The Witchhunt is On.

“Is our huge deficit a problem today? Not if you think people should have jobs. Private sector demand has plunged because of the collapse of the bubble. If the public sector does not fill the demand gap with deficit spending, then we have less demand and fewer jobs. That’s worth saying a few hundred thousand times since the deficit hawks have filled the airwaves and cyberspace with so much nonsense.“

The CEPR’s invaluable Dean Baker rails anew at the deficit hysteria currently in Beltway vogue. I’ve said this several times already now, but I just cannot take anyone seriously who froths and frets about looming deficits, but then says nary a word about out-of-control defense spending. And right now, when it comes to such deficit peacocks, DC is a full-fledged menagerie.

Update: “The danger posed by the deficit ‘is zero. It’s not overstated. It’s completely misstated.’” Ezra Klein talks with James Galbraith, son of the venerable J.K. Galbraith and originator of the great witchcraft metaphor, about the deficit hysteria seizing Washington:

“[W]e should be focusing on real problems and not fake ones. We have serious problems. Unemployment is at 10 percent. if we got busy and worked out things for the unemployed to do, we’d be much better off. And we can certainly afford it. We have an impending energy crisis and a climate crisis. We could spend a generation fixing those problems in a way that would rebuild our country, too. On the tax side, what you want to do is reverse the burden on working people. Since the beginning of the crisis, I’ve supported a payroll tax holiday so everyone gets an increase in their after-tax earnings so they can pay down their mortgages, which would be a good thing.“

FinReg: Where Things Stand.

“Last week, Congress decided it would not confront Too Big To Fail, the single gravest threat to our collective financial security. But there are still several key Wall Street reforms worth fighting for–reforms that must be enacted before the next crisis hits, with or without a big bank break-up. And fortunately, key Senators have authored amendments dealing with each one.” In HuffPo, Zach Carter delineates the most worthwhile progressive amendments to financial reform still up for debate in the Senate. A good encapsulation of the state of play.

The Great Deficit Witchhunt.

“‘The frame of the debate is between those who think the witches have taken over the entire community and the whole lot of them should be burned and those who think there are only a few witches and burning just a few of them would be enough to appease the demons,’ said James Galbraith, the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government at the University of Texas. ‘There are a few of us operating safely removed from the bonfires who maintain there is no such thing as witchcraft.‘”

As more troubling details emerge about its funding and backers, and as commission member Andy Stern, late of SEIU, settles into a troubling Lanny Davis-ish “those fringe liberals are ruining everything” mode, The Huffington Post‘s Sam Stein reports in on the early doings of Obama’s deficit commission.I went over my thoughts on deficits and this commission in my SotU post a few months ago, but to repeat myself:..

On deficits: “We know exactly what happens when you cut spending too quickly after a virulent recession — It was called the 1937 Roosevelt recession, and it would be flagrantly idiotic to repeat it. Just because the GOP doesn’t seem to understand basic Keynesian economics doesn’t mean we should follow them down the rabbit hole of flat-earth thinking, just so we can look bipartisan…[Besides, p]eople were not looking to President Obama for this sort of deficit tsk-tsking and small-bore, fiddling around the margins.“

On this commission: “It’s clear to everyone involved that the entire point of this commission is CYA: i.e, to create political cover for raids on entitlement spending, while once again ignoring the grotesquely swollen defense budget…In other words, this commission will basically just be a chance for deficit peacocks to pretend they’re Serious People and ‘make tough decisions,’ while in fact the one really tough idea that actually needs to be tackled — reining in defense spending — will be completely avoided.“

What I said then still stands. At best, this commission always sounded to me like centrist kabuki theater for deficit peacocks, and, given what we’re learning about some of its backers, it could end up being much, much worse.

Like a Bad Penny.

“Decision Point: Is it a good idea for me to land on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit with a sign that says ‘Mission Accomplished‘? Key Decision: How is it not a good idea?” On the announcement that former President Bush’s forthcoming memoirs will be called, um, Decision Points, the wags at the Gawker crime lab have some fun with Photoshop. (Speaking of decision points, I will concede that it’s very smart of the GOP powers-that-be to wait until the week after Election Day to remind America of the Dubya years.)

HCR: Where’s My Stuff?

Since I was talking to old friends on Facebook yesterday and realized once again that few folks outside of DC have a good sense of what’s actually in the recently passed health care bill, here’s a handy interactive graphic that delivers the what-for for the first year. There’s also a handy embed code there for wider distribution (but sorry, the death panel protocols are still classified. You’ll learn them when they come for you.)

Blunt Rebuke.

“‘Access for kids who have pre-existing conditions, who would be against that?’ Blunt asked a group of health care professionals in Springfield, MO. ‘But access for adults who’ve done nothing to take care of themselves, who actually will have as I just described every incentive not to get insurance until the day that you know that you’re going to have medical expenses–that’s a very different kind of story.‘”

Thanks, Roy! Republican congressman and ostensible chair of the “GOP Health Care Task Force” Roy Blunt actually comes out in favor of repealing the ban on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, one of the few provisions in the recent health care law that usually garnered bipartisan support. For its part, leukemia declined to comment.

The Nuclear Option: Ignorance.

“If there were any doubts that Sarah Palin is a total idiot, she settled them with that single statement….Tip to Sarah Palin: Obama may have some vulnerabilities, and you may have some strengths, but command of the issues doesn’t fall in either category.” As the up traffic here in DC, Slate‘s Fred Kaplan beats back some of the dumber GOP attacks on Obama’s nuclear policy, while Joe Conason tries to explain what Ronald Reagan really thought about nukes.

Sigh…Pick any issue these days, and for far too many of the GOP opposition, the question seems to come down to whether they’re out-and-out venal or just incompetent. Sadly, the answer seems to be yes.

Here’s to our Health.

“As our colleague John Lewis has said, ‘We may not have chosen the time, but the time has chosen us.’ We have been given this opportunity, an opportunity right up there with Social Security and Medicare: health care for all Americans. I urge my colleagues in joining together in passing health insurance reform — making history, making progress, and restoring the American dream.”

So, as you may have heard, the House passed the health care bill 219-212 late last night. It was a long and busy weekend, and a long and busy week is ahead, formulating the death panels and whatnot. Still, we’ve been talking about this bill since I got here last July, so it feels quite good to finally get this done. Now, let’s make it better. (Pic via here.)

Update: Here’s what goes into effect right away, and here’s what it means for you.

The Government We Paid For.

“‘This is the earliest that the Center has ever offered an estimate,’ Krumholz said. ‘As election observers across the political spectrum work to assess the impact of Citizens United, this prediction offers a solid baseline to compare new spending levels against.'” Before even taking the torrents of campaign cash expected in the wake of the Citizens United decision into consideration, the Center of Responsive Politics estimates that the 2010 midterms will cost over $3.7 billion. (FWIW, the year 2006 clocked in at $2.85 billion.) Sigh…fasten your seat belts — It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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.“