Month: July 2011

This weekend should have been relaxing. It's almost August. Oregon is warm, dry, and sunny. Staining decks isn't my favorite activity, but I enjoy the simple manual labor. However, for the past few days I've been running to my laptop every hour or two and checking on the progress of the debt limit negotiations. Now that our investments have crawled back to within spitting distance of their value prior to the Big Crash, I'm not wild about a major market downturn -- which likely would happen if Congress and the President don't get their act together and avoid a totally…

The House Republicans appear to be poised to pass a bill that would forbid increases in the federal debt limit beyond six months from now unless Congress sends out to the states for ratification a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. This will never happen. There aren't enough votes in the Senate, and maybe even the House (two-thirds), to approve the amendment. And I predict that if the federal debt limit isn't raised by August 2, as appears increasingly likely, American voters will be horrified by the prospect of a balanced budget amendment -- dooming this foolish proposal forever. Why?…

I'm hoping that soon we'll have another constitutional slogan that will become as well known as "pleading the Fifth" -- take the Fourteenth. The Fifth Amendment provides a right against self-incrimination. To many, including me, the Fourteenth Amendment authorizes the president of the United States to do what is necessary to protect the validity of our nation's public debt. A month ago I was arguing for this, inspired by a fictional -- but today, all too believable -- speech that Garrett Ebbs wanted Obama to give if debt limit negotiation talks broke down. It ended with: I regret that the…

This progressive says, "Thank you, House Republican leader John Boehner. You just served up a juicy political victory to President Obama by throwing a hissy fit and walking away from the debt limit negotiations yesterday." If Boehner had accepted Obama's deal, which was tilted toward Republican positions, lots of Democrats (including me) would have freaked out. As Jonathan Cohn's cogent analysis in The New Republic points out, Obama was poised to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security in ways that would have hurt seniors and poor people. This also would have taken away a powerful argument that Dems are eager…

Great analysis by Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight. He supports what I've been saying: Republican "fundamentalism" about refusing to consider any additional federal revenues for any reason is way beyond how the majority of Americans feel. The average Republican voter, based on this data, wants a mix of 26 percent tax increases to 74 percent spending cuts. The average independent voter prefers a 34-to-66 mix, while the average Democratic voter wants a 46-to-54 mix. ...But the House Republicans are very unlikely to capitulate on their no-tax pledge. And Democrats have little reason to capitulate either: they are on the…

The more it looks like the United States is heading for a political and financial train wreck over raising the federal debt limit, which has to be done pronto to avoid a massive panic in the stock and bond markets, not to mention drastically increasing the government's future borrowing costs, the more I put the blame for this fiasco on religion. Why? Because Congressional Republicans who are "negotiating" with President Obama and Democratic leaders are acting like thou shalt not raise taxes is a divine decree rather than a ridiculous pledge cleverly engineered and promoted by Grover Norquist, a decidedly…

The Republican stance on negotiating an increase to the federal debt limit is illogical and ridiculous in so many ways, it's difficult for me to know where to focus my outrage.  First, it's deeply irritating to have the national interest held hostage by a quasi-religious "Thou Shalt Never Raise Taxes." And just as absurd, "Thou Shalt Always Have a Balanced Federal Budget." The first commandment is Grover Norquist pontificating, who knows zilch about economic reality. Conservative (but not a crazy one) David Brooks gets it exactly right in his The Mother of No-Brainers column. Over the past few years, it…

Wild and crazy can be fun. But not in politics, not now, because there's too much extreme'ish freaking out going on in both Congress and state legislatures. So thank you, 2011 Oregon legislature, for showing that Republicans and Democrats can still work together productively to serve the public. The Oregon Legislature wrapped up business Thursday, putting final touches on a no-frills budget and heaping praise on each other for what they called the most congenial, businesslike session in many years. ..."We have been blessedly boring all session," summed up Rep. Vicki Berger, R-Salem. Yes, there were some partisan spats, especially…