Debt and Deficit Negotiations
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-07-18/debt-and-deficit-negotiations
President Barack Obama sits with House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., as he meets with Republican and Democratic leaders regarding the debt ceiling in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, July 13, 2011.
(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
The haggling goes on. The White House says Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling by Friday to avoid a potential U.S. default, but there were few signs of progress over the weekend. The only plan that seems to be gaining some traction is a bi-partisan proposal that allows the president to raise the debt ceiling … without the support of congressional Republicans. The plan assures wrangling for months, if not years, to come. This week both the House and Senate plan largely symbolic votes on measures aimed at soothing ruffled constituents but little else: Join us for a conversations on the debt and deficit battles down to the wire.
Guests
E.J. Dionne Jr.
senior fellow, The Brookings Institution,
columnist, Washington Post
and author of "Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right" and of "Stand Up Fight Back."
Janet Hook
congressional correspondent, The Wall Street Journal.
David Winston
Republican pollster and President of the Winston Group. He also writes for Roll Call and is a CBS News consultant.
Comments
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I assume it is true that tax revenues went up in the Bush era, but one has to take into account that much of the capital gains taxes received in 2004 and the next couple of years was based on the reasonable expectation that taxes must go up to pay for the war. Rational behavior said to cash in while the rates remained low and that's exectly what happened. I see the year 2004 used often as a beneficial consequence of cutting taxes when it was really a fear that taxes would go up to pay for the war.
This is all about getting elected or re-elected. Fail to sign Grover Norquist's "pledge" never to raise taxes under any circumstances, or violate it, and his organization will challenge you in a primary election and you will lose your seat.
jchaywood,
Yes, indeed - what will our own politicians sacrifice? I don't consider SS and Medicare as "entitlements," because these were deductions from our payroll - involuntary. A more accurate term, then, is payroll taxes.
If the Bush tax cuts generated revenue increases, it was because of more and more consumer spending on cheap imported goods and the demolition of our ourmanufacturing base.
The same wealthy people are in charge now as then. The only difference is that their profits are generated in China and other 3rd world countries.
Mr. Winston can keep repeating the claim that revenues increased after the Bush tax cuts were passed, but what does he say to the fact that even before the recession started in 2008, the 2000s had the worst job growth since the depression? Tax cuts do not equal job growth.
The debate about tax increases or reductions, in essence, is how to maximize tax revenue while putting more jobs in place to reduce the unemployment rate.
However, the current market reflects the fallacy about jobs being created by letting the rich put money into employing more people. Companies are making profits equal to what they were making before the recession, and yet employing far few people. Companies are about making money, period. If they can make the same amount of money with fewer employees, they will. Corporate CEO salaries that were indelibly linked to stock prices are at record levels.
The entire discussion about tax increases or reductions on the wealthy is a red herring, when the issue comes to reduce the employment rate and maximizing the tax revenue. There really needs to be a discussion about how to stimulate job creation - without all this links to broad-scope taxes. Reducing loopholes (which account for about $1 Trillion dollars of revenue, yearly), should be a major focus of these debt talks.
Your panel commentator stated that profits rose by 40% during one part of the Bush Presidency, and asked for an explanation! I would suggest that the industrial Military industries and Walls Street were by far the GREATEST Beneficiaries and contributors to this fact!! Paul in Palm Beach, Florida
Diane,
Thank you for you shows.
Please, though in your pleasant yet insistent style, require these folks to do their factual homework. For instance, go back and read our financial history, I did. And, here's what a reading of past congressional financial actions revealed. In 1936 - 37 Congress argued similar themes - the "balanced budget - cut spending" faction won out and threw our country right back into the Depression from which it was slowly emerging.
Diane even if you have to politely stand up on your chair - hold them to the truth !
Thank You,
Hugh
I think we are seeing in the current debate, the fact that so many Congresspeople have stopped being national legislators and instead are so focused on their districts that they think only in terms of their districts. I believe that when elected to national office, it is their duty to think in much larger terms, while still bringing their districts perspective to the debate, but to not let that be the end all be all for them, which is where I see us now.
I am an independent; fiscally conservative and socially "liberal". How can any person in Congress believe they are serving our country? The Republicans in Congress ARE taking the social conservatives for granted; they ARE protecting the wealthy and they seem to just want to disrupt.
The Democrats don't provide leadership to counter them. How are Democrats helping the middle class and center, who really do the work.
Shold there be term limits? Should we have a maximum on campaign expenditures?
Every aspect of the cost of runing our government is legitimate. Only republicans seem to have a problem with paying for our obligations. They do not know any better than I do "how much is too much" nor "how big is too big" when it come to government.
This is the most ridiculous and disturbing debate I have seen in a long time. We have succumbed to an idea that in part has destroyed the wonderful ideals that founded this country. We now have almost half of the working people not paying any income tax. We have gotten almost every working person in this country sucked into having their retirement in the stock market, making it impossible to not legislate in order to keep that marking steady or lose most everyone's savings! Congress has been complicit for years in regulating properly so as to Keep all of this from happening. And most of the folks in congress who have been there for a while should be in jail! We need term limits and NO lifetime pay for legislators...it was never designed as a career! Congress had promised too uch to too many for far too long and now we are having problems paying the bill! The ONLY thing to do to fix this is to raise the debt limit now and, at the same time pass a law requiring that IOU's to social security are paid back in total over the next 10 years. Also require spending is reduced one tenth more than the debt over the next 10 years. We have got to work our way out of being a welfare state or we will end up like Greece!!
The Democrats that are there are not "really Liberal". E. J. Dionne opened this discussion today saying the Repub/T-Party is being disingenuous by demanding unreasonable cuts. I would go beyond E.J. and say Democrats are complicitous in cutting Social Security and Medicare which workers paid for, and also cutting other desperately needed social supports. Both parties are in the thrall and control of the wealthy financial class. As the caller at 10:47said," WE no longer have any government by or for the People."
Neither party will "crate jabs." Neither party will tax the rich or their corporations. Elections are a sham because wealthy interests control educational content and all the media including the shopping mall we called Internet. We will have to occupy Washington starting Oct. 6 to get answers and/or actions. The profitable (for the wealthy) wars of occupation must stop so that we can meet our humane obligations.
NO, NO, NO! The Simpson-Bowles commission DID have an automatic vote provision! It required the committee to come up with one plan that almost of all the committee would vote for. But the committee splintered into three groups, each releasing their own plan. Will the media please STOP saying that they came up with a plan!
Notice how David Winston got away with changing the argument? When the caller said the Bush tax breaks did not increase jobs David changed it to the tax breaks saw a tremendous business growth. Doing this he evaded that callers question, which was about jobs. What happened at the same time was a significant outsourcing of jobs overseas. This meant jobs went away in the U.S. At the same time businesses were allowed to avoid U.S. taxes by placing their business headquarters in foreign lands and tax revenues also went down.
The Republicans continue to try this change of the discussion every time you bring up the Bush tax breaks.
Republicans demonstrate that they care not a bit about curbing the national debt. Their only objective is to stall long enough to keep the economy uncertain through the election, thereby being able to blame it all on Obama.
George Bush spent more than $500 billion on the wars. with a balanced budget amendment in place, tax rates would have to go up monumentally. If raising tax rates hurts the eceonomy as the Republicans contend, then the rates would have to go up again to balance the budget reducing economic output causing taxes to have to be raised again. Using their logic, and assuming a balanced budget amendment, any long term war will eventually result in tax rates of 100%.
Monte : Well written or not (and I always fly away from text without paragraphs) WHO in the world has time to read such a lengthy treatise?
[DELETED]
You need to give us the full quote -- here it is:
"Professional forecasters estimate that a tax increase equivalent to 1 percent of the nation’s economic output usually reduces gross domestic product by about 1 percent after 18 months. A spending cut of that size, by contrast, reduces G.D.P. by about 1.5 percent — substantially more.(emphasis added)
from: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/business/economy/03view.html?_r=1&scp=...
If you read the entire article you could learn a lot - unless you were just being disingenuous in the first place.
lff
Diane, I realize you are just the moderator but can you not object when your guests are so obviously being disingenuous?
Winston repeatedly said "...the New York Times said (Christine) Romer said..." but when he read the quote from the NYT article he read it as "..Republicans said that (Christine) Romer said..."
Quoting the NYT quoting Republican talking points is not quoting the NYT.
He was really just quoting himself!
And the quote left off the last sentence - entire quote: "Professional forecasters estimate that a tax increase equivalent to 1 percent of the nation’s economic output usually reduces gross domestic product by about 1 percent after 18 months. A spending cut of that size, by contrast, reduces G.D.P. by about 1.5 percent — substantially more. "(emphasis added)
lff
Over the years when I continually hear about how O J Simpson got away with murder , I have to remind people of the many thousands of blacks who were killed in cold blood and how there was no justice in their case. Unfortunately these things are not taught in schools.
The strongest economy in Europe (Germany) is the second biggest exporter in the world, they have strong unions, and they pay a lot of tax. Yet over here we seem to think that taxes and unions are the worst thing ever. It would be good if we produced more stuff ourselves, but I doubt that it is taxes and unions that hold us back. My hunch is that Germany's high tax buys them excellent public education, providing companies with the best workforce.
Your Republican guest deliberately misrepresented Christine Romer's position quoting one sentence of what she said but omitting the next sentence which reads " Dr. Romer has said she believes that a similar study of the impact of spending cuts would find even greater damage [than tax increases]. Today's NY Times. No one called him on this.
How can there be any doubt about why the budget/debt problems have been so intransigent? The Senate Majority leader McConnell has on several occasions made it perfectly clear that his first priority is to stop the reelection of Barack Obama!
So, Where is the mystery?
Politics trumps reasonable policy.
lff
Colonel Sanders did a whole lot more for black people than Colonel Simmons ever could.
Romer did a peer-reviewed study of the disasterous effects of tax increases for economic growth, but she's got a hunch that gov spending cuts are bad too. I'll wait for a robust study before buying that one.
If you don't like ideology, then stick to the numbers. Spending more than you tax needs to end, the sooner the better.
The substitution of ideology and propaganda for common sense and evidence is a recipe for disaster. Do we need to see it happen yet again? Apparently, the Republican answer is yes, as they righteously march us over the precipice, willfully blind to the many tragedies of human history traceable to this practice.
I shall deal more specifically with monte's nonsense (which is neither well written nor thought out) another time, but for now consider one very pertinent fact: everything he said was written two days ago, before this program aired! It is a perfect example of Republican politics: not based on facts, and simply a spew of pure ideology.
(Ditto for those, like meangreen, who chose to praise it.)
E. J. Dionne, thank you for articulating my thoughts about the current "false fiscal fracas" in DC!