;)
The Commentariat -- January 2, 2013
My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on New York Times analyses of tax-and-spending negotiations.
Cliff Notes
John Bresnahan, et al., of Politico tell some behind-the-scenes tales of the negotiations.
It Takes a Woman. CW: Meanwhile, I looked in vain for a substantive story on the role of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who was, after all, responsible for getting the bill through the House, even if she had a little help from Vice President Biden, and in the end, a significant number of votes from Boehner's crowd. Instead, we read about the Big Boys throwing tantrums, walking out on negotiations, making obscene remarks to one another, etc. Pelosi, she just does her job.
President Obama made remarks late Tuesday after the House passed the tax-and-spending bill:
Ginger Gibson of Politico: "The Republican House leadership split its vote late Tuesday night on the fiscal cliff deal that received bipartisan support in both chambers before heading to the president.Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) voted in favor of the measure. But Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) voted against the legislation, as did Whip Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Chief Deputy Whip Peter Roskam (Ill.). House Budget Committee Chairman and 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan voted in favor of the deal. The leadership schism reflected a general split in the House GOP conference, in which 151 Republicans voted against the deal and 85 GOPers voted for it."
** Rosalind Helderman & Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "The House late Tuesday gave final approval to a Senate-backed bill that will let taxes rise for the richest Americans, shield the middle class from tax hikes and extend emergency unemployment benefits, ending Washington's long drama over the 'fiscal cliff.' The dramatic vote followed a wild day in which the critical measure was assumed for several hours to be headed for defeat because of widespread Republican objections. The vote was 257 to 167, with 85 Republicans joining with nearly all of the chamber's Democrats. President Obama, whose vice president, Joe Biden, crafted the deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), was preparing to address the nation."
** "By a vote of 257-167 the House has passed HR 8, the Tax Relief Extension Act, which the Senate passed early Tuesday morning by a vote of 89 to 8." -- C-SPAN.
Go fuck yourself.... Go fuck yourself. -- House Speaker John Boehner, in a public face-to-face encounter with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, shortly after Reid said on the Senate floor that Boehner was running the House like a dictatorship
Greg Sargent: "If yesterday's events were such a horrific defeat for the GOP, as many conservatives are telling us, it's only because Republican leaders have spent months or years drumming it into GOP base voters' heads that the most modest of tax increases on the very richest among us would constitute a sellout of deeply sacred principles.... For many House Republicans, this idea -- and the broader refusal to compromise at any cost -- seems to have become a deeply held and guiding governing principle."
Josh Barro of Bloomberg News again on "House Republicans' rational idiocy."
The Intertoobz are full of "I Hate This Deal" stories from the left, so here's one from Joshua Holland of AlterNet. You can look up others yourself. ...
... Though I would recommend this take by Charles Pierce: "I continue to be pessimistic about the whole business."
Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Just a few years ago, the tax deal pushed through the Senate in the early hours on Tuesday would have been a Republican fiscal fantasy, a sweeping bill that locks in virtually all of the Bush-era tax cuts, exempts almost all estates from taxation, and enshrines the former president's credo that dividends and capital gains should be taxed gently. But times have changed.... The latest stalemate on Capitol Hill surprised even many Senate Republicans.... House Republicans have again proved themselves to be a new breed, less enamored of tax cuts per se than they are driven to shrink the government through steep spending cuts."
Drunken GOP Senators Vote for Half a Bill. -- Darrell Issa. Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) ... joked that Senators may have been drunk when they passed the measure in the early hours of Jan 1.... [Issa told CNN's Wolf Blitzer:] 'You know, Wolf, frankly I can't account for what happens after midnight and all of that partying and revelry and drinking that goes on New Years Eve at 2:00 in the morning. What I can tell you is they did half of a bill."
Lori Montgomery & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "House Republicans reversed course Tuesday evening and charted a course toward likely passage of the bipartisan agreement struck in the Senate to avoid the worst effects of the 'fiscal cliff,' setting up a late-night vote to complete a dramatic day in which the critical legislation appeared to be endangered for several hours. In a second meeting with GOP members Tuesday, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.) outlined the options for handling the Senate plan while explaining the high 'risk' involved with approving a different bill that might die in the other chamber, according to lawmakers exiting the evening session." ...
... New York Times story, by Jennifer Steinhauer, here.
Domenico Montanaro of NBC News: "Today, in the opening prayer at the start of the House session at noon ET, [Patrick Conroy,] the House chaplain, made a rare appeal to the heavens for compromise."
Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: "The bipartisan agreement struck in the Senate to avoid the worst effects of the 'fiscal cliff'' ran into strong opposition in the Republican-controlled House on Tuesday, with GOP members criticizing the deal for raising taxes without cutting spending. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the influential House majority leader, emerged from a two-hour meeting with GOP colleagues and said he opposes the Senate bill, which would let income taxes rise sharply on the rich. Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said Cantor 'forcefully' expressed his concerns during the closed -door session, during which other GOP members expressed grave doubts about the agreement. Cantor's opposition likely dooms the chances for fast House passage of the legislation without changes, which could prolong efforts to avert the automatic tax increases and spending cuts that technically took effect on Tuesday."
The Washington Post's liveblog is here. And stuff is happening.
Peter Schroeder of The Hill: "The Senate deal to avoid the 'fiscal cliff' will add roughly $4 trillion to the deficit when compared to current law, according to new numbers from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)." CW: this is because the CBO assumed the Bush tax cuts would expire and also takes into account "the addition of a permanent patch to the alternative minimum tax."
Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center: "... sometime soon, lawmakers will almost certainly have to dip back into the tax code for more revenue, making the details of the fiscal cliff deal ephemeral. In short, this budget agreement will accomplish next to nothing. Congress is only buying time -- and precious little of it." Via John Cassidy of the New Yorker.
Ed Kilgore of Washington Monthly: "This Congress is scheduled to end on Thursday at Noon, so it's beginning to look increasingly possible that the whole negotiation process will have to begin again with a slightly different configuration of players."
Dr. David Newman, an emergency room physician at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in a New York Times op-ed: "I do not know exactly what measures should be taken to reduce gun violence like this. But I know that most homicides and suicides in America are carried out with guns. Research suggests that homes with a gun are two to three times more likely to experience a firearm death than homes without guns, and that members of the household are 18 times more likely to be the victim than intruders. I know that in 2009, the most recent year for which data is available, nearly 400 American children (age 14 and under) were killed with a firearm and nearly 1,000 were injured. That means that this week we can expect 26 more children to be injured or killed with a firearm."
These Republicans have no problem finding New York when they're out raising millions of dollars. They're in New York all the time filling their pockets with money from New Yorkers. I'm saying right now, anyone from New York or New Jersey who contributes one penny to congressional Republicans is out of their minds. Because what they did last night was put a knife in the back of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans. It was an absolute disgrace.... As far as I'm concerned, I'm on my own. They're going to have to go a long way to get my vote on anything. -- Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) ...
... Raymond Hernandez of the New York Times: "A bill to provide tens of billions of dollars in federal aid to states pummeled by Hurricane Sandy was in danger of dying Tuesday night as the House seemed headed for adjournment without taking up the legislation." CW: apparently House leadership was too busy having histrionics. Jerks. ...
... Larry Margasak of the AP: "New York area-lawmakers in both parties erupted in anger late Tuesday night after learning the House Republican leadership decided to allow the current term of Congress to end without holding a vote on aid for victims of Superstorm Sandy. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said he was told by the office of Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia that Speaker John Boehner of Ohio had decided to abandon a vote this session.... In remarks on the House floor, King called the decision 'absolutely inexcusable, absolutely indefensible. We cannot just walk away from our responsibilities.'" CW: These are your people, Pete.
Conservative Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker is sick of the right's "vicious, disheartening & disgusting" character assassination of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Of course Parker has to mute her outrage by blaming "both sides," even though she doesn't bother to cite a single case where Democrats similarly attacked Republicans.
Wow! Austerity Works! Andrew Higgins of the New York Times on how Latvia's economy is improving, thanks to strict governmental austerity measures. Read the whole article & draw your own conclusions. Or, here's Krugman, in an October post. And in a July post.
Tom Shanker of the New York Times compares the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 to the U.S. withdrawal.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Rebecca Tarbotton, an environmental activist who helped persuade big banks to stop financing mountaintop removal mining and who helped persuade Disney to reduce its use of paper made from trees cut down in rain forests, died on Dec. 26 in a swimming accident in Mexico. She was 39 and lived in Oakland, Calif."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leaves New York-Presbyterian Hospital with her daughter Chelsea and husband, former President Bill Clinton. Reuters photo.New York Times: "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday evening, after several days of treatment for a blood clot in a vein in her head."
Politico: "Shortly after the House passed a deal averting the fiscal cliff, the White House announced President Obama will be heading to Hawaii to finish out his vacation." He may return to Washington, D.C., January 6.
AP: "Gov. Tom Corbett [R-Penns.] scheduled a news conference for Wednesday to announce the filing of a federal lawsuit against the NCAA over stiff sanctions imposed against Penn State in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal."
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Reader Comments (9)
Congressional dysfunction in 4 mins.
...and the bipartisan AllMighty smiles down on Washington. Thanks with big help from the (Wo)Man up above, U.S. politicians put down their expensive whiskey bottles and told their assistants to get serious writing legislation averting the impending deficit reduction.
SO what have we learned from this miraculous intervention?
Nothing! Except expect more of the same in 2013 with a Prez who prefers folding to scolding and Repugs who aim further right to avoid a 2014 fight.
I think the Greasy Toad will be particularly cunning in this new year after tarnishing the Repug brand with all of that bipartisan compromise. He'll vigorously flubber that neck roll declaring "NO!" to any further compromise, and the debt ceiling will bring "concessions" to the other aisle soon.
...and the circus continues.
The Politico article underscores the fact that Boehner is entirely an empty suit with a martini. He is not a true believer. He's comfortable in a smoke filled bar as long as there are no deals that must be made. Harry Reid is taking advantage of finally having the upper hand. Perfect jab to call Boehner a dictator. The reference is rich with meaning - Cantor at his back and no power to dictate anything except the next bathroom break.
More news from right-wing world.
WND, World Net Daily or Wing Nut Daily, has taken a look back over the past year to find liberal and progressive villains whose work and thought are dangerously inimical to wingnut goals and ideology and have decided that the most evil person of 2012 was.....
John Roberts! America's Newest Benedict Arnold.
How do they know this? Why, they were told so by Big Conservative Thinkers like Rush Limbaugh and Micheal Savage. That evil John Roberts helped the Black Satan to allow moochers to receive health care, never a good thing in right-wing world. And they finish with a flourish of generous quotes from that serious political scholar Ted Nugent.
More than just a bit of juvenile silliness, it really shows the depths of a hatred, in right-wing world, of compromise and negotiation for the betterment of all Americans. As in the response by many teabagger louts in congress to the Fiscal Mole Hill negotiations, the controlling principle is to never give an inch on anything, no matter how ridiculous and hypocritical.
But then you knew that already, didn't you?
It turns out that our conservative Republicans from NJ and NY are furious with their conservative colleagues for not spending taxpayer funds from the socialist government for support for the recovery from Sandy.
When I read the so-called 'success story' about Latvia's austerity measures earlier this morning, it was the very last sentence of that article that summed it up—exactment!
“You can only do this in a country that is willing to take serious pain for some time and has a dramatic flexibility in the labor market,” he said. “The lesson of what Latvia has done is that there is no lesson.” (NYTimes). Which, certainly reinforces Krugman's early July blogpost that CW pointed out.
Observing the DC Republican performance over the past days left me disgusted. Whereas the Democrats often left me puzzled, frustrated and bewildered. After all the road blocks that McConnell has put in front of the Administration since 2008—now he gets invited in as a 'play-ah.' In the end, I think it was all done as a piece of performance art...the Markets (and the Prez) NEEDED to end the year with an uptick. A few positive outcomes, yes...but overall meager progress. Charles Pierce had two early morning posts that made several astute observations. Coming to your telly soon: March Madness and debt ceiling redux.
(Off-beat morning musings): Anyone notice the upper body posturings, struttings, & facial mannerisms of Boehner? There's a vague similarity to (the late) John Gotti! Both of'em smug bas'tids, but one had balls & management skills of a sortl!
Not much time for detail but wanted to let the CW know I thought her alter ego's Examiner analysis of the Fiscal Bluff dramatics was the best I've read, a big picture look at what was happening at the time of writing and, by this morning, has now happened.
The parliamentary part is particularly provocative. Have a friend who worked as a high level government functionary in New Zealand for three years who readily and happily sings the praises of the parliamentary system, but I retain doubts about the policy gyrations that system allows and sometimes encourages.
More later as we head into the next certain fiscal crisis after two months of relatively easy breathing. If the Senate actually does something substantive about the filibuster in the meantime, it might help, but there's still the gerrymandered House ready to do their dirty.
Will the split last night's House vote revealed be healed by March? Will Boehner still be speaker? Guess we'll have to wait for the answer.
BTW, the Lord of All Things, who drew so much attention here a few days back, did a fine job with the Rose Bowl.
@Ken Winkes: "BTW, the Lord of All Things, who drew so much attention here a few days back, did a fine job with the Rose Bowl."
You might not think so if you were, as are Kate Madison and I, a Wisconsin alum. U Rah Rah.
Marie
@Marie and Kate:
That darn Point of View! (has bitten me too).
My best,
Ken