Saturday, 7/28/12, Public Square

Monday, 5/21/12, Public Square

Sunday, 7/17/11, Public Square

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Wednesday, 6/22/11, Public Square

Bush and Obama Tax Plans

So how are the Republicans going to sell their plan to keep those Bush tax cuts for the 2% who are wealthiest?  What kind of spin will they put on this one?  It would be entertaining if it weren’t so desperately serious.

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Obama: GOP Will Move Country Backward

With a victory on the financial regulation overhaul in his pocket—a “key pillar” in his recession recovery plan—President Obama said a Republican plan for the economy would move the country backward to the job-killing policies of his predecessor. “It took nearly a decade of failed economic policies to create this mess, and it will take years to fully repair the damage,” Obama said in his weekly address that aired Saturday, vowing that his policies would move the country forward. That’s expected to be one of the White House’s main messages during this fall’s midterm elections. The president admitted that the growth since the credit crisis two years ago hasn’t created enough jobs, but said the GOP would make things much worse. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) countered that the GOP would promote growth by cutting spending and taxes.

Read more here.

Or, listen to the address here.

GOP answer to budget shortfall — “Who knows?”

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took to CNN Sunday to bash Democrats’ “gargantuan spending spree,” the latest in a long line of Republican attacks over the deficit that began almost immediately after President Obama’s inauguration. But what, exactly, would the GOP do to reduce the substantial budget shortfall–a much of it coming from the sea of red ink President Bush bequeathed to President Obama?

The answer: Who knows?

That, of course is nothing new — talking about belt-tightening in the broad sense is always easier than throwing out specifics.  Since Sen. Jon Kyl’s clarification on Fox News earlier this month that extending unemployment benefits is fiscally dangerous but deficit-financed tax cuts to the tune of $678 billion are just gravy, Republicans have been under new pressure to clarify how exactly they intend to reduce the national debt.  Sen. Pete Sessions’ (R-TX) appeared Sunday on Meet The Press and under persistent questioning from David Gregory, he failed to offer any specific examples of what spending programs the GOP would cut.

This evasion probably won’t keep them from being elected or reelected, it hasn’t in the past.  And if they should regain the majority and are asked to present a budget they’ve painted themselves into a corner.  They’ve signed pledges to not increase taxes, they’ve endorsed an array of new tax cuts that blow a further hole in the budget.

The GOP recently rebranded itself as the holy defender of Medicare during the health care debate, putting another huge chunk of the budget out of play. Let’s assume that Defense Spending is an unlikely target as well. That pretty much leaves Social Security and a handful of popular spending programs like SCHIP on the block, which are as politically disastrous targets as they come.

Pinned down by a conservative base demanding drastic spending reductions AND tax cuts, it seems extremely unlikely a Republican House would be able to produce a workable budget that would get past the president’s desk, leading some observers — most notably Paul Krugman — to predict a government shutdown.

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Wealth Inequality in America

Check out these 15 charts on the subject of wealth and inequality in America.

Reconciliation only for GOP

Thanks to the 2006 and 2008 elections, conservatives no longer control the American government. They do, however, continue to essentially control the American media. As a case in point, you’ve probably heard that part of the Obama administration’s plan to pass health reform is to use the budget reconciliation process. The reason you’ve probably heard is that the press has been obsessed with the topic, repeatedly labeling it a “controversial” move that would “ram” legislation via an end-run around the normal legislative process.”

In fact, though most bills do not go through the reconciliation process—typically because their subject matter makes them ineligible—the process has been invoked frequently since 1980. And the reason it’s remained obscure until 2010 is that until the health-care debate, the press never saw fit to go into conniptions over congressional procedure.

Some of the mainstream media coverage of the reconciliation issue has been bad. Some of it, like this excellent NPR story, has been good.

Continue reading here.