The Senate tonight passed a bill 81-18 to end the shutdown and increase the debt ceiling--both short term measures requiring new action in January and February of 2014. See New York Times story (Oct. 16, 2013) (regarding HR 2775).
As the article notes, the Tea Party Republicans are appropriately reaping the blame for the shutdown they intentionally caused in a binge of extortionist economic terrorism.
The result of the standoff that threatened the nation’s credit rating was a near total defeat for Republican conservatives, who had engineered the budget impasse as a way to strip the new health care law of funding even as registration for benefits opened Oct. 1 or, failing that, to win delays in putting the program into place.
The shutdown sent Republican poll ratings plunging, cost the government billions of dollars and damaged the nation’s international credibility. Id.
Charlie Dent (R-PA) said that Congress should have ended this weeks ago by passing a clean bill to fund the government. Id. Boehner, who should have had the courage to end the debacle before it started by allowing a clean continuing resolution to come to the floor of the House, pretended that what this rabid minority had imposed on the country to get their way was a reasonable thing to do. "We fought the good fight", he said. No sir. That was not a "good fight." It was a scandalous demonstration of self-centered lack of concern for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who were hurt by the furloughs and cessation of government programs.
What we're getting (assuming the House does now pass this bill) is not a "clean" bill. The Senate and House are supposed to negotiate a tax and spending "blueprint" for the next decade--with anarcho-libertarian Paul Ryan in the House and Senator Patty Murray leading the negotiations! It may be wishful thinking for Dick Durbin to hope that the Tea Party Republicaions will "be willing to be more constructive." Id. Fleming (R-LA) has already said that this just moves to "Round 2" where "we're going to start this all over again." Id. One of the instigators of the shutdown and debt ceiling fight Senator Ted Cruz, in spite of the clear expression of American will against his position, still is apparently under the delusion that he is speaking for "the American people." You can bet that the right-wing corporate defenders will push for severe cuts in corporate tax and will not be willing to do what the 1986 reformers knew was needed--eliminate the capital gains preference entirely (thus getting rid, with one fell swoop, of the elite's "carried interest" ploy) or increase taxes with more brackets and higher rates for income and estate taxes. The GOP will also push for huge changes in Medicare and Social Security and for continuing cuts to spending on child welfare and infrastructure provisions. Let's hope the Democrats have learned something about keeping a stiff backbone from this experience.
But the sad thing is, even assuming that the Tea Party Republicans grow up a little bit after this, they have already done near-irreparable harm to the credibility of the US as a democracy and as a reasonably sane economic power that is aware of its place in the world.
[Edited to add Marcotte article on role of fundamentalism in Tea Party politics.]
We have seen congressional ethics probes of Congressmen for exacting quid pro quo bribes from businessmen or for conflicts of interest or apparent failure to pay personal taxes. What about failing to perform their most fundamental duty--to protect the integrity of the U.S. democratic process and constitutional system?
It seems to me that people like Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, Michele Bachmann, and the rest of the Tea Party acolytes in Congress are committing an ethical violation even more severe than money-corruption. They are sacrificing the economic stability of the country and the individual lives of hundreds of thousands of its citizens to the altar of their own personal religio-political dogmas. [For a discussion of the role of fundamentalist religious dogmas in Tea Party politics, see, e.g., Marcotte, Christian delusions are driving the GOP insane, Salon.com (Oct. 10, 2013).] They are willing, that is, to extort the vast majority of citizens of this country--anyone who doesn't agree with them--in order to get their way on something in which they are a minority of a minority.
In an increasingly unequal society in which Congresspersons are part of the "have-more" group and many, many Americans are not, the impact of their extortion is severe human suffering and permanent damage to the U.S. economy.
Democracies have to deal with something that has been called the "countermajoritarian problem"--the need to pay attention, in some situations, to the needs of a minority as against the wishes of a majority. In the US, this has generally come about as the U.S. Supreme Court interprets the protections of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution to require the protection of the rights of ethno-social minorities to the vote, public accommodations, marriage, and other rights taken for granted by the majority against the will of a majority to suppress those rights.
Is the kind of thing the Tea Party/GOP coalition is doing in Congress today in line with this tradition of respecting "discrete and insular" minorities that might otherwise suffer inappropriate and harmful discrimination and lack of parity? The simple and obvious answer is no. In fact, just the opposite, as their dogmatic stance is wreaking severe harm on the most vulnerable amongst us and threatening the fragile recovery from the Great Recession that already dealt a blow to the 99%. Besides, rural, less educated voters, many from the South, have for many years exercised considerable outsized political power because of (among other things) their ability to elect senators representing many fewer people than for urban metropolises. In fact, the Tea Party/GOP coalition has wielded over the last forty years considerable power to veto most progressive ideas through the use of the "filibuster" in the Senate, which makes it easy for a small minority to require a super-majority to pass any legislation. Thus, we get the ongoing cycle of the right's anti-"entitlement" sloganeering that supports farm subsidies (representing a corporate farm entitlement for the wealthy) while cutting food stamps (especially necessary for urban poor), huge increases in military activity (wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and "enemy combatants" jailed forever at Guantanamo without due process, and all those military- related expenditures) and corporate tax avoidance, for which they are willing to sacrifice research funding, education funding, and the safety net provided by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Yet in spite of that filibuster and the enormous power allowed under the democratic process to such strong minority voices, a much weakened form of health care reform (not even including a public Medicare-for-all option) passed through the democratic process and became law. So the economic terrorists in the Tea Party/GOP coalition--aided by House follower-in-chief John Boehner--refuse to end the extortion and let a "clean" continuing resolution make it to the House floor. If a clean bill came to a voite, it' appears clear that Democrats and less extreme Republicans would pass it to put the government back fully in business. Instead, Boehner apparently cares more about his "leadership" position than the good of the country and is willing to allow the radical right to continue to extort the nation to get their way. Shouldn't that be an ethical violation in itself?
Even if not an ethical violation, it clearly is a perversion of the kind of situation in which the "countermajoritarian" interests of the Civil War constitutional amendments are intended to operate. Real people are suffering. Native Americans are confined to even greater poverty on tribal lands. Families that are dependent on federal programs of various kinds are desperate. Food-insecure people and federal employees on furlough are worrying about mortgages, tuition, and where the next meal will come from. And it gets worse the longer it goes.
One has to wonder--do these Tea Party/GOP activists have no shame? Can they not see the individual harm they are doing to people all over the country, while they continue to get paid or are so rich that they can give up their pay to charity and pat themselves on the shoulder that they are now "suffering" along with the poor? Are their egos so large that they care only about their own "rapture" (as Michele Bachmann indicated recently) rather than about the daily suffering they are causing?
IT IS TIME TO END THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWNAND INCREASE THE DEBT CEILING WITH CLEAN BILLS. THE SHUTDOWN SHOULD END WITH NO CONCESSION TO THE TEA PARTY MINORITY EXTORTIONISTS. THE DEBT LIMIT SHOULD BE INCREASED FOR AT LEAST A YEAR, TO REMOVE THE POTENTIAL FOR ONE CRISIS AFTER ANOTHER AS IDEOLOGUES IN THE TEA PARTY TRY TO SHOVE THEIR VIEWS DOWN THE COUNTRY'S THROAT.
If you agree, you can sign a petition (circulated by Barbara Boxer, Dick Durbin, Tom Harkin, Mazie Nirono, Mary Landrieu, Patrick Leahy, Claire McCaskill, Patty Murray, Jack Reed, Brian Schatz and Mark Udall) to Republican leaders to end the government shutdown.
The devastating effects of the GOP’s government shutdown are real -- and they'll only get worse the longer this goes unresolved.
This entire debacle could be over in a few minutes if House Republican leaders would just agree to bring a "clean" budget -- one that funds the government without killing Obamacare -- up for a vote.
Sign the petition to Speaker John Boehner and House Republican leaders: Bring the Senate-passed budget to the floor for a vote -- and end this government shutdown, right now.
As the New York Times reported on Saturday: Stohlberg, A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning, New York Times (Oct. 5, 2013), the current fiscal and political crisis was planned as a manuver to get their way by the inner operatives of the Tea Party/GOP coalition. What the media has tended to report as a partisan dispute with both sides to blame is in reality a planned attack of economic terrorism on the United States government and its citizens from members of that very government--an artificially created economic crisis planned as a heavy ax over the President's head that would force him to give away the ship in order to save hapless federal employees, their families and their communities from the economic havoc that would ensue with a government shutdown or, most especially, with a refusal to increase the federal debt limit. And that attack has been supported by the likes of the Koch Bros (who've reaped a fortune from the oil-friendly laws they lobby for so successfully) and groups funded by them and similar interests, like the Tea Party groups, Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Action for America, and the Club for Growth.
On the debt limit (sometimes called the "debt ceiling"), let's review just what the issue is.
1. Congress has already approved certain spending measures.
2. Congress has already approved the legislation that determines the amount of tax revenues the government is currently bringing in.
3. The mathematical equation that shows the relationship between spending and revenues requires borrowing to make up the difference: Spending MINUS TaxRevenues EQUALS RequiredBorrowing.
4. The idea of a debt ceiling is fundamentally at odds with the enactment of spending and tax measures that determine how much borrowing is required to bring the two into equilibrium. You cannot hold borrowing constant when spending and taxes are already determined, without causing a default. The debt ceiling, that is, is an artificial concept that has no place in modern governmental affairs. Most advanced countries don't have such a concept. And regretably, having such a concept readily lends itself to economic terrorism such as the Tea Party/GOP coalition is threatening ("bargain with us on our terms, or we'll unleash a default on the country and all that entails").
5. A default has dire consequences for any country entering into one--future borrowing becomes more costly or nonexistent and austerity measures that stifle growth and job creation while likely resulting in detrimental and even dangerous infrastructure and programmatic expenditure delays are put into play. People suffer--especially older Americans on Social Security, sick Americans depending on Medicare, and young Americans dependent on various kinds of family assistance programs, not to mention government workers, government contractors and all the corollary businesses that cluster around necessary government expenditures.
6. Thus, since the Tea Party/GOP coalition has taken the position that it is willing to cause a default if it does not get its way, regardless of the consequences, the Tea Party/GOP coalition will be responsible for all of the dire consequences known to follow from national defaults.
Tom Tomorrow's political cartoon on the Tea Party hostage-taking approach to legislation, entitled "A Political Crisis" and originally posted at Comics and reposted at Daily Kos, hits its target, though perhaps, as one of the commenters on the website suggests, it should more accurately be called "An Existential Crisis."
Most commentators think that a clean continuing resolution, based on the budget numbers agreed to last month by Boehner, would pass the House if only put to a vote. See, e.g., Loosinhouse, The Two Words All Democrats Must Start Using Immediately, Daily Kos (Oct. 7, 2013). The shutdown would end, and the government agencies and offices could transition back to doing their work. Congress could then get back to real work instead of the "showdown at the OK Corral" tactics intentionally planned, adopted and pursued relentlessly by the Tea Party wing of the GOP based on the idea that it is okay for a congressional minority to attempt to undo legislative enactments achieved in the ordinary process of legislation by threatening to cause great harm through withholding funds or withholding approval for an increase to the debt ceiling if it (the minority) doesn't get its way.
Boehner, however, says the votes aren't there. And although the radicals have wasted a lot of Congress's time (with endless unsuccessful votes to repeal or defund Obamacare) and a lot of ordinary Americans' time (with furloughed inactivity and the anxiety that non-rich people experience when they aren't getting paychecks but have bills to pay), Boehner claims that he doesn't want to waste time by calling for a vote that will certainly lose. Id.
The Daily Kos (op.cit.) suggests that Boehner shouldn't expect us to believe him when he tells us it simply isn't possible to pass a clean CR because the votes aren't there. There's a list of who would likely vote for funding the government without any strings attached, and it includes a lot of Republicans--enough to pass a clean CR with Democrats. See, e.g., Bendery, Here's a Tally of Which House Republicans Are Ready to Fund the Government, No Strings Attached, HuffingtonPost.com (Oct. 1, 2013, as updated Oct. 8, 2013). That's at least 23 Republicans who, if voting with all 200 House Democrats, would easily surpass the 217 votes needed to pass a clean CR. (The Huffington Post article notes that 4 GOP House members who said they would support a clean CR have now flip-flopped to say they will not.)
And finally other journalists are beginning to ask the kinds of probing questions that makes journalism different from a he-said, she-said echo chamber. Take a listen to this interview by Anderson Cooper of Republican hostage-taker Raul Labrador (R-Idaho): This isn't Fox or MSNBC: You're Getting Real Questions Here (Oct. 7, 2013).
So shouldn't the burden of proof be on Boehner? Why not hold a vote if there is a good chance it could pass? How could it possibly be a waste of time to hold a vote that would end the personal pain and suffering being inflicted on hundreds of thousands of federal employees, their families, their communities, and the economic potential for the country at large?
The Tea Party/GOP coalition has often talked about the importance of the Constitution, but one can't help wondering if the recent extortionist behavior doesn't belie that, when the governnment shutdown it has caused as a means of extorting its way to getting rid of Obamacare is costing us $300 million a day. And getting back up to snuff after the shutdown ends will be extra-expensive--an inefficient increase in the deficit that the right complains so much about. Those extra expenses will claim even more of thetax revenues that we don't have because we still tax the wealthy people's income at ridiculously low preferential rates (the capital gains preference, the carried interest debacle) and we have tax rate brackets that ignore the reality of CEOs who earn 400 times what their average worker earns.
The Daily Kos staff came up with a thoughtful bit to remind the right how government is supposed to work--a letter to Dear GOP. Excerpts, self-explanatory, follow.
Dear GOP,
...
You don't like the Affordable Care Act. ... But it was passed the correct way .... It made it through the House, and it made it through the Senate. It wasn't passed in the "dead of night", nor was it "rammed down" anyone's throat .... It passed only after an excruciating 14-months of debate and negotiations. ...
Us liberals weren't thrilled when it passed. ... After all, we're not in the business of fighting for Heritage Foundation-created ideas championed by the likes of Newt Gingrich and first adopted by Republican governors (the guy you nominated, in fact!). If we couldn't get single payer, we at least wanted a public option—an expansion of Medicare for all. But alas, we went to D.C. with the Congress we had, not the one we wanted. ....
....
But here's the thing: If you want to truly get rid of the law, you have to do it the proper way, as specified in that Constitution you pretend to cherish. Those House votes? ... You're a third of the way there. Because you still have to get that bill passed by the Senate. And then, you have to get the president to sign it. And if the president doesn't sign it, then you have to overturn that veto which requires a two-thirds majority, which you don't have even in the House.
So what are your options? Certainly not shut down the government and threaten a national default on our debt. That's not in that Constitution (seriously, read it!). Your options are to win some elections. Hold that ill-gotten gerrymandered-fueled majority in the House. Get a simple majority in the Senate and then get rid of the filibuster. ... Then win the presidency. ...
...
If you really truly believe that America is behind you, then you're golden. 2014 and 2016 will bear that out and you'll have all the governmental control you'll need to repeal to your heart's content. So put your trust on that American public you so fervently believe is behind you and let the chips fall where they may.
...
Originally posted to kos on Tue Oct 01, 2013 at 09:12 AM PDT. Also republished by Daily Kos.
As the shutdown continues, Republican Speaker Boehner still refuses to bring a clean budget resolution to a vote. It is most likely that a clean resolution would pass, ending the charade of the extremist Tea Party faction in the House willing to cause individual suffering for hundreds of thousands of workers and communities, while also damaging the US government with the huge incremental costs of transitioning into and out of shutdown. Instead, word is that Republicans are planning a series of small bills so they can claim they are funding the "good" stuff in the government. Again, a perfect example of hostage-taking--letting those the hostage-takers like get out, but holding whatever the hostage-taker doesn't like hostage. The Dems would be wise to say no to all of these special interest bills.
The media tend to present this as a "he said, she said" type situation where both sides are at fault. It isn't. This is a case of a desperate minority attempting to enforce their will on the majority of this country through whatever means they can find, including destroying the economy and causing individual suffering. The Tea Party efforts are even causing problems for Republican congressional staffers, many of whom receive fairly low salaries (as little as $28,000 a year), who would be denied any federal subsidy for insurance under one of the Tea Party proposals, even though both parties had agreed that they should be eligible. See Joan McCarter, GOP staff: Our bosses 'threw staff under the bus', Daily Kos (Sept. 30, 2013).
The Dems in control of the Senate negotiated with the House over the budget measure for months. And the Dems compromised an extraordinary amount by agreeing to the "across-the-board" sequester, which cuts government programs in arbitrary and harmful ways. And the Dems agreed with the House on letting most of the Bush tax cuts be made permanent, including the dividend treatment as capital gains that benefits mostly the wealthiest of the wealthy. The Dems have compromised already on fiscal and tax policy, giving the right much of what it wanted. It was the House, controlled by a minority of Tea Party Republicans, that refused to appoint conferees to the necessary conference committee to work out the details, just as it is the House that continues to attempt to exploit shutting down government/causing suffering/and potentially cause a US default to try to get its way. The Tea Party Republicans have shown a reckless willingness to put the country at risk of huge harm to get their way.
Senator Reid has made a reasonable offer that Boehner should let a clean continuing resolution get to vote so that the government can reopen, and then the Senate will appoint conferees for a budget conference committee where the House and Senate can hash out a real budget bill. See Lewison, Reid makes Boehner an offer: Reopen government and then let's talk, Daily Kos (Oct 2, 2013). And today, President Obama challenged Boehner to allow a vote and get the government operating again. Stop this Farce, Obama Tells Contress on this Third Day of Shutdown, Reuters.com (Oct. 3, 2013).
"As reckless as a government shutdown is, as many people as are being hurt by a government shutdown, an economic shutdown that results from default would be dramatically worse." Id.
Even the threat of default is problematic.
The Treasury report shows that the Congressional debt-limit standoff in 2011 hurt consumer confidence, small-business confidence, household wealth and the stock market, with ramifications for lending and the economic recovery. Id.
But maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Apparnetly, Boehner realizes that Republicans will pay heavily if he lets this fight go to the point of causing a federal default so he "has told colleagues that he is determined to prevent a federal default and is willing to pass a measure through a combination of Republican and Democratic votes, according to multiple House Republicans." See Ashley Parker & Anne Lowrey, Republicans Say Boehner Vows to Avert Federal Default, New York Times (Oct. 3, 2013). Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA) indicated he expected there would be another vote with majority Democratic support. " 'Hurricane Sandy, the fiscal cliff, all of the big votes require reasonable Republicans and Democrats to come together in order to pass it and get it to the president’s desk,' he said. 'This will be no different.' " Id.
[The Republicans are] just holding out at this point to get some kind of a fig leaf so they can call their shutdown tactics a success. And that's exactly why Obama and the Democrats shouldn't give them an inch. If we don't want to go through this destructive, pointless process every three months, we need the whole nation to see that shutting down the government is a losing gambit. There should be no fig leaf and no token concessions of any kind. ...
Another points out the historical origin of the debt ceiling--demonstrating that extremists on the right have long used whatever means they can find to try to undo programs they don't like.
[W]e all should remember that the "debt ceiling" itself was established in 1939 by the conservative coalition in Congress after major Republican gains in the 1938 elections in order to push back New Deal public works and other programs and prevent the establishment of new social welfare programs. The debt at the time was 41 billion and the [ceiling] was 44 billion. ...
A sustainable economy requires a Congress that will act with some temperance to reach agreements across partisan disputes. A government cannot be run by minority blocks who demand their way no matter what. Voters should remember this mess when next they go to the polls to elect a Senator or Representative.
The House, dominated by Tea Party/GOP politicians (or those fearful of their impact on upcoming primaries) passed a bill that attempted to tie the continuing operations of the government to compliance with Tea Party ideas about getting rid of the health reform legislation duly enacted four years ago. See Weisman, House Bill Links Health Care Law and Budget Plan, New York Times (Sept. 20, 2013). Ted Cruz has now run his non-filibuster filibuster in the Senate, and then voted against his own "principled" filibuster position (presumably out of a quite justifiable fear that he would be shown for the fool he is as the only one voting in support of his "principles", since the Senate vote was unanimously on the other side). Ted Cruz Filibuster, NY Daily News (Sept. 27, 2013).
Remember, these are the same Tea Partiers who cried "Get Government Hands Off My Medicare," so one can't expect to see much rational debate about facts and ideas, especially on health care. The fact that Obamacare is based on a Republican, business-centered idea is lost on the Tea Partiers, who seem to simply hate anything associated with Obama and Democrats. Similarly, the fact that the reforms for the first time ensure that people who have pre-existing conditions can find insurance to help pay for catastrophic health costs at reasonable rates doesn't seem to penetrate the Tea Party conscience.
The Tea Party and its amenable GOP politicians, however, apparently aren't done trying to use whatever tool however destructive to get their way on health care. Having a sustainable economy is not even on their agenda. After not succeeding in repealing the health care reform law that at least offers some Americans a chance for needed health coverage (including those with pre-existing conditions and those whose employers offer no plans and who cannot afford the typical premiums for non-group plans), the Tea Party/GOP coalition is using the threat (and likely reality) of a devastating government shutdown unless it gets its way on a matter that the American people as a whole have soundly rejected. It is ready to push the country off the fiscal cliff all over again. So after the Senate voted cloture to consider the House bill and then passed a clean funding bill to get us through at least a few more months, the House GOP (with the Tea Party reactionaries in charge) again voted on Saturday to add amendments intended to destroy Obamacare to the funding bill (a one-year delay plus a repeal of the medical device tax, one of the measures intended to cut health care costs and pay for needed reforms).
The message is simple. The GOP is attempting to hold hostage the entire federal government, including at least 800,000 federal employees who will be furloughed but who need their paychecks to live, and many towns and cities across the country that depend on their federal government agencies and employees for their own livelihoods. The Tea Party/GOP coalition has demonstrated that it doesn't care about the government, the long-term harm to the country, or the suffering of individuals caused by these actions. The Tea Party/GOP coalition is willing to keep going its selfish way, like a petulant child determined not to let anybody have anything at all unless he gets his way.
And even then, it apparently intends to continue to wreak havoc, with the threat of causing the US government to default on its debt for the first time ever, using the silly comparison of the federal government to a family operating on a fixed budget as its equivalent of P.T. Barnum's fictitious but real-seeming mermaid to scam its "Tea Party" members.
While we need to make judicious choices about how and what we spend on, we shouldn't make those decisions based on a single-minded and short-sighted goal of cutting tax revenues and not increasing the federal debt limit. We are an enormously rich country. We could work miracles of ending poverty, repairing infrastructure, funding basic research, and creating educational opportunity if only we had the will to do so. And doing those things would create jobs and hope for the under-and un-emplolyed. This is because the federal government is not a family operating on fixed wages. It can print money. It can also raise taxes. We are one of the lowest-taxed countries in the OECD, down at the bottom of advanced countries with the likes of Turkey and Mexico. We have allowed corporations (and their mostly very rich shareholders) to avoid taxes, through legislation and through sharp-witted corporate tax attorneys, to the point where they are only paying a pittance of their enormous profits to the government. We have allowed our tax brackets to become fossilized at the upper range at extraordinarily low levels of income, when the top earners get so many millions that they pittance that even the top rate brings in is just a gnat's bite for the rich.
These facts scream for recognition that the Tea Party goals are not only damaging in the process of government-hostage-taking being used to try to reach them, but highly unfair and irresponsible in their likely impact of accelerating the increasing inequality in this country--inequality that means the rich are getting rich while the poor and middle class are losing ground. Thus, the Tea Party/GOP coalition is pushing forward in what amounts to class warfare on behalf of wealthy Tea Party funders like the Koch Brothers and their corporate empire and the "silver-spoon" crowd like Mitt Romney who think that they got where they are through their "merit" (ignoring the many advantages of networks and educational opportunities that helped them "make it" in the status-and-power-based world of crony capitalism).
Charles Reid at Huffington Post concluded that Cruz was a huckster primarily intent on self-promotion appealing to a Tea Party/Republican base that invites itself to be huckstered. Here's his description:
[A] good half of the Tea Party is pure, old-fashioned American hokum. There are the conspiracy theorists selling their tales of devious plots by the Federal Reserve. And the gold dealers who spin elaborate yarns of out-of-control inflation which the government keeps secret. And there are the Second Amendment fanatics warning ominously about plots to disarm law-abiding American constitutionalists. There are even the patent-medicine folks. Newsmax, a principal Tea Party news organ, is filled daily with claims about cures for everything from diabetes to Alzheimer's. Charles J. Reid, P.T. Barnum, Joe McCarthy, and the Rise of Ted Cruz, HuffingtonPost (Sept 27, 2013).
This mode of thinking is darkly conspiratorial. The world is sharply divided -- "us" against "them." And those who stand against the heroic defenders of justice and the American way are always secretly scheming to run not just the country but the entire world.
***
[T]o enter today's GOP base is to cross the border from reality into Glenn-Beckistan. There are the young-earth creationists who see the whole of empirical science as a diabolical plot to conceal divine creation. There are the global warming skeptics, found even in the pages of the formerly great Wall Street Journal. And then there are the folks who come out of the woodwork at conservative workshops and rallies: The ones who want to abolish the IRS. Those who wish to dismantle whole government agencies. Those who believe Social Security is irretrievably insolvent, an accusation first made by Alf Landon in 1936. Even the next generation of segregationists who once thrilled to Wallace and Goldwater.
This is what the U.S. Congress is reduced to--paranoid hucksterism parading as compassion for the people. A minority of flim-flam artists huckstering for attention that will, they think, win them reelection and please their paranoid-prone base of Tea Party/GOP constituents--the group who thinks their religious freedom is being oppressed when they can't repress everybody else's religious rights; who thinks a conspiracy to undermine them exists when saner thinking attempts to impose some kind of reasonable restrictions on the gun mayhem that is killing this country's children and youth and elderly in what we once thought were relegated to movie depictions of Old West shoot-em-outs; and who combines this paranoid conspiracy-thinking with anarchic libertarianism to conclude that "taxation is theft" and "government is the problem" even when these majority-Republican rural constituencies from Alaska to Mississippi depend on government employment and other federal dollars for their very livelihoods. See In Republican States, More Government Jobs, New York Times (Sept. 27, 2013).
There's the rub. The inability of the Tea Party base to listen, to consider facts, to accept the importance of community and the important role of taxes in maintaining the institutions that make community possible through collective action. It makes me think of George Orwell's 1984, as depicted in the movie with John Hurt and Richard Burton --a population that has taught itself not to think with home-schooling and religious indoctrination, reinforced by political demogogues who retain power and perks by figuratively beating the proletarian to a nonthinking mass that resents any attempt to act collectively for the greater good of the people.
As the budget battles loom again in our dysfunctional Congress, one of the targets of the right is, not unexpectedly, funding for the IRS. Sequestration is already hampering the IRS's ability to perform its functions. See $6 collected for every $1. But the right wants to cut funding for the IRS to a mere three-fourths of its current level. See Rubin, GOP Proposes Reducing IRS Budget by 24%, Bloomberg, July 9, 2013, at Accounting Today.
It's worth thinking about what this kind of budget reduction for the IRS--one of the biggest "too big to fail" financial institutions in the country--would mean. Remember that the IRS performs essential governmental functions--enforcing the tax laws and collecting necessary government revenues. In connection with these enforcement and collection functions, the IRS has implement a number of congressional policies (often with very little guidance) and, working with others in Treasury, provide guidance in the form of revenue rulings and regulations for many different types of taxpayers, as well as internal procedural guidelines for revenue officers. It has to determine eligibility of numerous organizations for the various "tax-exempt" categories Congress has created. It has to track information received from the myriad tax-reporting provisions. It has to ferret out tax scams and shelters invented by high-paid accountants and law firms and in-house counsel. It has to examine and audit and negotiated with taxpayers who are often better resourced and therefore able to "outgun" the agency. It has to provide information and testimony to Congress. It has to interact with tax lawyers in their professional organizations, such as the ABA Tax Section and the NYSBA Tax Section. And, to do its job decently well, it must spend considerable effort recruiting and training employees and overseeing them.
Much (if not all) of the problems pointed out (especially by the right-wing propaganda corps attempting to generate a "scandal") about the IRS mismanagement of the thousands of 501(c)(4) applications it receives stems from under-resourcing of the agencies and the lack of skills training, computerized systems and solutions, and sufficient management personnel to ensure efficient and timely use of resources to target scrutiny to those organizations most likely to be in breach of requirements.
So one would think that the right response to the intense need for a good revenue collection and tax-law enforcement agency would be to increase resources rather than to cut them. But there is a significant portion of Congress people-especially in the House--that is not interested in ensuring that the government that they are a part of function properly and especially not interested in having the tax-collection-and-enforcement agency work properly. As James Maule put it on Mauled Again earlier this year in a discussion on IRS hearings:
[A]nother member of the panel tried to make the point that cutting IRS funding doesn’t necessarily mean revenue will decrease. He tried to make his argument by claiming that increasing IRS funding does not increase revenue. He asserted that funding for the IRS increased from 2001 to 2009 and yet revenue decreased during that period. No kidding. The revenue decreased because in 2001 and again in 2003, the geniuses behind tax cuts succeeded in persuading the nation to accept a cut in its tax revenues at the same time it was pumping trillions of dollars into war expenditures. It was encouraging to hear another member of the party point out that the economic downturn also was a reason for the decrease in revenue collection. Yet it remains deeply disturbing that Americans have elected to Congress someone who thinks that sequestration of IRS funding won’t have an adverse impact on revenue.
The attempts to shrink the IRS is part of a larger, pervasive, foundational aspect of the anti-tax crowd’s plans to unchain themselves from any attempt on the part of anyone to get in their way as they exalt themselves at the expense of the society on which they are, no matter their denial, very dependent. I have explored the short-term foolishness of cutting IRS funding in posts such as Another Way to Cut Taxes: Hamstring the IRS. At a time when the Congress has piled dozens of new credits, deductions, and exclusions onto already complex tax law, has turned the IRS into the health care enforcer, and has required the IRS to serve as a collection agency for unpaid child support and other debts, it is absurd to cut IRS revenue collection efforts. When people defending the anti-government agenda claim to take their inspiration from the private sector, they conveniently ignore the fact that if a business wanted to eliminate its operating loss, the prognosis for success would be zero if the business ceased all advertising and left its cash registers and online payments systems unattended and unfunded.
This idea of cutting the agency that is already so underresourced that it cannot fight the hired guns of the multinational corporations and Big Oil, Big Pharma, and other sophisticated big-monied taxpayers fits with the general corporatist approach of those on the right these days. It is an approach laden with anti-populist, pro-oligarchic, class warfare sentiment. It is the "meritocratic" notion that those who have most already should have even more because they "merit" it, while those who have less can be allowed to suffer their plight without any role of government to provide a safety net. It is the force that pays CEOs and other top managers and directors obscenely high salaries in bad times as well as good times, no matter what they do to create ruin for their communities and their employees and even their companies, under the false belief that the people at the helm are responsible for all productivity gains and none of the productivity losses of the firm. It is behind the effort to reduce pensions of already-retired union employees and the fight against unionization from wealthy interests (like the billionaire Walton heirs whose WalMart stores still refuse to pay a living wage). It is behind the decades of Reaganomics and Friedmania, two cult ideologies masquerading as economic theories that have wreaked havoc on the US economy and most especially on its middle class and poor. It has left one-fourth of American children living in poverty. It has created a country with untold wealth that won't pay for decent public schools or decent public health care. It has privatized education to the point that poor school districts are forced to subsidize religious and other private schools while trying to maintain a decent quality of education in public schools for the not-wealthy children that remain in them. It has allowed Big Banks and Big Insurance companies to reap "rentier" profits from municipal necessities and personal health care needs, all in the name of claiming to support personal freedom. It is behind the GOP-driven refusal to support Detroit in Michigan where businesses and the wealthy get huge tax breaks, but the city on which the state depends for its future is treated as a misbehaving child, with its (mostly black) residents punished for the city's exploitation by Big Banks and by corrupt leaders. This right-wing behemoth continues --with the aid of the so-called "centrist" Democrats--to paint Social Security and Medicare as too-generous "entitlements" whose benefits need to be pushed back to avoid the need to increase taxes to support them. This corporatist class warfare, in other words, is remaking the US economy into a have and have-not society that privileges the wealthy while peonizing everyone else. The push to defund the IRS is a useful piece of the class warfare battle gear for the right--by handicapping tax revenue collection and tax law enforcement, the right facilitates the wealthy elite and the multinational corporations they own and run in ripping off the nation and jeopardizing the lives and fortunes of the middle class and especially the working poor.
There is one bright spot in this budget debate--those Senate Democrats who are proposing an increase of about $26 million in IRS funding, in recognition of the great disadvantage in which the agency, with so many diverse tasks, is put by underfunding compared to the sophisticated taxpayers who are willing to aggressively push the boundaries of tax evasion. See several links, below.
Obama's budget isn't even released yet and he's already caving to the "let's make the rich richer and forget the rest" crowd. That crowd that claims that we need a capital gains preference so the rich can gather all that extra money to purportedly create jobs. The crowd, that is, that fails to acknowledge that the rich tend to take all that extra money to Singapore, the Bahamas, or the Cayman Islands or hide it away in some Swiss bank, none of which does any good for our economy compared to what the government investing that money in infrastructure projects would do. See, e.g., David Leigh, Leaks reveal secrets of the rich who hide cash offshore, The Guardian (Apr. 3, 2013); The corporatist crowd that refuses to admit the empirical evidence that says government investment is as important as private investment in creating jobs. It is the government that makes the market go round. And government money--our money--spent for schools, bridges, safer communities provides jobs and improves lives. Without that government investment, there is no market, just barter.
President Obama seems to have forgotten that he was elected. as a Democrat, over the Republican candidate. Obama has no business proposing cuts to Social Security benefits as part of a purported deficit reduction package. Social Security is not a deficit driver: it is a social insurance program earned by those who receive it by payments over lifetimes of hard work. It is the only stable retirement income most have. The average Social Security beneficiary receives just short of $14,000 a year from Social Security--that's just 125% of the poverty line, which of course is defined so low as to guarantee that anyone living at or below that line is indeed in abject poverty and unable to move out of it.
The Republican Party has argued for cuts to Social Security benefits for decades, using whatever crisis of the momen they can engender to argue that we can't afford the system in place. They've invented the perjorative term "entitlement" to imply that those who rely on social insurance because of disabilities or old age are just 'freeloaders' who are mooching off others. Not so, since Social Security is an earned benefit program like insurance: workers pay premiums throughout their working life, and then once they reach retirement age they may draw benefits.
There are a number of reasons for the amount of debt that the US government has--most of them related to the four-decade-long drive by the Republican Party to protect the wealthy and the corporations they own from much of a tax burden and to allow the accumulation of immense wealth by a few at the top of the income distribution. Outsize military expenditures driven by Bush's preemptive wars undertaken at the same time that the Bush Administration pushed through tax cuts that favored the rich are of course a big problem. The Bush tax cuts threw us from surplus to deficit and we haven't gotten beyond them yet. The almost complete capture of the financial regulatory agencies by Wall Street, and the resulting financial crisis driven by casino capitalism spiked with the heady bubbles of derivative inflation is of course another part of the problem, and we haven't gotten beyond that yet, as Big Banks still exercise far too much power over their own regulation, proven by the LIBOR scandal that demonstrated their ability to manipulate the purportedly objective market rate to suit their profit machines.
But Social Security is not one of those drivers of the debt. And the debt is not so outsize that it merits sacrificing the most vulnerable amongst us to mollify the wealthy who merely want to avoid paying their fair share of the revenues needed to get rail service up to snuff, bridges safe, and public schools owned by the public again.
The average Social Security benefit is just under $14,000: the use of chained CPI will result in a loss to the average recipient of "$4,631 in Social Security benefits by age 75, $13,910 by age 85; and $28,004 by age 95" (from release by Social Security Works, based on “Inflation Indexation in Major Federal Benefit Programs: Impact of the Chained CPI,” Alison Shelton, AARP Public Policy Institute, March 2013.).
Obama has no business facilitating the gluttony of the rich. He should drop the proposal to use “chained CPI” that will result in a cut benefits for Social Security recipients.
Obama seemed to get a spine for a brief time around the State of the Union address. But he just can't seem to maintain a strong progressive position--too easily swayed by the Wall Street bunch that run his Treasury or just not understanding what is required to keep his base voting for him. If he treats Social Security--which doesn't have anything to do with the deficit--as one of the cards he can "trade" to the right-wing Republican crowd for some kind of a "grand deal" (of undefined necessity), he will destroy the gains of Roosevelt's New Deal for petty concessions from the entrenched GOP that intends to dismantle the New Deal.
Obama has been threatening to include chained CPI as one of his own budget recommendations. This is foolhardy. For those who depend on Social Security, which they have paid into all their working lives, reducing benefits--which is what moving to chained CPI does--is nothing short of betrayal.
Robert Reich is urging people to sign onto a MoveOn petition to Obama to make clear that we understand the importance of holding firm against the radical right's attempt to dismantle the New Deal. I've reproduced the letter and link, below.
From: Robert Reich Date: Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:10 AM Subject: Mr. President, don't hurt seniors with your Chained CPI
Social Security is not driving the deficit, therefore it should not be part of reforms aimed at cutting the deficit. The chained CPI, deceptively portrayed as a reasonable cost of living adjustment, is a cut to Social Security benefits that would hurt seniors.
There are several sensible reforms to Social Security that should be considered to help make it sustainable, including lifting the ceiling on income subject to Social Security from $113,700 to $200,000 or more, as well as instituting a 1% raise in the payroll tax rate, a rate that hasn't changed in over 20 years.
Both of these reforms would go a long way toward protecting the long-term health of Social Security, but neither should not be conflated with efforts to reduce the federal budget deficit.
President Obama needs to stand by his Democratic principles and fight to protect Social Security benefits.
That's why I created a petition on SignOn.org to President Barack Obama, which says:
Mr. President, the chained CPI is a cut to Social Security benefits that would hurt seniors—it's an idea not befitting a Democratic president. If you want to reform Social Security, make the wealthy pay their fair share by lifting the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes.
This petition was created on SignOn.org, the progressive, nonprofit petition site. SignOn.org is sponsored by MoveOn Civic Action, which is not responsible for the contents of this or other petitions posted on the site. Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor didn't pay us to send this email—we never rent or sell the MoveOn.org list.
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