Bruce Bartlett, one of the original supply-siders, helps the tea-bagging, town-halling masses see the truth.
• Between the fourth quarter of 1992 and the fourth quarter of 2000, real GDP grew 34.7 percent. Between the fourth quarter of 2000 and the fourth quarter of 2008, it grew 15.9 percent, less than half as much.
• Between the fourth quarter of 1992 and the fourth quarter of 2000, real gross private domestic investment almost doubled. By the fourth quarter of 2008, real investment was 6.5 percent lower than it was when Bush was elected.
• Between December 1992 and December 2000, payroll employment increased by more than 23 million jobs, an increase of 21.1 percent. Between December 2000 and December 2008, it rose by a little more than 2.5 million, an increase of 1.9 percent. In short, about 10 percent as many jobs were created on Bush’s watch as were created on Clinton’s.
• During the Bush years, conservative economists often dismissed the dismal performance of the economy by pointing to a rising stock market. But the stock market was lackluster during the Bush years, especially compared to the previous eight. Between December 1992 and December 2000, the S&P 500 Index more than doubled. Between December 2000 and December 2008, it fell 34 percent. People would have been better off putting all their investments into cash under a mattress the day Bush took office.
• Finally, conservatives have an absurdly unjustified view that Republicans have a better record on federal finances. It is well-known that Clinton left office with a budget surplus and Bush left with the largest deficit in history. Less well-known is Clinton’s cutting of spending on his watch, reducing federal outlays from 22.1 percent of GDP to 18.4 percent of GDP. Bush, by contrast, increased spending to 20.9 percent of GDP. Clinton abolished a federal entitlement program, Welfare, for the first time in American history, while Bush established a new one for prescription drugs.
Conservatives delude themselves that the Bush tax cuts worked and that the best medicine for America’s economic woes is more tax cuts; at a minimum, any tax increase would be economic poison. They forget that Ronald Reagan worked hard to pass one of the largest tax increases in American history in September 1982, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, even though the nation was still in a recession that didn’t end until November of that year. Indeed, one could easily argue that the enactment of that legislation was a critical prerequisite to recovery because it led to a decline in interest rates. The same could be said of Clinton’s 1993 tax increase, which many conservatives predicted would cause a recession but led to one of the biggest economic booms in history.
In my opinion, conservative activists, who seem to believe that the louder they shout the more correct their beliefs must be, are less angry about Obama’s policies than they are about having lost the White House in 2008. They are primarily Republican Party hacks trying to overturn the election results, not representatives of a true grassroots revolt against liberal policies. If that were the case they would have been out demonstrating against the Medicare drug benefit, the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, and all the pork-barrel spending that Bush refused to veto.
The misinformation and ignorance of Sarah Palin’s recent Facebook posting speaks for itself:
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
By comparison, Andrew Sullivan offers some advice to fellow Conservatives about health care reform:
Real conservatives should point out that the current proposals are not tough enough on costs – and criticize Obama for that, not for fantasies like a communist takeover or euthanasia program for special needs kids . . .
I’ve come to accept that the fiscal and economic costs of the current system, however wonderful it has been for a few decades, simply cannot be sustained much longer. I say that not because I have become a socialist, but because the US is on the brink of the kind of bankruptcy it will be very hard to recover from if we do not tackle its source now. Taking measures to avoid fiscal collapse even greater than today’s is a conservative impulse. Letting one sector of the economy destroy the rest of it – and public finances too – is sheer recklessness.
What do you want, GOP? A permanent populist culture-war? Or actual solutions to pressing problems? Let us know when you’ve matured enough to answer that question.
Listening to Obama’s critics hyperventilate over the “cash for clunkers” program, it is clear that they have forgotten about George Bush’s own “cash for guzzlers” program put in place in 2003 under his own fiscal stimulus plan. As part of his 2003 tax cuts, Bush expanded an existing tax loophole that allowed small businesses to write off $25,000 of the cost of a 6,000-pound vehicle (the provision was intended to encourage farmers and construction companies to invest in light trucks). The maximum deduction was expanded to $100,000 and by 2003, 38 passenger SUVs qualified for the write-off.
This had the effect of making some of the largest and most luxurious passenger SUVs fully deductible and worth considerably more than $4,500 per vehicle to the taxpayer – in fact, the tax benefit to a purchaser often was tens of thousands of dollars. Many real estate agents, accountants, lawyers, and doctors were now economically compelled to buy a more expensive (and less fuel-efficient) car than they otherwise would. In short, the program created an economic incentive for America’s small businesses to contribute to our dependence on foreign oil and drive gas prices up. As Jim Walczak pointed out at the time, a business owner wanting to buy a Lincoln Town Car would receive a $7,660 deduction, just one-fourth what he might save by buying a Lincoln Navigator.
And according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, the SUV tax loophole cost the federal government $1 billion for every 100,000 vehicles that businesses buy – that’s $10,000 per vehicle compared to Obama’s $4,500 per vehicle for those scoring at home.
To summarize:
Bush’s tax break (remember: effectively $10,000 per car in cash) went to doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, and independent contractors, etc. – whether the vehicle was a pickup truck carrying lumber or a BMW X5, carrying your accountant. Obama’s cash payment ($4,500 in size) goes to anybody with an old car who raises his or her hand.
Bush’s tax break is a clear economic incentive to buy the largest and least-efficient SUVs, as only they qualify for the deduction. Obama’s cash payment prompts people across all tax brackets to go buy a fuel-efficient car.
The Obama critic will defend the Bush plan on the grounds that a tax break is a more efficient form of stimulus than the redistributive cash payments of the “cash for clunkers” program. But is that a strong argument? Let’s be honest: both programs amount to a fiscal stimulus and contribute to the growing deficit. Each one distorts the prevailing incentives in the free market. And each benefits a targeted group and is inherently redistributive.
But clearly Bush’s plan is more narrowly targeted, and more expensive per vehicle. It’s fair to be skeptical about how much the economy will benefit from Obama’s $4,500 per-car fiscal kick in the shins. But is a $10,000 per-vehicle fiscal kick in the shins – targeted at an even narrower class of taxpayer really any better? By not expanding this loophole, Bush could have reduced his deficits. Or if he insisted on cutting taxes, he could have chosen a more broad-based stimulus (like Obama’s – or preferably even broader than Obama’s). Or maybe one that promoted less dependency on foreign oil.
The lens of history enables us to see that Bush’s program came into practice just as he was converting his inherited budget surpluses into deficits. We also now see that this loophole was in place just as the insurgency in Iraq was having its best days. I wonder how many of our men and women in uniform who were desperate for up-armored vehicles in an oil-rich war zone knew that we couldn’t afford it because we wanted new gas-guzzling Hummers for ourselves at home.
Frank Rich reflects on the “national conversation” about race.
Some whites habituated to a monopoly on the upper reaches of American power just can’t adjust to the reality that Obama, Sotomayor, Oprah Winfrey and countless others are now at the very pinnacle, and that they might sometimes side with each other just as their white counterparts do. Threatened white elites try to mask their own anxieties by patronizingly adopting working-class whites as their pet political surrogates — Joe the Plumber, New Haven firemen, a Cambridge police officer. Call it Village People populism.
Sometimes the most revealing expressions of this resentment emerge in juvenile asides — Bill Kristol (on The Weekly Standard’s blog) ridiculing Gates for writing a flowery travel magazine article about his privileged vacation home of Martha’s Vineyard, or Heather MacDonald (in National Review) mocking Gates as a “limousine liberal” for his supposedly hypocritical admission that he has a “regular car service” and a “regular driver” to fetch him at the airport. Who does Henry Louis Gates Jr. think he is, William F. Buckley Jr.?
Exhausted from this spring’s tea-bagging, and unwilling to use their brain cells to actually provide constructive opposition to the president, right wingers are on to a new topic this summer: president Obama’s citizenship status. The “birthers” movement, complete with some congressional support, is calling into question the fact that Obama was born on American soil back in 1961 – despite overwhelming evidence supporting Obama’s citizenship – a birth certificate, statements from the Republican governor of Hawaii and the Director of Hawaii’s Department of Health testifying to the authenticity of Obama’s birth records, as well as birth announcements in two Honolulu newspapers. At what point does the right simply embarrass itself to death? Jon Stewart takes them on – and makes sure that cable news gets what it deserves as well:
Barack Obama’s running the old “Kenyan prince birth announcement” scam. Here’s how it goes: You want to destroy America from the inside, but you can’t – because you’re a foreigner. So first, you gotta find yourself a good old American who’s willing to reproduce with you. Then, you have that child on foreign soil while simultaneously placing the birth announcement for that child in one of our “fringe states’” local newspapers – your Hawaiis, your Alaskas, your Pennsylvanias – you heard me. And then, you wait until this baby is a middle-aged man. Now the trap is set! You just sit back and let that child go out and win the election for President of the United States. Now here’s where the scam gets tricky: they can’t just win the popular vote. He or she must also have a strategy to win the electoral college vote. That’s what trips up most grifters. But if you pull it off, you and your puppet child can just sit back and destroy the fabric of the country that you both hate so much. It’s almost too easy.
The House chart was a clever tactic. In reality, the existing health care system is no more complex, as demonstrated in a chart by the New Republic .
The speed and repetition of the use of this chart reveals the coordinated anti- health reform agenda of these specific cable programs and their operating mantra: if you say it over and over again, it becomes true . . . at least in the minds of some viewers.
It also underscores the dreadfully low standards for newsworthiness at these outlets. A mocking health reform chart is the domain of Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart and late night comics.
But then again, one would expect NFL widereceiver, Keyshawn Johnson, to peddle his new reality show, Tackling Design, on day time programs like the View and Oprah, not serious, substantive programs like Hannity’s America.
The health care reform debate engenders what attorneys call a “parade of hypotheticals”. If Congress passes x, then y will happen. In a departure from conjecture and hypothesis, I share some empirical evidence from Capital Words, which tracks word frequency in the Congressional Record.
In 1997, my secret crush on Karenna Gore ended. She got married. We’ve never met and she has no idea who I am, but in my own delusional, imaginary world, I was certain I had a shot.
During the 2000 election, as she worked on her father’s campaign, I wondered why the father could not be more like the daughter. When interviewed or speaking on the campaign trail, Karenna was bright, knowledgeable, well-spoken, idealistic, genuine, affable and photogenic. Her father, on the hand, was overly coached, calculated, pedantic, arrogant, and horribly disingenuous, most notably in the primary against Bill Bradley.
According to TPM, Karenna Gore Schiff is considering running for the House of Representatives. Bravo!
P.S. Since 1997, I found an exceedingly bright, articulate, charming, generous and photogenic wife!
Watching Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings this week, still in the lingering jetwash of Sarah Palin’s flameout, I couldn’t help noticing thecontrasting images of Sotomayor and Palin and the crossroads at which the Republican party finds itself. Facing a confirmation process that even her opponents suggest will be relatively easy, Sotomayor was nevertheless extremely impressive this week. Compared with the formulaic sound-bite prattle that passes for debate and discussion on cable news or talk radio, judicial nomination hearings are fun to listen to. The topics can be complex, and the precise and high-minded language employed by questioning Senators and the nominee is refreshing.
Judge Sotomayor’s testimony clearly reflected an extraordinary amount of preparation. As with prior Supreme Court nominees, the testimony required her to discuss a host of decisions from her own career, recalling the facts and relevant laws and precedents that were brought to bear on those decisions. She also confidently discussed or cited cases and decisions from a variety of jurisdictions across 200 years of American history in order to respond to questions. In short, her work ethic practically jumps out of the TV at you.
Sotomayor faced several questions (fair questions, in my view) about her past speeches and writings, as Republican senators sought reassurance that she would apply the law impartially. But as many GOP senators acknowledged prior to the hearings, her professional qualifications are above reproach, and her distinguished career and personal narrative have made her an inspiring figure.
Meanwhile, we have Sarah Palin who, ironically, is the GOP’s most clumsy and transparent foray into the very kinds of identity politics that they fear fromSotomayor. She has been elevated to prominence on the basis of her sex appeal and a specific, politically-crafted, and made-for-TV (if not ready-for-primetime) image. The basis for her support stems solely from her having successfully branded herself as the target of the media and Washington DC chattering classes. And while she sits next to Sotomayor in this week’s headlines, I wonder if Republicans have noticed the irony in the fact that their brightest star’s primary qualification for leadership is her self-ascribed victim status.
This contrast has implications that go beyond these two women and the fact that their opposing career trajectories have intersected this week. Politics is in large part an exercise in cultivating and maintaining an image – for a party, for a candidate, and for a platform. The Republican party needs to understand this: voters (not to mention tomorrow’s voters) have the images of these two women before their eyes this week. One is an intellectually formidable constitutional scholar who has relied on a strong work ethic to rise to the top of her profession. The other continuously plays the victim card and can not name a newspaper that she reads.
The GOP should feel free to oppose Sotomayor’s nomination – or at least accept Sotomayor with certain reservations. But the long-term health of the party will be dependent on their ability to reject the image of Sarah Palin and identify serious, respectable figures who embrace authentic conservative principles.
There’s been an enormous amount of consolidation in the health insurance industry over the last several years. Aetna bought a lot of competitors. It reached 21 million members. And, but what it realized and what investors began to see is that a lot of the businesses that it had bought were not all that profitable. . . . among the things they did was bring Ron Williams in. And Williams, among the first thing he did was order a revamp of the IT system . . . so that the company could determine more about which accounts were not profitable or marginally profitable. So with that new system, he was able, and the other executives to identify the accounts that they wanted to get rid of. And over the course of a very few years, they shed eight million members.
I reject the view by many on the left who demonize Aetna, Cigna and other private insurers. These corporations are rational actors who are doing exactly what they should be doing — maximizing profit. Unfortunately, the sick, the poor and the elderly are not profitable groups to insure at affordable rates. As a result, I share Potter’s conclusion.
That we shouldn’t fear government involvement in our health care system. That there is an appropriate role for government, and it’s been proven in [other] countries . . . You know, we have more people who are uninsured in this country than the entire population of Canada. And that if you include the people who are underinsured, more people than in the United Kingdom. We have huge numbers of people who are also just a lay-off away from joining the ranks of the uninsured, or being purged by their insurance company, and winding up there.
world, I was certain I had a shot.
contrasting images of Sotomayor and Palin and the crossroads at which the Republican party finds itself. Facing a confirmation process that even her opponents suggest will be relatively easy, Sotomayor was nevertheless extremely impressive this week. Compared with the formulaic sound-bite prattle that passes for debate and discussion on cable news or talk radio, judicial nomination hearings are fun to listen to. The topics can be complex, and the precise and high-minded language employed by questioning Senators and the nominee is refreshing.
Sotomayor. She has been elevated to prominence on the basis of her sex appeal and a specific, politically-crafted, and made-for-TV (if not ready-for-primetime) image. The basis for her support stems solely from her having successfully branded herself as the target of the media and Washington DC chattering classes. And while she sits next to Sotomayor in this week’s headlines, I wonder if Republicans have noticed the irony in the fact that their brightest star’s primary qualification for leadership is her self-ascribed victim status.
