GOPCons: Governing by Hostage Taking

The Legislative Path to Keystone XL

What it would look like if we weren't in denial about the US House

The most recent -- and most convenient -- example presenting the point of this posting can be seen in the "poison pill" inclusion of the Canadian pipeline authorization which is added to the House proposal.  By insinuating this otherwise un-associated provision into the legislation as a condition for the extension of the middle class tax cuts and unemployment insurance benefits, we can hardly miss another glaring repetition of similar, past, bad behavior.

We've seen it before.

And, we have not only seen it before, we have seen it quite recently and quite frequently from both the tea bags and the even more grotesque "nova Republicans" who are now imitating their bad example.

["Nova Republicans?"  These would be the latest, opportunistic, hybrid spawn of traditional "old school" GOPCons, a heavily soiled mix of the old corporate "bite and grab" crooks with the more modern,  truly thuggy tea bag ideological gangsters.].

A bill like the one authorizing the pipeline would normally be authored by sympathetic Congressmen with constituent districts which could, presumably, benefit from the project.  Also, some of the "forward defensive tackling" would have been handled well before such a bill took its final shape.

For example, US agency opinions would have been investigated.  The domestic market would have been analyzed.  Price impacts would have been calculated.  Environmental impact difficulties would have been anticipated.  Perhaps, a few of the farmers with fields which would have suffered when the thing plowed its Juggernaut style easement would have been interviewed.

MeanMesa calls such a process a "causal vector swarm."  To visualize such a concept, just imagine a cork with thousands of needles stuck into it.  Each needle is another one of the predictable "multiple constraints" inherent in such an undertaking, that is, each needle amounts to another "ox to be gored." The final conclusion about the workability of such a project would amount to totalling up all the "pro's and con's" to see how many -- and whose -- oxen were still standing.

When one has the ambition to create a gigantic, multi-billion dollar result, it's usually a good idea to have hammered out a "good idea" before one begins spending the money, much less, pissing off voters.

However, when political realism is added to the mix, you have to make sure you have enough needles, that you have examined each one carefully and that you are ready to hand over all the dead oxen to your election opponent.  More and more gaseous, essentially irrelevant tests will be added as you watch in horror, yet, in a Republic like ours, this torturous route remains the map of the journey.

In the end, the final product will be far from the purity of its engineers' original dream, but it will make sense.  This highly modified new design will have successfully merged individual interests with corporate interests in a way which, more or less, satisfies both parties.  Lyndon Johnson famously said that if a bill passed with more than one vote, too much had been negotiated away during the process.

The Nature of GOPCon Hostage Taking

The American people have spoken. The legislation has wide popular support. (image source)

The Keystone XL pipeline project is only the latest "burning question of the day" so far as hostage taking examples go.  Let's look at a conveniently short list of other recent examples.

A well-informed MeanMesa visitor might, at this point, simply sigh and lament "So, what's new?"  However, let's try to glimpse the "big picture" of what's actually going on here.

Normal governance would suggest that each of these expenditures would be debated, run through the process of Congressional "ox goring" and, finally, either fail or be passed.  Part of each plan adopted would be figuring out a way to pay for the expenditure without further increases to the national debt.

Americans understand that we have to pay for things we need or things we want.

Paying for things which we need or want includes collecting the taxes when necessary.  Raising taxes is part of the package -- unless you can slip by this step by holding something desirable or necessary hostage.  When the "hostage" course is taken, the "ransom will be paid" by lowering the expenditures on something else

The scheme can best be described as watching a kidnapper "holding a knife to your daughter's throat" while demanding that you turn over your house's heater.  At the moment, saving your daughter is paramount, but after she is returned, both of you are sitting through the winter in a cold house.

Why not just govern the regular way?  Collect taxes for what is needed and then buy it?  

If you are a Congressman, this would make perfect sense if raising taxes were a choice you could actually make.  However, when that prospect is "off the table," you have to take the heater in payment.

Americans are getting close to a point where they have no more heaters to sacrifice.  1/6 of the population is now below the poverty line.  1/5 of the population is unemployed.  1/4 of American children are food challenged.

Meanwhile, there is the matter of debt coming due.  To avoid taxes during the Bush autocracy, more and more money was borrowed -- from anyone stupid enough to lend it to us.  The daughter was returned, but, since the parents borrowed the ransom money, the house's heater remained in place.

This worked great for a little while, but plans like this one have a habit of falling apart as time runs along.

Obama, again in the "big picture" view, is now trying to lead the nation back to the regular scheme.  His proposals connect the revenue derived from increased taxes to the urgent necessities now facing the nation, urgent necessities such as jobs, infrastructure challenges and economic recovery.

Where Do Spending Cuts Go
When They "Grow Up?"

Okay then, where does the hostage ransom go 

after the daughter comes back home?

Spending cuts, according to the prevailing myth, become tax cuts.  Spending cuts mean, ridiculously, that less money will need to be borrowed.  The "ridiculously" part enters the equation due to the very, very flimsy reasons that most money is borrowed in the first place.  These reasons become flimsy when they are joined with comments and pledges about not "wanting to drown our children in debt."

The more the national debt is reduced in this way, the lower the interest payments required to service that debt will become.  If the flow of tax money is sustained at the same levels it flowed before the spending cuts, the debt is repaid with the surplus.  The "foot of brass" foundation of the entire Spending Cuts - Lower Debt - Lower Interest - Lower Taxes scam might have actually worked, theoretically, at some point in the distant past, but those days are long gone now.

The tax reductions which are the constant, atmospheric promise of modern spending cuts are. of course, mostly described by the old adage: "To the victor go the spoils."

Further, all spending cuts are not exactly the same.  In fact the motivation behind any specific tax cut separates them into categories.  Needless to say, the motivation in many cases is sheer opportunistic looting, but the other choices are also interesting.

As we look at the design of the spending cuts now being offered in the legislative process, the  distinctive differences are usually disguised as a "blend" of two or more of the varieties shown in the diagram (above).  However, there are a few fundamental questions about spending cut proposals which "sort them out," making the picture a little clearer.

1.  Will the benefits of spending cuts be benefits to all the tax paying base?

2.  Do the spending cuts actually make any sort of sense when it comes to hard numbers in the budget?

3. Do spending cuts target the relaxation of regulations which have been previously generally accepted by the electorate?

4. Can the spending cuts be classed as either "demand side" or "supply side" benefits?

5.  Are the increased "profits" made possible by spending cuts actually taxable themselves?

A Reminder About Exactly Who
Is An "Expert" On Spending

A Reminder About Job Creation

A MeanMesa Christmas Gift Suggestion

For Your Republican Relatives

MeanMesa's compliments to the President.

Cleaning Up the Blood After Republican Spending Cuts

One Child Every Seven Hours

To bring this home, we have to indulge in a dark little MeanMesa fantasy, play along.

You are two years old.  Your single mother drinks a bit, but her boyfriend has a few other habits, too.  He likes for the house to be quiet while he and your mother are spending some "together time."

Unfortunately, at two years old, you have not yet been able to quite understand this.  You foolishly assume that your mother will come to help you when you cry.  You're hungry, your diapers are wet and you're getting cold because the place is barely heated.  In your two year old mind, these are exactly the sorts of things that mothers can solve.

You cry.  You can't really talk much, or, for that matter, even walk particularly well.  So, you cry.

However, instead of your mother, the boy friend comes barrelling out of the bedroom where you would usually sleep.  You look up at him.  He is huge.

Worse, he is mad.

He slaps you across the room.  You land on your head.  He is yelling something at you, but you can't understand him.  You cry some more.

This time he picks you by your arm.  It hurts all the way across your chest.  You are terrified.  You cry some more.

Now, he screams at you and slaps you again.  This time, your whole head is on fire and your back hurts -- really, really bad.  You cry some more.

You see a giant fist speeding toward your face.

Then you see nothing.  At first, it's like falling asleep.  Then it's over.

Statistics

This happens on an average of every five hours in the United States. 

This happens on average 2,500 times each year.  Reduced to "incidence per 100,000" children in the United States, the average is 3 time that of Canada, 4 times that of the United Kingdom and 11 times that of Italy.

Annually, the United States creates 4 times more corpses in this manner than two wars do.

Causes and Spending Cuts

The statistics folks have worked out most of the details about why this happens and how it can be prevented.  The lists hold no surprises.  The statistics are getting worse.

15 million -- 21% of US children live in poverty.

There are 2 million Americans in jail.  There are 7 million Americans on parole or probation.  Most are men.  Some are fathers, some are boyfriends.  Most are broke or nearly broke.

The United States accounts for the consumption of 94% of the illegal drugs sold in the world, not including alcohol.

The parents of between 1/4 and 1/3 of US children have no health insurance.

50%+ of the children born by women under 30 years of age enter single parent homes.  The poverty rate in such homes is astronomical.  65% of them rely on government assistance of one type or another.  About 1 million teen age girls get pregnant each year.  About 15% have abortions.  In New Mexico, 97 per 1,000 teen age girls will get pregnant each year.

Programs which locate and intervene in child abuse cases are effective.  They could be better, but they have shown that they are effective just the way they are.  In the current economic collapse, many state child protective intervention workers have 60 or more cases at any given time.

These safety nets are largely conducted as state business, not as uniform federal regulations.  Many states have no problem sacrificing child safety for budget cuts and state rights.

The Point?

The Republicans are imposing all sorts of their weird religious agendas in programs exactly like this one, usually disguised as ways to cut spending.

American tax payers want their tax money spent to save children, not given to "job creators."

All Better Now - painting by S.L.B. Hanson (image source)

Innuendo Tsunami - CATO and Ryan Cut Deficits, Attack Obama

Following the President's speech, there are no shortage of "counter punches" streaming forth from the GOPCon "talking machine."  MeanMesa might be tempted to hoist itself "on its own petard" with some frantic effort to "truth check" a few dozen examples, but that undertaking would result in a blog post long enough to stretch from Detroit to Duluth.

Still, when examined closely, that is, perhaps over generously, the GOPCons have actually introduced a sort of continuity to their counter attack.  Given the grisly underpinnings of their own "Ryan Proposal," MeanMesa has to salute their bravery and determination. 

The oligarchs who control the GOPCon Party are "sticking to their guns."  The world in which this latest outrage, The Path to Prosperity, was tragically still born is one where every grandmother has a trust fund, handicapped children are left on a mountain to die in the cold and millions of "little people" without boot straps are left to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps."

The oligarchs, it seems, have already foreclosed on all the "boot straps" long ago. 

So, MeanMesa looked over a few of the thousand or so choices and settled on the following as a good example of what the billionaire masters of the Republican Party are actually thinking.  Enjoy.

From uncoverage.net, April, 2011

 

CATO Institute: Federal Spending 

Ryan vs. Obama

Read the original article  here. 

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Jane Jamison| 

I am going to post the  many  position papers explaining the Republican budget-cutting proposal as they come out today.   Get behind this.  Own it.  Memorize it.  Talk about it.  Federal Spending: Ryan vs. Obama

Posted by Chris Edwards, the CATO Institute

House Budget Committee Chairman, Paul Ryan, introduced his budget resolution for fiscal 2012 and beyond today entitled “The Path to Prosperity.” The plan would cut some spending programs, reduce top income tax rates, and reform Medicare and Medicaid. The following two charts compare spending levels under Chairman Ryan’s plan and President Obama’s recent budget (as scored by the Congressional Budget Office).

Figure 1 shows that spending rises more slowly over the next decade under Ryan’s plan than Obama’s plan. But spending rises substantially under both plans—between 2012 and 2021, spending rises 34 percent under Ryan and 55 percent under Obama.

Figure 2 compares Ryan’s and Obama’s proposed spending levels at the end of the 10-year budget window in 2021. The figure indicates where Ryan finds his budget savings. Going from the largest spending category to the smallest:

Ryan doesn’t provide specific Social Security cuts, instead proposing a budget mechanism to force Congress to take action on the program. It is disappointing that his plan doesn’t include common sense reforms such raising the retirement age.

Ryan finds modest Medicare savings in the short term, but the big savings occur beyond 10 years when his “premium support” reform is fully implemented. I would rather see Ryan’s Medicare reforms kick in sooner, which after all are designed to improve quality and efficiency in the health care system.

Ryan adopts Obama’s proposed defense (security) savings, but larger cuts are called for. After all, defense spending has doubled over the last decade, even excluding the costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ryan includes modest cuts to nonsecurity discretionary spending. Larger cuts are needed, including termination of entire agencies. See DownsizingGovernment.org.

Ryan makes substantial cuts to other entitlements, such as farm subsidies. Bravo!

Ryan would turn Medicaid and food stamps into block grants. That is an excellent direction for reform, and it would allow Congress to steadily reduce spending and ultimately devolve these programs to the states.

Ryan would repeal the costly 2010 health care law. Bravo!

To summarize, Ryan’s budget plan would make crucial reforms to federal health care programs, and it would limit the size of the federal government over the long term. However, his plan would be improved by adopting more cuts and eliminations of agencies in short term, such as those proposed by Senator Rand Paul.

House Republican Tax Plan Emerges

 A Well Fed Clutch of Oligarchs

MeanMesa visitors already know that precisely the same people -- with the possible exception of a few recently "hired" tea bag wing nuts -- now boisterously raving about spending cuts were exactly the same "conservatives" who voted, time after time, to increase the national debt to its current state.  There seem to be "two prongs" to the GOP political strategy unfolding.

1.  The worse economic conditions can be made prior to the 2012 election, the better the Republicans think they will do.

2.  "Spending cuts," instead of lowering the deficit, always seem to wind up in the pockets of the oligarchs who are directing the Republican Party.

 The following Center for American Progress article is worth reading.  Once the hill billies and bigots are sufficiently fired up with the House hearings on Muslims and abortions, we will all need a little perspective to guide us through the water cooler wars to victory.

In any event, we must be ready for the fight.

Read the article here.

Infographic: Tax Breaks vs. Budget Cuts

By Donna Cooper | February 22, 2011

 

Most Americans would be surprised to learn that tax breaks are not on the table during any budget negotiations. In fact, Congress has the Congressional Budget Office prepare an official spending estimate for the cost of all programs or their expansions. Meanwhile, Congress enacts and continues tax breaks without any requirement that the cost of tax breaks be calculated and shared with members before a vote.

That’s why, over the last 16 years, the cost to the Treasury of the mortgage interest tax deduction, for example, doubled from $48 billion in 1995 to nearly $100 billion this year and no one made a peep about getting control of this loss in revenue. The stunning growth in this tax break is unchecked and unquestioned.

This tax break is also increasingly benefiting individuals who don’t need any federal incentives to purchase a home. In 2011 the mortgage interest deduction will help families who purchase a vacation home avoid taxes to the tune of $800 million. Meanwhile, the House Budget Committee chairman’s 2011 budget bill included $730 million in cuts to housing programs for the elderly and disabled.

There are many other examples where the cost of tax breaks are skyrocketing and disproportionately benefiting companies and people who don’t need them (see chart):

• 

Congress should rein in the $4.6 billion in tax breaks given to companies who move jobs offshore instead of making cuts to the $4 billion in job-training programs.
 
Oil companies get more than $2 billion in tax write-offs for drilling expenses yet Congress is considering cutting the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the $2 billion federal program that helps poor families pay their winter heating bills.
 
Large biofuels companies, such as Archer Daniels Midland, benefit from the ethanol tax break that now costs nearly $5 billion a year. And oil companies such as ExxonMobil benefit from more than $9 billion in tax breaks for oil exploration.

Some tax breaks make sense. Those that stimulate economic activity that otherwise wouldn’t happen without the tax incentive may be worth the lost revenue, especially if that economic activity creates American jobs and provides assistance in sectors of the economy that show potential for growth.

That’s exactly what the Research and Development Tax Incentives or the Renewable Energy Tax Credits provide. Income tax breaks that help keep working families afloat, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, use the tax code effectively to stabilize the economy.

It’s regrettable that the congressional budget process doesn’t permit a robust debate about the choices we can and must make to bring the budget into balance. The Center for American Progress is thus pushing for a process where tax breaks are “scored” so members of Congress know and consider the cost of tax breaks as part of the annual congressional process to pass a budget.

A transparent budget process approach should be instituted now given the enormity of the budget challenge. It makes no sense to eviscerate safety-net supports when billions in unnecessary tax entitlements can be cut to preserve these important and socially responsible federal expenditures. Congress must face up to the cold hard fact that it’s time to make the tough choice to end tax entitlements—such as the one for “NASCAR racing facilities”—so federal funding for critical items such as child-nutrition programs are spared.

Donna Cooper is a Senior Fellow at American Progress.

Sources for tax breaks

Row 1: Figure represents half of the estimated $23 billion cost of weakening the estate tax for 2011 and 2012. See: Gillian Brunet and Chuck Marr, “Unpacking the Tax Cut-Unemployment Compromise,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, December 10, 2010, available at http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3342.

Row 2: Figure represents 1 percent of the fiscal year 2011 tax expenditure estimate for the mortgage interest deduction, over 10 years. The vacation home deduction accounts for at least one percent of the tax expenditure cost. See: Office of Management and Budget, Analytical Perspectives, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2012 (Executive Office of the President, 2011), table 17-1; Congressional Budget Office, “Budget Options” (2000), REV-02.

Row 3 (now re: estate planning): General Explanations of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2012 Revenue Proposals (Department of Treasury, 2011).

Row 4 (now re: itemized deduction limit): General Explanations of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2011 Revenue Proposals (Department of Treasury, 2010).

Row 5: Joint Committee on Taxation, Estimated Budget Effects of the “Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010,” JCX-54-10, December 10, 2010 (subpart F active financing exception).

Row 6: General Explanations of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2012 Revenue Proposals (Department of Treasury, 2011).

Row 7: Joint Committee on Taxation, Estimated Budget Effects of the “Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010,” JCX-54-10, December 10, 2010 (half of total cost of two-year extension).

Row 8: General Explanations of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2012 Revenue Proposals (Department of Treasury, 2011).

Row 9: General Explanations of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2012 Revenue Proposals (Department of Treasury, 2011) (10-year cost).

Row 10: Office of Management and Budget, Analytical Perspectives, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2012, (Executive Office of the President, 2011), table 17-1 (expensing of multiperiod timber growing costs and capital gains treatment of certain timber income).

Row 11: Joint Committee on Taxation, Estimated Budget Effects of the “Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010,” JCX-54-10, December 10, 2010 (half of total cost of recent two-year extension).