February 09, 2009

2/9: Nice Job, Centrists!

Liberal bloggers are furiously denouncing the Senate version of the economic stimulus bill, which was reached in an agreement between Dems and three moderate GOPers. Lefty bloggers think the list of cuts proposed by the centrist senators makes little sense; Josh Marshall complains that the cuts "build up the least effective parts of the package at the expense of the most." The netroots are particularly incensed by the proposal to cut $40B from proposed aid to states, which they're describing as "crazy" and "perverse". Liberal bloggers believe that giving money to state governments is necessary to prevent further budget cuts and job losses, and they hope that state aid is restored when lawmakers reconcile the House and Senate bills in conference.

Meanwhile, several conservative bloggers are blasting the three GOP moderates for "betraying" their party and compromising with Dems. Michelle Malkin is urging her readers to contact the offices of ME Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and "protest [their] collusion in this act of generational theft." Other righty bloggers are less upset by the actions of Collins, Snowe, and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), as they believe that "Barack Obama and the Democrats own this bill, and they will own the consequences that almost certainly will result: delayed recovery [...], unprecedented deficits, tax increases and inflation."

STIMULUS: What The Centrists Have Wrought

Liberal bloggers are overwhelmingly opposed to the compromise forged by the group of centrist senators:

• The New York Times' Paul Krugman: "[T]o appease the centrists, a plan that was already too small and too focused on ineffective tax cuts has been made significantly smaller, and even more focused on tax cuts. [...] My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years."
• TAPPED's Tim Fernholz: "The decision to [cut] $40 billion in state aid, another $20 billion in school construction, $2 billion for rural broandband access in favor of $30 billion in tax rebates for people who buy homes and cars is a travesty; the former option is more stimulative to the overall economy and targets needed investments, while the latter has a small stimluative value, is regressive and would be a step towards puffing the housing bubble up again."
• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "I've heard that you are supposed to get more conservative when you get older. The older I get, the more I am convinced that 'moderates' like Susan Collins and [NE Sen.] Ben Nelson -- so beloved by the media -- are simply rich corporate hacks who seek to destroy the American middle class by subtler means than the likes of [George W.] Bush."
• MyDD's desmoinesdem: "In the name of bipartisanship and compromise, Democrats in the Senate may approve a stimulus bill that won't work. That will do more to revive the Republican Party than the think tank [RNC Chair] Michael Steele axed. Even if a handful of Senate Republicans vote for the stimulus, Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats will pay the price if the economy continues to decline."

digby: "Hardball is reporting that the new bill is 42% tax cuts now and 58% spending, which is considered a big win for Republicans. And they are still fighting it. And when it finally comes to the floor, they won't vote for it anyway. That's how a truly ruthless opposition party works. They ruin the legislation, are lauded as winners for ruining the legislation and then vote against the legislation that they ruined. Awesome. [...] It also occurs to me that it's just accepted as fact that the Republicans will filibuster this bill if they can. In the middle of a national emergency. Why is that ok but filibustering a supreme court justice nomination was a crime against the constitution?"

STIMULUS II: Where's The Logic In This?

Many liberal bloggers are complaining that there's no rhyme or reason to the list of cuts proposed by Sens. Nelson and Collins:

• TPM's Marshall: "[T]he list of cuts they've pushed through follow no coherent approach to the package -- and build up the least effective parts of the package at the expense of the most. They follow a logic of political grandstanding."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "I'm really shocked by the extent to which the architects of the Senate cuts to the recovery package aren't being made to offer any kind of justification for their actions. And in the absence of pressure, they certainly aren't doing it of their own accord."
• Obsidian Wings' publius: "[W]hat exactly were Nelson and Collins trying to accomplish? The whole thing seemed like a bad black comedy. The negotiators seemed to be pushing for cuts, not because the cuts achieve any substantive policy objective, but just because the Senators had an ideological aversion to 'bigness.' Or something. It's all incredibly frustrating -- it would be one thing if the Nelson/Collins crew cut measures that actually had no (or very limited) stimulus benefits. But that's not at all what they did -- in fact, there seems to be little coherence to what they cut. From what I can gather, they wanted to cut some stuff just to say that they had cut some stuff."
• Ezra Klein: "There are two basic arguments you heard coming from the Collins-Nelson crew. The first was that the stimulus was too big. [...] The second was that the particular programs weren't justifiable within the 'stimulus' rubric. [...] But the gang of job-cutters -- to steal Dean Baker's elegant formulation -- hasn't justified their cuts on grounds of either size or efficacy. Why is $900 billion a stimulus package they would have to oppose, but $800 billion is a stimulus package they can support? There's been no explanation for the superiority of $800 billion against $600 billion, or even against $1.2 trillion. Nelson has not argued that the likely output gap over the next two years has been overstated in CBO estimates -- and way overstated by Goldman-Sachs' estimates -- and thus the stimulus is too large for our purposes. Nor have they argued that the $40 billion in state aid and $20 billion in school construction will be less stimulative than the $70 billion Alternative Minimum Tax patch, of which exactly 0.5% goes towards the bottom 60 percent of the income distribution (which are, of course, the folks most in need of relief, and most likely to spend it quickly). In fact, they haven't really argued anything at all. Rather, it's been a dazzling display of the most analytically bankrupt strain of centrism: The belief that the right answer lies, by definition, somewhere between the answers that are already on the table."

STIMULUS III: They Want To Cut State Aid?!?

Liberal bloggers are especially outraged by the proposal to cut $40B in aid to states:

• Yglesias: "The single most perverse thing about the Senate version of the stimulus package is that it made big reductions in federal aid to the states. In economic terms, this was just about the least-controversial idea you could put in a stimulus package."
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "State aid was cut? That's crazy. Even many of the conservatives I read agree that preventing huge state cutbacks is one of the quickest and most efficient forms of fiscal stimulus. And most of the rest of the spending on this list is infrastructure spending, exactly the thing that conservatives were complaining there was too little of. Granted, neither laws nor sausages bear close scrutiny, but trading this stuff for a bunch of idiotic car and homebuying subsidies strikes me as unusually mindless, even by U.S. Senate standards. This is not exactly centrism's finest hour."
• dday: "The $40 billion [cut] for state aid is astounding. You're not going to see an economic recovery if the states are having to cut budgets at the same time the feds expand them. They'll cancel each other out."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "Cutting state aid from the stimulus bill is a very bad idea. Congress can get the money to states quickly, and give states a much needed boost at exactly the right time. I don't know what Collins & Co. are thinking, but they need to think again."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "[T]he craziest thing about the centrist compromise over the stimulus bill is that for whatever reason, they stripped out a ton of aid that would go directly to the states, create immediate jobs. At a time when the economy is shedding 600k jobs a month, not firing a police officer is almost as good as hiring a new one."
• publius: "[S]tate budget aid is an important stimulus. It should not be cut. Let's hope [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi hangs tough on this."

STIMULUS IV: The Last Resort

Disgusted by the compromise currently being forged in the Senate, several liberal bloggers are hoping that lawmakers improve the bill when the Senate conferences with the House:

• Fernholz: "The only light at the end of the tunnel is the conference committee, when a select group of senators and representatives will get together to iron out the differences between the two houses' versions of the bill. It's possible that conference will be a venue to improve the bill, and once it is brought back for a vote -- no amendments allowed -- Obama's national tour next week will have brought enough pressure to bear that a chagrined Republican or two will cross party lines for the bill."
• dday: "If you want more jobs, you have to eliminate the AMT patch, which can be reconciled through a regular process with offsets, and add back the spending to the states, school construction, and more, which will probably add a million more jobs. Otherwise, you're going to see cops, firefighters, nurses and teachers out on the street. [...] Will the House force the moderates in the Senate to eat a shit sandwich? Will the moderates do it, or will they vote against the bill and sink the economy? There can be no amendments to a conference report, but the bill will need a 3/5 vote."
• Firedoglake's Christy Hardin Smith: "Children don't vote. Which means that programs which benefit them far too often end up on the funding chopping block. So who will pushback on their behalf for the upcoming conference negotiations on this bill? I know I will be. And I hope you will, too. Why? Because without a public push, the likelihood of any of this funding being restored is nil -- and the most vulnerable members of our society will be shoved aside. Again. At a time when their need is increasingly desperate."

STIMULUS V: Thanks A Lot, RINOs!

Many conservative bloggers criticized the centrist GOP senators who were involved in forging the compromise:

• Malkin: "Details of GOP Sen. Susan Collins' 'compromise' 'stimulus' proposal are coming out. This is a Mt. Kilimanjaro-sized crock of you know what. Total cost of this 'pared down' bill is $1.175 trillion. Let me repeat that: $1.175 trillion. [...] So in the name of fiscal responsibility, Collins and the B.O. Republican contingent are selling out America with a plan that costs $7 billion more than the House Crap Sandwich Supreme. Are we ready to say the F-word* yet? (*Filibuster)"
• RedState's Jeff Emanuel: "Multiple sources are reporting that Republican Senators Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins have reached an agreement with Democrats on a final $780 billion version of the so-called 'stimulus' package. Way to sell out your team, folks. [...] I hope you enjoy the short-lived feather in your cap this compromise will be, Senators. All you've done is pave the way for this bill to get far enough along in the process to have everything you negotiated out put right back in -- and at that point there'll be nothing you can do to stop it."
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "When people like David Frum, Kathleen Parker, David Brooks, etc., say that they want a 'more moderate' Republican Party, in real world terms, what they want is for the GOP in DC to be more like Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter -- the Republicans who appear likely to cave on this stimulus package. Does anyone really think the Republican Party can succeed like that? For that matter, does anyone think the country can thrive with a Republican Party made up of people like that?"

Power Line's John Hinderaker isn't too upset by the actions of the three GOP moderates, as he thinks Dems will ultimately "own this bill": "The important thing, I think, is that Barack Obama and the Democrats own this bill, and they will own the consequences that almost certainly will result: delayed recovery (although this will be impossible to prove), unprecedented deficits, tax increases and inflation."

STIMULUS VI: A Disaster In The Making

Needless to say, conservative bloggers aren't any less opposed to the stimulus bill now that centrist senators have removed some of the spending provisions:

• Hawkins: "This stimulus bill is huge, so disastrous, and so harmful to our country that even though Obama has been in office for less than a month, I think it's already fair to label him as one of the worst Presidents in American history."
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "I do not know how anyone can deny anymore the fact that the stimulus package is a public policy disaster waiting to be implemented."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Throughout the next few days of debate, the conference and the final votes in the House and Senate, every Republican Representative and Senator should warn of the risks of spending this much money on giveaways. This kind of spending unconnected to the productivity unleashed by tax cuts brings on inflation and low if any real economic growth -- Carterism, in other words. [...] Repetition, repetition, repetition: It is a teaching moment that the votes of Senators Collins, Snowe and Specter cannot in any way obscure. This sort of fiscal policy cannot work and never has. The Democrats know this but prefer the short-term political benefits of paying off their constituencies over the opportunity before them to redraw the political map by embracing centrist, common-sense economics as Clinton did post 1994."

Malkin encourages her readers to keep calling Congress: "Thanks to all of you who have melted the phones to stop passage of this Mt. Kilimanjaro-sized, gold-plated pile of crapola. The voicemail and e-mail boxes of the U.S. Senate are completely filled. You can find local district phone and contact information for every U.S. senator here. Don't stop."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Trouble With Centrism

The Atlantic's Ross Douthat:

"The liberals are angry, and not without reason. You can imagine a world in which 'centrist' Senators used their awesome deal-making powers to forge compromises that incorporate ideas from the left and right alike. [...] But that's not the world we live in. In this world, centrist Senators exist to take politics as usual -- whether it's tax cuts in Republican eras, or spending splurges in Democratic ones -- and make it ever so slightly more fiscally responsible. So if the GOP wants, say, $500 billion in tax cuts, the country clearly needs $400 billion in tax cuts -- but not a penny more! And if the Democrats want $900 billion in stimulus, then the best possible policy outcome must be ... $800 billion in stimulus! To read this Arlen Specter op-ed, justifying both the stimulus package and the cuts the 'gang of moderates' have attempted to impose, is to encounter a mind incapable of thinking about policy in any terms save these: Take what the party in power wants, subtract as much money as you can without infuriating them, vote yes, and declare victory.

Now fiscal responsibility is generally a good thing, and so a centrism mindlessly focused on tweaking legislation away from deficit spending has its uses. But what Nelson, Collins, Specter and Co. have done isn't a new kind of politics. It's the definition of politics as usual. And in this particular case, there's a reasonable argument that it's actively pernicious -- that if you can't shrink the stimulus package much more substantially than the centrists have done, you shouldn't shrink it at all. There's a case to be made for a stimulus that's radically different than the one we have now; there's a case to be made for a stimulus that's like the one we have now, but a great deal smaller and more targeted; and there's a case to be made for a stimulus that's absolutely gargantuan. But thanks to the centrists, we're getting the cheapskate version of the gargantuan version: They've done absolutely nothing to widen the terms of debate about what should go into the bill, and they've shaved off just enough money to reduce its effectiveness if Paul Krugman is right -- but not nearly enough to make it fiscally prudent if the stimulus skeptics are right."

LEST WE FORGET: Dorks On Parade

Wonkette's Sara K. Smith is underwhelmed by Annie Leibovitz's portraits of various members of Obama's team:

"Annie Liebovitz will photograph literally anyone, as long as they are marginally famous. Ever since Watergate she has taken portraits of schlubby double-chinned Administration staffers, so as to glorify the current President and reassure the nation that, while power changes hands occasionally, it transfers cleanly from one self-satisfied bureaucrat to the next.

Her latest series on key Obama administration figures raises a very important question: Do we really need to see what any of these dorks look like? And more importantly, why would any of these dorks assume we want to look at them? They obligingly stood for their portraits in the New York Times Sunday magazine a few weeks back, and far be it from any of them to turn down a session with the Great Annie Liebovitz, but jesus christ. America is interested in precisely four (4) people involved in the Obama administration: Barack, Michelle, and their kids. That is all. The halo of glamour does not extend to Steven Chu."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at February 9, 2009 01:16 PM