Comments on: The crisis of 2011?

By: bartkid

bartkid — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:02:19 +0000

>What surprises me is that no-one has drawn the obvious inference as to what will follow, namely a shutdown of the US government.

Dude, the government has been two-thirds shut down already.
How many cloture votes have there been? The most ever.
How many judicial nominees have holds on them? The most ever.
How many other nominees have holds on them? Just look at the outrage over one recess appointment.
Look at the latest dance with extending unemployment payouts.

The only difference between today and December 2010 is the dozens of subpoenas being served to White House staffers.

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 05:50:08 +0000

JMG @63

Yes. Megablow back. It was so bad that Bush was in for two terms and we had 4+ years of unified Republican rule.

By: Bruce Wilder

Bruce Wilder — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 05:24:22 +0000

A full shutdown?

The Republicans don’t know or care enough about governing, to figure out how. Their philosophy of government is: don’t. And, that satisfies their main constituencies. They are, increasingly, spokesmodel politicians, ambitious for celebrity and pretty, but not much unconcerned about the rest.

Would the Republicans go after the subsidies that balance the mandates of Obamacare? Or, try to throw a monkey wrench into the slow roll-out of new structures, under that rubric? There might be some skillful lobbyists willing to pull the strings for that marionette show.

By: The Fool

The Fool — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 02:35:09 +0000

Hey McGrabass:

You know when you’re not calling people troll, you really don’t have much to say, do you?

By: The Fool

The Fool — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 02:23:08 +0000

Seems highly unlikly to me.

First of all, I don’t think the Republicans, generally speaking, hate Obama as much as they hated Clinton. The Republicans are just generally more extreme now even than in the 90’s, but that is not due to Obama specifically. Of course they have to hate Obama and the more racist ones probably feel it more viscerally, but I think Clinton got much more under their skin than Obama. Clinton drove even the comparatively more sane Republicans wild. I don’t get the feeling that Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin have it out for Obama specifically. Its not personal for them like it was with the 90’s era Repubs and Clinton.

No, a government shutdown, a la Gingrich, is not in the cards. But there would effectively be a government shutdown as very little got passed other than caretaker budgets. They have no desire to shoot themselves in the foot exactly the same way twice.

But rest easy: the current crop of Republicans is crazier than a bunch of loons on a full moon. They will find other ways to embarrass themselves thoroughly.

By: Martin Bento

Martin Bento — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:30:09 +0000

Alex, I think I responded to Jim’s point. There is nothing to stop the Repubs from first securing the extension of Bush tax cuts and then shutting down the government. Given how much Obama loves to make unilateral concessions in return for nothing, not even a rhetorical something (no single payer, OK to offshore drilling, stimulus needs tax cuts), that should be quite doable for them. If they do need to promise something in return, they could always say that’s just a promise, like using the SS fund for SS was just a promise.

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 14:33:40 +0000

Social Security isn’t in much trouble, and the only “reforms” it needs in the long-term are some minor tweaks

Factual, and therefore irrelevant.

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 14:02:02 +0000

I think bad Jim has a key point here – shutdown implies accepting the reversal of tax cuts for the rich. The raison d’etre of the shutters-down is, in fact, tax cuts for the rich.

By: Robert the Red

Robert the Red — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:53:36 +0000

The basic symptoms are that the Republicans are demented and power mad, and the Democrats are cowards. If the Tea Party is seen as propelling the Rs into power, then the dementia will increase, and a crisis is likely—though not necessarily of the forms predicted. Ugh.

By: Lee A. Arnold

Lee A. Arnold — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:41:20 +0000

Another demand they could make is to shrink the long-term budget, which is scheduled to grow to a larger portion of the GDP in several decades from now. But the first problem for them here, is that the CBO just said that the Democrats have brought the long-term budget into rough balance: it grows, but there are no deficits worth mentioning. So then the question is, “Who do you trust? At least the Democrats moved in the correct direction!” The next problem is that Bachmann et al. will be doing it in return for INCREASING the short-term deficit. And many people, particularly their supporters, confuse short-term and long-term: a deficit is a deficit. (I just ran into that last night from an Ivy League lawyer.) Bachmann et al. will be undermining their own simpletonian credibility, as it were. So I’m not sure this will work for them either.

By: Lee A. Arnold

Lee A. Arnold — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:20:57 +0000

That’s an interesting idea. To remain optimistic, I suppose they could try it, but Social Security isn’t in much trouble, and the only “reforms” it needs in the long-term are some minor tweaks that don’t make much of a current issue, and the only “reform” it needs in the short-term is to sunset the Bush Tax Cuts—which is where the “Trust Fund” disappeared to, because Clinton had set-up those coming surpluses and then Bush/Cheney/Greenspan drained them. So I really don’t know how far Bachmann et al. could get with explaining this ploy, beyond the continued sympathies of the 27% that is hardcore wingnut. At some point the Republican leadership might consider jumping ship to become Democrats.

By: Bloix

Bloix — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 22:52:48 +0000

All you need are a handful of safe-seat lunatic right-wingers – Michelle Bachmann, Mike Pence, Dan Burton – to say that they refuse to vote to increase the debt ceiling unless the administration agrees to “reform” Social Security. What will the rest of the Republicans do? Set themselves up to be primaried into oblivion? It doesn’t matter to them whether what they do will hurt them in the general if they’re afraid of the primary.

By: JMG

JMG — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:23:06 +0000

The two mega-actions taken by the GOP Congress in the Clinton years were the shutdown and impeachment. Each had terrible blowback. The Republican party’s ratings during impeachment were horrible, and Bush specifically ran as “different from them” using the code word “compassionate conservative.”
The possibility that the House would provoke a genuine constitutional crisis seems remote to me. The President, of whichever party, would be bound to win it, since after all, he has all the tanks and planes and stuff, and just as important ALWAYS rates higher in public esteem than the Congress.

By: Lee A. Arnold

Lee A. Arnold — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 19:34:22 +0000

Okay, I think I only hit it once!

By: Lee A. Arnold

Lee A. Arnold — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 19:31:52 +0000

b9n10nt @ 59, I think Paygo can start to rid the stench, and in a few generations it can be eliminated. It’s an enormous discussion—and the effort will require constant engagement and tactical change. Lefties are lazy and always want perfection in the beginning, so the real danger is as always and as right now: that the defenders of the safety-net will discombobulate into feckless whining about reified abstractions, or else complain that Obamacare, for example, didn’t give them what they want (not noticing that Obamacare sets up the means to their ends!) Etc.

My own reasoning would go down these avenues:

(1) The welfare state “entrenchment” has a finite purview: it has achieved its intellectual objectives: it isn’t getting any larger in the number of basic applications.

(2) Paygo throws it in everyone’s face and it really can be epochal if we want it to be. Because (as the Republicans know and fear!) under Paygo the “rabble” finally will stick with defending a short list of gov’t spending that includes, in the U.S.: education, Social Security, Medicare, universal coverage, etc. (see number 1), to be funded by progressive taxation. As the teabagger said, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”

(3) Over the long term? Institutional design will get better, more focused, and less costly over time, as well as change according to the advantages of innovations as they come. (In fact, far beyond what is required along these lines, I think medicine is going to cure just about everything, and become as cheap as a laptop computer and then as cheap as chewing gum.)

(4) Consequently, “welfare-state luxury propertarianism” is a long moment in thought, but not a psychological end-state.