It’s disheartening really. It demonstrates that neither the proudly pudgy, fatally geekish David Brooks nor the frighteningly rigid, possibly comatose Charles Krauthammer are reading my posts here. Within the last week, both have apparently given their uniquely charmless spin to the GOP talking points and tried to portray the cool reception the Democrats have given to President Bush’s plans for Social Security as evidence Democrats don’t care about poor people and are not recognizing the courage it took the President to grab that third rail and make the tough choices.
First Krauthammer:
This is about as fair and progressive a plan as you can find.
Even the inveterately, reflexively, often apoplectically anti-Bush
Michael Kinsley expressed admiration — and indeed puzzlement that the
president would offer it without any prospect of short-term political
advantage.
Leave the quest for short-term political
advantage to the Democrats. They have finally gotten a Republican
president to openly propose "cuts" in Social Security and they intend
to win seats in 2006 running all-out against them.
Then Brooks:
Democrats have been hectoring President Bush in the manner of an
overripe Fourth of July orator. The president should be summoning us to
make shared sacrifices for the common good. The president should care
for the poor, and stop favoring the rich. He should make the hard
choices and impose a little fiscal discipline on government.Sometimes you had to walk through Democratic precincts in a gas mask,
the lofty rhetoric was so thick. But now we have definitive proof that
they didn’t mean it. It was all hokum.Over the past few weeks,
the president has called their bluff. By embracing the progressive
indexing of Social Security benefits, the president has asked us to
make a shared sacrifice for the common good. He’s asking middle- and
upper-class folks to accept benefit cuts so there will be money for the
people who are really facing poverty.
While you have to admire the way they embrace their role as the dutiful little poodle, it’s laughable that they are willing to risk their mortal souls via such audacious hypocrisy without even attempting to address the most important reason to reject the President’s plan: it will result in Social Security being reframed as Welfare for old people, and from that point be more easily dismantled.
They still have souls to risk?
And as Josh Marshallpointed out, all Bush has done is take the supposed problem (there’ll be benefit cuts) and redefine it as the solution (we must make benefit cuts). The difference is that Bush is proposing to place the lion’s share of these cuts on the shoulders of lower middle-class Americans.
I saw our President doing his leadership thing the other day at one of the Potemkin gatherings. At one point, he got all folksy and barbecuey and shrugged his shoulders and said (I paraphrase) “You know, I talk to a lot of young folks around the country, and many of them ‘feel’ that Social Security won’t be around when they need it. That’s why we need to fix it. How would you like to “feel” it won’t be around and yet be paying into it?”
I haven’t felt so reaassured about facticity since Bill Clinton said he didn’t do something with someone.
But just in case we aren’t seduced by Lyndon Baines Gantry into wrecking the New Deal, we need the scary rictus of Krauthammer and company advancing inexorably toward us and bearing down, telling US we’re the flesh-eaters.
it’s laughable that they are willing to risk their mortal souls via such audacious hypocrisy without even attempting to address the most important reason to reject the President’s plan
I thought the most important reason to reject the President’s plan was that it’s inferior to the Do Nothing plan under almost every single measure of success.
Being morally, historically, intellectually, and factually wrong is a job requirement to be a conservative columnist. Also, having no shame.
There is one tiny bright spot here, though. The vague set of ideas that comprised Bush’s original ‘reform proposal’ went over with a dull thud when even village idiots knew they were a load of crap. The hastily-revamped but still vague ideas that comprised Bush’s second ‘reform proposal’ also died soon after birth.
Now Bush has to acknowledge that benefit cuts are a feature, not a bug. I don’t hope for much from the electorate, and god knows I don’t hope for much from Congress, but somehow I don’t think “Benefit Cuts: Good for America” will fly any better than the first two dodos.
“By embracing the progressive indexing of Social Security benefits, the president has asked us to make a shared sacrifice for the common good.”
Be serious. What the President is doing is asking the middle class to sacrifice for the public good. If there really were shared sacrifice, it would include rolling back the tax cuts, restoring the estate tax, and other items which benefit the rich, who have been the overwhelming winners under the President’s economic policies.
One of the things I find interesting about this is that they are trying to sell the Bush “reform” plan as benifit cuts for the “rich” where “rich” means making $36,000 a year. Usually republicans consider people making $100,000+ as middle class. Odd that.
If there really were shared sacrifice, it would include rolling back the tax cuts, restoring the estate tax, and other items which benefit the rich, who have been the overwhelming winners under the President’s economic policies.
Of course if we did all that the benefit cuts would be unnecessary.
“it would include rolling back the tax cuts,”
U.S. Jan. federal budget surplus $8.7 billion
WASHINGTON (AFX) – The U.S. federal government ran a surplus of $8.7 billion in January, the Treasury Department said Thursday. Receipts were up 9.2 percent year-over-year to $202.2 billion, while outlays grew 3.8 percent to $193.6 billion. Last week, the Congressional Budget Office had estimated January’s surplus would be about $12 billion. So far in fiscal 2005, the government has run a deficit of $109.2 billion, about $22 billion less than last year at this time, the Treasury said
I know the MSM has suppressed this info and it’s unfortunate that those on the left in the blogosphere seem to ignore it, but can’t we just admit this is a good thing.
Maybe, some of you guys can spend some time picking apart this argument.
http://www.nationalreview.com/kudlow/kudlow200505051554.asp
synchronize your watches!
let’s see how long before the GOP farm teams start trying this one on their blogs.
Oh, of course!
GOP brainless minions. Democrats thoughtful soulful individual thinkers.
Both these statements seem to me to fit Edward’s own post as well as they fit those who he is accusing.
“On Cue, the Hacks Roll out the New Meme”
“While you have to admire the way they embrace their role as the dutiful little poodle”
Of course, he is accusing others of behavior he often seems to be engaged in.
What is being asserted here? The Treasury Statement shows a deficit of $176.6 bn January-March. That’s up on last year’s $171.2bn.
“I know the MSM has suppressed this info …
If its suppressed, how do you know? Although I do like it when conservatives believe every word of GOVERNMENT news releases and feel no need to tinker with them.
But, you’re right, I am a soulful individual thinker. I’m a thoughful thinker, too. But I’m especially soulful.
There was in fact a surplus of $8.7billion in Jan. I don’t know about the MSM, but I ignored it because month by month deficit/surplus figures are a lot less meaningful than year by year figures, since the latter are a lot less likely to be due to little accounting blips, like some large chunk of spending taking place on Feb. 1 as opposed to Jan. 31. To put the Jan. figures on context, here are the figures for the last year (surpluses positive, deficits negative; in billions of dollars):
FY2004: April: 17.578
May: -62.483
June: 19.124
July: -69.160
August: -41.132
September: 24.633
FY 2005: October: -57.302
November: -57.901
December: -2.853
January: 8.578
February: -113.942
March: -71.227
The budget deficit for this year to date is about $50billion larger than it was at this time last year. For what it’s worth. (Figures here (pdf), p. 2).
That’s why I didn’t make a big deal of it. And Tinker: you might consider factchecking the NRO’s economics columns. They’re notoriously bad.
In any case the January surplus was due to a temporary dip in outlays. Receipts were down and fell sharply in February. This is difficult to square with Kudlow’s story of tax cuts leading to a surge in revenue as the old supply-side magic does the trick.
All of which has nothing whatever to do with the new story about cutting SS in order to save it.
Note that Kudlow carefully selects one category of tax collections to make his point. Wonder why.
hilzoy,
I think your arithmetic is off (or mine is). Through the first six months of the fiscal year the deficit is down to $294 billion vs. $301 biillion last year. The difference is entirely accounted for by “off-budget” items, such as Social Security. The on-budget deficit is very close to unchanged.
Brooks is only half bad. Krauthammer is merely grim.
Was it expected that throwing Kudlow into the mix would sooth our savage liberal breasts? The word “hack” should be changed to “Kudlow” for the sake of the language.
I’m merely bloviating, but when Kudlow comes up with some facts worth countering, I’ll come up with some facts to counter him. If I were to say that Kudlow is a practitioner of the “other faith”, would I be accused of maligning his religious convictions? He replaced his previous addictions with an addiction to what that well-known religious bigot George Bush Sr. called voodoo you know what. Sticking the little pins of tax cut after tax cut into the little doll called government was supposed to make the patient better AND kill the patient, whichever argument fits the venue.
As in all faiths, there shall be no doubts for Kudlow; there shall be no facts which cannot be skewed to fit the faith. He’s not a Marxist, of course, he just acts like one, as he replaces reality with his wicked little solipsism.
See, I can be soulful.
Bush keeps the Iraqi war costs off the books, too, camouflaging them as “emergency requests.” I think there are other budget items not included in the budget besides SocSec and the Iraq War, but I can’t remember what they are.
Re Social Security: I figured Bush would use his ” The SocSec Trust Fund is just a bunch of worthless IOUs” idea as an excuse to default on SocSec altogether. Since the “worthless IOUs” speech only seems to have succeeded in pissing people off, and sending his numbes even lower, does anyone here think he’ll default on the Trust Fund anyway?
Yes, yes it’s all bad. And that jobless recovery is just horrible.
Bush keeps the Iraqi war costs off the books, too, camouflaging them as “emergency requests.” I think there are other budget items not included in the budget besides SocSec and the Iraq War, but I can’t remember what they are.
Afghanistan’s reconstruction (such as it is), I think. At least it used to be; it might have been moved onto the budget in FY 2005.
Yes, he will default on the Trust Fund, but only if he can’t kill it above board first.
And, yes the newly created jobs are very nice. But Clinton gets the credit because he never got any last time. I hope, too, they lead to revenue windfalls to the Treasury Department so Kudlow’s dreams of gargantuan revenues from lower and lower taxes become true. Of course, defunding and killing government will still be a priority, so we’ll need to lower taxes again and keep that deficit growing.
Tinker,
The deficit wasn’t the point of my comment (although when the budget actually reaches a surplus for an entire year, you may have a worthwhile counterpoint). My point was that the rich have received so much benefit from reduced taxes, that even with a decrease in Social Security benefits they are far ahead for the Bush Presidency.
does anyone here think he’ll default on the Trust Fund anyway?
yes, but he’ll call it something nicer, like “forgiving us our debts”.
Bernard: probably mine; I was doing it on my onscreen calculator (not the one I like to use, which is made of plastic, not pixels), and I might easily have screwed it up.
Edward_
“neither … Brooks nor … Krauthammer are reading my posts here”
Dunno: I read Geo Will’s piece and had the impression that he *had* read your post.
I.e., it seemed to me that Will was actively pushing the “SS=welfare” line, exactly as a way to taint SS and drive down its popularity. The other half of this was to claim, as though it were a well-known fact, that no young people today would ever get their SS checks. So: you’ll never get any money, and if you did it would be a source of shame.
Maybe the anti-SS leadership read your post and thought “aha! equating SS with welfare really hurts them; let’s keep it up!”
If that’s the way they want to take the fight, let them do it–I think the viewpoint of you and your father will prevail. There’s only one side in this fight that needs to feel ashamed, and that’s the side that keeps on figuring out new lies to tell in order to try to phase out social security.
I don’t know, Tad Brennan, I’m not so optimistic. I think they will find a lie or some accretion of lies which just about 51% of the American people will buy.
Like the velociraptors in “Jurassic Park”, which evolved from sequel to sequel into more clever but no less dangerous cold-blooded reptiles, I think they may learn to open doors and maybe even fly helicopters to the mainland. They are rather inexorable, don’t you think? And I don’t think having right or morality or ethics on our side is much help.
Exceptions to all the usual suspects.
And, Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers out there, even velociraptor Mommys. 😉
You know, I just hate tactics like that. It shames me to see Republicans adopting them, too.
I’m truly beginning to suspect that the surest way to achieve any sort of reform is to maintain that no reform is needed and things will be just swell indefinitely if people could only keep their meat-hooks off. The alternative is having the opposition accuse you of not caring about poor folks (or worse, actually loathing the poor) at any and every opportunity. Of course, this could all be some sort of political smokescreen designed to make the opposition appear reactionary. If I were Karl, I’d give that a try.
Actually, Slarti, the alternative presented here by the president and his rolling hacks comes fitted with accusations about not caring for poor folks. It’s similar to proposing minority judicial nominees fitted with accusations of racism, or to using war as a wedge issue fitted with accusations of treason. That’s the way these guys have kept the faith from day one. Up is down, and neither appropriation, nor shame, has anything to do it.