the Republicans as obstructionists who are in the way of our nation’s best interests, to use terms like “a balanced approach” for their version of a deal regardless of how balanced or unbalanced their version may be, to say things like “my door is open for negotiations” regardless of how disinterested they may be in negotiating, and to say, “Certain people are stooping so low as to accuse us of trying to use this opportunity to score political points. I shouldn’t even dignify this accustion with a response, but that is blatantly false.” while laughing to themselves.
I’m not saying Democrats are completely heartless and unhuman; I’m just saying it would be to their advantage to be so.
I’m just guessing here, but here is my guess. The harm that the sequestration would cause is so enormous, Obama would feel duty bound to cave to the Republicans to prevent that from happening, the potential benefit for Dems notwithstanding. He would be duty bound to do so. And I think he would.
Again, just guessing.
Its unfortunately when one side in a negotiations has a heart and gives a damn while the other side is a bubbling river of hatred
I think the White House would look at sequestration like Clinton did on the government shutdown: Republicans, if you want to be the ones to take the heat for ruining government, you’re going to take more heat than I will.
The sequester doesn’t just cut military programs, but it is heavily weighted to military cuts. There timeline of the sequester is pretty clear cut by the way. When the Budget Control Act had passed, Boehner and President Obama had a preliminary agreement behind closed doors on the “grand bargain” that everyone said would “have” to happen to avoid the U.S. debt rating being downgraded. Obama then, most likely because he shrewdly realized he could exploit the situation far better politically by not signing a grand bargain, decided at the last minute to add $400bn in increased tax revenue to the bargain. (Tax revenue had already been on the table, so Boehner was willing to buck the Norquist no tax increase pledge as far back as that.) That ended any chance of the grand bargain.
At that point Republicans were unwilling to sign any agreement that didn’t include spending cuts, so as a compromise Obama came up with the idea of having a super committee be drawn up that would figure out a “grand bargain” on spending cuts. To force the super committee to act, he proposed the sequester, a severe cut in spending targeted to areas neither side would particularly like and at such a level the super committee wouldn’t dare fail to come to a compromise. As we all know, the super committee was a joke and here we are at the sequester.
This idea that the sequester isn’t Obama’s idea is asinine–it’s the only way he could see to get what he wanted (more debt) without avoiding what he didn’t want (immediate decrease in spending.) It’s likely Obama figured he’d be able to wield political muscle in between the BCA and now to make it so the sequester would never happen, which would basically get more of what Obama wants–increased revenue with the bare minimum of spending cuts necessary to get it.
It’s unlikely that will work, to be honest. Even Nate Silver is showing the GOP is simply not that vulnerable to losing many Senate seats in 2014, in fact he’s projecting they gain a few seats. This might cost them a chance to take back the Senate, but their chances of doing that aren’t all that high regardless.
At the House level, the GOP’s majority is firmly ensconced with strong districts that simply will not be going blue anytime soon. Not until 2020 at least and probably not even then–because it relies on control of state legislatures and governor’s mansions and Democrat power is not evenly distributed in our fifty state system but tends to be concentrated in the most populous states. Since we have a system that gives special preference to states over population units there is probably going to be a longstanding Republican advantage in the House. This isn’t like 2006–the House GOP is much more powerfully positioned now than they were when they last lost the House, the districts are not nearly so competitive and I don’t see any projections where this would cost them the House.
With the fiscal cliff, there was a major impact on all sectors of the economy looming. Republicans were getting an immense amount of pressure from basically all big business types, Republican governors were pressuring congressmen and etc. You’d think the big defense contractors would be out marshaling their resources now, and they probably are–but it may simply be the case they are not as widely influential as commonly thought, because the GOP genuinely doesn’t seem that interested in budging on the sequester without a willingness by Obama to agree to simply restructure the spending cuts. They don’t appear willing to compromise much on trading the sequester for more spending.
I also think Boehner realizes from a negotiating perspective doing behind-the-scenes negotiations with Obama hurt him politically and did nothing to advance his agenda on the fiscal cliff. Strategically Obama was getting his tax cuts then no matter what, the question was would the Republicans agree to more sensible legislation in exchange for things important to them (like keeping the Bush tax cuts on middle class earners.) In this scenario what Obama doesn’t want, Boehner only has to wait to make happen. Boehner does not appear to care as much about spending cuts looming as he did taxes going up on basically all Americans. In this scenario really the only card Boehner has is the sequester. If he gives that up for whatever taxes Obama wants, then basically we’re left with the normal budgetary process (depending on what sort of CR they’d agree to as part of the sequester deal) to hash out negotiations on getting what they want. But that’s a more “even” playing field, and since the GOP only controls one House of Congress that means the playing field is tilted toward the Democrats (as it normally would be when they control 1.5 branches of elected government.)
The sequester cuts are Boehner’s only card to play, he had no card at all in the fiscal cliff negotiations, but it doesn’t make sense in this scenario for him to not take advantage of his strategically more powerful position.
Except, you know, the good of the country.
As conservatives push the “cuts only” approach to the budget, here’s a new poll on what programs the American people want cut.
The answer? Nothing, really. Maybe a little bit of foreign aid. Actually, majorities want more spending on education and veterans benefits. Only15% want cuts to Medicare, only 10% want cuts to Social Security.
Keep running on your platform, Paul Ryan. It’s a winner.
The reality is, and I don’t know why Democrats seem to think they can dream or rhetoric it away is we’re on a dangerous trajectory. We have an aging population and benefit programs that are designed as PAYGO, where working-age people who receive paychecks fund the retired old age people. In the 1930s that was a perfectly workable idea, before many of these programs something like 50% of elderly people in America died in poverty and now aside from a few scattered exceptions almost no elderly people die impoverished. But our system is predicated on there being a vastly larger pool of workers than beneficiaries, and that underlying idea is out of sync with the reality right now and even more so with the reality 30 years from now.
It doesn’t particularly matter whether Americans want to modify these programs or cut some benefits, anymore than it matters whether Americans want to pay income taxes or not or work for a living or not. The U.S. government does not have the power to wave a magic wand and remove all the problems with letting these programs continue as they have, so changes–which will almost certainly include some form of benefit cuts versus where we are now, are coming. Maybe not while a Democrat is President, but they’re coming. Mainly because eventually the question won’t be whether or not we cut benefits, but how we explain to people we’ve bankrupted the country and destroyed the world’s largest economy. I suspect at some point politicians facing that grim reality will make the hard choices–hopefully long before that doomsday scenario plays out.
For that reason, the position the Republicans need to take pretty much has to be one for the good of the country. We’re never going to beat the White House in a PR campaign, the bully pulpit is simply too powerful. In fact, I can’t think of a single instance in the history of the United States where we’ve had divided government and the legislature have prevailed in the court of public opinion over the Presidency.
Democrats in America believe any modifications to New Deal and Great Society programs are a step towards laissez-faire libertarian anarchy in which all the poor people are left to die in the street. But countries far more economically left than the United States have reformed old PAYGO systems to be more sustainable, and we will eventually have to do the same. Because the choices will ultimately be: limit the pool of beneficiaries, massively increase taxes, or reform the structural nature of these programs. I think the first two options will get anyone responsible voted out of office, so the third option isn’t only the best option for the country but the most likely to happen some day.
As for the politics, the GOP is losing this round, period. We can’t win it, because we can’t beat the White House at PR. But Gingrich lost the PR battle with Clinton in his day, but his principles carried the day, and we had a balanced budget* largely because of Gingrich. He lost the short term PR war, but he’s still popular in many circles to this day because of the lasting achievements of his time as Speaker. If not for his many personal failings he’d probably have won a Presidential nomination.
All that being said, we can lose this PR battle and still do fine politically in the big picture. On a district by district level this battle is very defensible. It’s easy to tell people in Ohio and Pennsylvania’s rust belt that we’re fighting for cuts to programs that are a drag on the economy while President Obama is fighting for more money for the region of the country that continued to boom throughout the recession–the D.C. Metro Area. Obama can fight for more largesse to fat cat Washington workers but we’re fighting for ordinary Americans in the rest of the country. [This is political boilerplate that most people will accept without question, not my actual opinion–I know the nuances of the issue but as Obama is proving with his administration’s PR campaign right now people believe anything they are told as long as it sounds right.]
*We didn’t really have a balanced budget, but it was close enough for government work.
The argument isn’t about the trajectory, and isn’t about the realities you describe. Everyone agrees that the current situation isn’t going to work in the wrong term.
The question is about how do we address it?
We’ve got stagnant wages and huge unemployment, and we’ve got a tiny portion of society that has reaped tremendous gains over the last few decades with buckets of free cash looking for anything to invest in to make them even more cash.
Both Democrats and Republicans agree we need some cuts. The disagreement is only over whether the balance sheet is 100% cuts on the benefits to the elderly and poor, or whether 1 cent can come from increasing taxes on the wealthiest. As long as one side refuses to compromise at all, there can’t be an agreement.
I agree – the Republicans should just support the tax rates that were in place at the time of that balanced budget period. (If they had just been left there, we would be in much better shape now.)
Well, I’ve long said we need higher taxes. For many years in my life, I’ve said that people are a bit too anal about budget deficits. Primarily because, with a growing economy a certain level of budget deficit is actually entirely sustainable. It’s basically even advisable if you have a sustainable deficit limit to spend around that limit. To boil a complex topic to something very simple, it’s like making use of a credit card in a personal household budget in a way that avoids saddling you with crushing debt but still allows you to be flexible. However we have a deficit so high that it is not sustainable by any normal period of economic growth, and we also have lower than normal economic growth on top of that. So in the current environment I have to take the position of a deficit hawk, which in more normal climates hasn’t been my nature.
I’ve proposed a lot of different types of tax increases over the years–almost universally targeting the wealthiest Americans. So I’m all for that, Martin Feldstein wrote a good article recently in the Wall Street Journal that spoke of just capping deductions at a percentage of income which I think is a really good idea. It will disproportionately target the wealthiest Americans, because lower and middle income people would rarely have deductions that exceed the percentage threshold he proposed. The “middle class” people who would are largely people who frankly have chosen to live in very expensive homes and have very large mortgage payments, and I’m mostly okay with that segment of the middle class not being able to deduct as much as they were before.
I’d fully support a deal on the sequester that preserved at least 100% of the $85bn in cuts but also provided for more tax increases. I’m also in favor a CR at the end of March (or more specifically a real budget) that includes both more spending cuts and more tax increases. What I’m not in favor of is abandoning all $85bn of spending cuts and replacing it with only tax increases–which is Obama’s position in the current negotiations.
Speaking of foreign aid, are there any recent polls as to what the people think we are spending money on, especially those people in red districts? If they think we spend all the federal money on foreign aid and welfare for the poor, then they’ll go to themselves “I don’t take any money from the Feds! If we only stopped giving money to Israel and welfare queens, we could solve the budget easily!” Meanwhile ignoring social security and medicare (which they “earned”, despite the fact that medicare at least pays out far more than it takes in,) not to mention the farming subsidies and military installations in red districts*.
So it isn’t necessarily cognitive dissonance that would make people continue to vote for people who go against their own interests: it could be that people who support the GOP are genuinely ignorant about what we’re spending money on, and want it to hew closer to the polls (even though it already is in real life, if that makes sense.)
Plus, the linked poll partially does reflect a concordance between people’s voting patterns and their beliefs. People firmly voted for Obama and the Democratic party**, but the GOP continues to cling to partial power due to districting. And the people in those districts may or may not agree with the linked poll (and may or may not even know what we do spend money on.)
*Which isn’t to say that farm subsidies is a big part of the budget, plus, I think Americans do have a good idea on what we spend on defense.
**Also, which isn’t to say that the Democratic party supports the poll results either, at least the leadership. Good luck finding someone who supports a huge across the board spending increase anywhere in Congress.
People take advantage of ignorance in politics, and both sides are guilty of it.
When we want to cut spending we’ll always talk about foreign aid and welfare queens, which are a small portion of the Federal budget (and welfare queens mostly never existed and certainly don’t exist to any large degree after the Clinton-era welfare reforms) and are mostly something serious policy people fully support.
It partially ties in to what I said before about the Republicans having a higher responsibility than opinion polling. Our entitlement system needs reform whether people want it reformed or not. We need to continue spending money on the State department and foreign aid whether people want to or not. I always had a lot of personal (but little political) respect for John Kerry. But I 100% agree with his speech the other day when he made the argument that money on the State department and being engaged in the world is a lot cheaper than money on military actions, that money that goes overseas may not always work out but the concept is good and it’s generally money well spent. It doesn’t particularly matter if someone in Nebraska agrees.
An example from the other side though, are “subsidies to oil companies.” President Obama is being very duplicitous on that issue. Those subsidies exist because they appeal to both parties, and both parties supported them. Why? Of the roughly $4.5bn in oil subsidies in 2010, $1bn was for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve–something pretty much no one advocates we get rid of. Another $570m was the Low Income Home Energy Assitance Program which insures people in the Northeast where many homes are heated by fuel oil can keep the furnace running in winter-time, when lack of home heating can and has killed people. Another $1bn is in tax writeoffs for agricultural fuel use. All three of these popular programs account for more than half of the fuel subsidies annually and have wide bipartisan support. Liberals would never vote to end LIHEAP for example, almost no one would vote to end the SPR, and farm state legislators of both parties would never end the agricultural fuel subsidies. Much of the remainder of the fuel subsidies are common manufacturing tax credits that all manufacturers can take advantage of (and even non-manufacturing companies like software companies have been able to take advantage of them at times)–and Big Labor and President Obama love manufacturer tax credits.
Railing against big oil and fuel subsidies is political theater at its worst, and shows how both sides will take advantage of complex issues by boiling them down to simplistic misrepresentations.
The totals for oil subsidies in 2010 are available for Googling. That’s the good news, the bad news is that they are all over the map. Where’d you get yours?
Your calculation neglects primaries, where representatives who’re willing to raise taxes to avoid cutting defence expenditure get turfed.
Martin Hyde, what is the purpose of agricultural fuel subsidies?
Martin Hyde, excellent posts, sir.
After digging into it a bit I can’t really say it’s clear how much the subsidies are, but we can arrive on a range. This is a spreadsheet on “priceofoil.org” a website for the “Oil Change International” organization which is generally devoted to “exposing fossil fuel subsidies and advocating for their end.”
If you dig into that spreadsheet, they list out figures from the OECD. Total oil subsidies (provisionally) for 2010 are listed at $4.2bn. Lower in the spreadsheet, in table 25.2, it breaks it down more specifically. If you total it all up it comes to $4.506bn in total subsidies with $2.88bn at a Federal level, $923m listed as “both” (meaning State & Federal, with no further breakdown), and the rest of the total being split up among various state subsidies. Why this total of $4.506bn doesn’t = the $4.2bn in the opening summary, I do not know.
These are provisional numbers. If you go to the OECD’s website you can actual find some newer numbers that have provisional data for 2011 and finalized data for 2010. You can find that here. This lists $2.6bn Federal, $2.3bn State, and $1.016bn “both.” For a total around $6bn.
Oil Change International, if you check out their website, seem to accept $10bn/year as an acceptable “baseline” for “total fossil fuel subsidies” (this includes subsidies for coal and natural gas as well as for oil/petroleum.) So I don’t think the range of $4.5b-6bn for petroleum is really that controversial.
To its credit, Oil Change International has a much larger figure that they openly admit many/most people will not agree with–the figure of $50bn. This figure includes Department of Defense efforts overseas that OCI argues should be considered a subsidy of fossil fuels (think security of Persian Gulf shipping etc.)