Tag: Recovery Act

A Wasted Opportunity. | So Now What?

“The task facing the makers of the Obama museum, however, will be pretty much exactly the opposite: how to document a time when America should have changed but didn’t. Its project will be to explain an age when every aspect of societal breakdown was out in the open and the old platitudes could no longer paper it over — when the meritocracy was clearly corrupt, when the financial system had devolved into organized thievery, when everyone knew that the politicians were bought and the worst criminals went unprosecuted and the middle class was in a state of collapse….It was a time when every thinking person could see that the reigning ideology had failed, that an epoch had ended, that the shitty consensus ideas of the 1980s had finally caved in — and when an unlikely champion arose from the mean streets of Chicago to keep the whole thing propped up nevertheless.”

In Salon, Thomas Frank laments the wasted opportunity of the Obama years. “Why, the visitors to his library will wonder, did the president do so little about rising inequality, the subject on which he gave so many rousing speeches? Why did he do nothing, or next to nothing, about the crazy high price of a college education, the Great Good Thing that he has said, time and again, determines our personal as well as national success? Why didn’t he propose a proper healthcare program instead of the confusing jumble we got? Why not a proper stimulus package? Why didn’t he break up the banks? Or the agribusiness giants, for that matter?”

Frank’s piece is definitely a bit overwritten, with its “mausoleum of hope” and all. That being said, I’m on board with his central thesis, as I’ve said several times before. (In fact, I was glad to see when fixing the old archives lately, that however hopey-changey I felt in 2008, I was more measured in my writing than I remembered, bringing up the ominous example of Herbert Hoover in my post-election post and wondering what the heck was going on within two weeks of Obama’s inauguration.)

Also, to get a sense of what a bad place our party is at these days, just look at Kevin Drum’s ridiculous response to this Tom Frank piece. Drum, mind you, is the official blogger of Mother Jones, named after the famous labor leader. And he writes: “It’s easy to recognize this as delusional…Because — duh — the hated neoliberal system worked. We didn’t have a second Great Depression. The Fed intervened, the banking system was saved, and a stimulus bill was passed…As for Obama, could he have done more? I suppose he probably could have, but it’s a close call.”

A close call? C’mon. As I responded on Twitter: “And all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. This neoliberal horseshit would’ve made Mother Jones blanch. This piece sidesteps O’s GWOT record. 2. It ignores O’s penchant for starting negotiations where they should finish. 3. It presumes filibuster reform impossible. 4. It ignores that financial crisis response grew inequality. And so on.”

And, remember: This fatalistic “Americans are all centrists anyway, Obama did all he could” shrug is coming from the house blogger of one of our foremost progressive journals. It’s pathetic. This is yet another example of we progressive Democrats no longer having the courage of our convictions.

See also this very worthwhile Salon piece on Zephyr Teachout’s challenge to notorious douchebag Andrew Cuomo, by my friend and colleague Matt Stoller, which talks about this exact same phenomenon.

“The basic theory of the ‘New Democrat’ model of governance is that Wall Street and multinational corporate elites produce wealth through the creation of innovative financial practices and technology, and that Democrats should then help middle class and poor citizens by taxing this wealth, and then using some of it to support progressive social programs…This method of running the economy has become so accepted among Democratic leaders that writers like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Vox writer Matthew Yglesias now argue that there simply is no alternative…

“There is a hunger in the Democratic Party for making the party serve the interest of regular voters, not the rich. In 2008, liberal Democrats decisively broke from the Clinton legacy and voted for Barack Obama, with his mantra of hope and change. Obama, however, stocked his administration with Clinton administration officials like Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Janet Yellen. A joke going around Democratic circles after the election was that ‘Those supporting Obama got a president, those supporting Clinton got a job.’ Obama broke with the Clinton name, but brought the Clinton intellectual legacy, and Clinton’s Wall Street-backed machine, into governance…”

“The potentially transformative message of the Teachout-Wu campaign is that the problem is not solely one of personalities or tactical political approaches. Rather it is that the New Democrat model itself, and the Democratic party establishment, is fundamentally at odds with the party’s traditional liberalism…Teachout and Wu are trying to place the citizen at the center of policy. They do that through their proposals for public financing, for antitrust, for social insurance, infrastructure and labor.”

Without vision, the people perish. If we ever want to see the real and positive change that Americans were promised back in 2008, we progressives have to stop acting like we have no other option than to fall into line behind the leftiest of the centrists and clap harder for every occasional, diluted-to-all-hell scrap they throw our way. There’s more to life than Rockefeller Republicanism, and it’s not like we don’t have excellent historical templates to borrow from. We need to dream bigger, stop thinking the status quo is all there is, and push back.

Are Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu going to knock out Andrew Cuomo, a guy who’s quite obviously the poster child for everything that’s wrong with our party? Alas, probably not. But one does not always fight because there is hope of winning. And New York in 2014 is as a good a place as any to start the long uphill slog of taking back our party.

Update: Right on cue, the NYT delves into Andrew Cuomo’s hobbling of the state ethics commission. “[A] three-month examination by The New York Times found that the governor’s office deeply compromised the panel’s work, objecting whenever the commission focused on groups with ties to Mr. Cuomo or on issues that might reflect poorly on him.”More here.

Meanwhile, Blake Zeff thinks Cuomo may have met his match in US Attorney Preet Bharara. “[Bharara] has not only taken possession of the files from the corruption-fighting Moreland Commission that Cuomo recently closed down as part of a budget deal, but has also publicly floated the possibility of investigating the governor’s alleged meddling in its investigations.”

The Deficit Witchhunt: Self-Immolation Time.


“The terms on which the U.S. government can borrow now are exceptionally advantageous. And because of high unemployment the benefits of boosting government purchases and cutting taxes right now are exceptionally large…[R]ight now, as best we can tell, an increase in federal spending or a cut in taxes will produce (in the short run) no increase in interest rates and hence no crowding-out of productivity — increasing private investment. Indeed, government spending that adds to firms’ current cash flow may well boost private investment and so leave us, dollar for dollar, richer after the effect of the stimulus ebbs.“

As the recent wave of deficit hysteria hits the G20, prompting a frightening and idiotic retreat back into Hooverism (As Krugman put it: “Utter folly posing as wisdom“), economist Brad DeLong explains once more the the case for deficit spending during a recession. THIS IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, people (which is why 3/4ths of voters already get it.)

On Jobs and the Jobless.

Via Speaker Pelosi’s official website, some much-needed perspective on the jobs situation under Dubya and Obama respectively (so far). Next time anyone of the (Keynesian-challenged) Republican persuasion starts to rant and rave about the stimulus, this might be a good graph to keep in your back pocket.

Of course, this is not to say we’re anywhere near the clear on the jobs front. Not only is there some frightening new data around about the length of unemployment in this downturn, The Atlantic‘s Don Peck makes a compelling case about how this new jobless era will transform America: “The unemployment rate hit 10 percent in October, and there are good reasons to believe that by 2011, 2012, even 2014, it will have declined only a little…The worst effects of pervasive joblessness–on family, politics, society–take time to incubate, and they show themselves only slowly. But ultimately, they leave deep marks that endure long after boom times have returned.“

Stimpak Applied.

“We have begun the essential work of keeping the American Dream alive in our time. Now, I don’t want to pretend that today marks the end of our economic problems. Nor does it constitute all of what we’re going to have to do to turn our economy around. But today does mark the beginning of the end…The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that I will sign today — a plan that meets the principles I laid out in January — is the most sweeping economic recovery package in our history.” Back in Denver for the day, President Obama signs the ARRA economic stimulus bill into law. [Remarks.] “‘We have done more in 30 days to advance the cause of health-care reform than this country has done in an entire decade,’ Obama said, prompting a standing ovation.“

As with the initial versions, the final bill passed without a single GOP vote in the House and only three Republicans — Snowe, Collins, Specter — in the Senate. Y’know, it’s bad enough that these situationally-ethical jokers stand in the way of what obviously needs to be done to get our economy moving again. (I don’t remember any calls for spending restraint, or any worries about pork, in the flush times when Boss DeLay was running the show, or when both Reagan and Dubya were ratcheting up the deficit to all hell.) But, it offends the senses to have to listen to the aggressively stupid talking points Republicans tend to trot out these days. For example, the party’s new leader, Michael Steele: “Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job.” (The armed services notwithstanding, who does he think the runs the government? Elves? Hey, Mr. Steele, look down — we call those roads.) Or consider South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint: “This is not a stimulus bill. It’s just a spending bill.” Econ 101: A stimulus bill is a spending bill. (They do in fact teach this in SC — I can attest to it.)

Worse still, the national newsmedia has been failing miserably in their coverage of the stimulus battle, by continually enabling these Republicans to spout their inanities without comment. It reminds me of Paul Begala’s “Neil Armstrong Principle,” which I heard him break down on Charlie Rose a few months back: “If John McCain and Sarah Palin were to say the moon was made of green cheese, we can be certain that Barack Obama and Joe Biden would pounce on it, and point out it’s actually made of rock. And you just know the headline in the paper the next day would read: ‘CANDIDATES CLASH ON LUNAR LANDSCAPE.’” Too true.

Well, at least the durned thing passed. I’m sure the bill has its problems, not the least that it was transformed and watered down in an attempt to placate a bunch of Republicans who were never in a million years going to vote for it anyway. Perhaps, when we move forward now, we can focus on writing good policy that will get this economy and our country moving again, rather than catering to the whims of the naysayers, political opportunists, and/or flat-earth morons that comprise today’s GOP.

Fine, We’ll Do It Without You.

“‘There will be people in districts all over the country that will wonder why, when there’s a good bill to get the economy moving again, we still seem to be playing political gotcha,’ White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in an interview.” Well, so much for the post-partisan era. Despite several attempts at across-the-aisle diplomacy by the new administration, the House passes President Obama’s stimulus bill 244-188 without a single Republican vote. Sigh.

Perhaps a little history lesson is in order. Journey with me, if you will, back to 1993, the last time a new Democratic president tried to work with this same crew of jokers on a new, recession-busting economic plan. As you may remember, Clinton’s 1993 budget also passed the House and Senate without a single GOP vote. Let’s see what the Republicans had to say back then (courtesy of some old, off-line research of mine):

Dick Armey (who, btw, made an embarrassment of himself on national television last night): “This bill would grow the Government…shrink the economy” and “will mean fewer jobs for ordinary Americans.” [Congressional Record, 8/5/93]

Newt Gingrich: The bill will “kill jobs and lead to a recession” that would “force people off of work and onto unemployment and will actually increase the deficit.” [Houston Chronicle, 8/7/93, 1993; AJC, 8/6/93]

Bob Dole: The bill “would take America in the wrong direction.” [WP, 8/4/93]

Ronald Reagan (yes, they wheeled him out with talking points): The bill will “only cause the deficit to increase and will likely wreck any hopes for economic recovery.” [“Just Say No to Clinton’s Package,” NYT op-ed, 8/3/93]

Rush Limbaugh: True to form, the GOP’s poster boy bet the DNC $1 million on the air that three of the following five things would happen by 1996: 1. The deficit would grow. 2. Unemployment would rise. 3. Inflation would swell. 4. Interest rates would surge. 5. The President’s approval rating would fall below 45 percent. [ James McTague, “Off to the Races,” Barron’s, 3/18/96]

Well, I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the untold economic devastation that was the remainder of the Clinton years. (If you’re keeping score, Rush went 0-for-5, and never paid up.) As it turns out, just as with Boehner this time around, the GOP had decided beforehand they weren’t going to vote for any Clinton bill. As Bob Woodward notes in The Agenda (p. 109), Dole told Clinton this three weeks before the bill was even proposed.

Then as now, the modern Republican party doesn’t seem to understand the first thing about basic economics (their right-wing dogma precludes any grasp of Keynesianism, I guess.) They don’t seem to “get” rudimentary American history. (I’ve seen so many dumb things written about Herbert Hoover and the 1937 “Roosevelt recession” — which was caused by spending cuts and fiscal retrenchment by the FDR admininstration, not “over-regulation” — by right-wingers of late that it’s hard to even know where to begin.)They don’t seem to understand basic politics. (The American people have obviously voted for action, and a path away from Dubyanomics. Getting in the way of this bill won’t “reboot” their party in any way, shape, or form.) At this point, it’s an open question whether they can distinguish their asses from their elbows.

So…can we please stop spoon-feeding these guys now? The GOP has proven yet again that they’re not looking to play ball. If they want to be on the wrong side of the problem as usual, let them. It’s useless to spend any more time bending over backwards to accommodate their lousy, discredited ideas and inchoate, faith-based economic beliefs. It’s time to move on.

On the Shoulders of Giants.

Two recent and choice Columbia-related links by way of Ted at The Late Adopter:

“Lincoln is important to us not because of his melancholia or how he chose his cabinet but because of his role in the vast human drama of emancipation and what his life tells us about slavery’s enduring legacy…In the wake of the 2008 election and on the eve of an inaugural address with ‘a new birth of freedom,’ a phrase borrowed from the Gettysburg Address, as its theme, the Lincoln we should remember is the politician whose greatness lay in his capacity for growth.” In The Nation and on the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, Eric Foner evaluates the continuing legacy of the 16th president.

“Economic orthodoxy — which gave high priority to balanced budgets and fiscal restraint — remained a powerful force in the 1930s, even as its limitations became increasingly obvious. Similar arguments can still be heard today…The New Deal was least successful when it was least aggressive–when it let concerns about fiscal prudence override the urgent need to pump enormous sums of money into a moribund economy.” And, over in TNR, Alan Brinkley notes what the Obama administration can learn from the New Deal.

Update: “Most Americans, I suspect, if asked whether they would prefer a president with strong principles or one who prefers pragmatic politics, would choose an idealist over a realist in a flash. But almost all successful politicians combine principle with pragmatism constantly.” In a TNR piece that ties the two above together quite well, Prof. Brinkley speculates on the fatal flaw in Dubya’s make-up: certitude. “For whatever reasons…Bush has seemed to be comfortable only when he could make quick and firm decisions, however complicated the issue, and then move on. Admitting mistakes or changing course seems almost contrary to his nature.“

Americans, Living Large.

“Numbers posted by the National Center for Health Statistics show that more than 34 percent of Americans are obese, compared to 32.7 percent who are overweight…In the 1988-1994 surveys, 33 percent of Americans were overweight, 22.9 percent were obese and 2.9 percent were morbidly obese. The numbers have edged up steadily since.” In dire news on the national health front, we Americans are fatter than ever. Perhaps it’s time to dole out Wii Fits as part of the stimulus package? The health care savings might actually make it worthwhile.