GOP senators wanting to purity-test selves on Trump budget

First, there's Ron Paul, who says he doesn't like the amount of money sloshing around, then does an about face and says he'll vote FOR it — if the debt ceiling increase is removed.

This lets him play the part of voting to increase the debt, then voting against increasing the debt ceiling later. A true hypocrite as well as a poseur; no wonder many fellow Rethuglicans don't like Sen. Squirrel Hair. (At least the carpet weaver has added a few touches of gray to the weave.)

Ron Johnson calls the budget bill's deficits "completely unsustainable" before saying he wants to see Trump succeed. Translation? "I'll vote for it while pretending to be a deficit hawk," kind of like Squirrel Hair.

Johnson then invoked Elmo Musk and DOGE as his "out," apparently in the idea that he can blame Trump for not listening to Musk if he has to — all while keeping an ear to the ground of which of the two is more popular among wingnuts-sqaured.

Meanwhile, in the House that just passed it, Speaker Mike Johnson, the choirboy with Peter's two swords, did his St. Ronald of Reagan, Jack Kemp, Art Laffer, etc., said the CBO has it wrong, and this big beautiful new deficit will do a supply side self healing.

No, MSM, the current GOP deficits are nothing new

Certainly, the GOP attitude toward deficits is nothing new.

That's despite the AP, the Bezos Post and the Houston Chronicle, among other outlets, claiming the GOP acceptance of wall-to-wall deficits is a historic sea change.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Presidentially, with the exception of the brief interlude of Poppy Bush, GOP presidents haven't cared about deficits since Nixon. After all, Veep Dick Cheney said they don't matter.

In Congress, the Senate had its deficit hawks under Reagan, and Shrub Bush, but some had left the Senate and others gone mute by the time of Shrub Bush.

And, the variations of unsubstantiated supply-side economics get new makeup on their lips every couple of years and that's that.

So, MSM?

Just stop trying to normalize the national Republican Party.

Democrats who still don't get it on the GOP, the budget, and Catfood!

And, no, this time, it's NOT Dear Leader, President Obama, who doesn't "get it."

It's a Democratic Senator.

The Washington Post has a story about how the shrinking budget deficit is gutting the likelihood of grand deals on debt-cutting.

First, how shrinking?

This:

In February, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that this year’s deficit would fall to $845 billion, down from nearly $1.1 trillion in 2012. Goldman Sachs recently predicted that the deficit would fall even further, to $775 billion, and return to sustainable levels within two years.

Take THAT, austerians, Catfood Commission, etc.

In turn, that's pushing back the next time the Congressional GOP gets to hold America hostage via hitting the debt ceiling limit.

That, in turn, has House GOP wingnuts like Eddie "Paul Ryan" Munster boo-hooing.

Now, the "Democrats who still don't get it." And, the Democrats who are "part of the problem."

They're the same person, this time:

“The American people — all of us — are tired of management by crisis,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said at the Peterson summit. “We need to start working now.”

WTF?

First, why is an alleged liberal like Patty Murray at a Pete Peterson (aka Catfood Commission eminence grise) "debt summit"? The same one Eddie Munster was at, to boot?

If you want to get a clue, read about austerity costing 2.2 million jobs.

That's the conclusion of a new study by Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney at the Brookings Institution. In the 46 months since the Great Recession ended, state, local and federal governments have cut about 500,000 jobs. In contrast, in every other U.S. recession since 1970, the government hired approximately 1.7 million people, on average. That means the U.S. is an estimated 2.2 million jobs in the hole.

Given the size of the U.S. labor force, an extra 2.2 million jobs would mean the U.S. unemployment rate would be about 6.1 percent, instead of 7.5 percent. That would be below the 6.5 percent rate the Federal Reserve is targeting with its extraordinary bond-buying program known as quantitative easing.

Second, if "The American people — all of us" includes "House GOP," you're dead wrong. As your own party's cave on airport traffic controllers shows, the House GOP has seen management by crisis kind of, sort of, work, for its own ends.

Ergo, given A and B, and to riff on LBJ, er ... Patty?

Eddie Munster's got your ovaries in his pocket.

And, once again, people ask me why I continue to push Green Party voting?

Will Preznit Kumbaya talk to House GOP on budget deal?

So now, House Republicans are threatening to derail last year's budget/debt control deal?And, Obama's response? "OOoh, that could cause a shutdown." Duh, that is kind of what they want, isn't it?

That said, the House GOP leadership may not want such a battle, even if rank and file members do. But, the clueless sincerity, or whatever, with which he approaches this issue boggles the mind. This was an immediate opening to pre-empt the political attack angle and he blew it.

I can cut the deficit better than the NYT

The New York Times, in an interactive page, lets readers try to balance the budget. Even within the NYT's chintzy constraints, I actually produced a surplus.

Among the chintzy constraints? It won't let you get ALL troops out of A-stan and Iraq by 2015; no surprise from the warmongers there. It also won't let you address corporate income tax loopholes, just some individual ones.

If the NYT would allow all the tax changes I'd like, I'd produce a $300 billion surplus by 2030, without breaking a sweat.

That said, I do agree with it and the Catfood Commission on eliminating a few individual income tax exemptions, above all the mortgage interest deduction. It would stop McMansions, speculative home buying and other evils. It's about the only Catfood Commission idea, other than inadequate defense cuts, I agree with.

David Broder’s self-righteous budget hand-wringing

All that and more are in the latest column of the man Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just recently derided as the retiree who rites an occasional column.

And rightly so, on Reid’s derision. Broder refuses to accept the word of the Congressional Budget office about the bill. Plus, most of the people and groups whose word he DOES accept want to privatize Medicare and Social Security, to boot.

Beyond that, where were Broder’s budget concerns when Bush gutted the estate tax? Went to war on off-budget spending? Rammed through Medicare Part D on budget lies?

I hear crickets.

Wingers should blame W, selves for alleged Obama kowtow to China

To the degree it’s true that President Barack Obama is allegedly soft-shoeing China on civil rights and other issues, blame George W. Bush’s massive war debt.

The pending China-US divorce

David Brooks, in one of his better columns, says three baseline things:
1. Chinese leaders assume American consumers will never have the same 1995-2005 binge;
2. The U.S. government will not get its fiscal house in order
3. Young Chinese, fueled by the Net, have become more nationalistic.

I halfway agree with 1, at least halfway agree with 2, and am not totally surprised by 3.

Results? Brooks says it’s a “divorce.” No. 1 has Chinese leaders pushing internal consumerism, etc. No. 2 is why Beijing keeps attacking the dollar and pushing for a backup global reserve currency. And, No. 3 could be a Pandora’s box.

Read the full column.

It is NOT the ‘Obama deficit’

Dave Leonhardt makes that clear, despite lies by conservative bloggers such as Von at Obsidian Wings.

That said, Leonhardt also makes clear that Obama has chosen to continue many Bush choices; putting some of them on-budget is part of what makes the current deficits look so bad.

But, other stuff just got dumped in his lap.

That said, nobody’s forcing Obama to increase Pentagon spending so much, etc. And, I voted Green, so I have no special interest in defending the portion of debt and deficit that IS his fault.

Obama budget promise – yeah, right

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, like out of the mouth of every president from Ronald Reagan on, but President Barack Obama says he plans to halve the deficit in four years.

Now, I applaud him for putting all the “off-budget” spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, money that Shrub put there, back on budget. No accounting gimmicks (other than the bipartisan “borrowing” from Social Security).

That will actually make the percentage cuts easier to achieve, too. But, c’mon, B.O. – the easiest way to really get at that is to get all troops not just your weasel-phrased “non-combatants,” out of Iraq. Second that with not expanding the war in Afghanistan more, and you’re easily on your way.

Your “government efficiency” mantra? Neolib bullshit that started with Clinton-Gore, and reflects one of the ways in which neolibs are far away from being “liberal.”

For Obamiacs and Krugmanites who say ‘spend away’

I offer the counter-example of Japan. Japan, with the highest debt burden of any modern nation — debt at 182 percent of GNP — has little money for m ore programs for the elderly, for example.

We’re not aging as rapidly as Japan is, but, we would be at zero population growth without immigration, at best.

Ignoring typical conservative diatribes about the imperiled future of Social Security, treating a $1 trillion deficit cavalierly isn’t advised.

Yes, FDR pushed us back into deeper economic malaise when he tried to be a budget-cutter in his second term.

That said, his deliverance from both a strong depression AND from monstrous deficits was found in World War II.

I don’t think that’s a bankable repeat economic plan.

But Steve Benen, for example, riffing on Paul Krugman, say, “spend away,” though.

We’re fortunate we’re not as old as Japan. But, we’re moving more that way.

And, if we were a Third World country pulling this crap, the IMF would be beating down our collective national door with a battering ram.

Other critics of the Krugman column are right — it’s a blank-check license to spend without doing some analysis of what a bottom line should be.

There will be NO ‘Iraq savings’

Nicholas von Hoffman gives Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama a well-deserved smackdown on this issue. Instead, in and of itself, all that the end of the Iraq War will offer is a lessening of our Chinese borrowing, he says.

Even if you rescind all the Bush tax cuts, which he doesn’t number-crunch, we would be lucky, lucky indeed to get back to a balanced budget.

Imagine three well-dressed people on a sidewalk: a white-haired man in his early 70s, a woman in a pantsuit, and a young, spaghetti-thin African-American man. They are absorbed in a dispute, but they carry on in polite, moderated tones.

Across the street, a building is collapsing, another one is on fire, and a woman is jumping from the roof of a third structure. Others kneel, gasping for air near inert human forms, more dead than alive. The police, hands clapped to their heads, run to and fro like ants after a squirt of insecticide. Firefighters arrive, jump out of their glistening red machines, and attach their hoses to the hydrants. But no water comes out.

Not so many feet away, the three well-dressed people continue their disagreement, oblivious to the tumult.

Thus the presidential campaign soldiers on, all but ignoring the largest economic upheaval since the disaster of 1929. Given the chaotic state of no-longer-so-high finance in America, they have good reason to stay as far away from the daily debacle flooding out of Wall Street and, inch by foot, putting the nation under water.

But whoever wins the White House will enter it under conditions undreamed of when this long presidential season began. Long-held delusional assumptions have ceased to be tenable, owing to the catastrophic brew mixed up by Wall Street.

Now that you’ve got the intro, you know the tenor of the whole column.

Von Hoffman notes “the dollar isn’t the dollar anymore,” the next president will have to offer “the castor oil of austerity” and tell America to “man up”

As for just how bad the borrowing situation is, well foreigners are starting to get skittish, von Hoffman says:

Owing to the ever shrinking dollar bill, foreigners are ceasing to buy U.S. government securities. Last year they bought $126 billion less than in 2006.

What’s the solution?

Von Hoffman says inflation is the only likely way to get out of this — real inflation. It’s either that or a possible crash, he says.

And, the last time we used “crash” and “economy” in the same sentence to talk about America was back in October 1929.