It’s often been said you have to get to the last paragraph of an article to understand what the author’s truly trying to say. You’re in a rush, and you certainly don’t have time to slog through a Thomas Friedman-esque story about a Bangalore rickshaw driver in an article about school vouchers.
So that’s where I begin with Ezra Klein’s latest:
The interesting question is whether the possibility of a government shutdown, a debt-ceiling breach or simply the pressure of the sequester’s cuts will, in the coming months, break one side or the other. But as long as the GOP’s position is they won’t compromise, there’s not going to be a compromise.
Haven’t we been here before? Did people black out during the debt ceiling negotiations, or the fiscal cliff deal? In both situations, Republicans caved to Democrat demands. That’s not compromise, that’s holding the government hostage, something Democrats loved to accuse Gingrich of in 1994.
And what about the nominations of Kerry and Hagel? Both were confirmed with Republican support, despite the fact that both candidates are less qualified for the job than Harriet Miers was for the Supreme Court.
So when has Obama not gotten his way? When has the GOP refused to compromise?
Well taxes of course. Those darn Republicans who won’t raise taxes and are letting old people and veterans die on the street!
Oh wait:
A 2% cut to the payroll tax has expired, bringing the rate back to the default of 6.2%. Combined together with the House GOP’s recent concession to end the Bush tax cuts on households making more than $450,000, the tax hikes are expected to slow economic growth by a combined 1% this year and reduce household incomes by a combined $125 billion — according to mainstream economists.
But on the sequester, Klein says:
There’s no deal even if Obama agrees to major Republican demands on entitlements. There’s no deal because Republicans don’t want to make a deal that includes taxes, no matter what they get in return for it.
And what about this evil sequester?
Obama seems intent on playing “Billie Jean” with it:
“The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.” — President Obama, in the third presidential debate, Oct. 22, 2012
[Bob] Woodward’s detailed account of meetings during the crisis, clearly based on interviews with key participants and contemporaneous notes, make it clear that sequestration was a proposal advanced and promoted by the White House.
In sum: Gene Sperling [Obama’s Director of the National Economic Council] brought up the idea of a sequester, while Jack Lew [White House Chief of Staff] sold Harry Reid on the idea and then decided to use the Gramm-Hollings-Rudman language (which he knew from his days of working for Tip O’Neill) as a template for sequester. The proposal was so unusual for Republicans that staffers had to work through the night to understand it.
(referring to the sequester) “This would be an enforcement mechanism”. –Obama, Jul. 12, 2011
The paper goes on to call Obama’s comments on this as deserving of “Four Pinocchio’s”.
Some right wing outlet, you say?
Nope. Klein’s own paper. The Washington Post.
Speaking of Klein, here’s his moneyquote:
Republicans won’t make a deal that includes further taxes, they just want to get the White House to implement their agenda in return for nothing. Luckily for them, most of the time, the conversation doesn’t get that far, and the initial comments that the president needs to “get serious” on entitlements is met with sage nods.
Republicans have caved on taxes time and time again, and likely will this time once more.
If only Klein’s own paper vetted him, he’d receive the Four Pinocchio’s that he deserves too.
UPDATE: America’s worst economist, Paul Krugman, chimes in:
Ezra Klein mans up and admits he was wrong. He had written a piece suggesting that if only Republicans knew how much Obama has been willing to offer, they might be willing to make a deal. Jonathan Chait set him straight, informing him that no matter what Obama put on the table, Republicans would find a way to say that it’s not enough. And sure enough, a Twitter exchange lets Klein watch that process in real time, as a top Republican consultant, confronted with evidence that Obama has already conceded what he said was all that was needed, keeps adding more demands.
So Klein admits that Republicans just don’t want to make a deal. Their objections to the deals on the table aren’t sincere; if convinced that Obama has met their demands, they just make more demands.
Republicans would be willing to make a deal if the President was a rational actor. Suggesting the idea of the sequester, supporting your own economists who put the idea together, publicly disavowing any involvement with the idea, and blaming Republicans for coming up with the sequester is quite a put-off to anyone trying to deal with you.
Obama has conceded nothing. He offered a sequester idea to demonize Republicans, then disavowed it and demonized them anyway. That’s not “reaching across the aisle”, it’s pointing a gun across it.
Krugman continues about those darned non-negotiating Republicans:
Republicans would be back, demanding more tax cuts and more cuts in social programs. They just won’t take yes for an answer.
Despite the fact that Republicans just allowed Democrats to raise taxes. Without cuts in social programs.
Democrats are the ones demanding more taxes. They just got it, and they want more. It’s the same with spending. They’re addicted to revenue, and the only solution is more cowbell.
Krugman continues:
Meanwhile, it’s not just Republicans who refuse to accept it when Obama gives them what they want; the same applies, with even less justification, to centrist pundits. As people like Greg Sargent point out time and again, the centrist ideal — deficit reduction via a mix of revenue increases and benefits cuts — is what Obama is already offering; in fact, his proposals have been to the right of Bowles-Simpson. Yet the centrist pundits keep demanding that Obama offer what he has already offered, and condemn both sides equally (or even place most of the blame on Obama) for the failure to reach a deal. Again, informing them of their error wouldn’t help; their whole shtick is about blaming both sides, and they will always invent some reason why Obama just isn’t doing it right.
Wow, way to throw centrists under the bus.
These people on the Left are unreasonable, and their response to every suggestion is “NO U”. They can’t be dealt with. They can’t be negotiated with. They would rather hold the country hostage with a stupid fake sequester controversy, cutting White House tours and anything that can directly and openly affect people, than get serious about massive debt and spending.
