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In the Daily Beast, Howard Kurtz gives a grudging center-left comparison of the president and his predecessor.
…The contrast could hardly have been sharper. Bush, with his short, declarative sentences, so sure of himself he felt no need to probe further on one of the most divisive ethical issues of his tenure. Obama, with his finely rendered prose, meandering around as he inspects the subject from various angles, almost like a think-tank analyst.
Eugene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist who has been an enthusiastic supporter of the 44th president and has been granted interviews and invites to group luncheons, wrote that Obama’s 60 Minutes appearance was “uninspired and uninspiring,” offering “no vision of a brighter tomorrow.”
…Still, it felt like we were watching The Decider vs. The Agonizer. The man who approved torture and the man who tortures himself. …
David Harsanyi calls the Dems on their spending addiction in light of the deficit commission’s recommendations.
…Democrats believe we have a taxing problem — more specifically, a not-taxing-the-rich-enough problem — rather than a spending problem. How many times have we heard the silly platitude about having to “pay” for tax cuts? We pay for spending, not tax cuts.
But that particular impenetrable philosophical divide is just the beginning. Outside of military spending, the co-chairs found that one of the most effective areas to save money — around $30 billion yearly — was by shaving 10 percent of the federal workforce and freezing all salaries.
Not a big deal, considering USA Today recently reported that the number of people in the massive federal workforce earning more than $150,000 had doubled since January 2009 — long after Washington supposedly understood the magnitude of the problem.
As you know, public employees are the wellspring of left-wing political support. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees was the single largest outside spender on the 2010 elections. Public-sector unions spent more than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce despite what you may have heard. And they spent taxpayer dollars. What are the chances of Democrats cutting 10 percent of that support?
What’s more holy than a government pension? An entitlement program, of course. Democrats aren’t interested in “reforming” these programs; they’re interested in finding ways to pay for them. There’s a difference. (Remember, the last time liberals decided it was time for reform, Washington took over an eighth of the economy.)…
We have commentary from the Corner on the deficit commission report. Up first, Samuel Staley comments on lax goals that the deficit commission set to reign in out-of-control government spending.
I’m wading through the Powerpoint of the deficit-reduction committee. While it doesn’t seem to pull punches on how desperate our fiscal condition has become, I can already see it’s not going far enough. Their goal is to eliminate annual federal deficits in 30 years! They have also set a long-term goal of reducing federal tax revenues to 21 percent of GDP. While that’s much lower than now, we need to get federal, state, and local government spending to below 20 percent if we really want to promote growth, according to the late economist Gerald Scully. Even more radical fiscal surgery will be needed if we really want to get a handle on federal spending.
Next from the Corner, Bob Stein lists his comments on the deficit commission’s report.
…Here’s what I don’t like:
…? Although the plan says it would try to cap revenue as a share of GDP at 21 percent, there is nothing in the plan that would do so. Gradually, productivity will push a larger share of income into the higher marginal tax brackets, resulting in higher revenue relative to GDP.
…? The plan calls for increasing the tax base for Social Security. This is a large tax hike for many workers.
…? The tax plan raises the cap-gains and dividends tax rates to 28 percent. …
Also from the Corner, Anthony Randazzo criticizes some of the deficit commission’s premises.
…The report perpetuates the belief that we need to wait until recovery sets in to start making reforms, and it argues that government should be investing in education, infrastructure, and high-value R&D to promote growth.
These wrong-direction ideas are all well-intentioned and understandable. But we can’t start cutting the deficit without recognizing that true recovery will only take hold once the current government interventions — stimulus spending, cash-for-clunkers, quantitative easing, HAMP, etc. — preventing the realignment of resources in the economy are removed. Moreover, any deficit-reduction plan that continues to believe government investment in the economy will promote growth is likely to be a failure.
Throwing more federal money at education has not proven to be successful, while local-level reforms — such as Washington D.C.’s — have yielded much higher returns. While there is certainly a role for government in maintaining a national infrastructure, continuing to focus on infrastructure spending as a means of boosting recovery is reaching levels of cognitive dissonance. And the argument that the private sector picks winners and losers in development better than government is a tired one, but still accurate and applicable.
Nevertheless, when it comes to specifics for cuts in the plan, there are some good ones. Here is a sample…
And last from the Corner, Yuval Levin points out that the deficit commission’s positions are a surprisingly realistic start for Democrats.
The preliminary report from the co-chairs of the president’s deficit commission makes for a very plausible leftmost boundary of the serious fiscal-policy debate. If this is the Obama administration’s starting position in the conversation about deficit and debt reduction, it will be a serious position and a constructive conversation. They will obviously need to be willing to move rightward on some key issues (especially the entire health-care question, which is the report’s most glaring and serious weakness, and is at the heart of our crisis of public finances). But on social security, discretionary spending, and many of the proposed tax reforms, this is a very good start.
The people who treat even this as going too far and “simply unacceptable” (to borrow the phrase employed by the outgoing Speaker of the House) are simply not serious about the problems we confront, and not ready for the kind of debate the country needs to have about how to get out of the hole we have been digging for ourselves and how to get beyond the social-democratic welfare-state fantasy that has dominated our political imagination for a century and think seriously about what genuine democratic-capitalism with a responsible safety net for the poor ought to look like.
Jennifer Rubin also weighs in on the report.
…Second, it is quite extraordinary that the plan puts forth a credible version of tax reform. Did you expect the commission to come forward with a reduction in the corporate tax rate and a top individual rate of 24 percent? I sure didn’t. This represents a fundamental shift for Democrats, at least those on the panel who embraced the essential principles of the Reagan and Bush tax cuts. But, you say, what about the changes to the home mortgage deduction? We’ll have to do the math, but with a drastic reduction in individual rates, they may be “worth it.” And, bluntly, it would also cause people to more closely examine how much house they can afford. (If you trust the market, once the subsidy goes away, demand would lessen and prices should come down, making housing somewhat more affordable.)
And finally, we need to be clear-eyed about the defense cuts. We are fighting a global war on terrorism, may find ourselves embroiled in a military confrontation with Iran, and must continue to build missile defense systems. The cuts have to be assessed in light of our security needs and the threats we face. Republicans who embrace a robust, internationalist foreign policy should be wary.
In sum, I’m mildly shocked it was as good as it was. Conservatives would do well to embrace the chunks of it they can and offer plausible alternatives to the rest (e.g., repealing ObamaCare, for starters).
Jennifer Rubin adds to her commentary on the deficit commission report.
As I observed yesterday, the debt commission came out with a preliminary report that was better than expected from the perspective of conservatives and an anathema to liberals. The Wall Street Journal editors outline some of the negative aspects of the report: adhering to ObamaCare, too much timidity on discretionary spending cuts and entitlements, and an anti-jobs hike in the payroll tax. But the editors are mildly impressed…
…House Republicans should react accordingly, which means taking what they like from the commission report and making it part of their own budget proposals. If Senate Democrats and Mr. Obama want to regain any fiscal credibility, they’ll be willing to listen and talk. If not, the voters will certainly have a choice in 2012.
To a large extent, then, the report is a useful political document for the right. It helps sniff out who is serious about spending restraint and who is not, and it embraces a methodology for tax reform that conservatives can support and liberals almost certainly can’t. (Let the “rich” pay have a top marginal rate of 24 percent? Oh the horror!) …
The WSJ editors look at another failed aspect of Obamacare.
…Mr. Obama declared at the time that “uninsured Americans who’ve been locked out of the insurance market because of a pre-existing condition will now be able to enroll in a new national insurance pool where they’ll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable health care—some for the very first time in their lives.”
So far that statement accurately describes a single person in North Dakota. Literally, one person has signed up out of 647,000 state residents. Four people have enrolled in West Virginia. Things are better in Minnesota, where Mr. Obama has rescued 15 out of 5.2 million, and also in Indiana—63 people there. HHS did best among the 24.7 million Texans. Thanks to ObamaCare, 393 of them are now insured.
States had the option of designing their own pre-existing condition insurance with federal dollars in lieu of the HHS plan, and 27 chose to do so. But they haven’t had much more success. Combined federal-state enrollment is merely 8,011 nationwide as of November 1, according to HHS.
This isn’t what HHS promised in July, when it estimated it would be insuring 375,000 people by now, and as many as 400,000 more every year. …
…Pre-existing conditions sometimes do lead to genuine hardships, and polls show that voters are worried about the relatively rare horror stories. More modest fixes could bring more stability to the individual market, while Republicans support a boost in funding for the high-risk pools that 35 states offer as a safety net. The government didn’t need to annex a sixth of the economy and create a multitrillion-dollar entitlement to help 8,011 people.
In the Telegraph Blogs, UK, Toby Harnden looks at the changes in journalism on both sides of the pond.
Often caught between the two, I’ve always been fascinated by the differences between journalism in Britain and the United States. One of the most striking things is the contrast between the self-image of journalists on either side of the Pond. In Britain, journalists (who prefer the term “hacks”) mostly view themselves as grubby tradesmen, living proof of Nicholas Tomalin’s dictum that “the only qualities essential for real success in journalism are rat-like cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability”.
In the US, journalists have traditionally been much more self-important, viewing themselves as part of a noble profession to be venerated and respected in the same way as doctors, lawyers and accountants. They have tended to see themselves as part of the Establishment. The difference has often been on display at White House press conferences, with long-winded, respectful, often pompous American questions contrasting with short, aggressive and impertinent British questions (which sometimes elicit much better answers). …
…Perhaps related to the breaking down of the divide between British and American journalism is the blurring of the old distinction between print and the web. Some very big names are moving to web-only outlets. Tina Brown recently hired Howard Kurtz at the Beast while Howard Fineman and Peter Goodman have gone to the Huffington Post. The journalistic trend in the US is away from the insider, access-based American model towards the iconoclastic, reporting-with-attitude British model. …