Harry Reid, Max Baucus still pursuing a 'grand
bargain' at the expense of vulnerable citizens

Senators Max Baucus and Harry Reid. Thanks for nothing, guys. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Some details have emerged from yesterday's Catfood Commission II Democrats' offer to slash Medicare in order to reach out to Republicans?an offer that was summarily refused. This is a time when you can actually be thankful for Republican intransigence on taxes. They might just be saving critical entitlement programs with their refusal to budge, because Democrats Max Baucus and Harry Reid are still pursuing an insane grand bargain.

Speaking for a majority of the six Democrats on the panel, Sen. Max Baucus (Mont.) on Tuesday urged his GOP colleagues to pick up where President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) left off in a summer battle over raising the federal debt limit.

Baucus, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, offered to cut as much as $500 billion from Medicare and other health programs and to adopt a less generous measure of inflation to calculate Social Security benefits, according to aides familiar with the talks.[...]

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) broached the idea of a "grand bargain" on taxes and entitlements in a meeting last week with Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Democratic leadership aides said the goal was to determine whether such a deal could come together.[...]

But Boehner and McConnell have been steadfast in their refusal to consider tax increases big enough to persuade Democrats to throw their weight behind reductions to popular social programs.

"Their offer is a joke," said one Democrat with knowledge of the GOP counter-proposal. "Democrats came to the table with an offer that had serious skin in the game for both parties. Rather than offering real solutions, Republicans are just doing more of the same posturing they do every time they walk away from efforts to constructively tackle this crisis."

Whose skin is in this "game" exactly? It sure as hell isn't Reid's and Baucus's. It's the skin of our most vulnerable citizens. That's the game they're playing. And they think that it's their sacrifice they're willing to make.

It's not, Senators Reid and Baucus. The worst that can happen to you is that you lose the next election and only have your very generous federal retirement to live on, or maybe those speaking fees and lobbyist gigs that will undoubtedly come your way. No, it's not your skin that's at risk at all. So maybe you can remember that next time you feel like bargaining away the security of the people you're supposed to be representing.

And really, how tone deaf can they possibly be? How absolutely insulated from what's happening in this country right now to think that making life worse for the most vulnerable of the 99 percent makes any kind of sense? What Atrios says: "the people in charge are incompetent and/or evil."

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Harry Reid, Max Baucus still pursing a 'grand
bargain' at the expense of vulnerable citizens

Senators Max Baucus and Harry Reid. Thanks for nothing, guys. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Some details have emerged from yesterday's Catfood Commission II Democrats' offer to slash Medicare in order to reach out to Republicans?an offer that was summarily refused. This is a time when you can actually be thankful for Republican intransigence on taxes. They might just be saving critical entitlement programs with their refusal to budge, because Democrats Max Baucus and Harry Reid are still pursuing an insane grand bargain.

Speaking for a majority of the six Democrats on the panel, Sen. Max Baucus (Mont.) on Tuesday urged his GOP colleagues to pick up where President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) left off in a summer battle over raising the federal debt limit.

Baucus, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, offered to cut as much as $500 billion from Medicare and other health programs and to adopt a less generous measure of inflation to calculate Social Security benefits, according to aides familiar with the talks.[...]

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) broached the idea of a "grand bargain" on taxes and entitlements in a meeting last week with Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Democratic leadership aides said the goal was to determine whether such a deal could come together.[...]

But Boehner and McConnell have been steadfast in their refusal to consider tax increases big enough to persuade Democrats to throw their weight behind reductions to popular social programs.

"Their offer is a joke," said one Democrat with knowledge of the GOP counter-proposal. "Democrats came to the table with an offer that had serious skin in the game for both parties. Rather than offering real solutions, Republicans are just doing more of the same posturing they do every time they walk away from efforts to constructively tackle this crisis."

Whose skin is in this "game" exactly? It sure as hell isn't Reid's and Baucus's. It's the skin of our most vulnerable citizens. That's the game they're playing. And they think that it's their sacrifice they're willing to make.

It's not, Senators Reid and Baucus. The worst that can happen to you is that you lose the next election and only have your very generous federal retirement to live on, or maybe those speaking fees and lobbyist gigs that will undoubtedly come your way. No, it's not your skin that's at risk at all. So maybe you can remember that next time you feel like bargaining away the security of the people you're supposed to be representing.

And really, how tone deaf can they possibly be? How absolutely insulated from what's happening in this country right now to think that making life worse for the most vulnerable of the 99 percent makes any kind of sense? What Atrios says: "the people in charge are incompetent and/or evil."

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Eric Cantor on House Republicans: We're not lazy!

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (center) is working hard?on all the wrong things
 If this pushback is any indication of what's going on inside House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's mind, then he doesn't have a clue about why public approval of Congress has fallen to an all-time low of 9% since Republicans took control of the House:

In a 1-page ?Dear Colleague? letter, Cantor pointed to several numbers that he said indicated a more deliberative and productive House due to the new schedule. For example, through Oct. 14 of this year, the House has taken 800 roll call votes so far, compared to 565 votes by the same time in 2010.

?I believe this year?s calendar, because of its new design, helped improve the legislative culture of the House,? Cantor wrote in the letter released Thursday.

In his letter, Cantor also noted a ?boom of activity? in House committees, with 1,276 hearings and 194 mark-ups held so far in 2011. Like this year, votes in the House in 2012 will be held later in the day between 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. ? largely to allow committees sufficient time to do their work in the mornings.

Cantor seems to think that the public is pissed off because they don't think Congress is keeping itself busy. But that's not the problem?nobody keeps themselves up at night worrying how many hours per day members of Congress are on the job. What they care about is whether Congress is actually getting something done. And by that measure, Congress has been an absolute failure, and the blame falls squarely on Republicans.

Nobody doubts that Paul Ryan worked very hard to pass his budget plan that called for the end of Medicare as we know it. Nobody doubts that tea partiers spent countless hours plotting the debt ceiling debacle. Nobody questions whether John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have burned the midnight oil to figure out how to block President Obama's jobs agenda.

The problem isn't how hard House Republicans are working. It's that they are working for the wrong things. They've got their priorities upside down. And the only way to solve the problem is to throw them out next November.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Clever!

Two guys release new! and improved! version of weird anti-welfare board game they've been peddling in one form or another for more than 30 years. The latest version features "Obozo the Marxist Clown." Get it? But their marketing gimmick seems to be the[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/lMcj3iGgKSg/clever.php

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

7 Billion And Counting

Sometime in the next few days -- if it hasn't happened already -- the world population of humans will hit 7 billion for the first time. We've put together a cool slideshow to tell that story, but this one photo captures the whole thing. [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/rhjwFj4dA8s/7_billion_and_c
ounting.php

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Study: Fewer regulations under Obama than Bush

Those pesky facts keep getting in the way of a good loony rant by the Republicans, again. Maybe the Democrats want to fight back on this one?

Obama?s White House approved 613 federal rules during the first 33 months of his term, 4.7 percent fewer than the 643 cleared by President George W. Bush?s administration in the same time frame, according to an Office of Management and Budget statistical database reviewed by Bloomberg.

The number of significant federal rules, defined as those costing more than $100 million, has gone up under Obama, with 129 approved so far, compared with 90 for Bush, 115 for President Bill Clinton and 127 for the first President Bush over the same period in their first terms. In part that?s because $100 million in past years was worth more than it is now due to inflation, Livermore said.

In the last 12 months through the end of September, the cost range of new regulations is estimated to be $8 billion to $9 billion, a decrease from 2010, according to non-partisan Government Accountability Office reports analyzed by Bloomberg. That total put the average annual cost of regulations under Obama at about $7 billion to $11 billion, compared with the $6.9 billion average from 1981 through 2008 in current dollars, according to the OMB data.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Supercommittee in the Sandbox

Democrats are offering a $3 trillion debt reduction of tax increases and spending cuts, including as much as $500 billion in savings from Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs to revive the Obama-Boehner Grand Bargain on the debt ceiling that Eric Cantor and his Tea Party House cohorts torpedoed last summer.

The proposal would include as much as $300 billion to stimulate the economy, but this would require Republicans to stop acting like spoiled Baby Boomers in a sandbox, clutching their favorite toys and refusing to share anything with anybody.

For someone of an older generation, such behavior recalls an early childhood memory in the Great Depression. Walking down the street, my mother grips one hand and in the other is some small object. I ask for something but she refuses. In a wailing rage, I fling what I am holding to the ground and, as my mother keeps pulling me along, I see another child pick it up. Now I want it back with all my heart. I learn that, if you ask for too much, you can lose what you have.

In post-World War II affluence, later generations grew up never having to realize that you can?t have everything, and their overblown sense of entitlement has now hardened into an adamant refusal to face the reality of not enough to go around.

All this is perfectly captured in an Esquire blog post by Charles Pierce, quoting a recent Paul Ryan speech:

"We're coming close to a tipping point in America where we might have a net majority of takers versus makers in society and that could become very dangerous if it sets in as a permanent condition. Because what we will end up doing is we will convert our safety net system...to help people who are down on their luck get back onto their feet into a hammock that ends up lulling people into lives of dependency and complacency which drains them of their incentive and the will to make the most of their lives."

Pierce calls this ?pure Ayn Rand. ?Makers vs. takers.? Moochers and leeches. You and Them. But especially Them. But not in a divisive way. Oh, no. The Congressman doesn't believe in divisive class rhetoric. He said so...And he is not engaging in the politics of division himself. Oh, no. He's just sad--mournful, even--that the ?conceits of liberalism? are on their way to dividing the country into ?makers versus takers.? And you know who you are, don't you? And who They are. And what They are taking...from You.?

Well said and sad. If nothing can get Ryan, Cantor et al out of the Ayn Rand sandbox, there will be fewer and fewer toys to go around for all.



Read The Full Article:
http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2011/10/superccommittee-in-sandbox.html

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Joel Osteen: Maybe Gays Will Stop Being Gay
‘If We Will Love Them’ Enough

Mega church leader Joel Osteen reiterated his belief that being gay is a “sin” during an interview with the Washington Post’s Sally Quinn, but said that gay people should still purchase his new book “Everyday a Friday” and learn from its message of empowerment. “They don’t have to let people steal their power, especially all the bullying, things that we see going on with that,” he said. Osteen also suggested gays could be converted:

Somebody that maybe had this certain difficulty now, maybe in five years they’re not if we will love them. You know, I think one of the messages I speak on sometimes is, you know, we can love people back into wholeness. But sometimes we want to beat them down — you got this addiction and you shouldn’t have that, or you did this — I just don’t think that’s the best way.

Watch it:

Osteen said that he would attend a same-sex marriage but wouldn’t officiate it, before adding, “we’re all growing, we’re all changing.” “Somebody who has a certain difficulty now, maybe they won’t in five years. You know, one of the messages I speak to is, you can love people into wholeness.”

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Why The GOP’s ‘Marriage
Penalty’ Is A Myth

Via Politico’s Pulse, the House Oversight and Government Reform committee is out with a new report arguing that the health care law implements a “marriage penalty tax” that will over time “directly cause fewer individuals to marry”:

1. Because the law links the tax credit to household income, two people who make above a certain combined income will not be able to get a tax credit if they file together (married), but if they get divorced or decided against tying the knot they would, individually, be eligible for a premium credit. Giving people pause about marriage could be a big “unintended consequence” of the law, the report says. (PULSE thought bubble: or provide a convenient excuse to those with commitment issues?)

2. Although the proposed rule on tax credits is somewhat unclear on the issue of affordability for families with employer-sponsored insurance, the GOP report suggests that the rule could be interpreted in a way where families with only one spouse receiving insurance through their employer could encounter a dilemma where they are forced to choose between a.) a divorce and tax credits b.) buying individual insurance without a premium subsidy or c.) paying a penalty and forgoing insurance.

Republicans first raised this concern during the health care reform debate and it’s still as meritless now as it was then. Here’s why: The affordability credits are pegged to the federal poverty guidelines, which treat married people as a unit and view individuals as separate parties filing separate tax returns. These guidelines assume, as Judith Solomon points out, that “people benefit from economies of scale when they?re living together” and recognizes that unmarried individuals have fewer resources (lower incomes, more money spent on basic necessities) than married families. In fact, since the majority of the uninsured are not married and marrying lowers uninsurance rates, providing more subsidies to individuals is a better way of targeting affordability credits to those who need them most.

That’s issue number one. Their second concern about an HHS rule offering insurance subsidies for workers if their employer doesn?t provide affordable individual coverage (as opposed to family coverage) is a worry health care advocates share. But to expand the affordability definition and allow more people to take advantage of the tax credits within the exchanges would cost the government “an extra $50 billion a year” — spending Republicans would surely oppose. The greatest irony of all, however, is that Republican health care prescriptions — look to the Boehner alternative introduced in the House for an example — don’t provide subsidies to anyone — married or unmarried Americans and it’s actually their efforts to repeal the ACA and do little to nothing for health care spending that would significantly strain families and their economic well being.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Peter King’s ‘Hard Evidence’
That Iranian Diplomats Are Plotting Terror Attacks: ‘Common Sense And Observation’

Yesterday during a House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on “Iranian terror operations on American soil,” Rep. Peter King (R-NY) echoed Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s (R-FL) controversial call to — in violation of American law — expel Iran’s United Nations diplomats from the United States. “You dropped the bombshell today at your hearing,” CNN host Wolf Blizter told King later, asking, “Doesn’t the U.S. have…international legal responsibilities as the host country to the United Nations?”

King said it’s legal because the Iranian diplomats are plotting terror attacks inside the U.S. But when asked for evidence, King offered random and confusing examples and conveniently said he can’t discuss the evidence but he’s seen it and “it’s buttressed to all sides.” Blitzer then pressed King again for “hard evidence,” and the New York Republican dodged, citing “common sense and observation”:

BLITZER: Just to be precise, these Iranian diplomats are in New York and Washington. Do you have hard evidence they were actually plotting to undertake terrorist operations inside the United States?

KING: I’m saying they clearly have ties to those in Iran who do those things. We know this from common sense and observation, from talking to people in the community that these people, whether it’s actual terrorist activities or dealing with other countries or just facilitating activities with them or with Hezbollah, the fact is they are over here for an ulterior purpose, not diplomacy. It’s to advance Iran’s interest and, as I said, there have been instances in the past where we’ve actually caught them doing it, but from people I’ve spoken to, in the intelligence and law enforcement community.

Watch the clip:

So King has no evidence. He essentially thinks that the Iranian diplomats in the U.S. are plotting terror attacks here because they’re here to “advance Iran’s interest” and have ties to Iranians (of course they do, they’re Iranians too). Based on those parameters, King should start working on the deportation papers for every foreign diplomat residing in the United States.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!