Politics As Usual

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Oh, fuck you. You've read enough of my posts over the years to know that I abhor runaway spending.

Then you must be physically ill about the amount of money lining the pockets of Halliburton, et al in Iraq. Is it only runaway spending if it's spent domestically?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Sexual Harassment Panda
Don't know, but I've heard good things about Moldavian women.

Dude. Throw in some WMD and 9/11 connections and we're there.

(did I say 9/11? I meant Al Qaeda in general, without reference to any particular event or set of events)

[SlaveNoMore]

Sidd Finch
Yes, but sometimes you drink a lot and get all silly.

That was funny.

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Interesting, because I'm thinking the reaction would be about the same.

Not sure why, since the numbers of casualties are so disparate, but ask him - I'd really like to know, all witty political reparte aside.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
So within a year of passing the massive medicare drug benefit the GOP will turn around and say, "Actually, we've got to cut this." Yeah, that's politically viable for Congress (who won't be free of the yoke of future electability).

Reform and cutting are not the same thing. Reform = restructure to make more efficient/less costly. And I'm not focused on the drug benefit per se, but rather the system as a whole.

Should we go the way of privatization, the transition to private accounts is going to cost us significantly more money than we currently pay into SS (estimated $2-3 trillion over the next 20 years). This is because the creation of the private accounts for current SS contributors will cut off the revenues which are being used to pay the current retirees (SS being a bit of a Ponzi scheme and all). I haven't crunched the numbers, but I would think there would have to be a significant increase in retirement age to offset that and provide some savings. Like, decades.

Increase retirement age = reduction in budgeted obligations.

This is not an all or nothing proposition, and it is not meant as a short term fix. It would be phased in slowly over time.

So we're left with "cutting pork", something no one has found a way to do much of even with both houses of the Congress and the WH in the same party's control.

Yes. Point being?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
general pork
begining reform of medicare
begining reform of SS (e.g, private accounts, raising minimum age, etc., all under the cover of a Greenspan blessing).

On general pork, you are dreaming. It just isn't there.

On Social Security, Bush doesn't seem to understand that his scheme to privatize it will cost more as you transition because we're paying for current retirees with current payroll deductions. You've got to cover those costs even as you shift away from them for future retirees.

Since Bush doesn't have the leadership required to ask the nation to make hard choices when we're at war, it boggles the mind that he's going to undergo some kind of conversion and grow brass balls once he's re-elected. But there's no point in arguing with you about your religion.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
So we're left with "cutting pork", something no one has found a way to do much of even with both houses of the Congress and the WH in the same party's control.

But, see, the reason it hasn't happened is because Bush is a first-termer. GOP values can't win elections, so they have to count on getting a lame-duck term to enact policies supported by, say, 30% of the populace. Maybe this is why the GOP has traditionally supported term limits --- if you're going out anyway, go out in a blaze of glory. The next candidate from your party will do your apologizing for you.

Slave, Club and Penske have no problem admitting their views can't command a majority. Yet they claim the GOP is the mainstream of American political thought. Go figure. Of course, the cognitive dissonance can be easily resolved by saying that millenial Christianity is at the mainstream of political thought in a sufficient number of swing states, making it possible for a numerical minority to serve its own interests without doing something unprincipled, like relying on the Constitution and the federal courts.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Honest question. Do you not see the argument that the tax cuts were necessary to offset the effects of (a) the recession (which started anywhere from 1/01 to 3/01), (b) 9/11, (c) the collapse of the capital markets due to multiple financial scandles, and (d) 2 wars?

Honest answer: No. Not those tax cuts, anyway. If you wanted to pass tax cuts to goose the economy, you would have picked different cuts. As you yourself have pointed out, the biggest effects of many of the cuts have not even been felt yet. In other words, Bush took advantage of the situation as political cover to pass the same tax plan he was proposing when times were good. He gambled that things would improve anyway in time for his re-election bid. So far the gamble hasn't really paid off, since the economy, and in particular the job market, is so far behind where it was.

Brad DeLong has blogged about this any number of times. Here's a representative post of his from May, 2003, quoting The Economist:

Bemused
One of the strangest things about the George W. Bush administration is its refusal to propose a stimulus package that would actually stimulate the economy. Nobody believes that this is an administration that would decide that it is more important to pursue economic policies that are good for the country as opposed to those that generate good employment news in the summer and fall of 2004. And here what is good for the country--short-term fiscal stimulus--and what is good for President George W. Bush's reelection chances are perfectly aligned.

So why the continued focus on policies that all serious analysts agree have little effect on employment in the short term? It's a total mystery. It's as if the economists have been unable to persuade anybody else in the White House that economic policies, like, affect, you know, the economy.

Here the Economist piles on, telling its readers that Bush's claims that his program will boost the recovery are simply not credible.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Economist.com: Another Bush, Another Jobless Recovery: ...The White House claims that if Congress passes tax cuts worth at least $550 billion over ten years, it would create 1m new jobs by the end of next year. A long-awaited study by the administration's number-crunchers is rumoured to show that one-third of these new jobs would come from eliminating dividend taxation, while many of the rest would come from accelerating cuts in marginal income-tax rates...
  
  Sadly, Mr Bush's claims are not convincing. The notion that a tax plan's ten-year price-tag provides any measure of its efficacy as a short-term stimulus is absurd. The central component of Mr Bush's tax plan?the elimination of dividend taxation?would improve the tax code and, probably, long-term growth, but it would do little to boost the economy now. Mr Bush's people say that ending dividend taxation would raise share prices, which in turn would boost spending. Most economists reply that the boost to share prices would be fairly undramatic (a 5-15% jump is the consensus guess); and any effect on spending would be small and gradual.
  
  For all his hustling, Mr Bush's original plan is being heavily modified in Congress. Both the House and Senate are in the process of passing different tax-cut bills.
  
  On May 6th, the House Ways and Means Committee passed a $550 billion tax package, whose central provision was to cut taxes on both dividends and capital gains to 15%. As The Economist went to press, Charles Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, seemed to have won support from his fellow Republicans for a bill including $430 billion of tax-cuts over the next decade. His bill would exempt the first $500 of dividend income from taxation (which would mean most investors paid nothing). There would then be a sliding scale of cuts for richer investors who pay most of the tax. Altogether, it would cut dividend taxes by only a fifth?which would annoy Mr Bush. Conservatives are also unlikely to be happy with a $20 billion bail-out for the states.
  
  That last provision could win Democrat support. Money for the states is part of Senator Tom Daschle's $152 billion package?alongside tax credits for families and businesses and an extension and expansion of temporary federal unemployment insurance (which the White House is prepared to let expire at the end of May).
  
  In the end, the Republican Congress looks likely to force through a stimulus package that is largely based around tax cuts. Some of these measures may be sensible long-term reforms, and returning money to taxpayers is seldom unpopular. But the stimulus will not create many jobs now, whatever Mr Bush says...

[the Spartan]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
On general pork, you are dreaming.

Who is Gen. Pork, Sgt. Club's commanding officer?

Uh, on second thought, don't ask, don't tell.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Go back and read my sentence. I said "surplus".

The non-sustainable amount of revenues caused by the bubble were used to calculate this non-existent projected "surplus" that Bush is always accused of squandering away. Losing nothing is still nothing.

We deficit hawks would be giddy if we'd simply lost the surplus, instead of having this massive structural deficit.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Increase retirement age = reduction in budgeted obligations.

FWIW, I have no problem with increasing the retirement age for SS purposes -- people live longer now than they did in the 1930s. But until our generation votes as much as the oldsters, it's not going to happen.

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Reform and cutting are not the same thing. Reform = restructure to make more efficient/less costly. And I'm not focused on the drug benefit per se, but rather the system as a whole.

I hear ya. I just haven't seen much about how the system can be overhauled to do things more cheaply, at the same time as we are facing a general spiral in health care costs. That's what I meant by faith-based: you believe, but don't explain.

Increase retirement age = reduction in budgeted obligations.

This is not an all or nothing proposition, and it is not meant as a short term fix. It would be phased in slowly over time.

The startup costs for private accounts will be there no matter how long we phase it in. They are only going to increase once the baby boomers start retiring in droves. Combining that with your mathematical equation up there, it means that the retirement age increase is going to have to be llllarrrrge.

If I had more googling ability I'd link here to the clip of the old folks assaulting Rostenkowski's car as a better visual aid for how that would go over, term limits or no.

Yes. Point being?

See above for explanation of "faith-based."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Honest answer: No. Not those tax cuts, anyway.

Here's a shorter summary from DeLong, from a post about ten days ago:

• George W. Bush, after 9/11, had a chance to take out insurance against a poorly-performing labor market--had a chance to set a significant employment-creating fiscal stimulus program in motion. Yet he decided not to do so: decided to say that he was proposing a "jobs program" while what he decided to do was another round of tax cuts for the rich--a round that had extraordinarily little in the employment-bang-per-deficit-buck department. This isn't hair splitting: this is the essence. Bush bet that the labor market would recover on its own, and no one would notice that his deficit-boosting "jobs program" was weak tea in the context of the large shortfall in employment growth. He was wrong: we lost.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Here's a shorter summary from DeLong, from a post about ten days ago:

• George W. Bush, after 9/11, had a chance to take out insurance against a poorly-performing labor market--had a chance to set a significant employment-creating fiscal stimulus program in motion. Yet he decided not to do so: decided to say that he was proposing a "jobs program" while what he decided to do was another round of tax cuts for the rich--a round that had extraordinarily little in the employment-bang-per-deficit-buck department. This isn't hair splitting: this is the essence. Bush bet that the labor market would recover on its own, and no one would notice that his deficit-boosting "jobs program" was weak tea in the context of the large shortfall in employment growth. He was wrong: we lost.

but tax cuts taste good. mmmmm tax cuts......

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by dtb
Uh.... ponies don't ever become horses.

Bully for us. We'll grow our way out of the deficit!