So, this happened:
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner presented the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a detailed proposal on Thursday to avert the year-end fiscal crisis with $1.6 trillion in tax increases over 10 years, $50 billion in immediate stimulus spending, home mortgage refinancing and a permanent end to Congressional control over statutory borrowing limits.
The proposal, loaded with Democratic priorities and short on detailed spending cuts, met strong Republican resistance. In exchange for locking in the $1.6 trillion in added revenues, President Obama embraced the goal of finding $400 billion in savings from Medicare and other social programs to be worked out next year, with no guarantees.
He did propose some upfront cuts in programs like farm price supports, but did not specify an amount or any details. And senior Republican aides familiar with the offer said those initial spending cuts might be outweighed by spending increases, including at least $50 billion in infrastructure spending, mortgage relief, an extension of unemployment insurance and a deferral of automatic cuts to physician reimbursements under Medicare.
I’m trying to figure out why the first sentence says it was a “detailed” proposal and the next two paragraphs almost seem to go to pains to clarify that, in fact, it’s not even remotely fucking “detailed”. Then I remember it’s from the New York Times and they don’t care about making sense.
Allahpundit’s exit question on his Hot Air post about it is: “Let it burn?”
Two possibilities. One: Obama reeeeally wants to avoid the cliff, so he’s engineering some political cover for the other side to compromise. Ante up with a ridiculous bid, then pretend to let Republicans “win” by letting them negotiate him down to, say, “only” a trillion in new revenues. In order to believe that, though, you have to believe that O fears the cliff. Why would he? Polls show that Republicans will take most of the blame, which means not only will Obama have more leverage after January 1 (see my earlier post about that) but he can then blame any economic sluggishness over the next year or two or four on the GOP too. That might be the difference between a Republican Senate versus a Democratic House in 2014. Which brings us to two: He’s either indifferent about going over the cliff or now actively wants it to happen, and since he knows he can count on the press to scapegoat Republicans when it does, he’s decided to shoot for the stars with his “offer” and see how desperate Boehner is. Is the GOP sufficiently nervous about being called enemies of the middle class if a deal isn’t reached that they’ll cave on tax hikes on the rich in exchange for some smaller bundle of concessions, with this insane package the only other alternative on the Democratic side? That’s what O wants to see.
I don’t know near enough about political maneuvering by malignant assholes like Obama to offer an opinion about any of that. Mostly I think Obama is a malignant asshole. What do you think?
Everyone is linking to this piece by Jim Geraghty:
At this moment, Republicans in Congress need to examine which presents a more dire threat to the country:
A) A double-dip recession driven by the sequester and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, or
B) the public’s belief (verified through polling) that our giant debt, our ticking time bomb of entitlements, and our gargantuan government can be solved by “asking the richest Americans to pay a little bit more,” as Obama insists.
Option A is terrible, but Option B is the giant locked door blocking all of the real solutions.
So if we must have tax hikes, let the tax cuts for every income level expire and let everyone of every income level pay higher taxes. Destroy the illusion among so many voters that they can get all the government they want without paying more in taxes…
Obama’s negotiating stance and tactics suggest he’s extremely convinced that going over the cliff, with the attendant double-dip recession, is a scenario where he wins politically. Maybe it’s worth seeing if that confidence is well-placed.
Look, whether roughly 51 percent of voters realize it or not, in November they effectively voted for another recession. Might as well get it over with.
As much as it makes my stomach bleed to think about what it’ll do to our personal tax returns, I agree with that. I want all the fools who voted for Obama to start feeling the inevitable pain consequent from their decision sooner rather than later. Let’s make this non-anesthetized stab wound now and let the screaming start so that possibly a critical mass of people can learn that goddammit, elections have consequences you irresponsible fools.
In another post, Allah draws out Geraghty’s idea a little further:
[Geraghty]’s playing a long game of “let it burn” here: At some point, Democratic tax-and-spend policies will squeeze so many people and cause so many problems that the public will revolt and turn back towards Republicans with a mandate to undo it. The “blue social model,” in Walter Russell Mead’s term, will eventually collapse because the left ultimately can’t make the math add up. But how long are you willing to wait? The public’s belief in soaking the rich as a solution to core budgetary problems is one of the sturdiest in American political life, rivaled only by their belief that defense spending and foreign aid are something like four-fifths of the federal budget or whatever. Democrats will put off the reckoning on entitlements as long as they can, until a Grecian debacle finally forces their hand…
The fact that the entire “fiscal cliff” clusterfark revolves around taxes instead of entitlement reform is proof enough of how deep the denial runs here. If you follow the “let it burn” approach on the assumption that the public will finally wake up and reach for the fire hose when it feels a little heat, before everything burns down, then you have more faith in the public than I do. Reminds me a little, in fact, of the assumption that a “starve the beast” approach to taxes would eventually force government to shrink. Not so, as it turns out: The beast doesn’t starve, it just borrows and continues to gorge.
And…yeah. So I’m not so sure what I think about Let It Burn after all.
But is it even possible anything other than the Burn is even possible? Isn’t it actually already burning and over half of America is just pretending it isn’t? Boehner, McConnell, and enough House Republicans will cave in and give President Slim Pickens his victory, won’t they? Linking to a Washington Examiner piece, Ace writes:
I’m conflicted on all of this. I’d prefer a lot of things — not having a Depression, for example, and not creating a socialist mega-state.
But I feel like, given the media’s intention to not only hand the Democrats the long-term win but also blame the short-term consequences of that on the wrong party, we conservatives have little to gain here, whatever we do. So I’m feeling amenable with the Let It Burn people — if the Democrats are determined to do this, and we cannot stop it politically, then let the Democrats at least have full ownership of the mayhem.
I’m also having trouble with the idea of pressuring Boehner and McConnell not to cave — because I know they will cave.
According to Politico, Boehner is willing to sign off on as much as $1.2 trillion in tax hikes over the next ten years in exchange for as little as $400 billion in Medicare cuts that do not even begin to take effect until 2013. That’s right: Boehner is about to sign off on a deal of $3 dollars in tax hikes now in exchange for $1 dollar in spending cuts 10 years from now. There is no way House Republicans will sacrifice their political careers for such a “grand bargain.”
Enough will. The Democrats only need 25 or so “brave Republicans willing to compromise (and be branded heroes by the media)” to do this.
As I know we’re going to cave — we always do — I feel a futility in arguing against the inevitable.
I’m also wondering why we shouldn’t just give the Democrats what they want and Let It Burn.
Later at Ace’s, Gabriel Malor weighs in and it seems that he disagrees.
Making decisions based on whether the GOP is going to get blamed or not is stupid. Of course Democrats are going to blame the GOP no matter what happens and of course the lemmings in the media will do the same no matter what happens. Folks proposing that the GOP simply allow the Democrats to do whatever they want are kidding themselves if they think that GOP cooperation will not be viewed as GOP consent to Democratic failures…
The bottom line, of course, is that we’re in a complete reversal of our usual roles right now. McConnell and other leaders in D.C. are trying to put the brakes on economy-killing “progressive” ideas . . . while conservative commentators are ready to give in and give socialism a try.
I’m still stunned by that. I understand being tired and a bit low after the election loss. I don’t understand acceding to evil because of it.
Well, I think it’s because McConnell and other leaders in D.C. are not actually going to succeed in putting the brakes on. We’re going off that cliff in January or we are going off it in a few more years…isn’t there value in letting it happen as soon as possible? Wouldn’t that help ensure people feel the agony for a full four years of Obama’s administration and thus possibly learn something about basic arithmetic and vote accordingly in 2016?
I don’t know, man. I don’t know shit anymore. I never knew shit. This is all so incredibly depressing and infuriating that I have to force myself to even read the news every morning. Big part of me wants to do nothing but play with Primo, drink a lot, Paypal some cash to Dad in Texas and ask him to go buy me several guns and a huge amount of ammunition, and spend the rest of my time living in Italy learning how to farm and how to hunt for food so that I might survive in my old age because at this point, forget Social Security bankruptcy – I never expected any of what I’ve paid into that – but I’m honestly starting to fear for my IRA and Rupert’s 401k and all the other money we’ve been investing and saving for so many years. I feel genuine, existential dread about the future for the first time in my life, which is saying a lot as someone who was a kid in the 1980s and was absolutely convinced we were all going to die in a nuclear war. Or a tornado.
Anyway. Since I’m unashamedly poaching Ace’s site today, here’s one more, my favorite short blog post of the year so far:
…I love that part about presidential control over the debt ceiling, as his Majesty might require.
Fuck you. Let it burn.
Anyone else? Yes or no?
P.S. Someone in that comment thread asked how you’d say “let it burn” in Spanish, so I thought maybe one person reading this might half-care what it’d be in Italian. I think it would be lasciarla bruciare, if I have my imperative tense right. Has a certain ring, no?
Say it out loud (lah-she-arlah broo-chee-ahreh) while shrugging with your hands in front of you palms up, and an air of grim despair.
There you go. We’re all gonna be European soon enough, may as well get used to it.
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Updated to add a poll so we can have mindthoughts about mathnumbers, unlike liberals:
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