Robert Reich: Beware the "Middle Ground" of the Great Budget Debate

Image via WikipediaRobert Reich: Beware the "Middle Ground" of the Great Budget Debate

How debates are framed is critical because the "center" or "middle ground" is supposedly halfway between the two extremes.

We continue to hear that the Great Budget Debate has two sides: The president and the Democrats want to cut the budget deficit mainly by increasing taxes on the rich and reducing military spending, but not by privatizing Medicare. On the other side are Paul Ryan, Republicans, and the right, who want cut the deficit by privatizing Medicare and slicing programs that benefit poorer Americans, while lowering taxes on the rich.

By this logic, the center lies just between.

Baloney.

According to the most recent Washington Post-ABC poll, 78 percent of Americans oppose cutting spending on Medicare as a way to reduce the debt, and 72 percent support raising taxes on the rich -- including 68 percent of Independents and 54 percent of Republicans.

In other words, the center of America isn't near halfway between the two sides. It's overwhelmingly on the side of the president and the Democrats.

I'd wager if Americans also knew two-thirds of Ryan's budget cuts come from programs serving lower and moderate-income Americans and over 70 percent of the savings fund tax cuts for the rich -- meaning it's really just a giant transfer from the less advantaged to the super advantaged without much deficit reduction at all -- far more would be against it.

And if people knew that the Ryan plan would channel hundreds of billions of their Medicare dollars into the pockets of private for-profit heath insurers, almost everyone would be against it.

The Republican plan shouldn't be considered one side of a great debate. It shouldn't be considered at all. Americans don't want it.

Which is why I get worried when I hear about so-called "bipartisan" groups on Capitol Hill seeking a grand compromise, such as the Senate's so-called "Gang of Six."

Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, a member of that Gang, says they're near agreement on a plan that will chart a "middle ground" between the House Republican budget and the plan outlined last week by the president.

Watch your wallets.

In my view, even the president doesn't go nearly far enough in the direction most Americans would approve. All he wants to do, essentially, is end the Bush tax windfalls for the wealthy -- which were designed to be ended in 2010 in any event -- and close a few loopholes.

But why shouldn't we go back to the tax rates we had thirty years ago, which required the rich to pay much higher shares of their incomes? One of the great scandals of our age is how concentrated income and wealth have become. The top 1 percent now gets twice the share of national income it took home thirty years ago.

If the super rich paid taxes at the same rates they did three decades ago, they'd contribute $350 billion more per year than they are now -- amounting to trillions more over the next decade. That's enough to ensure every young American is healthy and well-educated and that the nation's infrastructure is up to world-class standards.

Nor does the president's proposal go nearly far enough in cutting military spending, which is not only out of control but completely unrelated to our nation's defense needs -- fancy weapons systems designed for an age of conventional warfare; hundreds of billions of dollars for the Navy and Air Force, when most of the action is with the Army, Marines, and Special Forces; and billions more for programs no one can justify and few can understand.

If Americans understood how much they're paying for defense and how little they're getting, they'd demand a defense budget at least 25 percent smaller than it is today.

Finally, the president's proposed budget doesn't deal with the scandal of the nation's schools in poor and middle-class communities -- schools whose teachers are paid under $50,000 a year, whose classrooms are crammed, that can't afford textbooks or science labs, that have abandoned after-school programs and courses like history and art. Most school budgets depend manly on local property taxes that continue to drop in lower-income communities. The federal government should come to their rescue.

To think of the "center" as roughly halfway between the president's and Paul Ryan's proposals is to ignore what Americans need and want. For our political representatives to find a "middle ground" between the two would be a travesty.

Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.

A Tale of Two Moralities - NYTimes.com

A Tale of Two Moralities - NYTimes.com 

By PAUL KRUGMAN

On Wednesday, President Obama called on Americans to “expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.” Those were beautiful words; they spoke to our desire for reconciliation.

But the truth is that we are a deeply divided nation and are likely to remain one for a long time. By all means, let’s listen to each other more carefully; but what we’ll discover, I fear, is how far apart we are. For the great divide in our politics isn’t really about pragmatic issues, about which policies work best; it’s about differences in those very moral imaginations Mr. Obama urges us to expand, about divergent beliefs over what constitutes justice.

And the real challenge we face is not how to resolve our differences — something that won’t happen any time soon — but how to keep the expression of those differences within bounds.

What are the differences I’m talking about?

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state — a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net — morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.

The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.

There’s no middle ground between these views. One side saw health reform, with its subsidized extension of coverage to the uninsured, as fulfilling a moral imperative: wealthy nations, it believed, have an obligation to provide all their citizens with essential care. The other side saw the same reform as a moral outrage, an assault on the right of Americans to spend their money as they choose.

This deep divide in American political morality — for that’s what it amounts to — is a relatively recent development. Commentators who pine for the days of civility and bipartisanship are, whether they realize it or not, pining for the days when the Republican Party accepted the legitimacy of the welfare state, and was even willing to contemplate expanding it. As many analysts have noted, the Obama health reform — whose passage was met with vandalism and death threats against members of Congress — was modeled on Republican plans from the 1990s.

But that was then. Today’s G.O.P. sees much of what the modern federal government does as illegitimate; today’s Democratic Party does not. When people talk about partisan differences, they often seem to be implying that these differences are petty, matters that could be resolved with a bit of good will. But what we’re talking about here is a fundamental disagreement about the proper role of government.

Regular readers know which side of that divide I’m on. In future columns I will no doubt spend a lot of time pointing out the hypocrisy and logical fallacies of the “I earned it and I have the right to keep it” crowd. And I’ll also have a lot to say about how far we really are from being a society of equal opportunity, in which success depends solely on one’s own efforts.

But the question for now is what we can agree on given this deep national divide.

In a way, politics as a whole now resembles the longstanding politics of abortion — a subject that puts fundamental values at odds, in which each side believes that the other side is morally in the wrong. Almost 38 years have passed since Roe v. Wade, and this dispute is no closer to resolution.

Yet we have, for the most part, managed to agree on certain ground rules in the abortion controversy: it’s acceptable to express your opinion and to criticize the other side, but it’s not acceptable either to engage in violence or to encourage others to do so.

What we need now is an extension of those ground rules to the wider national debate.

Right now, each side in that debate passionately believes that the other side is wrong. And it’s all right for them to say that. What’s not acceptable is the kind of violence and eliminationist rhetoric encouraging violence that has become all too common these past two years.

It’s not enough to appeal to the better angels of our nature. We need to have leaders of both parties — or Mr. Obama alone if necessary — declare that both violence and any language hinting at the acceptability of violence are out of bounds. We all want reconciliation, but the road to that goal begins with an agreement that our differences will be settled by the rule of law.

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President Obama, on '60 Minutes,' blames his leadership - Josh Gerstein - POLITICO.com

Image via WikipediaPresident Obama, on '60 Minutes,' blames his leadership - Josh Gerstein - POLITICO.com

President Barack Obama acknowledged a series of errors since taking office, admitting that he misjudged the pace of the economic recovery, that he has sometimes strayed from his campaign promise to change the tone of debate in Washington, and that leadership “isn’t just legislation.”

“We were so busy and so focused on getting a bunch of stuff done that we stopped paying attention to the fact that, yeah, leadership isn’t just legislation, that it’s a matter of persuading people and giving them confidence and bringing them together, and setting a tone,” Obama said in an interview conducted Thursday for airing Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “We haven’t always been successful at that, and I take personal responsibility for that. And it’s something that I have to examine carefully as I go forward.”

While Obama stopped short of expressing public regrets about specific policy decisions, he continued the tone of contrition that he set in a televised news conference the day after Tuesday’s midterm elections saw Republicans recapture the House and narrow the Democratic majority in the Senate.

“Part of my promise to the American people when I was elected was to maintain the kind of tone that says we can disagree without being disagreeable. And I think over the course of two years, there have been times where I’ve slipped on that commitment,” the president said. He did not appear to offer specifics.

Asked by correspondent Steve Kroft if it were true, as Republicans have suggested, that the election was a referendum on him and the Democratic Party, Obama replied: “I think first and foremost, it was a referendum on the economy. And the party in power was held responsible for an economy that is still underperforming and where a lot of folks are still hurting.

He acknowledged that he thought the economy would have improved more and that he sometimes feels powerless when it comes to spurring growth.

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Sanford Bishop’s Win in Georgia Was Rare for State Democrats - NYTimes.com

Image via WikipediaSanford Bishop’s Win in Georgia Was Rare for State Democrats - NYTimes.com

ALBANY, Ga. — In an election cycle with few success stories for Democrats, the unlikely re-election of Representative Sanford D. Bishop Jr., 63, in Georgia’s Second District, has lifted the spirits of demoralized liberal Southern Democrats.

Conventional wisdom suggested that Mr. Bishop’s district would probably be yet another tally on the Republican chalkboard. He is a longtime incumbent in an anti-Washington year. He is black in a district where whites narrowly outnumber blacks and elections often split along racial lines. He was chairman of President Obama’s state campaign, and voted for the stimulus and the health care overhaul, in a state where national Democrats are so unpopular that the party’s nominee for governor left town during the president’s recent visit.

And Mr. Bishop was marred by scandal: He was accused of steering a nonprofit group’s scholarships to his stepdaughter and his wife’s niece. (Mr. Bishop says his family members got the money before rules prohibiting such awards were enacted.)

Yet there Mr. Bishop was Wednesday morning in the Albany Civic Center — hours after The Associated Press had declared his opponent the winner, based on an incomplete vote count, then retracted its decision — celebrating with supporters and thanking God. Final results showed Mr. Bishop with 51.4 percent of the vote and his Republican challenger, Mike Keown, a state lawmaker, with 48.6 percent.

Elsewhere, his fellow centrist Blue Dog Democrats were less successful. More than half of the coalition’s 54 members lost on Tuesday. Across the South, already dominant Republicans won every Senate race, all but one governor’s race and nearly every rural House race.

So, on Wednesday, in barber shops, at dinner tables and on talk radio stations across the region, the parlor game was to answer the question: “How did Sanford Bishop pull it off?”

Jerome Belle, 67, a photographer, Democrat and longtime friend who attends church in Albany with Mr. Bishop, suggested that the win was partly a result of Mr. Bishop’s focusing on the needs of farmers (the congressman is on the House subcommittee on agriculture). “He just knows how to talk to people, to stop his car and shake every hand in a small town,” Mr. Belle said.

But many white Republicans suggested that the results were driven by high black voter turnout (Mr. Keown is white). Forty-seven percent of registered voters in the district are black, and 49 percent are white. Politics here are still heavily influenced by race.

“It was blacks. That’s how he won,” said W. P. Wilson, 86, a retired economics teacher and a Republican from Albany. “Bishop voted for everything Pelosi wanted, and that didn’t work for most Republicans. But enough Democrats showed up to vote.”

An Alabama-born former lawyer, Mr. Bishop said in an interview that he had campaigned across the district, even in heavily Republican areas, to persuade moderate voters to evaluate him, not the entire Democratic Party.

“It was a sweet victory,” he said. “I am grateful to God for allowing me to continue this work.”

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Mitch McConnell: Defeat Barack Obama in 2012 - Manu Raju - POLITICO.com

Mitch McConnell: Defeat Barack Obama in 2012 - Manu Raju - POLITICO.com

An emboldened Sen. Mitch McConnell on Thursday will declare that President Barack Obama must be defeated in 2012 because Republicans "can't plan" on the White House to listen to voters and cooperate on some of his party's top political priorities.

“Over the past week, some have said it was indelicate of me to suggest that our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term in office," the Senate Republican leader plans to tell the conservative Heritage Foundation, according to excerpts of his speech provided to POLITICO.

"But the fact is, if our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things," the Kentucky Republican will say. "We can hope the president will start listening to the electorate after Tuesday’s election. But we can’t plan on it.”

While Democratic leaders said Republicans should be prepared to compromise in order to pass legislation, McConnell will make clear that he wants the administration to "move in our direction" if it wants his party's cooperation.

McConnell's sharpened attack would be a departure from the more collegial tone that some Republican leaders struck in the immediate aftermath of Election Day, where voters returned Republicans back to the House majority and elected six more Senate Republicans, narrowing the Democratic majority in the upper chamber to 53-47.

But McConnell's comments suggest that Obama will face a far more confrontational Senate - particularly if the president doesn't dramatically overhaul his agenda. And the Republican leader suggested that he's prepared to tie up the Senate floor and unite his party against some Democratic bills, which could lead to legislative gridlock and have profound repercussions across the 2012 campaign trail.

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Democrat fall may turn Obama inward: officials | The Japan Times Online

Image by IowaPolitics.com via FlickrDemocrat fall may turn Obama inward: officials | The Japan Times Online

Government officials voiced concern Wednesday that the election defeat of the U.S. Democratic Party may make the administration of President Barack Obama more "inward-looking" and reluctant to pay attention to East Asia as well as nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.

"From this point on, the Obama administration will have no alternative but to spend most of its energy in tackling internal problems," an official said.

Expectations are high in the government that Washington will extend its support to Japan, which has been troubled by strained ties with China and Russia, but the midterm election results may strip the Obama administration of much of its leeway to take further measures in support of Japan.

Most Japanese officials believe, meanwhile, the poll results will not affect the relocation of the Futenma base in Okinawa.

No security coverage

WASHINGTON (Kyodo) Washington said Tuesday that while it recognizes Japan's sovereignty over the Russian-held islands off Hokkaido, they are not subject to the Japan-U.S. security treaty because they are not controlled by Japan.

The U.S. government "supports Japan and recognizes Japanese sovereignty over the (Russian-held islands)," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told a news conference.

However, when asked whether Article 5 of the bilateral security pact covers the islands off Hokkaido, Crowley said it would not apply because they are "not currently under Japanese administration."

Opinion: Jewish vote veers right – at times - Tevi Troy - POLITICO.com

Opinion: Jewish vote veers right – at times - Tevi Troy - POLITICO.com

For decades, conservative Jews have been wondering when the traditionally Democratic Jewish voter would make the same migration as other ethnic groups and start voting Republican. At the same time, liberal Jews have been explaining the variety of historical and religious reasons why such a switch would never take place.

While this debate seems never-ending, it’s possible that both sides have been looking at the wrong metrics. The shift in the Jewish vote is already taking place — but at the state, not the national level.

Nationally, Jews are only about 2 percent of the U.S. population, but they are heavily represented in big cities and have disproportionately high voter turnout rates. They are major contributors to both parties, though Democrats get the lion’s share. Some groups within the Jewish community, like Orthodox Jews, have shifted to the GOP – 70 percent supported George W. Bush in 2004. In addition, Jewish neoconservatives have long been vocal Republicans — with voices louder than their numbers suggest. Overall, though, the Jewish vote remains strongly Democratic at the national level. The GOP share in the last two decades fluctuating between Bush’s 25 percent in 2004 and his father’s 11 percent in 1992. (See chart below.)

At the state level, however, Jews can and do vote less Democratic. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie attracted 38 percent of the Jewish vote in 2009, proving that Republicans who can be competitive in the Jewish community gain an edge against Democratic opponents, who then can’t take the Jewish vote for granted.

For this reason, it is worth paying close attention to the Jewish vote in close Senate races in states with significant Jewish populations. In the complicated Pennsylvania race, for example, a Republican-turned-Democrat Jewish senator, Arlen Specter, is involuntarily leaving, and the Jewish vote is likely to help determine his successor.

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Attacks on the President show Newt Gingrich groveling to far right, with 2012 surely in mind

Attacks on the President show Newt Gingrich groveling to far right, with 2012 surely in mind

Intelligence does not assure trust in the world of politics, or outside of it. Newt Gingrich has proven this with his hectoring xenophobia toward Muslims when the iron was hot among those on the extreme right. The former speaker of the House could have instead offered a good cold bucket of water to opponents of the proposed Cordoba House project, but he did not. Some assume that his outrage, so perfect for Fox News, was no more than a cynical quest for power among Republicans, perhaps enough to get the GOP nomination for President in 2012.

His willful distortions of fact about Muslims and their intentions for the proposed Muslim community center were disgusting. But he continues. Gingrich knows that there are those in the nation who are so deluded by their ignorance that they actually believe American Muslims could ignore the national laws and impose Islamic law. There is no doubt that he knows that's impossible, but he keeps saying it nonetheless.

Of late, Robert A. George, a conservative and libertarian journalist, poured intellectual hot coals down the back of Gingrich's pants. He was disturbed by Gingrich's embracing a wacked-out theory - first proposed by Dinesh D'Souza in a Forbes cover story - about Barack Obama having absorbed his purported disdain for Western values from his Kenyan father.

George, who is black, worked for Gingrich following the 1994 midterm elections. Due to that career choice, George has taken his lumps from blacks and liberals in cable news and print for not embracing left-wing ideals and, therefore, "betraying" his race.

George writes that the Gingrich we now see is not the man for whom he worked and who proved himself, over and over, neither afraid of a political brawl nor at a loss for solid beliefs well-grounded in scholarship.

During the Republican squabbles over the loss to Barack Obama, Gingrich transcended the verbal and intellectual mud-slinging, often seeming quite reasonable. He did not submit to the levels of demonization that became part of the act for Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. He seemed wrong for the budding Tea Party movement.

That Gingrich has taken a powder. Eventually, Gingrich leapt ahead of others on the right who were wary of being connected to (and diminished by) association with the rage heating up at the Republican margins; he rolled up his sleeves, left his principles behind, and went along with them.

This is not unusual and has too long and varied a pedigree to lay out right here, but we should never forget the way the Democratic Party was forced to kowtow to elected rednecks who kept their supporters by protecting Southern racism. Gingrich remembers how well the "Southern strategy" of President Richard Nixon worked. It attracted disgruntled Southern donkeys willing to become Republicans as long as the red in their necks was respected.

So Gingrich's change of tune is another disappointing example of how the possibility of rising to a position of power can intellectually deform a person.

Time takes principles and vitality down the drain. It is as much the enemy of a politician as it is the elemental fact movie stars dread every morning as they look into the mirror. In the case of Newt Gingrich, the question is: If you will not try to grab power now, when will you?

Plato once wrote of a man who had to devour his children in order to achieve his goal. If Gingrich chooses to see the electorate as his children, he appears to have decided that, at the end of the day, he can wipe the blood off his teeth.

crouch.stanley@gmail.com

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