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In a brilliant Corner post, Nicole Gelinas likens the new 12 person budget committee to the financial system’s attempt to offload sub-prime mortgage risk.
… Now, clever politicians think that they can transfer the responsibility of deciding what kind of spending we’re going to cut — entitlements to pay for the past, or infrastructure investments to pay for the future — to a committee that is of the political system but also somehow outside of it.
It’s a political derivative — and it won’t work. Come December 23rd, the results of this political derivative will boomerang right back to the politicians and the nation.
And remember: Politicians purposely — and foolishly — manufactured this particular crisis so that they could show how forward-thinking they were in saving us from it. No wonder financial markets — also in turmoil because of Europe right now — are skeptical of the exercise and the outcome. …
Alana Goodman, in Contentions, illustrates the uncertainty created in the super committee.
As we await the creation and deliberation of the “super committee” to determine the future of national defense, it’s worth taking a look at how this instability impacts the economy.
The prospect of massive – and unpredictable – future defense cuts isn’t just a concern for national security officials. It’s also reportedly spooking defense contractors, who are hesitant to hire new employees in such a volatile atmosphere.
From reading local news reports, we learn communities across the country are already bracing for the prospect of additional economic turbulence:
“The impreciseness of the deal and the uncertainty about where budget cuts will come from does little to help the fragile economic recovery in San Diego and could potentially have a huge impact on the region’s job growth in the coming years, experts said.
The deal imposed $1 trillion in budget reductions over the next decade but did not outline where cuts would be made, virtually ensuring continued hesitance among consumers and businesses that will keep them from spending. That doubt is expected to guarantee the unemployment rate in the county will remain about 10 percent through the rest of the year with very little job growth, experts said.” …
The National Journal says the super committee will create super lobbyists.
… When the Divine Dozen are named, it will lead “to the emergence of a pack of superlobbyists who will have access to those members” and who can try to protect clients from the carnage, said Democratic consultant David Di Martino. That’s because with only six members from each party on the committee, influencing the super committee will largely be an inside game with Democratic and Republican lobbyists working their respective lawmakers.
Each appointment will be closely watched for the signals it sends about the direction of the super committee, more formally known as the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.
“The bubbling, No. 1 question in the last 24 hours for downtown is, ‘Who are the 12 going to be?’ Because that will shape what the super committee will or will not tackle,” Republican lobbyist Kirk Blalock said.
A Democratic insider put the concern more bluntly: “If you’re a company with a major stake in what’s going to happen in the super committee and you have a team that has no connection to those members, you’re probably going to be looking for additional help”—an observation that may turn out to be a colossal understatement. …
Investor’s Business Daily editors say it is a sham to say these are budget cuts.
… According to IBD’s analysis of available budget numbers, the deal’s $2.4 trillion in 10-year cuts amounts to a mere 5% trim off total projected federal spending during that time. It’s like a 400-pound man boasting that he plans to drop 20 pounds over a decade, while his doctors warn about the risks of losing weight so fast.
Even calling these “cuts” is a bit of a stretch, since spending will continue to increase, just at a slightly slower pace. (See charts below.) By 2021, federal spending would still equal 22% of the nation’s economy, above the post-World War II average of 20%. Not really a cut, is it?
Plus, in the short term, these “deep,” “sharp,” “slashing” cuts would still leave the federal government spending roughly 4% more in 2012 than it did in 2010, and 20% more than it did in 2008.
Shorn of all the hyperbole, what this agreement really demonstrates is why it’s so hard to get federal spending under control. Both sides routinely use budget gimmicks to exaggerate spending cuts, while armies of special interests swarm Washington to make sure their pet programs don’t get touched. …
In a courageous blog post, Charles Lane points out the hypocrisy in the liberals calling the tea parties “terrorists.”
If liberals believe anything, it is that the right is either solely, or mostly, responsible for the degradation of political discourse in America. And they are surely correct to condemn such ugly rhetorical excesses as the Obama-is-Hitler placards that flowered across the land in the summer of 2009.
But liberals are in deep, deep denial about their own incivility issues. Consider the “terrorism” analogy now being aimed at the Tea Party by Democratic members of Congress — in the acquiescent presence of the vice president, no less — and by some journalists who sympathize with the Democrats. To pick just one example of the genre, today’s New York Times carries Joe Nocera’s column, “Tea Party’s War Against America.”
According to Nocera, President Obama’s debt-ceiling deal with the Republicans violated a basic rule: “Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them.” He adds: “Much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people.” These “intransigent” spending cutters were indifferent to “blowing up the country” in pursuit of their goals. They are indifferent to “inflicting more pain on their countrymen” via “the terrible toll $2.4 trillion in cuts will take on the poor and the middle class” and the extra unemployment it will bring.
I’m puzzled. The Times editorial board only recently condemned “many on the right” for “exploit[ing] the arguments of division,” and “demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats.” Right-wingers, The Times notes, “seem to have persuaded many Americans that the government is not just misguided, but the enemy of the people.”
So how can it be okay for Times columnists to demonize the Tea Party and try to persuade Americans that they are not just misguided, but the enemies of the people? …
Jennifer Rubin calls BS on the president’s claim he is pushing free trade deals.
One of the more disingenuous aspects of President Obama’s Rose Garden speech yesterday was his plea to pass three pending free-trade deals. He said, “I want Congress to pass a set of trade deals — deals we’ve already negotiated — that would help displaced workers looking for new jobs and would allow our businesses to sell more products in countries in Asia and South America, products that are stamped with the words ‘Made in America.’” Does he?
At every turn, the administration has dragged its heels and come up with one excuse after another. He has done nothing to accelerate ratification of the deals. …
… Given the way the debt-ceiling deal worked out, you can understand what is going on here. Obama in theory might favor passage of the trade deals. But he lacks the ability to galvanize his own party and the will to buck his union patrons. So nothing happens. It is quintessential, impotent Obama.
Peter Wehner with notes on the One’s fall.
If you want to gauge how upset President Obama’s liberal base is with him right now, consider the words of Democratic Senator Tom Harkin, who said this as the final debt ceiling deal was coming together: “I am just sorely upset that Obama doesn’t seize the moment. That’s what great presidents do in times of crisis. They exert executive leadership. He went wobbly in the knees.”
This isn’t simply stating a policy difference with the president; it’s a barely concealed assault on his character and fortitude.
It highlights not simply the unhappiness prominent Democrats have with Obama, but their borderline contempt for him.
I don’t think people fully realize just how weak and incapacitated the debt ceiling debate has left the president. But fairly soon, it’ll become clear enough.
His presidency is coming apart, and he doesn’t have a clue how to repair it. Obama’s fall from grace has been quite remarkable, and I suspect it’s nowhere near finished.
Iain Murray and Mark Steyn post in The Corner on lemonade stands. Here’s Mark;
… the state enforcers won’t let you make lemonade.
Iain Murray wrote yesterday about the spate of lemonade-stand crackdowns by this once great republic’s depraved regulatory class. This is not a small thing. A land in which a child requires hundreds of dollars of permits to sell homemade lemonade in his front yard is, in a profound sense, no longer free: It is exactly the kind of micro-regulatory tyranny of which Tocqueville warned two centuries ago.
Guest-hosting for Rush a week or two back, I suggested en passant that we needed a children’s version of the Tea Party — a Lemonade Party. I see now that a concerned citizen is organizing a Lemonade Freedom Day for August 20th.
By the way, our fellow NR cruiser Ed Driscoll has posted an excerpt from my new book about another curious priority of the control freaks of the Brokest Nation In History: The church bake-sale pie crackdown. I hesitate to channel Martin Niemöller (“First they came for the kid next door’s lemonade stand and I did nothing, then they came for the widder woman across the street’s maple pecan pie”), but this is a sustained assault by the state on civic participation, and thus on citizenship itself.
The proper response of any self-respecting seven-year-old girl on being told she needs the state’s permission to sell homemade lemonade is, “You’ll never take me alive, copper!”
Late night humor from Andrew Malcolm.
Leno: A new poll says only 17% of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction. I think it’s time for a female president. At least she’d stop and ask for directions.
Conan: The U.S. government is nearly out of money to pay its bills. Things are so bad, America may have to move in for a while with Canada.
Letterman: So the deficit talks keep breaking down. And right about now Obama, the president, he wishes he was born in Kenya.