The CBO's Sky Is Falling... Again.

Last week the GOP's collective hair was on fire when the always reliable CBO said that the health care reform being worked out in Congress would add to the deficit, not reduce it. I also predicted that within days, the CBO would come out with another statement amending the Chicken Little assessment.

Bingo.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released estimates this evening confirming for the first time that H.R. 3200, America's Affordable Health Choices Act, is deficit neutral over the 10-year budget window - and even produces a $6 billion surplus. CBO estimated more than $550 billion in gross Medicare and Medicaid savings. More importantly, the bill includes a comprehensive array of delivery reforms to set the stage for lowering the future growth in health care costs.

That was Friday. Yet, no one is talking about these CBO numbers, just as everyone ran for their bomb shelters to count their canned peaches stock the last time this happened, based on an incomplete or non-existant CBO report on the Obama administration's Recovery Plan.

I see a pattern developing.

McCaskill Rips GOP Hypocrisy on Earmarks

I love this woman.

President Obama at the White House Fiscal Responsibility Summit

Transcribed live from CNN -

Along with having a good sense of humor, President Obama hit another home run.

When accepting the suggestion that he continue to reach out to the minority and comparing it to the parable of sowing seeds and that his seeds would eventually find fertile soil, the President said, "I will certainly do that because I'm just a glutton for punishment... I'm going to keep talking to Eric Cantor. Someday sooner or later, he's going to say, 'Boy, Obama had a good idea.' It's gonna happen."

And then he closed with this:

"One last point I want to make, just because I think, from the press perspective, I was reading some of the newspapers today and there was a sense that maybe we were doing a 'pivot' because we had just moved forward on the recovery package and now we're talking about fiscal responsibility, how do those two things match up?

I just want to be very clear about this and I've said it to the Governors this morning and I've said it to my staff in the past. We chose to move forward on a recovery package because there was a strong sense among the vast majority of economists that if we did not try to fill a $1 trillion a year hole in demand, because of the drastic pulling back of businesses and consumers, that the recession would get worse, unemployment would increase and as a consequence, tax revenues would go down and the long term deficit and debt projections would be even higher.

That was the basis for the decision. It was not ideologically driven. I have no interest in making government bigger for the sake of it. I've got more than enough on my plate, as Lindsey [Graham] knows, between Afghanistan and Iraq, and issues of terrorism, that if the private sector was just humming along and we could just make government more efficient and not have to worry about this financial crisis, I would love that. But that's not the circumstance we find ourselves in, so I made the best judgement about the need to for us to move forward on a recovery package.

There were some differences, significant differences between the parties about this. I would suggest that if you look at the differences, they amounted to maybe 10, maybe 15 percent of the total package. There wasn't a lot of argument about counter cyclical payments to states to make sure that people had extended unemployment insurance or Food Stamps. There wasn't a lot of disagreement about some of the infrastructure that needs to be repaired. There wasn't a lot of disagreement on the tax cut front. Fifteen, twenty percent of it there was some disagreements about.

But the reason I make this point is that if we're going to be successful moving forward, it's important for us to distinguish between legitimate policy differences and our politics. And the reason there is no contradiction from my perspective in doing the recovery package first but now focusing on the medium and long term is because our hope is that this economy starts recovering - we will have taken a hit in terms of our debt and our deficit, but as Bob Greenstein said, the recovery package will account for about one tenth of one percent of our long term debt, the real problems are the structural deficit and the structural debt we've been accumulating and all of us are complicit in.

So we've gotta get that taken care of. We would have had to get it taken care of whether or not there was a recession. This just underscores the urgency of it and I'm hopeful that we move forward in that spirit in the days and weeks and months to come."

The quote of the day when someone harped that the Democrats in the House were not inclusive of the Republicans in the recovery bill process.

"On the one hand, the majority has to be inclusive. On the other hand, minority needs to be constructive... What you should see, I think, is the majority saying 'What are your ideas?' The minority has got to then come up with those ideas and not just want to blow the thing up."

Political Suicide

It's amazing to me that some of these insane Republican Governors would even fathom the idea of refusing federal aid for their states to make political hay. South Carolina's Mark Sanford has been the most vocal when it comes to the recovery bill.

“We’re moving precipitously close to what I would call a savior-based economy,” Sanford also said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
...“That is quite different than a market-based economy where some rise and some fall but there’s a consequence to making a stupid decision,” Sanford said after pointing to the powers granted to the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to help deal with the current economic crisis.

I wonder if Sanford will make the "stupid decision" of letting his state starve instead? Hell, he waited until the last possible second before asking for money to shore up unemployment benefits in the state with the third highest unemployment rate at 9.5%, so I wouldn't put it past him.

But we all know that in general, Republicans are hypocrites.

Sanford: "Being against it doesn't preclude taking the money."

Lindsey Graham on CNN after being asked if South Carolina should take the money: “I think that, yes, from my point of view, I — you don’t want to be crazy here."

Is it just me or is this like force feeding a baby to eat his beets? We know it's good for them, but they turn their heads and make a stink and cry and moan and wail because they don't like the taste of what's best for them.

I say, let them drink the political hemlock. If they seriously think that threatening to refuse money based on some set of misguided principles, or touting the funds they got in the bill through amendments they then voted against are going to help them in their upcoming campaigns, go right ahead and jump off that cliff. I'll be the one playing the pipe as they leap off the egde.

WHAT THE FUCK?! - NY Post Editorial Cartoon Way Off Mark

Rupert Murdoch's New York Post strikes again. Sean Delonas and whoever the editor was that thought this editorial cartoon was worthy of printing should be fired immediately.

There is absolutely no way that this racist cartoon can be explained away. If your first instinct was that cartoonist Delonas was comparing President Obama to a chimp, and a dead chimp shot by police no less, then no other explanation is necessary. I'm all for free speech, but this is beyond tasteless.

Sam Stein has more.

UPDATE (2:05pm):

From Fraulein in the comments:

I keep thinking that our illustrious media can't shock me anymore, but somehow they manage to keep doing it.

Jumping on this soapbox will make me sound 100 years old, but I'm going to do it anyway. In my day as a newspaper reporter (early/mid-1990s) we approached our jobs with a certain sense of ethics. We tried to air all sides of a story, to the extent that this is ever possible, and one rule we most certainly never broke, at least at the unremarkable suburban newspaper where I worked, was the one about not gratuitously insulting your readership. I would argue that by running such a viciously racist cartoon, the Post has attacked not only Obama, but most of its readership. It's attacked not only blacks, not only Obama supporters, but every one of its readers who don't consider themselves violent racists. Which one would hope is most of them (even though this is the Post we're talking about...)

Firings are the least of what's required to address this kind of systemic disregard for the principles of journalism. Unfortunately, I think the very issue is that it IS systemic. Across the board, from major newspapers to the execrable news weeklies (I'm looking at you, Newsweek) to the sewer of cable news, the ideals of a true free press died out long ago.

As news consumers, it's our job to call out the media on this kind of bullshit every time it happens. It's the only way they're ever going to learn how intolerable this kind of thing is.

Obama The Figurehead - The New GOP Talking Point

There's nothing like politicians from opposite sides working together for the good of the country to avoid economic disaster. And this is nothing like it.

Yesterday, we heard pissant Lindsey Graham accuse President Obama of being "AWOL" on this recovery bill. Yes, the same President Obama who invited leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties to the White House to talk about the stimulus bill; the same President Obama who personally met with House Republicans and Senate Republicans a week ago; the same President Obama who hosted a White House cocktail party and invited leaders of both parties to attend to discuss the recovery bill; the same President Obama that had a Super Bowl party (that McCain refused to attend) to discuss the stimulus; the same President Obama who called individual Senators to speak about the stimulus. That President Obama is now being called AWOL in the eyes of obstructionist Lindsey Graham.

It now seems that this was the opening salvo in the GOP propaganda powder room. Newt "Contract On America" Gingrich was on the Today Show this morning and said, "Why isn't he calling bipartisan leadership meetings in the White House to work out the details instead of making partisan speeches in front of a partisan audience attacking the people whose votes he's gonna need?" Yeah, Gingrich said that. I suppose Newt Gingrich was either AWOL or in a coma these past two weeks. And the irony of the "partisan speech in front of a partisan audience" line really made me laugh out loud.

Steve Thomma fell for it hook, line and sinker. Being interviewed by Nora O'Donnell this morning, the McClatchy reporter's response to Gingrich's statement was, "He's met with them, had lunch with them...we don't know if he's negotiated." Does Thomma think that Obama would have lunch with these idiots for the pleasure of it?

Thomma goes on to say that he doesn't know if Obama is "hands on" or if he's a "big picture -chairman of the board type" like Reagan was. Where did he get this opinion? At a luncheon with... Newt Gingrich. He continued with the GOP talking points about Obama needing to compromise and take spending out of the bill in favor of more balance between spending and tax cuts to gain Republican support. I guess Thomma was on vacation for the last two weeks as well.... or maybe sitting at another GOP luncheon.

So look for the new Republican talking point. Obama is just a figurehead who is AWOL when it comes to negotiating the specifics in the recovery bill. Because we all know it's more important to invent talking points and obstruct than it is to actually help the hundreds of thousand of Americans losing their jobs every month.

This Is What We've Been Waiting For!

There have been grumblings from the liberal blogosphere that in the interest of bipartisanship, President Obama is blowing it on the recovery bill. Yeah, he said, "We won" when some GOP lackey decided to try and push his 90 lb. weakling weight around and Obama stomped him, but for the most part, the same people who cried, "Oh Noes!" when they thought Obama was blowing it on the campaign trail are now biting their nails on the ruined opportunity of the recovery package.

And then we get this from President O-BAM!-A:

We're not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that in eight short years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin. We can't embrace the losing formula that offers more tax cuts as the only answer to every problem we face, while ignoring critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil, the soaring cost of health care, failing schools and crumbling bridges, roads and levees. I don't care whether you're driving a hybrid or an SUV - if you're headed for a cliff, you have to change direction.

...you get the argument that, well, this is not a stimulus bill -- this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point!

Finally, this is the Barack Obama that we were waiting for; the one who is going to try and work together with his rivals but one that will not be bullied. Someone who knows that the definition of bipartisanship is not capitulation. (I say "finally" but it's only been 16 days. Talk about being conditioned for the need of immediate gratification!)

I'm hoping to get the video up soon but for now, here is the C-Span video of the full 21 minute speech.

Obama Fights Back - Washington Post Editorial

This is something we're not used to seeing from Presidents. I can't remember if President Bush wrote anything, speeches, editorials, a book report on "My Pet Goat"?

President Barack Obama took his pen to paper and wrote an editorial regarding the economic struggle that we find ourselves in and the urgency of passing the Economic Recovery Bill currently in the Senate in the Washington Post today.

In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. They know that we have tried it those ways for too long. And because we have, our health-care costs still rise faster than inflation. Our dependence on foreign oil still threatens our economy and our security. Our children still study in schools that put them at a disadvantage. We've seen the tragic consequences when our bridges crumble and our levees fail.

Now, some will say that this is beneath the President. Why is he writing editorials in the Washington Post? The answer is because he can. I don't know if it's my perception or if the media is following Obama with a fine tooth comb, but I don't ever recall any President having or maybe wanting this much media access to bring his message directly to the American people. There he was on all the nightly newscasts answering for the Daschle withdrawal. Have you ever seen anything like it? With this President the words, "The buck stops here," isn't just a funny little catchphrase. He actually means it.

Some will suggest that the editorial sounds like fearmongering. I vehemently disagree. The President's editorial isn't fearmongering if there is truth to it. There are no false qualifiers here, no deception, no lies to persuade. We are in deep, deep trouble and every day we wait it gets worse. There is no falsehood to that. There's a difference between laying out the dire circumstances for all to see and fearmonging to scare up votes by saying something like, "...if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States." See the difference?

I also disagree with those who think that President Obama didn't have to send this message. So far, this recovery bill has been based on the framing of the argument. The Republicans have framed the debate on this bill as "pork laden." Rush Limbaugh calls it "porkulus" in front of 14 million weekly listeners. (And he certainly know something about porkulus.) The GOP has capitalized and zeroed in on a fraction of one percent of the recovery bill for their political advantage and framed the entire bill it as a pork laden wish list. They public thinks it looks like pork because the Democrats are sitting back while the Republicans, with the blatant or inadvertent help of the media, are framing it as wasteful spending. And if the public gets that perception, then that's what they'll believe because the media is never wrong. Where is the rebuttal from Democratic leaders explaining why these measures are in the bill?

$200 million for Medicaid on contraception will save $60 billion in government medical costs in the future. Sounds like a good investment. $21 million for the National Mall will put arguably thousands to work to repair the crumbling foundations of our national monuments. But the GOP calls this "$21 million for grass." The list goes on and on, and instead of the Democratic leaders rebutting these ridiculous pork notions, they are either nervously wringing their hands in silence or aren't getting the air time to rebut. The only Congressman I saw defending contraception was Robert Wexler (D-FL), who explained it rationally and logically on Hardball with Chris Matthews. And when he was done, he still got a "I don't understand what you're talking about," from an obtuse Phil Gingrey, the same Congressman who's apologized to Rush Limbaugh for his brief moment of clarity.

Maybe the President did make one mistake. In the interest of bipartisanship, President Obama compromised too much; he backed off to a fault with initial GOP resistance and it was perceived as a validation of Republican complaints. But what happened? After he accommodated them, House Republicans rejected the bill anyway. And the more it went on, the more we saw the political endgame that they would have rejected it no matter what the President did just to send a message.

Well, now it's the President's turn to send a message. It's the Democratic leaders' turn to send a message and make the obstructionists decide that if they really want to fight this thing, they're going to have to filibuster for it. No pansy ass cloture votes. Make them filibuster.

The only mistake the President made regarding the Washington Post editorial was not going far enough. This was a statement that needed to be made on prime time television in front of a national audience.

Morning Joke™ (The Madness Continues...)

This morning on Morning Joke™, Mika and her merry band of morons were poo-pooing the Obama recovery bill which Joe Scarborough categorized as "unprecedented, a total all-out socialist bill as I've ever seen in my life," and that it rewards those who don't make enough income to pay income tax, but still pay payroll taxes and sales tax for "doing absolutely nothing." The video on BobCesca.com via Media Matters is ridiculously fearmongerish.

How is it that with such an intelligent person for a father, Mika Brzezinski so easily falls into the propaganda vomit vat that is Joe Scarborough's mouth?

One of the commenters on Cesca's thread, "GIthe Joe" now "GItheScholar," is an Iraq veteran and was livid about this particular issue. He ranted on his comment (and a good rant it was) but asked for help revising his comments in order to send to Morning Joke™. Seeing as I had nothing on my plate this afternoon, I thought I'd oblige. Here is the letter sent by GI the Scholar, with contributions from Carl of Broadway and information (and a paragraph or two) provided by Bob of the Cesca.

Dear Morning Joe Crew,

I am an American soldier. I have honorably served my country while being deployed to Iraq for two tours of duty. I, and the countless others like me, am eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit because 100% of my income while in a combat zone was non taxable income. The same is true for every soldier, Marine, and airperson that makes less than $88,000 of base pay in a combat zone.

I was extremely grateful to receive this tax credit. It felt like the government was helping me, honoring me for my service to this nation. But we are not the only "do nothing" workers that can benefit from the EITC.

According to the Brookings Institution, "Together, the EITC and ACTC [Additional Child Tax Credit] provided more than $51 billion to low-income workers in tax year 2005, acting as critical wage supplements for working poor families throughout the country. Proposals to expand and streamline these credits to help more working families across all types of communities—urban, suburban, and rural—deserve consideration from policymakers, practitioners, and researchers."

For two years during the presidential campaigns and primaries, all we heard from mainstream media and cable news were phrases like, "Why can't Obama close the deal with rural Americans?" and "Obama isn't 'one of us'." And now President Obama and the Democrats want to give the working poor a tax break and other forms of relief as outlined in the recovery bill, the very people the cable news pundits claimed with which he was "so out of touch."

In tax year 2005, the greatest number of EITC filers lived in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas. In the South and West, rural taxpayers were most likely to receive the EITC. These are the people most likely to need help, and most likely to spend the money to stimulate the economy. Here's another example: For every dollar invested in Food Stamps, the stimulus return is $1.73, but for every dollar in corporate tax cuts, you get a negative return of $0.30 on the dollar.

But we hear from the informed pundits like Mr. Scarborough and Mr. Buchanan that they would rather spend this money on tax breaks to corporations. Buchanan, point blank, asked John Podesta on the February 2nd edition of Morning Joe why "they can't give the $80 billion to corporate tax cuts."

Mr. Scarborough, you shamelessly categorized tax credits the working poor of this country, those who work the fast food registers or pump gas to try and survive week to week, as receiving money from the government for "doing absolutely nothing." But I suppose in your world, these are the plebians who have no name; they live only to serve you. In your world, while sitting behind your desk making a seven figure income may be "work" to you, dodging improvised explosive devices and small arms fire is far from "do nothing" work for me.

Perhaps thinking before opening your mouth would make for a better show.

The REAL CBO Report

According to Think Progress, this much ballyhooed Congressional Budget Office report that was used to criticize the Obama Recovery Bill by Republicans was cited 81 times in the last six days by the talking heads on television and in print; they criticized that spending was initally slow and that only 35% of the package would be spent by 2011.

There's just one problem with that: the CBO report they were citing doesn't exist. Rather, the media and Republican opposition to the bill were citing a partial report that didn't include the planned tax cuts, unemployment benefit extensions and numerous other factors. Even after Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained that everyone was citing an incomplete report in his press conference on Friday, inaccurate reporting continued on the news.

New Meet The Press host David Gregory used the CBO report in criticism on Sunday morning and I personally witnessed Nora O'Donnell on MSNBC ask about the partial report when questioning Congressman Chris Van Hollen late Monday afternoon! But I suppose if it isn't scandalous it doesn't sell, so why bother with accuracy?

Well guess what? The CBO actually released a complete report Monday evening which shows that, just as the Obama administration has been saying, about ¾ of the stimulus package would be injected into the economy within the first 18 months.

From the CBO report (emphasis mine):

This is the first cost estimate that CBO has prepared for H.R. 1 in its entirety. A previous preliminary estimate that has been widely cited addressed only the budgetary impacts of an earlier version of the provisions contained in Division A, at the request of the House Committee on Appropriations.

CBO has since made small changes to our estimates of the portion of the bill that was included in that preliminary estimate, mostly to reflect amendments to the legislation since we prepared the last estimate. Based on information provided by the committee and discussions with numerous state officials, we also made small technical changes to that earlier estimate.

I wonder how quickly the very serious mainstream media will report on this, and if they'll mention it 81 times in six days? I'm also sure the GOP will ignore it while tending to their fudge, since it doesn't fit into their agenda.

I mean, think about it. All we've heard the latest cheap Republican talking point is the expenditure of $200 million for Medicaid to be used for contraception and all the hysteria from the right asking how something like that can stimulate the economy. They are completely ignoring the fact that education, prevention of STDs and unwanted pregnancies can help in reducing governmental financial responsibilities later on. But the word "contraception" is a touchstone for their religious right base, even though the money planned for this program is only 0.00024% of the total package.

What's the GOP solution? More tax cuts. You know, because it's worked so well before.

(H/T Bob Cesca)