Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting;
but never hit soft!
Theodore Roosevelt
Earlier One-Off Post: "A Non-Lawyer Looks at the Living/Dead Constitution"
Sunday Talk Soup: The Shutdown Aftermath
I still haven't written my Jack Lew rant yet, but I had to suffer through another Jack Lew appearance; CBS's FTN was tough for me to sit through. Among the swill being presented as 'political punditry' were comments about how "unreasonable" Tea Party was, that the GOP Congressmen were acting out of fear of being primaried next spring. There were the usual apocalyptic polls, the usual spin that Obama's reelection was a referendum on ObamaCare (never mind the indisputable fact that public opinion has been against ObamaCare since 2009, the GOP's taking the House in 2010 was largely based on resistance against ObamaCare and held in 2012).
First, I don't think I heard anybody discuss how bad having a $700B deficit is, nearly 5 years into the Obama Ptrsidency, the $6.5T he has added, more than all federal debt through Clinton, and more than doubling Bush's over 8 years with two bookended recessions. (And keep in mind federal taxes were biased up this past fiscal year as higher-income people pushed transactions into 2012 to take advantage of their last lower Bush tax rates.) We have a $17T national debt: That's roughly 7 years of federal revenues, not to mention over $80-100T or more of unfunded liabilities coming at a time as Baby Boomers accelerate retirement (many of whom have limited retirement assets). We still have below-average economic growth 4 years into the Obama "recovery", the lowest labor force participation rate in decades, the largest structured unemployment problem in decades, despite unprecedented easy monetary policy since 2008 and unprecedented federal deficits.
Look, it is perfectly understandable why the Tea Party Republicans are targeting ObamaCare, over and beyond the fact the majority of Americans oppose it. Nobody doubts that people getting highly subsidized below-cost insurance will be happy--but the economics requires younger/health people to insure at high premiums to make up much of the subsidized costs. Plus government subsidies in large part are funded by Medicare cuts, medical device taxes, and means-tested investment income surcharges. I think that the young people enrollments will disappoint, and I'm not sure any of the government funding will meet targets. So I think ObamaCare's business model is unrealistic from the get-go.
The Tea Party GOP was being prudent and reasonable as a matter of preventive policy. The problem is that most Americans don't understand the ObamaCare business model or know the history of prior healthcare programs that have routinely blown past cost projections.
However, money is fungible, and the fact that Obama was willing to hold Treasury bondholders hostage unless he got the Big Spender budget and debt ceiling hike approved is hardly "reasonable". I think that the GOP would have been on better footing if they had made some mandatory spending controls over and beyond ObamaCare cuts. For a while Harry Reid looked like he was going to try to extort the House in giving back the hard-won sequester funds. Part of the problem is that Republicans are Chicken Little over bloated DoD budget. The GOP needs to be ideologically consistent; when DoD "loses" billions of dollars and is paying more for defense that the next several nations combined, it's time for Republicans to note that Pentagon bureaucrats are no better than domestic agency bureaucrats. It's not enough to do bumper sticker cuts--we need deeper operational cuts. I've repeatedly stated a number of concrete ideas--close down redundant facilities, personnel compensation reform, across-the-board cuts, asset sales, privatizations, resource sharing, improved fraud controls, decentralization of individual benefit programs to the states, etc.
On ObamaCare, my position is to make clear to the Dems if and when ObamaCare turns south, there will be no bailout.
Finally, I was particularly discouraged by the failure of Schieffer and others to rise above "progressive" spin on the shutdown and an obsession over rudimentary-level politics and/or bashing Cruz or the Tea Party. EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN wants serious budget cuts, period. And that got short shrift. No challenge to the nonsense that the shutdown "damaged the economy"; what's damaging the US economy is Fed currency manipulation, gross overspending, unsustainable deficits and debts, not whether Obama is able to get the next generations to pay for his profligate spending.
The New American Economist Nobel Laureates: Thumbs DOWN!
The Fed's' Abuse of Power During the Shutdown:
Shutting Down Operations Not Dependent on Funding
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Gary Varvel and Townhall |
Marvin Gaye, "Mercy, Mercy Me"
