Friday News Roundup - Hour 1
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-07-01/friday-news-roundup-hour-1
The White House says Congress has until July 22nd to come to an agreement on a plan to cut the deficit. Significant spending cuts have been outlined, but Republicans and Democrats differ sharply on whether some tax increases should also be included. The Senate has agreed to cancel a planned recess next week to allow more time for negotiations. A three judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit upheld the constitutionality of the 2010 Health Care Reform Law, and the accuser in the sexual assault case against former IMF head Dominique Strauss–Kahn faces serious credibility questions: Join us for a discussion of these and other top national news stories of the week
Guests
Jerry Seib
Washington bureau chief, The Wall Street Journal.
Lynn Sweet
Washington bureau chief, Chicago Sun-Times, and columnist at politicsdaily.com.
David Welna
congressional correspondent, NPR.
Friday News Roundup Video
The panelists discuss the emergence of new information that has raised questions about the credibility of the woman who has accused former International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her in a New York City hotel room. The Wall Street Journal's Jerry Seib says that Strauss-Kahn may yet be able to recover his public image enough to be a viable French presidential candidate in the months to come:
Comments
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Love ya Dr show, but gotta say I thought discussion concerning economics and debt ceiling last Friday were about level of 7 year old (or that of Heritage Foundation talking points which is about same thing).
Would like to attempt to raise level of conversation just a little, although I’m sure not everyone may agree with ALL my opinions (except perhaps Python & Mellow Yellow).
I believe root of our problems stem from 30 years ago when Ronnie was able to push through congress economic policy that involved combining lowering taxes (especially upper brackets) & greatest peacetime military spending in American history, while claiming with straight face deficit would decrease and economy would improve. Brilliant!!
His budget director David Stockman, responsible for the fuzzy math, told him from get go he was dreaming. National debt rose over 300% under Reagan, while GNP was to grow at lower rate than under Carter.
Why is this relevant? because these are same issues that arise again and again.
I know we’ve got a lot of resources, but how many times do we run our economy into a brick wall, repeating same old “trickle up” mantras that never worked.
Borrow and Spend and Deregulate is all GOP has offered for 30 years and they want it to continue- Brilliant!
Greenspan finally admitted in Senate hearing after financial meltdown that allowing corporations to regulate themselves was wrong- (little late, weren’t you there Al?)
Economy can’t improve with policies that consolidate wealth at the top.
How stupid is stupid?!
Debt ceiling was raised 7 (8?) TIMES applauded by GOP each time under W- how else could tax breaks forwealthy have been afforded?!
3 years after Bush tax cuts were signed into law America employment was WORSE than before the cuts. This at a time when America was on mortgage/credit- induced spending frenzy. When consumers spend, goods are produced, stimulating production, and therefore job growth. W policies cleverly managed to reverse this basic law of economics, so only ones benefiting from period of tremendous “irrational exuberance” were the wealthy until what has emerged is distorted political system run for and by the few. During W, nation’s job base grew at SLOWEST PACE IN 50+ years (this an extraordinary accomplishment considering boom we were in). Founding fathers would be ashamed.
Situation is very similar to how nation stood before Great Depression. It’s in a way unfortunate that by through extraordinary measures, 2nd Depression was averted, because now political will (and sanity) is not there to make some of the great structural changes necessary- including tax increases for wealthy, regulations preventing majority from being screwed by runaway nefarious corporate interest, and improvement of decaying infrastructure.
Result at best will be high unemployment for LONG time. This of course falls into general GOP strategy, who by various extensive PR tactics on largely uninformed public, somehow attempt to blame last 10 years demise on dems (?), instead of disastrous 30 years of Borrow and Spend trickle-up.
Drew:
It always seems like modern economic history with you starts with Ronald Reagan. Wonder if you were in this great planet earth in the 80's or still in diapers.
Reagan's term began with 21% inflation rate and 18% interest rate thanks to Jimmy Carter. The only people that were doing well were people like my parents and others that learned to save. You could get over 10% on your CD's.
But I am willing to bet you Obama will go down as one of the worse presidents in US History.
The proof is already in the pudding.
'' During W, nation’s job base grew at SLOWEST PACE IN 50+ years (this an extraordinary accomplishment considering boom we were in).''
Still better than what Obama has done so far. Job growth down 25%. This even with 827 Billion dollar recovery act. You could of broken up all that money and given it to all the unemployed and made them millionaires. Do the math.
''greatest peacetime military spending in American history'', (Referring to Reagan)
Not quite, the Cold War was still going on and the Iron Curtain was still up. No peace there.
I assure you I’m a lot older than you insinuate as if that’s relevant to the facts mentioned above.
I believe I mentioned Raygun only once before (could be mistaken) and mention it now only in context that this is point in “modern history” when debt and deficits began to spin out of control.
One thing we know for sure, Obama was handed one of the most challenging set of issues to deal with than any president “in modern times” except perhaps Roosevelt, due to policies set by preceding administration.
I believe a great # of modern historians already have already ranked W as being the worst Presidents in history so the bar is set pretty high.
Dear Drew and meangreen:
May I make a radical suggestion?
How about waiting for a story to actually air before posting Comments?
(And now, hopefully, my insomnia is over.)
Night all.
MG- Isn’t interest rate adjustment a relatively “easy” adjustment to make?and has more to do with any positive economic gains during Reagan than anything else, with perhaps exception of major tax hikes that occurred in 82 (83?), after worst recession (at that point) was created by R since Depression?
Easy that is unless you inherit a rate of 0% as Obama did.
Etaoin: point of early post was to MAYBE stimulate a little less “glossed over” discussion of debt ceiling and economy than we got last week- pretending, I suppose, AS IF DR show actually ever reviewed any of these comments.
Later
The pros and cons of the Reagan legacy can be argued forever. One thing for sure he inspired great confidence in the country and is looked back upon with mostly admiration, mixed record and all. At that time he was the right man for the job and had the qualification and experience of being a Governor of a big state.
What we have now is the exact opposite.
To Etaoin Shrdlu:
Sounds like a good idea to me!
As a liberal myself, I don't see why is the President so afraid to call a tax hike a tax hike. Will corporations pay more tax when these tax loopholes are closed? Of course! That's a tax hike. But taxes should go up. I think that we should reinstate the Clinton tax rates. Those are the tax rates that historically have given us a balanced budget.
This week , 1,298,301 Ohioans said “Not so fast!” to John Kasich. We collected more than five times the number of signatures needed to give citizens veto power over Senate Bill 5....the anti middle class anti worker bill that extremist Republican Governor Kasich and fellow Republican lawmakers who pushed through this radical legislation That's how many signatures were delivered to the Secretary of State's office following a parade of about 7,000 people in Columbus.
Can your guest address this powerful and effective effort by hard working Ohioans?
What about the 14th amendment making the Debt Ceiling moot?
Regards,
David Clemo
Grand Rapids MI
Mortgage interest tax deduction benefits lower and middle income taxpayers. Rich people have fungible assets they can liquidate to pay cash in place of mortgage.
More than that, mortgage interest would be taxed two times if there is no deduction. The borrower has to pay the lender sufficient interest for the lender to pay yet another tax on that interest income (and tax on the income to pay the tax). Eliminating the deduction would force the borrower to pay tax on the interest which never belongs to the borrower, in point of reality.
Etaoin Shrdlu , wrong again ! self appointed police of the D.R. forum. The more your talkin the more i'm balkin.
It seems to me they would not allow access to these forums before the show if they were not looking for input.
Chicago and Illinois politics are in the sewer, this is the environment in which Obama was formed and thrived. Guess how?
This was the weakest case on Obamacare. More and stronger to come.
You bought a house that lost 50% of its value and you think the bank should pay while you are unaffected, in fact forgiven. Nice.
Most consumer debt is being written off, not paid off.
Did you hear Diane's pain when she said the word "profit" when talking about banks?
Regarding the role of the US big banks in the economic collapse: They caused it, they are getting away scott-free except for the guy who embezelled millions, Jamie Dimond says we don't need regulations, and his institution (Chase) helped cause the collapse/near collapse if you please.
Now Chase is refusing to modify my mortgage, which is 100% under water now that the home prices have decreased so much; where is the relief for those of us who don't qualify for federally-assisted mortgage modifications? We are at the mercy of the bloodless robber-baron banks. What could the feds do, in addition to what they have already done, to help those of us in that situation? And don't say, we got bad mortgages. Some of us did, some of us didn't. I'm close to retirement and there is no way I can pay my mortgage after retirement, unless I use my 403(b) to pay it off.
If DSK is innocent, why did he rush to take off at the NYC Airport and leave his cellphone behind at the hotel after the alleged incident take place? He seemed to be in an awful hurry to leave if he did nothing wrong.
Drew Kelly wrote:
" AS IF DR show actually ever reviewed any of these comments."
Diane is too busy reading tweets from twits to read from her own DR Show comment section while the show is on the air. But Rehm is grateful that Etaoin has volunteered to do pro bono monitoring of this segment of the DR Show that is completely ignored by her.
Now if Etaoin could actually reference any Friday News Round Up show where Rehm has read from the comment section.
How to encourage Americans to both be frugal and invest? Smart regulations that make us feel secure in taking reasonable risks. Then maybe mega banks and investment firms could say, "Trust us" with some integrity and will be believed.
I don't know where the argument about the 14th Amendment versus the debt ceiling came from, but I responded to it when it appeared on the June 23, 2011 episode of The Charlie Rose Show, where it had been raised by an editor of Time magazine. Here's what I wrote:
He [the editor] claims the (next to) last paragraph of the 14th Amendment forbids defaulting on debts. I fail to see how he derives that. True it declares that the validity of the U.S. public debt “shall not be questioned”, but that hardly prohibits the U.S. from defaulting on its debt obligations. It simply means those debts are valid. More importantly, a review of the entire paragraph (especially its second sentence), with due regard to its context (the aftermath of the Civil War), makes clear its purpose was to declare “illegal and void” the Confederate debts, as well as any claim for loss due to emancipation, while leaving intact the U.S. debts (especially those incurred during that War).
Especially when dealing with Law, you cannot take isolated words, sentences, or even paragraphs out-of-context. Doing so results in erroneous opinions and conclusions.
Drew Kelly on July 1, 2011 @ 7:58 am wrote: “Etaoin: point of early post was to MAYBE stimulate a little less “glossed over” discussion of debt ceiling and economy than we got last week- pretending, I suppose, AS IF DR show actually ever reviewed any of these comments.”
Actually, I believe the show has, on occasion, referenced Comments, but that’s not the point. These Comments are supposed to discuss what was actually said or discussed on the show, not what someone “predicts” will be said. Hence, we should wait until it airs before commenting.
As to the substance of what Drew posted, I haven’t read through all the other Comments today, so I don’t know if he got to this, but the reason Reagan’s policies are important (and not Carter’s) is because Reaganism has been the dominant fiscal and political philosophy of the past thirty years! As he correctly pointed out, Reaganism produced deficits “on steroids”, and yet it is that same theory (“voodoo economics”, and the mindless version of laissez-faire Capitalism) which is still being hawked as the solution to our current economic problems when in fact it helped cause them! Talk about selling snake oil!
As for the supposed “benefits” of Reaganism meangreen was praising, two points. By this time in Reagan’s Administration (the first 2 and a half years): 1) the deficit had increased by over 73%; 2) the unemployment rate rose from 7.1% to over 9.5%. So, judging Reagan by the same standard Republicans are using against Obama, Reagan should have been a “one-term wonder”. Instead, of course, the GOP insisted he be given “more time” to improve things (the same argument they made for ignoring Bush the Second's economic record at this point in his "reign").
(Sources: The World Almanac of 2010 page 63, and “Employment status of the civilian non-institutional population, 1940 to date” , United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. - ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat1.txt)
Oh, and as for the supposed “benefits” of Reaganism? Well, I could live “high on the hog” too if I “maxed out” all my credit cards. But someday the bill becomes due. Apparently, that day may be approaching, and the same people and ideology which helped run up that debt are now claiming it's the only way (and they’re the only ones) to reduce it! Forgive me if I’m a tad skeptical.
Ciao, for now.
The only thing I want to know E.S. is where did you get frames for the prisms you use for eyeglasses.
Of course the closing of loopholes should not be called tax increases, otherwise you can never improve the system. This is an opportunity.
strudel wrote: "the reason Reagan’s policies are important (and not Carter’s)"
Is this from the same one who complains that Obama's failed policies should be overlooked because it's all Bush's fault?!
Your post should be "flagged as offensive" ... for the hypocrisy alone!
A few facts got loose- careful where you step and type.
Both OPUS of Rep or Dem type have had good and bad moments.
With the exception of G jr. of course. Lost my career in government protesting his improvements to freedom. Bankrupted the country too. At least we have plenty of company... the 'new' terrorists will not be gang members... it will be your neighbors scratching to survive.
Poor Carter- he gets beat up most. After oil crisis in US(gas went from 25 cents to over a dollar- if you could find it- odd even days at pump... and he suggested we use less energy and develop renewable energy sources. What an idiot he was...
Your panel emphasized how much $$ had been used as stimulus into the "system."
Unfortunately, those in DC accepting the "Conventional Wisdom" forget to ask whether the stimulus was put in the system where it could actually stimulate the economy.
The new emergency housing aid is again managed "through" the banks by backdoor - Fed/Treasury $$$. It does not come into the bank via its customers/depositors. Since, it does not come in via the customer door, it has gone out via TARP, QE1, QEII, HAMP, FED Discount window & sold back to the FED @ 3%.
Not surprisingly, this back door cash only finds 1 way out, salary hikes & bonuses to the Exec floors.
All your commentators might re-watch "It's A Wonderful Life" & the explanation of how $$ enter depository banks & how it goes out in loans.
Customer/Consumers without $$$ can't spend. Money sent to banks can't be spent by consumers under the Hank Paulson, Larry Summers, Bernanke & Geithner 'system' can't make its way to consumers, be deposited by consumers & thus can't stimulate the "system."
Your panel emphasized how much $$ had been used as stimulus into the "system."
Unfortunately, those in DC accepting the "Conventional Wisdom" forget to ask whether the stimulus was put in the system where it could actually stimulate the economy.
The new emergency housing aid is again managed "through" the banks by backdoor - Fed/Treasury $$$. It does not come into the bank via its customers/depositors. Since, it does not come in via the customer door, it has gone out via TARP, QE1, QEII, HAMP, FED Discount window & sold back to the FED @ 3%.
Not surprisingly, this back door cash only finds 1 way out, salary hikes & bonuses to the Exec floors.
All your commentators might re-watch "It's A Wonderful Life" & the explanation of how $$ enter depository banks & how it goes out in loans.
Customer/Consumers without $$$ can't spend. Money sent to banks can't be spent by consumers under the Hank Paulson, Larry Summers, Bernanke & Geithner 'system' can't make its way to consumers, be deposited by consumers & thus can't stimulate the "system."
Semi-Anonymous wrote:
“A few facts got loose- careful where you step and type.”
Sounds a bit ominous. Are the blog police going to extradite us to kublistan to be tortured until forced to yell “greed is good”?
Agree with your sentiments about Carter.
Monte: Agree that Reagan did “inspire great confidence in the country and is looked back upon with mostly admiration, mixed record and all”. Unlike W, he actually surrounded himself with semi-intelligent, not completely ideological people. And radiated a persona perhaps most could trust. (And if what I heard on PBS tonight is true raised taxes 5 times). Unfortunately, I think he established some precedents that GOP has clung to ever since which has wrought great damage to our country.
But what do I know?- I’m just a flawed individual trying to understand my country, which I care deeply about.