Say What?

I thought the problem with Romney was that he does not do well without a script. That is not the case. By his latest famous quote about being “severely conservative,” he demonstrated that he does not do well when he ad libs. If you watch you will see that his body language is out of sync with his words. When the question is whether or not we want a President who can deliver lines with conviction, the name Ronald Reagan has got to come to mind. The Gipper was one of the best either on or off script and was the last great rhetorician to occupy the White House. It helps to have great writers, which is something Mitt Romney does not have and desperately needs.

Here is a little trivia about the Presidents’ age (birth year) and their writers. Reagan (1911), a trained actor, had Peggy Noonan. Richard Nixon (1913) worked hard at delivering lines and even used 3 X 5 index cards to practice small talk. William Safire scripted Nixon. A towering and passionate rhetorician, Lyndon Johnson (1908) relied on Richard Goodwin, who named LBJ’s political agenda “The Great Society”. Jack Kennedy (1917), the first television president relied on Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorenson to craft his speeches.

Here is the point of the trivia. When Reagan, Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy were young men, radio was the dominant medium of mass communication, masterfully utilized by President Franklin Roosevelt with his famous fire-side chats. World War II intensified the importance of radio. The spoken word, the rhetoric used in public speaking, and the crucial importants of written words characterizes the manner in which those men formulated their thoughts. It also influenced their choices of writers who they regarded as critical to their political success. That became more important as the dominant medium became television by 1960.

Mitt Romney (1947) is a baby-boomer for whom the dominant medium became television with the assassination of President Kennedy. Words formulating Romney’s thoughts are sound-bites, not the paragraphs of the radio era. It is bumper-sticker rhetoric, ideal for Twitter. To complicate Romney’s predicament further, he is a spreadsheet man. His speeches could well be written in Excel for a PowerPoint presentation. It would also appear that Romney does some of his own editing.

That is proving to be a mistake. In our media environment, words are like toothpaste. Once they are out, it’s tough to get them back in the tube. Do you think someone really wrote the lines “corporations are people,” “not concerned about the very poor,” or “severely conservative?” Could it be a cynical plot to discredit Romney in the eyes of various constituent groups? Can such thoughtless remarks be purposeful?

The only thing inevitable about Mitt Romney is that he will respond to the pressure of this campaign by trying to outdo his opponents and saying things he will have to redact. If he is wins its nomination, the Republican Party had better hire some great writers to load his lips. He could also use an acting coach to synchronize his body language with his lines. Since no one in the GOP seems to like him, Romney should study Nixon. The party did not like him either, but Nixon won. Otherwise, Romney is in over his head in a rhetorical duel with President Obama.

 

Article first published as Say What? on Blogcritics.

The Not-So Great Society

Mitt Romney revealed a lot about himself when he told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety-net there.” Weeks before he had asserted that those safety-net programs have “massive overhead” and that because of the cost of such bureaucracy “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.” His claim is false. The fact is that more than 90% of the money allocated to safety-net programs reaches its beneficiaries. Romney’s statements demonstrate that he is oblivious to such socio-economic realities, but at least he brought up poverty and made it an issue. That is something that has not happened up since 1964.

Romney touts his business background and pontificates that he knows how to create jobs. That may sound good to the Republican base, but Presidents of the United States have nothing to do with job creation. It is not in their Constitutional authority. Presidents do not legislate. They sign legislation into law or veto it. Furthermore, the United States is not a corporation. The last U.S. President who came to office from business was Herbert Hoover, whose administration ushered in the Great Depression, incredible job loss, and excruciating poverty.

Presidents do propose legislation to the Congress, as LBJ did with the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. That Act established the Office of Economic Opportunity to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty. Modified over the years, the Act’s remaining programs include Head Start and the Job Corps. Johnson proposed that legislation in January of 1964, coerced and cajoled members of Congress to pass it, and signed it into law on August 20, 1964. It created jobs.

In declaring the War on Poverty, President Johnson sought “to help that one-fifth of all American families with incomes too small to even meet their basic needs.” LBJ called for “better schools, and better health, and better homes, and better training, and better job opportunities to help more Americans, especially young Americans, escape from squalor and misery and unemployment rolls where other citizens help to carry them.”

The poverty rate is the percentage of Americans whose income is lower than the federally determined poverty line. It was 17.3% in 1965.

As LBJ put it to Congress, “Very often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children.” The safety-net programs that Mr. Romney does not comprehend came from President Johnson’s Great Society initiative.

Romney, the other GOP candidates, and the Republican Congress gripe about and seek to change one of President Johnson’s greatest legislative achievements, Medicare. It helped to lower poverty rates for the elderly. So did President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Social Security program, which LBJ enhanced by advocating, pushing for, and signing legislation in 1965 and 1967. But the GOP seeks to repeal LBJ’s Great Society by claiming that its programs are bankrupting the country.

Romney ineloquently brought up poverty with his “very poor” statement, for which he drew massive criticism. He said he misspoke. That may be true, but it reveals an ignorance of the fact that more than 20 million Americans live in a household with income of less than half the federal poverty rate. According to census data for 2010, those “very poor” had an annual income below $11,057 for a family of four. That portion of the US population in the very poor category has almost doubled since 1975 and is the highest it has been in 35 years. Business people rely on data. At the least Romney could have read Business Week and appeared less clueless.

In addition to those one in five Americans that Romney does not care about, the ones who had trouble putting food on the table last year, the unpleasant reality is that nearly half of all U.S. households are struggling to cover basic expenses like electricity and medical care. Children are the least fortunate victims. As in LBJ’s time in the late ‘20s when he was a Texas school teacher, childhood poverty can have a lifelong effect on a person's earning potential. The Brookings Institute and First Focus found that by the time children who fell into poverty during a recession grow up to be financially independent adults, their median income is about 30 percent less than that of adults who never experienced poverty as children. That is certainly bad for business.

The poverty issue is not who gets blamed. The issue is what choices do policy makers make to help expand economic activity. Romney and his cohorts are all about austerity, like defunding the safety-net programs for the very poor, the disabled, and seniors. The problem is that austerity in a recession makes things worse, not better. In Europe, which the GOP does not understand, harsh austerity policies have made unemployment soar. Cuts in government spending have failed to reduce budget deficits because tax receipts fell. Economic activity and employment levels collapsed. Poverty increased as spending decreased.

President John F. Kennedy said, “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” As one of those few, Romney demonstrates a profound paucity of the economic and social understanding that is requisite of Presidents. Despite the Republican pabulum to the contrary, this is still a country of great abundance that is slowly emerging from the Great Recession. However, the nation suffers from a rise of poverty that the nation can ill afford. All of the talk about the middle class ignores the plight of the “many who are poor.”

Poverty is bad for business and Romney should know it. His comments deserve derision because they are false, not because they are gaffes. He raised the poverty issue but has articulated no plan for addressing it, without which the country becomes the Not-So Great Society.

 Originally published as The Not-So Great Society on Blogcritics.

Buying Bad Ideas

There are a lot of expressions for bad ideas, like shooting one’s self in the foot. A bad idea is simply one that does not work. The problem is that from time to time, both as ourselves and as a people, we do not recognize a bad idea when we encounter it. The danger comes when for whatever reason -- ignorance, stubbornness or hubris – we stick with a bad idea to our detriment. Unfortunately, bad ideas tend to compound themselves. We have been suffering from that effect.

Consider the candidacy of the former governor of Alaska for Vice President. At the outset it is with some reluctance that I acknowledge a grudging gratitude to Sarah Palin. Until she appeared on television as if a human bridge to nowhere, nothing compelled me to engage in a political debate that I considered both cyclical and one-sided. The cyclical part was the fact that the country was due to change political leadership after an eight year Republican run, which is something that the country does. The one-sided part was the fact that the Democratic Party had emerged from a climactic contest between two compelling and competent Senate candidates, one of whom destined to become a historic first as President of the United States.

An oblivious Palin seemed to take herself seriously, saying stupid things and celebrating such stupidity. It offended me. I minded and began saying so. I minded that Palin did not speak any American language I would expect to hear from a competent executive. It was not alright, folksy or cute. But I underestimated the “moose-hunting rube,” as columnist Charles Krauthammer referred to her in the National Review.

Palin reminded me of one of the most vapid students in my high school graduating class who was the vice president of student body and vice president of at least a half-a-dozen high school clubs. The girl had a mid-double-digit IQ and passable looks. She would have been rather doltish except that she knew how to glom. She would stick to and campaign for the more popular students, thereby elevating her status in the high school social pool. She was a person who was never troubled by an original thought, just like Sarah Palin. The difference is that the high school girl understood the limitations that make bliss of ignorance. Palin did not.

Palin wowed conservatives like the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol and Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, who told the New York Observer that Palin was “a mix between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc.” Soon after, Palin brought self-aggrandizement to a new level as she energized the baseness of the Republican base – people who use racial epithets in private when they explain that they just don’t like blacks. She appealed to people of limited educational backgrounds as she championed anti-intellectualism with a wink and a nod. She became a darling of Fox News, the moral equivalent of a grocery store tabloid for people who do not read and who feel threatened by people who do.

People at Republican rallies began to shell out big bucks to hear her cheerlead and Palin noticed.

The Republican Party’s self-inflicted loss in 2008 is due as much to its selection of Sarah Palin for Vice President as the country’s guts being full of the Bush Presidency. A 2008 New York Times editorial said of her choice for VP, “It was either an act of incredible cynicism or appallingly bad judgment.” It was a bad idea. But having proved to be such a draw, the crowd pleasing Palin glommed on to the burgeoning Tea Party – another bad idea – and became an influential force.

With Palin on the payroll, Fox News aggressively promoted negativity and hostility, specifically towards the newly elected president. The Tea Party appeared to resuscitate the out-of-power GOP in the mid-term elections. Republicans believed it was important to take control of congress’ lower chamber more so than Democrats and they did, kind of. Reciting an edited version of the US Constitution, the GOP majority of the 112^th Congress had no idea that it had been infected by such a polarizing group. Its anti-government/anti-tax/anti-Obama negativity proved to sell to an electorate suffering from a deep, GOP induced repression.

However, the new Speaker of the House soon discovered that he only controlled a majority of the new Republican plurality. The Tea Party faction held it hostage. Compromise was futile. Government shutdowns and default threats became normal operating procedures.

As a result this bad idea, Gallup reported in September, “Majorities of Democrats (65%) and Republicans (92%) are dissatisfied with the nation's governance.” At present, “Congressional job approval remains at 13% in November, identical to October and tying the all-time Gallup low on this measure. The 2011 average is on track to be the lowest annual rating of Congress in Gallup's history.” What an accomplishment that is.

We are being bullied by the rhetoric of Tea Party acolytes in the Republican Party into thinking that the United States is not a prosperous country, despite evidence to the contrary. We are being coerced into thinking that taxation is too high, even though it is at its lowest point in 60 years. We are being fed a line that our economic policy needs to be austere and rife with cuts. Such contentious conjectures are bad ideas.

There are better ones. For example, here is what President Lyndon Johnson said in his January 28, 1965 message to Congress.

"The task of economic policy is to create a prosperous America. The unfinished task of prosperous Americans is to build a Great Society. Our accomplishments have been many; these tasks remain unfinished:

- to achieve full employment without inflation;

- to restore external equilibrium and defend the dollar;

- to enhance the efficiency and flexibility of our private and public economies;

- to widen the benefits of prosperity;

- to improve the quality of American life."

Palin and her gibberish have been replaced by other people every bit as unqualified for high public office as she who similarly say stupid things. Negativity and attack ads directed at the incumbent president remains the top Republican theme. Fox News is a beneficiary of the advertising revenue but the country is not. I am not convinced that the electorate will buy into more such negativity as a winning proposition as it did in 2010. It isn’t a winner. In its celebrated ignorance, it asks us to buy some more of a bad idea.

Originally published as Buying Bad Ideas on Blogcritics.

Presidential Approval: So What?

Presidential popularity begs a lot of questions. The most important question at election time is what candidate gets the most Electoral College votes, making the popular vote only interesting. Presidential approval begins with inauguration day and can be less than 50% to start, as with the administrations of Kennedy, Carter and “W” Bush. Between 1961 and 2001, voters changed their opinions widely about the eight presidents who occupied the White House. They disapproved of all of the presidents and demonstrated that economics drives public opinion more than current events.

Gallup has been tracking presidential job approval since Harry Truman took office in 1945. The Gallup Presidential Job Approval Center shows President Obama with an all-time high of 69%, when he took office in January 2009, and a to-date low of 40% recorded at the end of July. He is about two-months shy of being in office 1000 days and his average approval is 50%. Regardless of how one interprets the data, one thing abundantly clear: an awful lot of people disapprove of a President most of the time. Who is in office does not really matter.

Imagine becoming President with barely half of the vote by any measure. In 1960 Democrat Senator John Kennedy became president by defeating Vice President Richard Nixon with a 0.1% margin of the popular vote, 49.7% to 49.6%. Since JFK’s overall approval is 70.1%, he is assumed to have been well approved by Americans. That was not the case at the time. People who did not like him personally despised him. In the South for example, I remember seeing Ku Klux Klan bonfires burning to celebrate his assassination because Kennedy was a Catholic and a pro-civil rights president.

JFK also sent the first US troops to a country few people had ever heard of – Vietnam. During his 1036 days in office, JFK’s budgets ran deficits to finance his New Frontier programs. His approval ratings scored a high of 83% and a low of 56%. They had been trending down when he was murdered.

JFK’s Vice President Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency and then won the 1964 election in a landslide, defeating Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. LBJ also won the popular vote by a margin of 61.1% to 38.5 %. Johnson’s overall 55.1% approval rating ranged from a high of 79% to a low of 35%. He used his popularity when he had it, too. His Administration submitted 87 bills to the 89^th Congress and LBJ signed 84 of them into law.

''This country,'' LBJ said, ''is rich enough to do anything it has the guts to do and the vision to do and the will to do.'' His Great Society is still with us ''in Medicare and Medicaid, in the air we breathe and the water we drink, in the rivers and lakes we swim in; in the colleges our students attend; in the medical miracles from the National Institutes of Health; in mass transportation and equal opportunity,'' as former Johnson advisor Joseph A. Califano has stated. LBJ also expanded costly US involvement in the Vietnam War. With his approval ratings in decline, Johnson did not run for reelection.

As a private citizen, former Republican Vice President Richard Nixon won his second campaign for president in 1968 defeating two other candidates: LBJ’s Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Alabama Governor George Wallace, who ran as an Independent. Wallace captured 13.5% of the popular vote, leaving a 0.7% margin between Nixon and Humphrey, 43.4% to 42.7%. Although Nixon won reelection in a 1972 landslide victory and 60.7% of the popular vote, he resigned the presidency under the threat of impeachment and saw his approval numbers fall from a high of 67% to a low of 24%. Nixon had an overall term and a half approval rating of 49%.

Nixon inherited a weak economy from the Johnson administration but delivered a balanced budget in 1969. However, inflation, rising energy costs and high unemployment troubled Nixon’s administration. Despite wage and price controls and other measures that did not work, Nixon’s budget plans included using large deficits to marginally improve the economy. Although Nixon called upon “the great silent majority” for support, continued expansion of the Vietnam War, including bombing Cambodia, and the costs of war in addition to the Watergate scandal further degraded his approval numbers.

After Nixon’s resignation, Vice President Gerald Ford assumed the presidency and served its remaining 845 days only to lose his subsequent election bid in 1976. During his time in the White House, Ford gave Nixon a presidential pardon and concluded US involvement in the Vietnam War. His overall approval rating scored 47.2% for the time of American discouragement with politics that followed the highly publicized Watergate hearings that contributed to Ford’s becoming president. Ford’s approval ranged from a high of 71% to a low of 37%. Despite the Ford “Whip Inflation Now" program, 7% inflation and growing unemployment continued to weaken the economy that had slipped into recession and further eroded his approval numbers.

The next presidential race was so close, many voters stayed up until the early morning hours to see Georgia’s Democrat Governor Jimmy Carter win the 1976 election. A US Naval Academy graduate and peanut farmer, Carter won the election with a less than a 2% popular vote margin, 50.1% to 48%. Elected by just half of the voters like Jack Kennedy, Jimmy Carter only earned an overall approval rating of 45.5% that ranged from a high of 75% to a low of 28%. The federal government was in deficit every year of the Carter presidency. Slow recovery from the ’73-‘75 recession, fuel shortages, double-digit inflation and 9% unemployment plagued the Carter administration which lasted one term only. The American hostage situation in Iran exacerbated disapproval of Carter.

The country turned to a former Hollywood actor and spokesperson in the 1980 election of California Republican Governor Ronald Reagan, who won with 50.7% of the popular vote to Carter’s 41% and Independent Congressman John Anderson’s 6.6% protest vote. Reagan got his landslide reelection four years later, defeating former Vice President Walter Mondale by 58.8% to 40.6%. While Reagan’s overall approval rating is 52.8%, it ranged from a high of 68% to a low of 38%.

Reagan survived an assassination attempt and took credit for the end of Communism with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although he railed against the debt ceiling, it raised 17 times during his eight-year administration. His supply side “Reaganomics,” which his critics called “voodoo

economics,” created more new debt than the combined deficits of all previous presidents. While Reagan said he was committed to reducing government spending, it rose by $321 billion during his presidency, to more than a trillion dollars. He also raised taxes seven times. Only his age and the 22^nd Amendment prevented Reagan from running for a third term.

Instead, with a revenue improved economy, the enormous popularity of Ronald Reagan and relative world peace, Vice President George H. W. Bush won the presidency by defeating Massachusetts Democrat Governor Michael Dukakis by a popular vote margin of 53.4% to 45.7%. Best known for his famous pledge, "Read my lips: no new taxes," a recession began. Rising deficits, a declining economy plus a growth in mandatory spending began to further increase the federal deficit. Bush’s approval ratings ranged from a high of 89% to a low of 29%.

By 1990 the deficit had grown to three times its size in 1980. The federal government shut down for three days and the Democratic majority in Congress eventually forced Bush to raise tax revenues. But events of the Gulf War pushed economic issues out of the news and Bush ended up with an overall approval rating of 60.9% for his term in office, second only to Kennedy.

After three Republican presidential terms and the economy again in recession, two candidates ran against President Bush in the 1992 election: Arkansas Democrat Governor Bill Clinton and Independent businessman Ross Perot. Bush's 89% approval ratings following the Persian Gulf War made him look like a certain winner, but the economy trumped his approval ratings at the ballot box. Clinton prevailed with 43% of the popular vote to Bush’s 37.5% and Perot’s 18.9%. Ross Perot capitalized on the economic woe in his 1992 campaign and ran again in 1996. He siphoned an 8.4% popular vote as incumbent President Clinton defeated Kansas Republican Senator Bob Dole 49.2% to 40.7%.

The Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus between the years 1998 and 2000, the longest economic expansion period in US history. Only the second president to be impeached by the House, the Senate failed to muster the Constitutional two-thirds majority requirement to convict and remove an officeholder. Despite the impeachment and another government shutdown, Clinton left office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any US president since World War II at 60.6%. His highest approval rating scored 73% and his lowest recorded 37%.

Economy tends to trump political events no matter how much of a splash those events create. Kennedy’s high rating occurred because he died in office before his first term ended. Reagan’s approval rating of 52.8% falls behind the 55.1% approval rating of LBJ and Bill Clinton, who tie for 3^rd place. George H.W. Bush comes in second to JFK at 60.9%. Those are the numbers.

Here are some more. Take a look at the disapproval ratings for the eight presidents and keep them in mind the next time approval ratings is brought up as some kind of data being foisted as something significant.

John Kennedy: 56

Lyndon Johnson: 35

Richard Nixon: 26

Gerald Ford: 37

Jimmy Carter: 29

Ronald Reagan: 37

George H.W. Bush: 38

Bill Clinton: 37

The public changes its mind with regularity and presidents are just not that popular. Why anyone would want such a job is another question.

Article first published as Presidential Approval: So What? on Blogcritics.

History and Consequences

With all of the information that is available, the public remains confused. It may have to do with the sources of their information, but the latest polling data says that 47% of Americans say their greater concern is that raising the debt limit would lead to higher government spending and make the national debt bigger, while 42% say their greater concern is that not raising the limit would force the government into default and hurt the economy. Additionally, 74% of Republicans and GOP leaning independents who agree with the tea party faction of the party say their bigger concern is that raising the debt limit would result in more spending, compared to 58% of those who do not agree with the faction.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the debt ceiling has been raised 74 times, since March 1962, and 10 of those times have occurred since 2001. Theoretically, the debt ceiling limit is supposed to help Congress control spending. In practice, the debt limit has been ineffective in controlling spending and deficits because politicians and reality remain as strangers to one another. History shows that it has been that way for quite a while.

The fact is that the debt ceiling doesn’t regulate anything, believe it or not. The Budget Control Act of 1974 created a process that requires Congress to vote on aggregate levels of spending, revenue and deficits every year. That makes the debt limit redundant.

Five years after the 1974 Budget Act passage, a combination of a failure to increase the debt limit in time and a breakdown of Treasury’s machines for printing checks caused a two-week technical default and a short term failure for the government to meet its obligations. That raised interest rates by six-tenths of a percentage point. Over time that percentage hike translated into billions of dollars in increased interest payments on the nation's debt, which became a cost passed on to taxpayers.

In other words, default increases the debt service which increases the deficit.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) questioned the meaning of a legal debt limit, according to Time Magazine on January 20, 1941. The President “hinted that there should be no legal limit.” In its coverage of the FDR’s Budget for the fiscal year 1941-42, Time noted, “Last July's Democratic platform made no mention of that fiscal dodo, that old museum piece: a balanced budget. Franklin Roosevelt held to precedent—he didn't mention it, either.” The Newark News remarked, “Like the budgets of Mr. Average Citizen, it was full of unjustifiable errors of judgment, of expenses borne out of habit, of big installments still being paid on past mistakes.”

FDR signed the first Social Security Act into law in 1935. Thirty years later, that part of FDR’s “New Deal” became part of the President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) “Great Society” and established Medicare when LBJ signed the Social Security Act of 1965 into law.

Only half of American's 65 and older had any health insurance at the time. The bill LBJ signed also created Medicaid, the public health insurance program that today covers over 60 million people, including one in three children, eight million people with disabilities and nearly six million low-income seniors. Each state administers its own Medicaid program. Republicans have scorned the entitlement programs of the Great Society ever since, now more so than ever.

Here is how we pay for those programs. Social Security and Medicare entitlements are paid for by the FICA [Federal Insurance Contributions Act] tax. The rate is 7.65% of our pre-deduction [gross] earnings. 6.2% goes for OASDI [Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance]. 1.45% goes for Medicare. The Social Security system pays for old-age, survivors, and disability. Hospital insurance is funded by Medicare. Income tax funds the government. It is called revenue and is a separate and different issue. Republican rhetoric obfuscates that point.

While the public may be somewhat divided about the debt ceiling, they are not so confused when it comes to entitlements. “The public decisively supports maintaining the status quo,” according to the Pew Research Center. “Six-in-ten (60%) say it is more important to keep Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are; only about half as many (32%) say it is more important to take steps to reduce the budget deficit.”

LBJ argued that helping the poor was in the best interest of business by providing stability to society. GOP disdain for Johnson’s Great Society and its War on Poverty continue. Republicans demand sharp cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Programs for the poor and the aging are the “reckless spending” recitations of Republican rhetoric that compound the deficit conundrum that confronts House Speaker John Boehner.

At a recent press conference Boehner said, “I agree with the president we cannot allow our nation to default on our debt.” He added, “But to prevent a default, a bill must pass the Congress.” For that to happen, “the bill must include spending cuts in excess of the increase in the debt ceiling.” He faced a similar challenge in April with the government shut-down threat. He also faces factional opposition within the Republican House majority and its fame-seekers, like Representatives Cantor and Ryan.

"I don't think the majority of Congress is so stupid as to visit an actual default on the United States," said David Kelly, chief market strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management. "Their constituents would never forgive them for playing fast and loose with the credit-worthiness that it took 230 years to build up." Meanwhile, Standard and Poor's told Reuters last week it would “waste no time cutting the top-notch U.S. credit rating” if Treasury missed a $30 billion debt payment on August 4.

The consequence of default would crank up borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, and flush the vulnerable US economy back into the toilet of recession.

The Speaker of the House is responsible for ensuring that the House passes legislation supported by the majority party, in this case the majority of the majority. Mr. Boehner was a teenager when LBJ ushered in the Great Society in 1965. [President Obama was 4.] Majority leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) was a 2-year-old. GOP Budget author Paul Ryan (R-WI) wasn't even born. . It is their short-sighted ignorance of history and consequences, coupled with the ideological intransigence of the freshman tea party faction, which threatens Boehner’s speakership, the Republican Party and the United States.

# # #

Article first published as History and Consequences on Blogcritics.

Repealing the Great Society

Republicans propose changes in Medicare and Social Security. The claim is that federal spending is “out of control.” Members of Congress repeat that claim often, hoping that by repetition their claim will become true. GOP members publicly advocate that the federal budget must be cut to their terms or else the United States can default on its obligations. The party opposes the “Great Society” as it did the “New Deal.” It just doesn't know that.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) signed the Social Security Act of 1965 into law. It established Medicare. Johnson enrolled former President Harry Truman as the first Medicare beneficiary at the bill-signing ceremony and presented him with the first Medicare card. Truman’s boss, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), signed the first Social Security Act into law in 1935. Thirty years later, that part of FDR’s New Deal had become part of LBJ’s Great Society.

Republicans have opposed Social Security for more than 65-years-old. They also oppose facts. For instance, Social Security and Medicare entitlements are already paid for through an involuntary tax called FICA, collected at a rate of 7.65% of gross [before deduction] earnings. 6.2% goes for Social Security called OASDI [Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance]. 1.45% goes for Medicare. The federal system of old age, survivors, disability and hospital insurance is paid by the FICA tax. The Social Security system then funds the first three, while hospital insurance is funded by Medicare.

Those are the facts. Here are more. For the last 20 years Congressional Republicans have tried to limit Medicare spending on doctors’ services. However, the proposed limits have always proved to be so unrealistic, like their current demands, that each time new limits have been proposed, Congress has had to intervene to increase them. Republicans inaccurately call it uncontrolled spending when they lose.

Only half of American's 65 and older had any health insurance at the time LBJ signed the bill that created Medicare. Medicaid, established by Title XIX of the Social Security Act of 1965, is administered by the states. The public health insurance program covers over 60 million people, including one in three children, eight million people with disabilities and nearly six million low-income seniors. Each state administers its own Medicaid program. In addition to Medicare, LBJ’s “Great Society” legislation included laws to uphold Civil Rights, to create Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, and to establish a host other social legislation programs to improve the American way of life. It seems as if Republicans are determined to repeal the Great Society.

Thirty-five million Americans lived below the poverty level in 1965. In a nation with such abundance, LBJ argued that helping the poor was in the best interest of business by providing stability to society. Republican disdain for Johnson’s War on Poverty continues. Originally headed by the late R. Sargent Shriver, the first Director of the Peace Corps, its legislation created Medicaid in addition to environmental protection, aid to education, Head Start, and the Job Corps. Republicans appear to label any program that helps poor people as “reckless spending.”

President Johnson also handled spending differently than the way Republicans and President Obama are considering. Instead of deficit spending to finance the Vietnam War, LBJ pushed Congress to enact a surtax. The imposition of a surtax added another 10% to one's ordinary federal income tax liability. LBJ left office in 1969 with a balanced budget plus a small surplus. It took 30-years for the United States to see another balanced budget.

Bear in mind that there is no Constitutional requirement for a balanced budget. The United States federal government has pretty much always been in debt since its inception. Article I, Section 8, Clause 2 of the Constitution grants to the United States Congress the power “To borrow money on the credit of the United States.” As you may also know from recent accounts, Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment states, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

Republicans are questioning it.

Their latest debt ceiling demands include an oldie-goldie cover renamed the Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge. It is a classic hit that comes up from time to time -- to oppose raising the borrowing limit unless it is accompanied by spending cuts and caps, and to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. So far the Pledge has been signed by just 12 senators (6 of them freshmen Republicans) and 28 House members (17 of them Republican rookies). Republicans seem to like the idea of amending the Constitution despite the fact that the founders made that so difficult to accomplish it has only happened seventeen times. As I say, it’s a GOP blast from the past like the Fair Tax.

During the Carter administration, Republicans proposed the Balanced Budget Amendment as a fiscal cure-all. It didn’t cost them anything politically since they were out of power, controlling neither house of Congress nor the Presidency. They knew it would not be enacted. Between April 29, 1975 and January 29, 1980, 34 petitions for a Balanced Budget Amendment have been submitted to Congress from 30 different state legislatures. Even though deficit spending soared during the Reagan administration, a program agreed to by Congressional leaders and the administration that entailed two dollars of spending cuts for every dollar of tax increases failed miserably. Deficits mounted further. But Congress had no intention of passing the Balanced Budget Amendment.

The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act of 1985 acted as political cover to raise the debt limit. It called for automatic cuts in discretionary spending when certain deficit-reduction targets were not met. Aimed at cutting the budget deficit, the largest in history at the time, the House passed the bill 271-154, the Senate by 61-31, and President Ronald Reagan signed the bill on December 12, 1985. However, when it began to affect popular programs, Congress amended it to postpone its effects until later years. The Act was partially overturned in the courts and eventually repealed in its entirety.

Republicans should know that default is not an option. A failure to increase the debt limit by the deadline coupled with a breakdown of Treasury’s machines for printing checks caused a two-week default in 1979. That was enough to raise interest rates by six-tenths of a percentage point for years afterward and increased the Reagan era deficit even more. Yet, the GOP threatens default as a negotiating tactic.

As to tax revenue increases, Ronald Reagan requested the largest peacetime tax increase in American history in 1982. Bill Clinton also asked for a large tax boost for deficit reduction again in 1993. Strong economic growth followed each time, even though conservative economists predicted economic disaster.

Congressional Republicans seem to be thinking about something other than fiscal responsibility, business, or the social fabric of the country. Advocacy of its position to negotiate the budget with default puts its representatives in the position of breaching their oath of office which could subject them to recall if not impeachment. The GOP position seeks to repeal the Great Society. They are doing a good job of that, so far.

Article first published as Repealing the Great Society on Technorati.

A Jack, a Hack, and a Quack

Getting lost in the spin-coverage of Sarah Palin, Jan Brewer and Rand Paul is the essence of what they allegedly stand for.

In common, they espouse theme positions that at best do not make sense and at worst are hateful and bigoted. Two of those themes are “the outsider” and “anti-establishment”. Before I get to specifics, let me ask a few questions for clarity. Please, pardon my pronouns.

What is this being “an outsider” supposed to mean other than you have not been elected yet? How does being an outsider benefit your constituency that elects you to office? What is in it for them? How are you going to get what your constituents elected you to get? Do you work well with others? Can you collaborate and negotiate on your constituents’ behalf, especially since that will be with the “insiders” – you know the people who actually run things?

What is this anti-establishment “no more politics as usual” rhetoric supposed to mean? Does that include anarchy? Does that mean other than usual or abnormal politics? Isn’t normal politics as usual really what voters elect a person to do in the first place? Isn’t the conduct of legislating so that the electorate does not have to what normal politics is about? How is being different from other people who successfully do politics for a living a valid qualifier to hold an elected position?

The Tea Party backed son of big-time insider, the rookie Rand Paul’s opinion on the Civil Rights Act did not get the coverage it deserved. The deniable plausibility defense that his comments were taken out of context is a cover-up story. The story is the Tea Party connection and an unconscionable position that supports invalidating parts of the Civil Rights Act. And even if Paul did not mean it, it is tooth paste out of the tube – hard to get back.

His dad called to coverage “unfair,” as if fairness is a high priority to establishment Republicans and their Libertarian cousins like Ron Paul. That Pops Paul is incumbent is because he plays well with others and has for years deserve noting. His official website proclaims that he is “America's leading voice for” among other things “. . . a return to sound monetary policies.” It does not say when such sound monetary policies existed, although presumably it was sometime before the Civil Rights Act, you know like the “I Like Ike” era. I digress.

Both Paul and Palin espouse positions on off-shore drilling that get incomplete or disconnected coverage. Sarah Palin says she remains a "big supporter of offshore drilling" despite the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, according to AP. She says it’s safer to dig in Alaska. Of the oil spill Paul says that “. . . sometimes accidents happen.” Each excuses the environmental catastrophe BP created. The Tea Party likes drilling. Never mind the pesky environment or conservation.

Meanwhile, Arizona’s governor has new propaganda that is both evocative and shallow. Jan Brewer is Rosie the Riveter, “Doing the Job the Feds won’t do.” That used to be called codswallop. The Feds are the only ones who can do anything about immigration. Arizona’s racial profiling law is being taken to court by no less than the NAACP and is also a matter of presidential inquiry by the Justice Department. Palin’s contribution is the Tea Party connection.

Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921. President Warren G. Harding signed the law which established national quotas for immigrants, although Latin Americans are not mentioned. It became the Immigration Act of 1924 and lasted until 1965, when it was replaced by Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. After President Lyndon B. Johnson signed that law it went into effect in 1968 and is pretty much at the core of US immigration law today.

Johnson said of Immigartion Act of 1924, "This system violates the basic principle of American democracy, the principle that values and rewards each man on the basis of his merit as a man. It has been un-American in the highest sense, because it has been untrue to the faith that brought thousands to these shores even before we were a country." LBJ signed the Civil Right Act. He was not a lawyer.

Neither Palin or Brewer or Paul is a lawyer so they might not recognize that while their speech may produce resonance with populist sentiment, it espouses segregation. They might not know that the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson endorsed "separate but equal" racial segregation. It might be unclear that the law remained until the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka renounced it 58 years later. They are not lawyers, alright..

The Tea Party and its spotlight-celebrities do like to cheerlead when they play in their ideological theme park -- “limited government, lower taxes, less spending.” If they really want to cut government size, reduce the tax burden and spend less, so much as they say, how come they do not call for ending the Iraq War and bringing our troops home? That would be all three rides in the Tea Party theme park.

The answer is that they are big supporters of the military, never minding that the military is a huge part of the government and is ridiculously expensive. The Tea Party loves guns, the 2nd Amendment and wants to "take the country back." It is anyone's guess how far back they want to take it.

Being the anti-establishment outsider for limited government who gets elected makes a great movie theme, like Frank Capra’s classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But it ends there. The rhetoric is codswallop. The Tea Party connection of Palin the Jack, Brewer the Hack, and Paul the Quack has a segregationist tilt. The essence that is lost due to inadequate coverage is the disingenuousness of the themes being peddled with such Tea Party pandering.

Are We There Yet, 1964

Writing earlier this week in the Washington Post, Richard Cohen concluded his column that this is “the second time that a senator from Arizona has led the GOP into the political wilderness.” While his implications that the 1964 campaign of Barry Goldwater is being revisited by the GOP in its ugliness, there are some striking differences.

The most striking is the choice of vice presidential candidates. For Goldwater it was the formidable William Miller, an attorney and 14 year congressional legislator who went from being an assistant prosecutor in the 1945 Nuremburg Trials to becoming the Chairman of Republican National Committee. Goldwater would have found Mr. McCain’s choice unconscionable, especially the wardrobe and expensive makeup to hide the lack of any substance.

Goldwater believed that the Johnson administration had usurped constitutional role of Congress. Whether or not the Old Maverick believes the same thing, McCain has voted with the Bush administration to get away it. But then again, Old Goldie thought he was going to run against Jack Kennedy and later said he had no chance of defeating LBJ, "because the country was not ready for three presidents in two and a half years."

Helping to assure his defeat, Goldwater turned the GOP into a conservative institution that would beget the elections of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. To assure his defeat, McCain has “driven out ethnic and racial minorities” as well as “a vast bloc of voters who, quite bluntly, want nothing to do with Sarah Palin.” As Cohen says, “For moderates everywhere, she remains the single best reason to vote against McCain.”