QOTD DNC National Press Secretary Hari Sevugan: "I'm all for changing the way we do business in Washington, but proposing a 'budget' that doesn't use numbers may be too much for me. After 27 days, the best House Republicans could come up with is a 19-page pamphlet that does not include a single real budget proposal or estimate. There are more numbers in my last sentence than there are in the entire House GOP 'budget.'" h/t Benen
Sully: How The GOP Intends To Save
A risible set of spending cuts proposed in an alternative budget:
International organizations and foreign aid recipients, including millions for reconstruction in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Labor union bosses participating in a new “green jobs” program. The National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Americorps, Title X Family Planning, and a host of spending programs that will do nothing to help our economy recover. And even community organizers, such as ACORN, performing “neighborhood stabilization.”
Because Hamas and condoms are breaking the budget. Then: a spending freeze. Er, that's it. Yeah: it seems to be that lame. The full version will come out later.
Daily Kos' JedL has the video. Brutally funny:
- Matthew Yglesias adds: So taking a first glance at the Republicans’ alternative budget proposal, the striking thing is the total lack of real budget numbers. It’s full of complaints that the CBO score of Obama’s budget leaves the deficit too high—they have charts and graphs and everything—but no charts and graphs about the deficits that would be created by their own proposals. After all, as best I can tell they’re not proposing drastic cuts to Social Security or to Medicare or to defense but they are promising lower taxes. This should leave them with spending that’s not all that much lower than Obama’s spending, but revenues that are wildly lower.
- TPM: Boehner: We'll Have to Get Back to You With Those Pesky Details. The House GOP set today for the rollout of its own budget proposal. You know, instead of just being the "Party of No" they'd actually show the public which hard decisions they would make. Well, not so much. Elana Schor just attended their press conference and let's just say it was a glossy, but detail-free, rollout.
- Steve Benen:
Republican leaders posted their "Road to Recovery" report online, and it's more or less a joke. Apparently -- I hope you're sitting down -- the minority party believes the nation will thrive if we cut taxes, stick with Bush's energy policies, and pursue more deregulation. How much would this cost? They don't say. How would this affect the deficit? They don't say.All of this, as we discussed earlier, plays into the Democrats' hands. Republicans are not only playing by the White House's rules, they're doing it badly.
DNC National Press Secretary Hari Sevugan, not surprisingly, took a swing at the ball that Republicans set on a tee: "I'm all for changing the way we do business in Washington, but proposing a 'budget' that doesn't use numbers may be too much for me. After 27 days, the best House Republicans could come up with is a 19-page pamphlet that does not include a single real budget proposal or estimate. There are more numbers in my last sentence than there are in the entire House GOP 'budget.'"
The GOP was on the offensive, pointing to vulnerable points in the Obama administration's agenda and pressuring center-right Democrats to break with their party. Now, they're on the defensive, pretending to have credible ideas and presenting a bizarre "budget" with no numbers in it.
Republicans really didn't think this one through.
- More Steve Benen:
Ryan Grim noticed one key proposal from the document: "a huge tax cut for the wealthy."House Republican leaders called a press conference Thursday to unveil their "alternative budget." While it was thin on specifics, it does include one major policy proposal: a huge tax cut for the wealthy.
Under the Republican plan, the top marginal tax rate would be slashed from 35 to 25 percent, facilitating a dramatic transfer of wealth up the economic scale. Anyone making more than a $100,000 would pay the top rate; those under would pay 10 percent.
No, seriously, that's the plan. It's right there on page 10: "Republicans propose a simple and fair tax code with a marginal tax rate for income up to $100,000 of 10 percent and 25 percent for any income thereafter."
So, Bush/Cheney lowered the top rate from 39.6% to 35%, which cost hundreds of billions of dollars and helped create the largest budget deficits in American history. Now, the very same GOP lawmakers want to send the top rate from 35% to 25%, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, all in the name of deficit reduction.
How much would this cost? The "detailed budget" doesn't say. What it would do to the deficit? The "detailed budget" doesn't say. What would Republicans cut to pay for this massive tax cut for the wealthiest Americans? The "detailed budget" doesn't say. How much would Republicans raise or spend over all? The "detailed budget" doesn't say.
When might GOP leaders flesh out the details in their "detailed budget"? Boehner told reporters today that some numbers will probably be available sometime next week. So, right around the time House lawmakers are voting on the budget, the minority party will offer an alternative budget that no one's seen.
- TPM'S Elana Schor:
Late Update: As Democrats (along with Contessa Brewer) have a ball playing up the GOP plan's lack of detail, Politico reports that House Republican aides are already squabbling over whose boss thought it was a good idea to unveil a budget that lacked nearly all the essential qualities of budget-ness.The whole post is worth reading, but this quote from "a GOP aide heavily involved in budget strategy" stands well on its own:
In his egocentric rush to get on camera, Mike Pence threw the rest of the Conference under the bus, specifically Paul Ryan, whose staff has been working night and day for weeks to develop a substantive budget plan ... I hope his camera time was gratifying enough to justify erasing the weeks of hard work by dozens of Republicans to put forth serious ideas.If only the House Republican Conference were a reality show. Pence and Ryan's aides would have to hash all this out on camera while wielding Nerf bats on a giant log suspended over the ocean, and then sing with Dionne Warwick.
Yglesias: Mike Pence Doesn’t Know What the Deficit Would Be if Mike Pence’s Budget Were Implemented I’ve been saying this for a while now, but something people need to understand about the current state of American politics is that Rep Mike Pence (R-IN) is not a smart man. He lacks intelligence. He’s been able to rise into the House leadership and even somehow require a reputation as a policy thinker of the right larger because it’s extraordinarily rare for the media to ask a politician to answer a question about a policy issue. But when Pence is asked to do this—as Norah O’Donnell did below—he’s completely unable to deal with it.
Basically, Pence is very upset that Obama’s budget proposal would lead to high deficits. Pence is also the author of an alternative “budget” “plan.” O’Donnell, sensibly, asks him what the deficit would be under his plan. It’s not a tough question, it’s not a gotcha question, it’s not an ideological question. Indeed, if Pence knew the answer to the question, and if the answer made sense, it would actually count as an absurd softball. But Pence doesn’t know!
Gibbs priceless response:
The madness continues as Michelle Bachmann introduces legislation that “would bar the dollar from being replaced by any foreign currency.”
What the Chinese were proposing, of course, was to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. I would take the view that a move away from near-exclusive reliance on the dollar is probably inevitable irrespective of what we do. But whether or not you agree with me about that, this isn’t something congress can ban—it’s a decision by foreign countries about what they do with their reserves.
UpdateIn response to an inquiry from Greg Sargent, a Bachmann spokesperson clarifies that Bachmann understands she can't legislate foreign countries' behavior and that "This legislation would ensure that the U.S. dollar remain the currency of the United States." But nobody -- not Russia not China not Tim Geithner -- has ever proposed changing this.
Benen: STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES....
Over the last couple of years, it seemed like Barack Obama's conservative detractors had thrown just about every criticism imaginable at the guy. If recent commentary on far-right blogs is any indication, they've come up with a new one: they're convinced the president isn't very bright.Think Progress: Rep. Barton: Climate change is ‘natural,’ humans should just ‘get shade.’Just to be clear, they're talking about the current president.
Now, this always seemed like one of the few attacks the right would go out of its way to avoid. For one thing, they defended George W. Bush, despite his, shall we say, intellectual limitations. For another, I had assumed even die-hard Republicans would grudgingly acknowledge Obama's intelligence, much the same way a liberal lawyer might reluctantly respect Justice John Roberts' intellect, even while disagreeing with him on everything.
Apparently, though, that's not the case, and quite a few of the leading far-right bloggers have convinced themselves that the president, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, is a dim bulb. Take this item, for example, published yesterday by Powerline's John Hinderaker:
Everyone knows that Barack Obama is lost without his teleprompter, but his latest blunder, courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, via the Corner, suggests that the teleprompter may not be enough unless it includes phonetic spellings. [Obama apparently mispronounced the name of the company "Orion"]
So evidently we have to add astronomy to history and economics as subjects of which Obama is remarkably ignorant. I'm beginning to fear that our President has below-average knowledge of the world. Not for a President, but for a middle-aged American.
Just in case there's any doubt, there was no indication that Hinderaker was kidding or being deliberately ironic. (With conservative blogs, it's often hard to tell.)
This is, of course, coming from the same blogger who was not only impressed by Sarah Palin's intellectual prowess, but also once lauded George W. Bush as "a man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius."
A.L. concluded, "The alternative universe that these folks manage to create for themselves is really quite something to behold.... What's really sad is that Hinderaker is not alone in this belief. If you read the right wing blogs, it's just an accepted fact that Obama is a moron. It's as if they think that if they say it over and over again, it will somehow catch on with the public at large. "
If that's the goal, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it fails. Call it a hunch.
- More from Anonymous Liberal's: Dispatches from the Alternative Right Wing Universe
If that alone isn't enough to make your head explode, here's what the very same John Hinderaker had to say about our previous president:It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.The alternative universe that these folks manage to create for themselves is really quite something to behold. In their world, a man who was the editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review and a constitutional law professor at a top law school is some sort of empty suit who is incapable of thinking or expressing a coherent thought without a teleprompter. A man who spent much of his childhood in Indonesia, has travelled extensively overseas, and who, by all accounts, is an avid student of foreign policy is some kind of ignoramus who knows nothing about the world.
But a man who was notorious for his struggles with the English language, who achieved everything in his life by virtue of his last name, a man who admittedly had no interest in foreign policy and had traveled nowhere prior to becoming president . . . that guy is worldly beyond measure, a "man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius."
What's really sad is that Hinderaker is not alone in this belief. If you read the right wing blogs, it's just an accepted fact that Obama is a moron. It's as if they think that if they say it over and over again, it will somehow catch on with the public at large. The problem with this meme, of course, is that it's so easily disproven. No one who watched Obama give his hour long prime time press conference last month--where he gave lengthy professorial answers to every question asked--would entertain for even a moment the suggestion that he is stupid or unknowledgeable or incapable of speaking without a teleprompter. The right wing blogosphere might as well be trying to convince the public that Obama is white.
But in the up-is-down world of the right wing echo chamber, anything goes, no matter how dumb.
In a hearing today on adapting to climate change, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) denied the consensus on man-made climate change, saying it is “natural.” His solution to the warming planet? Just get some “shade”:
BARTON: I believe that Earth’s climate is changing, but I think it’s changing for natural variation reasons. And I think man-kind has been adopting, or adapting, to climate as long as man has walked the Earth. When it rains we find shelter. When it’s hot, we get shade. When it’s cold, we find a warm place to stay. Adaptation is the practical, affordable, utterly natural reflex response to nature when the planet is heating or cooling, as it always is.
“Nature doesn’t seem to adjust to people as much as people adjust to nature,” he added. “Adaptation to shifts in temperature is not that difficult.” Watch it:
Last year, Barton — known as “Smokey Joe” for his efforts on behalf of big polluters — stalled congressional efforts to decrease power plant emissions.
- Steve Benen adds: In recent months, Republican lawmakers, especially in the House, have made it practically impossible to have a serious bipartisan dialog on economic issues. If Barton's comments are in any way reflective of his caucus' approach to global warming, discussions with Republicans on environmental policy will be just as fruitful.
Aravosis: Jindal Spurns Obama’s Jobless Aid as Mayor Pleads ‘Help Me Now’
But Bubbah Bobby wants to president. And he can't do that by helping the little people. Though, remember how in his response to Obama's "State of the Union" Jindal criticized George Bush's non-response to the Katrina disaster? Wonder if Jindal's next speech will be criticizing his own non-response to the economic disaster in his own state? Remember, Republicans aren't in office to help people. They take office in order to take higher office, and then hold it. Everything is a stunt. Nothing is intended to make anything or anyone better.Benen: WHAT A DIFFERENCE A WEEK MAKES....
Bloomberg:Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican, cited fiscal responsibility when he turned down about $98 million in unemployment aid that was part of President Barack Obama’s $787 billion federal stimulus package.
That doesn’t make sense to Clarence Hawkins, the mayor of Bastrop, Louisiana. An International Paper Co. mill closed in November as pulp demand fell worldwide, leaving the town without one of its biggest employers.
“Give me something now,” said Hawkins, a Democrat whose city of 12,500 lost more than 400 jobs. “Help me right now. I need to survive today.”
Last week, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons (R) became the latest Republican governor to resist accepting federal stimulus aid, specifically relating to unemployment funds. Though the move was opposed by lawmakers in both parties and the state's Chamber of Commerce, Gibbons said the unemployment aid was too generous, would help too many people, and undermine Nevada's sovereignty.Gibbons, arguably the nation's least popular and most scandal-plagued governor, didn't stick to that position very long.
Mr. Gibbons -- who like several of his Republican counterparts in the nation's governors' mansions who are considering rejecting or have said no thanks to the unemployment funds -- found that the state's legislature was poised to override him, which they are statutorily permitted to do, to get the expansion of benefits.
After weeks of denouncing the extension, Governor Gibbons officially changed his mind Wednesday afternoon.
In a statement, he said: "As our economic crisis deepens, Nevadans are suffering because of layoffs, business closings and other cutbacks. We have the responsibility to do everything we can to help our unemployed workers get through these difficult times, even if that means passing legislation that we would not necessarily approve during prosperous times."
Of course, Nevadans were suffering because of layoffs, business closings, and other cutbacks last week, too, when Gibbons opposed the federal assistance.
In any case, it's good to see Nevada will get the help. The state's economy has been very hard hit, and rejecting unemployment funds would have made a bad situation considerably worse.
Here's hoping Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, and Mark Sanford follow Gibbons' lead and take the recovery money their constituents need.
Benen: THE NEOCONS DON'T KNOW WHEN TO QUIT....
Their ideas discredited, and their arguments left on the trash-heap of history, neoconservatives should, ideally, enjoy some quiet time right about now. Instead, some of the movement's leaders are getting together to form yet another organization to promote the same misguided agenda that's already failed.It's called, innocuously enough, the Foreign Policy Initiative. It will spread its wings next week with a panel discussion on Afghanistan, led in part by John McCain. (President Obama is scheduled to explore his own Afghanistan policy in more detail around the same time. What a coincidence.)
Matt Duss strikes the right note in dismissing the latest neocon endeavor.
The Foreign Policy Initiative lists Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, and Dan Senor on its board of directors, so no prizes for guessing what they're about (more power, less appeasement, stronger wills.) Kagan and Kristol need no introduction, they're the Tick and Arthur of disastrously counterproductive military adventurism. Given the staggering costs in American blood, treasure, security, and reputation incurred by their boundless enthusiasm for blowing stuff up, you might think they'd have had the decency to retreat to a Tibetan monastery by now, but sadly no. The way it works in Washington is, if you're willing to argue for more defense spending, you'll always find someone willing to fund your think tank. [...]
On March 31, FPI holds its first public event, Afghanistan: Planning For Success, though, given the heavy representation of Iraq war advocates, I think a far better title would be Afghanistan: Dealing With The Huge Problems Created By Many Of The People On This Very Stage. The broad consensus among national security analysts and aid officials is that the diversion of troops and resources toward Iraq beginning in 2002 was one of the main reasons the Taliban and Al Qaeda were able to to re-establish themselves in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas, facilitating the collapse of the country back into insurgent warfare. Having failed to complete the mission in Afghanistan, Bush and the Iraq hawks handed the Obama administration a war that promises to be as difficult and costly as Iraq has been -- if not more. It's deeply absurd that some of the people most responsible for the crisis in Afghanistan would now presume to tell us how to deal with it.
At this point, I shouldn't be surprised by the shamelessness of Kristol, Kagan, et al. But I'd hoped they'd feel a little more chastened by their failures that this.
Benen: ECHO CHAMBER CASE STUDY....
Once in a while, we can watch a conservative talking point follow a predictable trajectory. What may start as a strange and obscure claim will soon work its way to more conservative blogs. Soon after, Drudge will pick up on it, which usually leads to Limbaugh. From there, it's a Fox News story, and then accepted conventional wisdom by the Republican Party.We saw this clearly in February the bizarre fight over the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology. Around the same time, the infamous (and non-existent) high-speed rail between Disneyland and Las Vegas offered another case study.
Ali Frick reports on the latest theory, which actually managed to make its way into the White House last night.
Earlier this week, China's Central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan suggested the need for a "super-sovereign reserve currency," a move most passed off as China trying to "flex some muscle." And yet, within days, Fox News' Major Garrett was demanding whether President Obama supported a "global currency."
So how did a story that has effectively no basis in reality -- and has nothing to do with a global currency -- end up as one of the few questions posed to President Obama last night? It started with a blaring banner on the instigator of conservative and media memes, the Drudge Report.
Within hours, right-wing fanatic Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) was demanding that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pledge to never adopt a "global currency." Soon, Fox News' resident conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck was ranting that a U.N.-imposed global currency was the first step toward world government.Last night, Fox News' Major Garrett raised the profile of this nonsense by asking the president directly whether he supports a move to a "global currency."
The president responded, "I don't believe that there's a need for a global currency."
Will this put far-right minds at ease? I doubt it. Obama's response was probably all part of an elaborate ruse, quite possibly involving the U.N. The president just wants us to think he opposes a global currency as part of an effort to lure us into a false sense of security.
Don't worry, Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann know what's really going on.
John Cole: Always Picking The Losing Battle
I really don’t get these guys:
It’s OK for Republicans to want President Obama to fail if they think he’s jeopardizing the country, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told members of his political party Tuesday night.Jindal described the premise of the question—“Do you want the president to fail?”—as the “latest gotcha game” being perpetrated by Democrats against Republicans.
“Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, ‘Why no sir, I don’t want the president to fail,’ is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism,” Jindal said at a political fundraiser attended by 1,200 people. “This is political correctness run amok.”
They just seem so dead set on picking battles that have no upside for them whatsoever. Is it honestly their number one priority to fight for their right to hope the President fails? And anything less is political correctness? How tone deaf and offkey can these guys get? Even if you win the argument about it being acceptable to want the President to fail, you are now on record HOPING THE PRESIDENT FAILS. Why? And that isn’t even going into the last couple of years in which any objection to Bush’s policies was met with catcalls regarding treason and whatnot.
Chris in Paris (AmBlog): Texas reaches for the dark ages, again
Looking at this latest "debate" in Texas reminds me again why we need Obama to be successful. The GOP has nothing to offer other than backwards ideas, when they even have that. It's always good to see the Republicans remind everyone why they are the wrong choice and controlled by religious lunatics.
The Texas Board of Education this week will vote on science standards that critics say seek to cast doubt on the theory of evolution.
The board -- considering amendments passed in January -- will hear from the public on Wednesday. It will then take votes -- an initial one Thursday and the final vote Friday.
"This specific attack on well-established science ignores mountains of evidence and years of research done by experts in a variety of fields," said Steven Newton, project director at the Oakland California-based National Center for Science Education, a proponent of evolution.
C&L's Amato: Michael Steele's buffoonery: The Limbaugh feud was all strategic and it's up to GOD if he'll run for President
By John Amato Wednesday Mar 25, 2009 6:00pmSteele finally came out of the basement and was interviewed by CNN. Michael Steele is just so smart. I don't mean you and me smart, I mean Chess smart. Man, he's got us all fooled. Every silly comment and action he's made since he narrowly won an election to be the head of the RNC is really a cold calculated step that he's got down to a Boris Spassky---Bobby Fischer,---Garry Kasparov type chess master science.
Steele: I'm a cause and effect kind of guy, so if I do something there's a reason for it. Even, it may look like a mistake, a gaffe. There is a rationale, a logic behind it.
Q: Even with the current news and events there's a rational behind Rush, all of that stuff?
Steele: Yep.
Q: You wanna share with us?
Steele: I want to see where the landscape looks like,. I want to see who yells the loudest. I want to know who says they're with me , but really isn't....
Q: How does that help you?
Steele: It helps me understand my position on the chess board. It helps me understand you know, where the enemy camp is and where those who inside the tent are, ahhh
Q: It's all strategic.
Steele: It's all strategic.
He's been fooling us all. When he called Limbaugh "ugly," that was all a clever ruse to weed out his enemies. His apology to Rush was all part of the master plan. How ingenious. I myself like to open up a chess game using the Sicilian Defense, which starts with a e4 c5 move, but he's using strategies never before seen in the history of chess. What a true master! Michael 'Spassky' Steele.
And I'm a spiritual person so his belief in GOD is his own, but it's just offensive when he uses the GOD word to talk about possibly running for President on the second clip. He repeats the word "ugly" again---to describe politics now, but it's "ugly" to watch him speak like that. He knows its' not an option for a man who already is being asked to quit the RNC job he just got. What an utter embarrassment this man is to the GOP, but I'm certainly entertained keeping an eye on a true master of Pawns and Knights.
Benen: DOUGLAS PLAYS THE DUNCE....
I don't get to talk much about my adopted home state, but Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas' (R) misguided announcement yesterday warrants all kinds of attention.
Gov. Jim Douglas of Vermont said Wednesday that he would veto a same-sex marriage bill if it reached his desk, setting a new hurdle for a measure that had been moving swiftly through the legislature.
But Mr. Douglas, a Republican, also said that "legislative leaders would not have advanced this bill if they did not have the votes to override a veto."
The issue of marriage equality, the governor said, "diverts attention from our most pressing issues," which is why he announced his intention to veto the bill.
The argument doesn't stand up well to scrutiny. Douglas tends to avoid blatant bigotry and culture-war crusades -- he is, after all, the Republican governor of one of the nation's "bluest" states -- so he can't very well reject the pending legislation on homophobic grounds. But the "distraction" argument is a cheap cop-out -- the sooner this common-sense legislation becomes law, the sooner it moves off the Vermont political world's radar.
By announcing his intention to veto, Douglas puts the issue of two consenting adults getting married at the forefront of the state's political debate. By daring state lawmakers to override his veto, the governor is prolonging the process. If the goal were to end the "distraction," Douglas would be moving in the opposite direction.
For what it's worth, the veto override remains a real possibility. The marriage bill passed the state Senate 26 to 4. It will pass the state House fairly soon, but the margin remains unclear.
I'll let you know what happens.
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