Ed Kilgore on the budget deal:
If I were a congressional Democrat under orders to vote for this deal, I tell you what: I’d make sure to get as many of my colleagues as possible together on a public pledge to make measures aimed at reducing long-term unemployment my top priority in 2014, whether it’s via restoring benefits in a free-standing bill, or an intensive job placement assistance program, or direct federal hiring. The one thing we know for sure about long-term unemployment is that it tends to be self-perpetuating and socially corrosive, so there is no time to waste. Yes, Republicans will fight almost any relief effort, but they should at least be forced to go on record labeling one million of their fellow citizens as permanently disposable.
If I were a congressional Democrat under orders to vote for this deal, I would tell the leadership to stuff it. It’s obvious that the Republican leadership is desperate to avoid another government shutdown, and it appears that Speaker Boehner will have to rely heavily on Democratic votes to pass this budget. If it doesn’t do anything for people who have been out of work for a year or more, then the bill is unconscionable and should not be supported. Even from a cynical political point of view, it’s better to force the Republicans into another government shutdown than it is to impotently criticize them for their callousness.
If the Dems can’t help desperate people during the holiday season when the GOP is eager to make a deal, then they can’t help them at all. If the House Republicans want this budget, let them vote for it. If they want progressive votes, let them come to us with an offer. This deal isn’t good enough.
If it doesn’t bust the Norquist pledge, it’s not a compromise. Because it savages federal civil service employees, that is backhandedly sacrifices an entitlement. A little rebellion in the Senate ranks would be useful to drag Patty Murray away from the brink.
Make the Republicans pass this in the House by themselves. And let only enough Democrats in the Senate (Blue Dogs) vote for this to avoid a shutdown if it comes to it.
Make the entire Republican caucus put their names on this shit sandwich.
Haven’t we been here before in the last five years? Every major bill of the Obama presidency has appeared to have some terrible deficiency that it turned out not to have when the smoke had cleared. I think it is possible that the extension of unemployment benefits will find its way back into the budget after the House has taken its initial vote, just in time perhaps to be announced in a secret Friday news dump.
When TARP happened, under Bush in September of 2008, Jim Webb tried to get a rider voted on that would have mandated that any bank taking money from the federal government bailout would have to agree to pay its employees no higher than the highest paid government bureaucrats. This would even have been a basically symbolic vote for two or three years, as the Fed was fire-hosing the banks with so much free money that the “re-payment” under TARP was guaranteed — but at least during that time, AIG and BoA and Citi (including Jamie effing Dimon) would have had a hint of a taste of what a bad stretch in life looks like.
Schumer and Menendez, et al., prevented that from happening.
Now, when Murray, Durbin, and Schumer are negotiating for a budget deal, they can’t even draw red lines on emergency unemployment assistance. We’re talking money to pay people an extra 14 to 26 weeks in nearly all the states (excepting Illinois and Nevada, funny that) no more than $350 to $400 a week so they don’t also lose their homes. And this doesn’t even touch the people that go no unemployment, that quit a miserable job or were fired “for cause” or never had a job that qualifies them for assistance but can’t find work nevertheless.
What about talk about a full-employment program for any American willing to work? They sign up, and work construction jobs re-building our aging infrastructure, laying next-gen energy and communications infrastructure. Not only do we not get that, we can’t even pay to staunch the misery for people that most need it anymore? It’s all revolting.
Hell yeah. It’s kind of a corollary of the Hastert rule. This whole “majority of the majority” nonsense is basically a way to tell the minority to go fuck themselves. If the Republicans want to pretend there aren’t any Democrats in the House, let them pass their own damn bill.
Then they can’t help them at all.
Ahhhhh….the old “public pledge”. Takes me back to the depressing days of Harry Reid’s “sternly worded letters”.
So basically, it’s “I’ll gladly give you ten dollars next month for the hamburger you give me today”.
NO DEAL, HOWIE!!! NO FREAKING DEAL!!!
I tend to agree about forcing the GOP’s hand here, but I think the statement someone made about “savaging” federal employees is a bit off. I happen to be a federal employee. Our current retirement system is commonly described as having three legs: Social Security; a mandatory sort of pension; and the Thrift Savings Plan, an entirely voluntary system akin to investing in a 401k. The Ryan/Murray bill calls for increasing employee contribution to the mandatory bit. But any federal employee knows that the key to a viable retirement income is making contributions to the Thrift Savings Plan (and Uncle Sam matches those contributions up to 5% of gross pay). I don’t want to dismiss the fact that the draft legislation amounts to about a 1% pay cut for federal employees, but just to note the complexities of our retirement system.
Forty years ago pensions were considered fringe benefits that substituted as compensation for lowered salary. Now they are considered entitlements that can be stripped away by employers at will. Making the formula more complicated has hidden that fundamental reality from people, who have adjusted with the shifts.
The savage aspect is that this is being done by members of Congress who are constitutionally insulated from doing this to themselves. In the name of a crisis that does not really exist except in the politics of the two chambers of government but has real world effects in the lives of people who are faithfully performing a public service.
In order to insulate the incomes of the people who have created and perpetuate the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
What other word than “savage” is there?
Not by half, and for at least the reasons stated in this post. I see that Congressman ZEGS is crowing about how this bill will reduce the deficit by $23 billion over the next two years, as if the budgets during the Obama administration haven’t been more and more in balance the farther away we get from the Reign of Error of Bush the Stupider.
You want to reduce deficit spending in a real way? Bump the tax rate on the wealthiest income folks by 3%. Raise the capital gains tax rate to, say, 22.5%. Deficit spending will practically vanish, and unless you regularly appear on the teevee machine and get paid six or seven figures (or more) for doing so, you won’t notice any change at all.
Wouldn’t it be better to pass it and use unemployment insurance and minimum wage as a cudgel against the Republicans to make them vote for it as a stand alone bill or face angry voters in 2014?
This bill is better than the status quo and gives us an opportunity to pound the Republicans over and over again.
Did someone say JOBS? Oh silly me…