The Next Hurrah

Cheney's "Policies"

by emptywheel

The third installment in the WaPo's Cheney series is a bit of a hodgepodge. It includes items that appear to have been thrown into this installment as part of a generic domestic policy article. But what the article is really about is how Cheney has pushed trickle down policies that have been proven failures in the past, once again by serving as a gatekeeper for advice that gets to the President, and pressuring the President on the few occasions when he disagrees.

But let me take a step back to contextualize this one. In my Sources post, I asserted that this series is largely an attempt on the part of Chief of Staff Bolten to reel Cheney in. How telling, then, that this article includes a direct link a scan of what appears to be an original memo (note the blue ink) Bolten wrote as Director of OMB, his position immediately prior to his current one. The memo describes the intent of the board--fiscal discpline--yet is placed after a paragraph describing how Cheney used the board as yet another gatekeeping device to direct Bush to make the choices Cheney supports.

The vice president chairs a budget review board, a panel the Bush administration created to set spending priorities and serve as arbiter when Cabinet members appeal decisions by White House budget officials. The White House has portrayed the board as a device to keep Bush from wasting time on petty disagreements, but previous administrations have seldom seen Cabinet-level disputes in that light. Cheney's leadership of the panel gives him direct and indirect power over the federal budget -- and over those who must live within it.

It's a curious touch, a subtle way of displaying Bolten's attempt to maintain fiscal sanity against the background of Cheney making economic decisions that have really screwed the American economy. This stuff, I get the feeling, is personal for former OMB Director Bolten.

YouBudget

by emptypockets

With remnants of Tax Day still on my mind (and my desk), I wanted to bring up a point I heard tossed out by a woman who, I think, was from the IRS when she was a guest on a CSPAN call-in show a month or two ago.

She pointed out that tax returns are the largest national survey taken annually and we could have more "fun" with them than we do. (And as a wonky-seeming government analyst, it really did, endearingly, seem to be her idea of fun.)

One thought she threw out there in passing has to do with the Revenue and Expenditure charts that used to be included with the instructions for the 1040 form. I believe they were not included this year, but the ones for last year (with data for 2005) look like this:

The Wages of Inequality

By Mimikatz

The Times has a piece this morning entitled "Why Are There So Many Single Americans?" in which we learn that a bare majority (51%) of adult women are not living with a spouse, and nearly as many (49%) men are not.  The fact that women live longer, and thus typically live as widows for several years is one factor.  But the main factors appear to be class and its surrogate, education.  It used to be that educated women were considered unmarriageable.  (Remember that canard?)  Not so.  It turns out that educated men do want someone with whom they can talk intelligently after all (or at least, someone intelligent to raise the children). 

Statistics show that college educated women are more likely to marry than non-college educated women — although they marry, on average, two years later. The popular image might have been true even 20 years ago — though generally speaking, most women probably didn’t boil the bunny rabbit the way Ms. Close’s character [in "Fatal Attraction"] did in 1987. In the past, less educated women often “married up.” In “Working Girl,” Melanie Griffith triumphs. Now, marriage has become more one of equals; when more highly educated men marry, it tends to be more highly educated women.   

Educated women also seem not only more likely to evntually marry, but to stay married.  Why does this "marriage gap" between the classes rise with age? 

Why have things changed so much for women who don’t have the choices that educated women have? While marriage used to be something you did before launching a life or career, now it is seen as something you do after you’re financially stable — when you can buy a house, say. The same is true for all classes. But the less educated may not get there.

“Women are saying, ‘I’m not ready, I want to work for a while, the guys I hang around with don’t make enough money and they don’t want a commitment,’ ” Mr. Jencks said. “It’s the same thing a lot of African-American women in poor neighborhoods are saying."

The marriage gap between the classes is not so great among younger men.  Both educated and uneducated young men are typically averse to commitment, the author states.  But after 35, the percentage of married, educated men is 12 percentage points higher than the percentage of married but uneducated men. 

Why should we care?  Among other reasons, because marriage attaches a person to society as a whole, and unattached males are much more likely to engage in anti-social behavior than women or attached men.  Marriage, by contrast, makes people happier (on average) and more stable.  (It has reportedly even been used to defuse terrorists.)  By making marriage difficult for less educated (read, lower class) people, we are creating yet another source of social instability.  (Interestingly, this is also the best policy argument for gay marriage--if marriage is good (on balance) for individuals and society, why deny its benefits to a whole class of people?   Doesn't this actually hurt society as well as the individuals involved?)   

The decline of marriage among the less educated creates philosophical dilemmas for both liberals and conservatives.  The difficulties in entering into and remaining in a marriage are psychological and cultural as well as economic, but economics surely plays a major role.  For conservatives who see marriage as the core social institution, supporting economic policies that provide a safety net and are more family-friendly brings them into direct conflict with pro-business free marketeers.

But the studies that document the stabilizing effects of marriage on adults as well as children may give pause to liberals as well.  Witness the turnaroud on divorce among educated women, 65% of whom now think divorce should be made more difficult.  And it also exposes the lie at the core of libertarianism--we are not islands, but social beings who need connection and thrive in communities.   

The Opportunity Cost of War, Part III

by emptywheel

I've been talking about the opportunity costs of war since way back in the early days of 2006. In this post, I considered what we could do with the $1 trillion Stiglitz and Bilmes estimated as the true cost of the war.

See, I've been saying for a while that it's not just that Bush lied us into a war and botched important parts of conducting that war. It's that Bush chose the least effective approach to respond to some threats to this country. And we'll be paying for that poor choice for quite some time.

And in this post, I reviewed Cass Sunstein making a very similar point.

For the price of the Iraq War, we could have implemented the Kyoto Protocol.

Now, a true expert on such issues returns as Cassandra--Richard Clarke describes how the Iraq Debacle has distracted the Administration's attention from seven equally pressing issues.

In the end, there are only 12 seats at the conference table in the White House Situation Room, and the key players' schedules mean that they can seldom meet there together in person or on secure video conference for more than about 10 hours each week. When issues don't receive first-tier consideration, they can slip by for months. I learned this firsthand: In the early days of the Bush administration, I called for an urgent meeting to discuss the threat al-Qaeda posed to the United States. The Cabinet-level meeting eventually took place -- but not until Sept. 4, 2001.

He, too, uses the term opportunity cost.

What Should Our Agenda Be? (Economics)

By Mimikatz

Nancy Pelosi has her 100 Days Agenda, but we need to be thinking in terms of shaping the longer term agenda for the next two to four years.  Other than Iraq, the area where we most need to roll back the damage of the Bush years is in the economic sphere.  Max Sawicky proposes five issues for a populist economics, including Trade (least important), Deficit dementia (moderate deficits are better than none), Social Security (there is no problem, let alone a crisis), Health Care (there is no crisis here either, just rising demand for ever-expanding treatments that must be managed fairly) and The Imperial Fed (which has elevcated slow growth and anit-inflationary policies at the expense of labor growth).

To me the biggest issues are global warming and how to turn the tide on increasing income inequality and declining mobility.  On the latter, certainly the minimum wage increase will help, as would repealing any Bush tax cuts that have not yet taken effect (there are several, and they benefit only the wealthy), including freezing the estate tax.  Single-payer or some similar way to provide at least basic health care for all and equalize risk better would also help greatly.  Rising inequality and its effects (along with Iraq), are, it seems to me, the area where the Dems are going to fulfill their mandate and get reelected to run the government for many years, or not and not.

What do you think are the big picture economic issues for the next 2-4 years?

Liberals and Libertarians: Why the Twain Will Never Meet

By Mimikatz

As Ezra over at TAPPED  and Kevin Drum have noted, many folks are discussing an article by Brink Lindsey at TNR on whether a fusion is possible between Libertarians and Liberals, to create a sort of neo-progressivism.   Not being a subscriber to TNR and having no desire to join, I haven't read the article itself.  However, this is a pretty old debate, and the reasons why the twain will never meet should be clear to anyone who has thought about the issues seriously.  As both Ezra and Kevin note, the easy part is agreeing on the socially liberal positions.  Libertarians are basically "leave me alone" types who dislike government interference period, so naturally they value individual privacy and do not like government prohibitions on personal conduct, such as drug laws, even if movements to expand the private sphere are mostly issues championed by the Left. 

But there is a very fundamental difference between libertarians and liberals (and especially progressives) once one veers into the economic area.  Although both words have their root in the Latin word for free, "liberal" comes from "liberalis," which meant "suitable for a free man," and has always been a synonym for generous.  Libertarianism, on the other hand, focuses on individual liberty.  Not to put too fine a point on it, libertarianism is a glorified synonym for selfishness, and therein lies the unbridgeable difference.   

Exit the lame Duck, Stage Right

By Mimikatz

A month ago the lame-duck 109th Congress had a busy agenda planned, including cutting domestic spending, extending various expiring tax breaks and repealing the estate tax.  Now, not so much.  The Republicans have decided to punt the completion of almost $500 trillion in domestic spending bills to the incoming 110th Congress and the new Democratic majority and cannot agree on the other issues before them.  With a truncated agenda, it looks like they will reconvene on December 4th and adjourn December 8th.  What have they left undone?

Most of the budget for fiscal 2007, which began October 1.  Congress passed appropriations bills for Defense and Homeland Security, but left the rest of the 9 bills for domestic agencies umcompleted.  Moreover, by shifting $5.3 billion slated by the Senate for domestic programs into Defense and Homeland Security in October, they left a comparable hole on the domestic side.  Rather than own up to the shortfall and cut popular programs, the ever-courageous  GOPers are transfering the onus to the Dems.  Two further consequences of the failure to act are a 5% mandatory cut in doctors' Medicare reimbursements and a shortfall in the State Childrens' Health insurance Program.  Guess those doctors and poor patients should have increased their contributions to GOP candidates if they wanted action.

In a further indication of the bipartisan comity to come, another reason for the failure to act is to complicated Nancy Pelosi's widely advertised "100 hours" agenda.  If the Dems are stuck fininshing the 9 spending bills, they can't move so quickly on their 100 hours agenda, allowing the GOPers and the press to claim that the Dems can't deliver.

In late January, moreover, the process of developing the fiscal 2008 budget begins, and at some point Bush will present Congress with a request for somewhere between $130 and 160 billion for Iraq. Both will  be complicated by the need to make hard fiscal choices in early January.

It isn't a done deal, but watch for what happens when Congress reconvenes.  If they pass another continuing resolution simply extending funding at current levels, that means they haven't done the most basic thing that they were elected in 2004 to do, raise money and fund the federal govrnment.  Instead, as with so much facing our country, they will have simply passed the buck to the Democrats.

The Wrong Price Watch

by DemFromCT

It's not just gas prices we should be watching.

The average price of gasoline across the country is currently $2.44 per gallon, down from a high of $3.00 per gallon this summer. The American public, however, remains relatively pessimistic about gas prices, and most Americans do not believe they will continue to decline. While 4 in 10 Americans believe gas prices will be lower by the end of the year, the majority predict prices will be the same or higher. Men -- particularly those aged 55 and older -- Republicans, Midwesterners, Southerners, and those in households earning at least $30,000 annually are most optimistic that gas prices will be lower by the end of the year.

High gas prices this spring and summer most likely helped drag down George W. Bush's job approval ratings and made Republicans more vulnerable heading into this year's midterm elections. The sharp drop in gas prices -- coming just weeks before the November elections -- has made some wonder if the timing is more than a coincidence. But the new poll finds that most Americans do not believe the Bush administration deliberately manipulated the price of gas. About 4 in 10 Americans do, however, believe the decreasing prices were the result of government manipulation, with Democrats especially likely to hold this view.

Well, Dems simply don't trust Bush. But the real price to watch is medication.

Millions of older Americans are confronting a temporary break in their Medicare drug coverage this month that will require them to pay the full cost of their prescriptions or face the painful prospect of going without.

This is the "doughnut hole" in the new Medicare drug benefit that began in January, and advocates for seniors say there is nothing sweet about it. Some seniors knew nothing of the coverage gap until they were hit with a bigger drug bill, advocates say.

Nancy Johnson (CT-Pharma) was running glossy "Nancy saved medicare" ads this summer. She's not running them now. Instead, she runs TNT ads (terror 'n' taxes) exclusively. CT and other states have (unevenly) taken steps to cover the doughnut hole. But seniors aren't dumb. Ask family members. They were pissed at the signup complexity, somewhat pleased with saving money on some things, and are pissed again at the doughnut hole. That's not the note you want to end the campaign on... seniors remain the most reliable demographic to actually vote.

If You Work For A Living....

by DemFromCT

...read this article.

With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.

That situation is adding to fears among Republicans that the economy will hurt vulnerable incumbents in this year’s midterm elections even though overall growth has been healthy for much of the last five years...

[W]ages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.”

I have no problem with profitibility, but this explains quite well why Americans have a different view of the economy than the subset of Americans known as Republicans. between gas price and staganat wages, these bread-and butter issues favor Democrats this year.

In fact, it's hard to find an issue that doesn't.

Lamont's "Single Issue" Voters

by emptywheel

The Q-Poll shows that 44% of Lamont's supporters support him mainly because of Lieberman's stance on the Iraq war. And Markos anticipates a bunch of pundits frowning on the large number of "Single Issue" voters.

For a pundit to suggest the Iraq war is a "Single Issue" simply betrays their ignorance of the impact that war has and will continue to have on this country and the rest of the world.

Some are opposed to the war because they're opposed to 2,500 Americans dead, 18,000 Americans wounded, perhaps 100,000 Iraqis dead, untold wounded. Some oppose the war simply because it uses violence to solve problems that should be solved using other means.

Some are opposed to the war because it has ruined our military. Two-thirds of our active army and three-quarters of our National Guard face readiness problems because it needs to replace equipment used in Iraq. Extended deployments and lowered recruiting standards are having bad effects on the military, their families, and our mission. The Iraq war--sold as a way to make our country safer--has only exposed it defensively.

Some are opposed to the war because it has thoroughly destabilized Iraq, and threatens to destabilize the entire region. By almost every standard, Iraqi quality of life is worse today than it was under Saddam.

Some are opposed to the war because it has created precisely the problem that it was cynically sold as a way to prevent. Iraq is creating terrorists, at a time when the threat of terrorism remains very real.

Some are opposed to the war because it has turned us into an international pariah. Some countries no longer trust us. Others want nothing to do with our aggressive ways.