2/24: Let's Get Fiscal

Conservative bloggers are portraying yesterday's "fiscal responsibility summit" hosted by Pres. Obama as a "boot-licking session" that won't result in any meaningful policy changes. Liberal bloggers, meanwhile, were relieved that Obama abandoned his plans to announce the creation of a Social Security task force, but they still have major worries that Obama will propose benefit cuts as part of a plan to ensure the program's long-term solvency. It's clear that the netroots will not rest until cutting Social Security benefits is "off the bargaining table".

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Liberal bloggers (Dworkin, Beeton, Marshall, Greenwald, Benen) are buzzing about recent polls indicating that Obama is significantly more popular than cong. GOPers.
• Conservative bloggers (Geraghty, Reynolds, Hinderaker, Hawkins) are blaming the stock market's continued poor performance on Obama's economic policies.
• Conservative bloggers (Hewitt, von Spakovsky, hogan, Goldberg) are criticizing the proposal to give Washington, D.C. a vote in the House of Representatives.

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY SUMMIT: Lots Of Talk; Little Action

Conservative bloggers are portraying yesterday's "fiscal responsibility summit" hosted by Obama as a largely political exercise that won't result in any meaningful policy changes:

• NRO's Yuval Levin: "I have had a nagging sense these past few weeks that Barack Obama thinks that he is the president of a university. Yesterday's conference, with its breakout sessions and half-aware absurdity, certainly didn't allay that worry."
• Michelle Malkin: "Republicans including [AZ Sen.] John McCain and [House GOP Whip] Eric Cantor joined Democrat tax cheat Charlie Rangel and spendocrat Henry Waxman, along with Obama corrupto-cronies such as the SEIU's Andy Stern in a boot-licking session with Dear Leader. [Obama] gathered them all in a press conference setting and called on them as if they were journalistic stenographers. Obama paid lip service to bipartisanship. They paid lip service to bipartisanship. Obama declared the need to fix health care. They declared the need to fix health care. Obama said we had budget problems. They nodded their heads and bemoaned our budget problems."
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "The man has been in office one month, seems to be headed towards a 2 trillion deficit this year based on insane spending programs he supports and he's [talking about fiscal responsibility]?!?!?!? [...] In the same situation, I don't think even Bill Clinton would be audacious enough to deliver those lines. It's like getting a lecture about non-violence from a blood soaked, knife wielding Charlie Manson."

Liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias thinks the summit was "a small-scale political masterstroke": "Yesterday's fiscal responsibility summit turned out to be pretty boring. And that all-encompassing dullness tended, I think, to obscure the real story coming out of the summit -- the way Barack Obama basically rolled the Blue Dogs. [...] Faced with Blue Dog pressure over the stimulus, the White House agreed to bend-not-break and make a big deal about how the deficit is terrible and we need a summit about fiscal responsibility. Then he unveiled a plan to contain the medium-term deficit that consists of tax hikes on the wealthy and fewer wars. Good ideas! But not ideas that involve liberals giving any actual ground. Similarly, he's moved decisively to execute liberals' long-time hope of redefining the 'entitlement problem' as primarily a problem that requires systematic health care reform. [...] All told, it's a small-scale political masterstroke. Obama's progressive agenda remains what it's always been, but now it's fiscally responsible! Not that I thought it is or was ever irresponsible. But it lacked the 'fiscally responsible' label, and now he's got it without giving anything up."

Meanwhile, ex-Labor Sec. Robert Reich criticizes Obama's promise to cut the annual deficit in half by 2012: "The President's message on fiscal responsibility -- that he'll cut the current budget by half by the end of his first term -- is smart politics right now, but it may be dumb politics by November of 2012, and it doesn't make much economic sense regardless. We're in a deepening recession, in case you hadn't noticed. The biggest challenge is to ramp up aggregate demand. Yes, we have to borrow lots from the Chinese and Japanese to do this, and, yes, it's costly in terms of additional interest payments to them. But there's no choice. In fact, if the slump gets worse -- and I have every reason to fear it will because that's the direction we're heading in as fast as you can imagine -- we'll probably have to have a second stimulus. And if the second isn't enough, a third. And so on. FDR's biggest mistake was doing too little until World War II."

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY SUMMIT II: Hands Off The Third Rail, Obama

While liberal bloggers are relieved that Obama didn't announce the creation of a Social Security task force at yesterday's fiscal responsibility summit, they're still worried that the President is open to cutting Social Security benefits:

• Open Left's David Sirota: "23 years is a long time -- almost a quarter century. It's also the gap between when Medicare will face some budget problems and when Social Security will face some budget problems. [...] Knowing this chronology, knowing that 45 million Americans also don't have health insurance, knowing President Obama campaigned on a promise to pass universal health care and not cut Social Security, it seems strange that President Obama is adamant about focusing the debate over entitlement reform even partially on Social Security and not on universal health care, which (if done right) could save lots of money."
• Atrios: "[I]f you really thought it was important to have some budget model make Social Security be 'solvent' for all eternity, it could easily be accomplished with a payroll tax increase. No mix [of tax increases and benefit cuts would be] necessary."
• Firedoglake's Jame Hamsher: "There is no compelling reason to tinker with Social Security, which will take in $180 billion more than it pays out this year and continue to run a surplus for the next 10 years. The 'looming crisis of 2041' could as Atrios notes be accomplished with the simple payroll tax increase Obama suggested during his campaign. Cutting Social Security, 'significantly' or otherwise, is a sop to the Blue Dogs and the Republicans to get them to buy in to healthcare reform, which is no doubt why [WH CoS] Rahm Emanuel is meeting with [SC Sen.] Lindsay Graham about 'entitlements generally, health care and Social Security' per the Times. [...] I'm betting that before this is over, we're going to have it out over whether 'liberals' find it acceptable to have reductions in Social Security benefits. Not that they need our support -- it could be achieved with a NAFTA-style Blue Dog/Republican coalition -- but it will still be interesting to find out where everyone comes down."
• digby: "The NY Times reports today that the left is agitated by talk of cutting social security. At least the administration knows that now, rather than being under the illusion that the left will support them, as the Politico reported a couple of weeks ago. That's a step in the right direction. But SS has to be off the bargaining table."

In response to Ezra Klein's assurances that "Social Security is not in danger," Hamsher asks: "If cutting Social Security benefits is off the table, why won't [WH Press Sec.] Robert Gibbs say it?"

OBAMA: Hey GOPers, Look At The Polls!

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about new Washington Post and New York Times polls indicating that Obama's job approval ratings are much higher than those of cong. GOPers:

• Daily Kos' DemFromCT: "Americans trust Obama on the economy, not congressional Republicans."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "Barack Obama [is] at Reaganesque levels of popularity one month into his first term. [...] This statistic on the relative levels of confidence respondents have in the President's ability to handle the economy vs. that of congressional Republicans is remarkable."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "The Post and the Times both have new polls out tonight showing continued, strong support for President Obama: Post (68%); Times (63%). Beneath that topline, the numbers show very negative reactions to how Republicans have managed their opposition."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "[Obama] has forged a relationship of trust with the American People. He is a tremendous politician. The cable chatter and the Media chatter do not matter, as his poll results demonstrate."
• Balloon Juice's DougJ: "Obviously, no one could have predicted that the Republicans' heroic battle against the stimulus package would hurt them politically. [...Apparently] not many voters want the GOP to be back in the saddle again. [...] I'm sure the pundits will continue to cite some Rasmussen results that show what a genius Eric Cantor is, though. I hate to keep beating this one, but I'm not sure I've ever seen the gap between Villager opinion and public opinion this wide. Not since the Clinton impeachment anyway."
• Salon's Glenn Greenwald: "The political establishment has never come to terms with, and the media establishment just refuses to acknowledge, how deeply unpopular and discredited the GOP is among most Americans in the wake of the eight-year [George W.] Bush disaster. [...] The punditry's claims that Americans want Democrats to dilute their policies in order to attract and include Republican support is entirely misleading. The endless media stories that Eric Cantor, [RNC Chair] Michael Steele and [CNBC host] Rick Santelli are now riding some resurgent, anti-stimulus GOP wave are pure fiction. And the incessant calls for 'bipartisanship' are anti-democratic in the extreme."

Obsidian Wings' publius argues that the public's low opinion of cong. GOPers doesn't matter because the GOP's strategy is a long-term one: "It's easy to look at these numbers and think, 'Wow, the GOP blew it on the stimulus. The public doesn't support them.' But that argument doesn't really work. The House GOP position -- at whatever reading level it was generally articulated on -- isn't a short-term strategy. The stimulus was always going to pass, and the pro-Obama/pro-stimulus numbers were never going to change all that quickly. The House GOP is playing a long-term game. In the spirit of parliamentary opposition, they're looking ahead to the next election. What the public thinks now is not necessarily relevant to what the public will think 18 months from now. They've gone all in but haven't seen the flop yet."

The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen still thinks these poll numbers are bad news for GOPers: "Publius makes the point that the GOP isn't necessarily striving for short-term gains, and is thinking more about positioning for 2010 and 2012. There's certainly something to that -- Republicans want to be able to say, 'We told you so,' if the economy continues to struggle in the coming years. But I also think Republicans expected some kind of boost out of the recent economic fight, which featured a very aggressive p.r. push on GOP economic ideas. If the new poll results are any indication, their efforts haven't worked at all."

OBAMA II: Hey Dems, Look At The Dow Jones!

Conservative bloggers continue to blame the stock market's continued poor performance on Obama's economic policies:

• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "To use Jen Rubin's terms, Economic America has no faith in what Political America is doing."
• Glenn Reynolds: "Stocks have now fallen to 1997 levels. Not much of a confidence vote from the markets."
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "The stock market tumbled again today, to its lowest level in more than a decade. Whatever else you think about the government's efforts to right the economy, it's impossible to say that it has succeeded in instilling confidence that its policies are on the right track."

Meanwhile, liberal bloggers continue to push back against this argument.

DC REPRESENTATION: The Rightroots Say No

Conservative bloggers are criticizing the proposal to give Washington, D.C. a vote in the House of Representatives:

• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "[This is] trashing the Constitution. [...] It seems to me that any state that does not want its power diluted in the Congress has the standing to immediately challenge the law, and hopefully one will do so."
• RedState's hogan: "To offer this representation extra-state is to tug at the thread holding our Republic together. If we begin tugging, how long before an argument is made by an activist court that representation no longer attaches to the state? Why not just take 305 million and divide by 435 -- and apportion throughout the land regardless of state boundaries? How long before the electoral college is ignored? [...] To continue down this path is perilous, and to offer an amendment to the Constitution, and particularly to offer an unconstitutional statute, that will turn our federalist structure on its head is wrong-headed."
• NRO's Hans von Spakovsky: "The Founders understood that it was necessary for the seat of federal government to be in an insular city -- one that would not make the members of Congress beholden or subject to the politicians of any particular state for, for example, services that they may require to work and live. In exchange, the citizens of the federal city would receive the benefit of having their interests advocated in some measure by all the members of Congress who work (and in many cases live) in the District and who, therefore, are attuned to the city's interest. Anyone doubting that this is true need only look to the fact that the District receives $5.55 for every dollar in federal taxes it pays: more than twice as much as any actual state."

NRO's Jonah Goldberg: "DC statehood is a bad idea for reasons familiar to lots of people. But it is true that taxation without representation runs against the American creed. What baffles me is how so many smart people think the way to remedy this injustice is to get more votes in Congress, when what we need to do is abolish the income tax for DC residents (like me!)."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Limits Of Umbrage

The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates thinks African-Americans should take a lesson from Obama's response to McCain's question at yesterday's fiscal responsibility summit:

"John McCain trie[d] to knife Obama at yesterday's event. It's not that raising the cost of the [presidential] helicopter is illegitimate. But that stupid, passive-aggressive grin comes over him just as he delivers the line. We've all seen that grin before -- it's usually paired with a 'my friends.' But later for that, watch Obama's response. Classy. Cool. And funny. He's not concerned with whether McCain is trying to knife him or not. He's beyond it. I think there is a serious lesson for black folks in the manner in which Obama handles opposition -- the legitimate opposition, but especially the illegitimate opposition.

More than any black public figure in recent memory, Obama understands the problems with a strategy premised on taking offense. It's not that Obama never takes umbrage, it's that he's careful about what and when he takes umbrage. I don't really know what the line is. But I know taking offense at calling the stimulus bill a spending bill hits people in a way that, say, taking offense at Michael Steele wouldn't.

There a certain sect of the American commentariat which believes black people complain about the country too much. Usually this same sect spends their time complaining about the country even more. I'm not down with that. But I think all of us should think hard about what we take offense, why, and what good ultimately comes of it. Apologies, I guess. I'm not sure that cartoons are worth our time. But governors denying unemployment benefits to tax-payers, in order to build some political cred, certainly is."

LEST WE FORGET: Not Everyone Can Be This Awesome

From Overheard in New York:

Hobo: Any change? Anything you got to give?
Suit: I wish I had something to give, but pretty soon, I'm going to be like you.
Hobo: My man, you cannot be this awesome.