GOP
Inside the Mind of the G.O.P. | J.D. Hayworth Blames Soros and Schumer For Financial Meltdown
bailout, Banking, Chris Matthews, Chuck Schumer, Financial Meltdown, George Soros, GOP, Politics, Right-Wing Talking Points, Stimulus Package, Those Wacky RepublicansJudd Gregg Withdraws as Commerce Secretary Nominee
Barack Obama, GOP, Judd Gregg, Obama Cabinet
By Jeff Zeleny
THE CAUCUS BLOG – NEW YORK TIMES
President Obama’s choice for Commerce Secretary, Senator Judd Gregg, withdrew his nomination on Thursday. He said there were “irresolvable conflicts” between him and the administration.
“It has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census, there are irresolvable conflicts for me,” Mr. Gregg said in a statement. “Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns. We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy.”
The withdrawal comes one week after Mr. Gregg was named to become the third Republican member of the Obama Cabinet. It is the second time that the Commerce Secretary position has been vacant within the last month.
Mr. Gregg, a Republican of New Hampshire, had not resigned his seat in the Senate. He has been away from the Senate floor this week, presumably preparing for his confirmation, and did not vote on the administration’s economic stimulus plan.
In announcing his selection as Commerce Secretary last Tuesday, Mr. Gregg stood at Mr. Obama’s side during a brief White House ceremony. The president touted his nominee as a fiscal conservative who could help “shore up our financial system and revitalize our economy.”
The president selected Mr. Gregg exactly two months after he nominated his first choice for commerce secretary, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico. He withdrew his name from consideration because of a federal investigation into state contracts, the first of several controversies surrounding the president’s top nominees.
In announcing his withdrawal, Mr. Gregg released a statement through his Senate office. It was not announced by the White House, though aides said the president had been informed of Mr. Gregg’s decision.
“Obviously the President requires a team that is fully supportive of all his initiatives,” Mr. Gregg said in a statement. “I greatly admire President Obama and know our country will benefit from his leadership, but at this time I must withdraw my name from consideration for this position.”
He added, “As a further matter of clarification, nothing about the vetting process played any role in this decision. I will continue to represent the people of New Hampshire in the United States Senate.”
It was another blow for the White House, which has seen three Cabinet nominees withdraw from consideration. Tom Daschle pulled his name from consideration to lead the Health and Human Services Department amid questions about his tax returns.
Stimulus: How to Know If It's Working
Barack Obama, D.C. Groupthink, Economic Stimulus, GOP, Jobs, Media Misinformation, PoliticsFebruary 11, 2009
Consumer confidence and job creation may be slow to emerge and hard to measure, but boosts in umemployment benefits and food stamps will be fast acting
By Moira Herbst
At his first prime-time press conference, President Obama was asked a central question about the $800 billion-plus economic stimulus package: How will Americans know if it’s working? “My initial measure of success is creating or saving 4 million jobs,” Obama answered.
That was on Feb. 9, a day before the Senate passed an $838 billion version of the bill by a vote of 61-37, following the Jan. 28 passage of an $819 billion version in the House. The House and Senate have begun negotiations to reconcile the measures, which Obama would like to sign into law by Feb. 16, the federal Presidents’ Day holiday. When people have a job, Obama explained, they purchase and invest, allowing companies to do the same and, in turn, to hire more workers as business expands.
Indicators of Success
Yet while job creation is arguably the most important goal of the stimulus package, other parts of the bill will have a much more immediate and visible impact. Food stamp increases and extensions of unemployment benefits will be among the first noticeable effects of the package. Tax credit payments for individuals and families would follow, along with other tax breaks and incentives. Rising consumer confidence and lower unemployment will be far more gradual, and aren’t likely to surface until late 2009 at the earliest.
There’s an understanding among many economists that the sooner a government intervenes in an economic crisis, the more effective it tends to be in getting the economy back on track. That doesn’t mean that precise measurement of success is easy, however. “The problem is, we don’t know what trajectory the economy would take without the stimulus package,” says J. Bradford DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley. “We can’t enter a Star Trek-like divided universe in which we compare what’s happening with the stimulus versus without it. It’s hard to precisely judge its impact.”
DeLong says that looking at interest rates will provide a clearer idea of whether the stimulus plan is working. “If interest rates stay extremely low, the plan is definitely working,” he says. “If Treasury interest rates do start to rise by more than normal levels, then we worry that [the spending] is crowding out private economic activity and discouraging investment.” Specifically, he says that if medium- to long-term Treasury bond interest rates climb two or three percentage points higher in the next year and inflation sets in, the stimulus package is not having its intended effect.
Swift Help for the Neediest
Of course, how one benefits from the stimulus package depends on several factors, including income, professional skills, and where you live. “What you’ll see [in benefit] and when you see it depends on who you are,” says Steve Ellis, vice-president at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a taxpayer advocacy group. “If you are living hand-to-mouth, you should have greater access to food stamps and other assistance right away. If you’re employed and not doing as well but hanging on, you won’t see much change unless a [federally funded] construction project starts up nearby. For them, the government hand will be less visible and less direct.”
Direct assistance for the poor and unemployed, considered as among the most effective stimulus measures, will be the first to take effect. Both the House and Senate bills offer an additional $20.2 billion to extend emergency unemployment benefits for more than 3 million people whose state benefits are set to run out after March. They also offer an extra $25 a week in jobless benefits to millions of workers through the end of the year; the current average weekly benefit is $293.
The packages also would give $7 billion to states that adopt reforms that make it easier for part-time workers, low-wage earners, and women to qualify for benefits. The proposals vary in the amounts by which they would increase food stamp benefits and additional medical assistance for low-income, unemployed workers under Medicaid, but both include spending for these items. An additional $17 billion in the stimulus bills would boost the maximum Pell Grant for higher education by $400 per applicant and provide other financial aid. Along with extended benefits, the unemployed may start to see shorter lines at the unemployment office. Both stimulus bills give states $500 million to help process unemployment applications, which have been overwhelming state systems across the country.
Tax Credits and State Aid
Working and middle-income Americans will benefit from the $82.1 billion in tax credit payments the plans offer. The House plan would give individuals earning up to $75,000 a year a tax credit of $500 and couples earning up to $150,000 a year a tax credit of $1,000. (The Senate bill lowers the income cap to $70,000 for individuals and $140,000 for couples, which critics say would reduce the stimulus effect.) Taxpayers can receive this credit either by claiming a credit on their 2009 and 2010 tax returns or by reducing their withholding from their paychecks. Other tax incentives to encourage auto and home purchases, included in the Senate bill, would be experienced by consumers at the time of purchase.
Later this year, the effects of other spending will become more visible. The bills offer states tens of billions in “state stabilization” money, to fund grants for education and to patch holes that have emerged in many state budgets. (The House bill sets aside $79 billion in state stabilization funds, the Senate bill cuts that to $39 billion.) Another $3 billion is earmarked for state and local law enforcement.
In the meantime, the stimulus plans are expected to create or save jobs in various sectors of the economy. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the House version of the bill would create between 1.3 million and 3.9 million jobs by the end of 2010. While police officers and teachers might feel the effect immediately, other workers would find jobs later this year on such projects as modernizing electrical grids, building highways, and weatherizing federal buildings.
Metrics May Prove Elusive
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys.com (MCO), says that if the package works according to Washington’s plan, unemployment insurance claims should start to drop in the summer and continue through the fall. He warns, however, that the unemployment rate will be slower to fall because layoffs will offset some of the gains. Some economists say that even as the unemployment rate does begin to fall, it will be hard to measure what would have happened without the economic stimulus plan.
The stimulus is likely to provoke heated “Did it work?” debates for years to come among politicians, economists, and the public. “We are throwing a rock into our nation’s economic pond, and the ripple effects will spread throughout the economy,” says Ellis of the taxpayer group. Still, he says the impact might be more muted than many would hope: the annual U.S. gross domestic product is $13 trillion, while the stimulus package is about $900 billion over several years. Says Ellis: “It’s a big rock, but it’s a very big pond.”
Herbst is a reporter for BusinessWeek in New York.
Paul Krugman: "On the Edge"
Barack Obama, D.C., Economy, Federal Reserve, Finance, GOP, Larry Summers, Media, Paul Krugman, Politics, Republicans, Stimulus Bill, Tim GeithnerOp-Ed Columnist
A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.
It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.
Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.
It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.
Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now. Developers of commercial real estate, watching rents fall and financing costs soar, are slashing their investment plans. Businesses are canceling plans to expand capacity, since they aren’t selling enough to use the capacity they have. And exports, which were one of the U.S. economy’s few areas of strength over the past couple of years, are now plunging as the financial crisis hits our trading partners.
Meanwhile, our main line of defense against recessions — the Federal Reserve’s usual ability to support the economy by cutting interest rates — has already been overrun. The Fed has cut the rates it controls basically to zero, yet the economy is still in free fall.
It’s no wonder, then, that most economic forecasts warn that in the absence of government action we’re headed for a deep, prolonged slump. Some private analysts predict double-digit unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office is slightly more sanguine, but its director, nonetheless, recently warned that “absent a change in fiscal policy … the shortfall in the nation’s output relative to potential levels will be the largest — in duration and depth — since the Depression of the 1930s.”
Worst of all is the possibility that the economy will, as it did in the ’30s, end up stuck in a prolonged deflationary trap.
We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken.
As the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, deflation, once started, tends to feed on itself. As dollar incomes fall in the face of a depressed economy, the burden of debt becomes harder to bear, while the expectation of further price declines discourages investment spending. These effects of deflation depress the economy further, which leads to more deflation, and so on.
And deflationary traps can go on for a long time. Japan experienced a “lost decade” of deflation and stagnation in the 1990s — and the only thing that let Japan escape from its trap was a global boom that boosted the nation’s exports. Who will rescue America from a similar trap now that the whole world is slumping at the same time?
Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.
So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.
It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.
Numerous Myths and Falsehoods Advanced by the Media in Their Coverage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Banking, Beltway Groupthink, D.C., Finance, GOP, Infrastructure, Jobs, Media, Media Matters, Politics, Propaganda, Republicans, Stimulus Bill
Media Matters for America previously identified numerous myths and falsehoods advanced by the media in their coverage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. As debate on the bill continues in Congress, other myths and falsehoods advanced by the media about the recovery package have risen to prominence. These myths and falsehoods include: the assertion that the bill will not stimulate the economy — including the false assertion that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the bill will not stimulate the economy; that spending in the bill is not stimulus; that there is no reason for stimulus after an economic turnaround begins; that corporate tax rate cuts and capital gains tax rate cuts would provide substantial stimulus; and that undocumented immigrants without Social Security numbers could receive the “Making Work Pay” tax credit provided in the bill.
1. The bill will not stimulate the economy
In a February 1 article, The Associated Press reported an assertion by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that the recovery bill will not stimulate the economy without noting that the CBO disagrees. ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson echoed this assertion during his February 3 interview with President Obama, stating: “And as you know, there’s a lot of people in the public, a lot of members of Congress who think this is pork-stuffed and that it really doesn’t stimulate.” Additionally, on the January 28 edition of his show, nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh allowed Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) to falsely claim of the bill: “Even the Congressional Budget Office, controlled by the Democrats now, says it is not a stimulative bill.” Fox News host Sean Hannity repeated this claim on the February 2 broadcast of Fox News’ Hannity, asserting that the CBO “say[s] it’s not a stimulus bill.”
In fact, in analyzing the House version of the bill, H.R. 1, and the proposed Senate version, the CBO stated that it expects both measures to “have a noticeable impact on economic growth and employment in the next few years.” Additionally, in his January 27 written testimony before the House Budget Committee, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf said that H.R. 1 would “provide massive fiscal stimulus that includes a combination of government spending increases and revenue reductions.” Elmendorf further stated: “In CBO’s judgment, H.R. 1 would provide a substantial boost to economic activity over the next several years relative to what would occur without any legislation.”
2. Government spending in the bill is not stimulus
Several media figures, including CNN correspondent Carol Costello, CBS Evening News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, and ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson, have all uncritically reported or aired the Republican claim that, in Gibson’s words, “it’s a spending bill and not a stimulus,” without noting that economists have said that government spending is stimulus. Indeed, in his January 27 testimony, Elmendorf explicitly refuted the suggestion that some of the spending provisions in the bill would not have a stimulative effect, stating: “[I]n our estimation — and I think the estimation of most economists — all of the increase in government spending and all of the reduction in tax revenue provides some stimulative effect. People are put to work, receive income, spend that on something else. That puts somebody else to work.” Additionally, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has said, “[S]pending is stimulus. Any spending will generate jobs. It is that simple.”
3. There is no reason for stimulus after a turnaround begins
McCain Not So Much in Support of Palin For 2012
GOP, John McCain, Politics, Sarah Palin
(CNN) — Sen. John McCain said Sunday he would not necessarily support his former running mate if she chose to run for president.
Speaking to ABC’s “This Week,” McCain was asked whether Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin could count on his support.
“I can’t say something like that. We’ve got some great other young governors. I think you’re going to see the governors assume a greater leadership role in our Republican Party,” he said.
He then mentioned governors Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Jon Huntsman of Utah.
McCain said he has “the greatest appreciation for Gov. Palin and her family, and it was a great joy to know them.”
“She invigorated our campaign” against Barack Obama for the presidency, he said.
McCain was pressed on why he can’t promise support for the woman who, just months ago, he named as the second best person to lead the nation.
“Have no doubt of my admiration and respect for her and my view of her viability, but at this stage, again … my corpse is still warm, you know?” he replied.
In his first Sunday political TV appearance since November 4, McCain also promised to work to build consensus in tackling America’s challenges, and criticized his own party for its latest attack on Obama.
McCain rejected complaints from the Republican National Committee that Obama has not been transparent about his contacts with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
“I think that the Obama campaign should and will give all information necessary,” McCain told ABC’s “This Week.”
“You know, in all due respect to the Republican National Committee and anybody — right now, I think we should try to be working constructively together, not only on an issue such as this, but on the economy, stimulus package, reforms that are necessary.”
McCain‘s answer came in response to a question about comments from RNC Chairman Mike Duncan. The RNC also released an Internet ad last week, titled “Questions Remain,” suggesting Obama is failing to provide important information about potential links between his associates and Blagojevich.
Blagojevich was arrested Tuesday and charged with trying to trade Obama’s Senate seat for campaign contributions and other favors.
“I don’t know all the details of the relationship between President-elect Obama’s campaign or his people and the governor of Illinois,” McCain told ABC. “But I have some confidence that all the information will come out. It always does, it seems to me.”
McCain said he, like Obama and many other lawmakers, believes Blagojevich should resign.
Despite the heated nature of the race and attacks both former candidates lobbed at each other, McCain emphasized that he plans to focus on pushing lawmakers past partisan politics.
“I think my job is, of course, to be a part of, and hopefully exert some leadership, in the loyal opposition. But I emphasize the word loyal,” McCain said.
“We haven’t seen economic times like this in my lifetime. We haven’t seen challenges abroad at the level that we are experiencing, certainly since the end of the Cold War, and you could argue in some respects that they’re certainly more complex, many of these challenges. So let’s have our first priority where we can work together…
“Will there be areas of disagreement? Of course. We are different parties and different philosophy. But the nation wants us to unite and work together.”
McCain said he wouldn’t comment on whether he thought he had a good chance of winning the presidency, given the Bush administration and the GOP were perceived to be responsible for the economy’s problems. McCain said he would “leave that question” for others “to make that kind of judgment.”
He pointed out that his poll numbers dropped along with the Dow.
“That would sound like I am detracting from President-elect Obama’s campaign. I don’t want to do that… Nobody likes a sore loser.”
The key to moving past the stinging defeat, he said, is to, “Get busy and move on. That’s the best cure for it. I spent a period of time feeling sorry for myself. It’s wonderful. It’s one of the most enjoyable experiences that you can have.
“But the point is: You’ve got to move on… I’m still a senator from the state of Arizona. I still have the privilege and honor of serving this country, which I’ve done all my life, and it’s a great honor to do so.”
The Fake "Congressional Budget Office Report" Now Fully Assimilated Into Boner Village
Boner, CBO, Congressional Budget Office, GOP, John Boehner, Partisan Politics Prevail, Republicans, The VillageSuch a Boehner
Of course it doesn’t matter that the report simply didn’t say what George Stephanopoulos, David Brooks and the rest of the Villagers Said it did.
The figure they cited wasn’t just out of context and just plain old misleading- it was wrong.
In fact, as the initial AP report noted, the CBO analysis did not take into account all aspects of the recovery plan — while it found that “only $26 billion out of $274 billion in infrastructure spending would be delivered into the economy by the Sept. 30 end of the budget year,” it did not “cover tax cuts or efforts by Democrats to provide relief to cash-strapped state governments to help with their Medicaid bills,” among other provisions. Nonetheless, in echoing aspects of the AP’s original report about the CBO analysis, numerous media figures and outlets left out the fact, reported by the AP, that CBO analyzed only part of the bill.
As the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim reported in a January 23 article: “[T]he nonpartisan CBO ran a small portion of an earlier version of the stimulus plan through a computer program that uses a standard formula to determine a score — how quickly money will be spent. The score only dealt with the part of the stimulus headed for the Appropriations Committee and left out the parts bound for the Ways and Means or Energy and Commerce Committee.” The article continued: “Because it dealt with just a part of the stimulus, it estimated the spending rate for only about $300 billion of the $825 billion plan. Significant changes have been made to the part of the bill the CBO looked at.”
And it looks like Good Ol’ Ed Henry has taken one for the team in his first Official Reacharound for The Village:
Media Matters:
On the January 23 edition of CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, White House correspondent Ed Henry referred to a “study” from the Congressional Budget Office that Henry claimed “showed” that Obama’s economic stimulus package “may not really stimulate the economy.” Henry later asserted that the study “was suggesting that a lot of the spending proposals in the original plan would not really take effect for a couple of years, so it wouldn’t clearly help create jobs in the first two years of the president’s administration.”
David Brock and the writers and researchers at Media Matters For America have all the details
Election 2008's Best Douchebag Moment | That Baldwin Brother Challenges Obama To A Fight
Barack Obama, Douche-Chills, Election 2008, GOP, Joe Biden, John McCain, Neocon, Republicans, Sarah Palin
Stephen Baldwin, who has threatened to move to Canada if Barack Obama is elected, has now challenged the candidate to box for charity. “I’d like to knock some good sense into Barack,” Alec’s right-wing bro said at the Printing House Gym in the Village. “I wouldn’t hurt him. But if he wins the election, he’ll hurt me. He’s a cultural terrorist.” This from the man who enriched us all with “Sex Monster” and “Snakeman.”
Mr. Rove's Wild Ride
Ari Fleisher, Atta, Bababooey, Baghdad, Balackwater USA, Barack Obama, Bechtel, Bill Kristol, Broadcatching, Bush Doctrine, Carlyle Group, Charles Krauthammer, Contractors, Dan Senor, Dick Cheney, Douglas Feith, Elliot Abrams, George W. Bush, George Will, GOP, Haditha, Halliburton, Iran, Iraq, Irving Kristol, Joe Biden, John McCain, John Tully, Joseph Wilson, Karl Rove, Kellog Brown and Root, Patraeus, Paul Bremer, Paul Wolfowitz, PNAC, Ramadi, Republican, Richard Perle, Rove+Poerpoint, Sarah Palin, Scott McCllelan, Security Council, Sen. Robert Byrd, Shinseki, Tom Daschle, Valerie Plame, War On TerrorismBY John Tully
October 8 2002
The Los Angeles Sun—
Politics is not a pretty thing.
Look no further than this week in Washington D. C. Former Vice-president Albert Gore Jr. finally brought up the huge marsupial in the room. Criminy! folks, that’s gonna’ wake the whole herd up mate!
Senate Leader Tom Daschle, who seemed to have stashed his opinions in a lock box this summer finally blew his top on the Senate floor denouncing President Bush’s comment at a recent fundraiser that the “Senate” is more interested in “special interests” than in the Security Of Americans. That very same fundraiser pushed the President past Bill Clinton’s record of $126 million raised in one year and it’s only the last week of September.
Stepping right up to the plate this week was a small group of Senators who have been all too quiet this summer with any dissent of this administration’s dual War On Terrorism and Iraq. In fact the debate on war had bipassed “if” and went straight through to “when” and “who’s with us” by the time Mr. Gore finally cleared his throat Monday in San Francisco. Actual questions were raised about our effectiveness in toppling Saddam and how to proceed post-war in Iraq among others.
Sen. Robert Byrd paced and shook with disdain as he read Bush’s remarks from the newspaper on the senate floor. Sen. Daschle’s voice broke as he defended his colleagues, spoke of members who have served in the military and demanded an apology from the President. He also spoke of not politicizing the nation’s debate. It was a classic case of “too little,too late”
Back in June an internal G.O.P. playbook, authored by White House political strategist Karl Rove got into the hands of the opposition. The Powerpoint presentation suggested Republican candidates play up the “War” to keep the political dialogue on their side of the fence.The relative silence of the Democrats this summer only strengthened the resolve of the true hawks in the administration and a bipartisan resolution for war will almost definitely be passed by both houses. For GOP candidates however, the strategy might not pay off.
A new poll released this week shows that while the majority of Americans are for action against Iraq, three out of five want our allies to sign on. Colin Powell would like to go back to the Security Council soon with a joint resolution from the United States Congress and it looks as if he will have it. Unfortunately for the Republicans, this momentary truce focuses the debate back onto the domestic front where, as usual, it is the Economy…stupid.
Crikey! The bugger just ate his own heed!
Politics is not a pretty creature.
The New York Herald Sun 