Who's Responsible for the Debt?

"If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in the previous five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, the Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the wasteful budgets."

--One of those e-mails your Catholic grandfather forwards to you

Is any political trope more overused than the portrayal of Republicans as responsible fiscal conservatives and Democrats as "tax-and-spend" liberals? Well, let's look at how the deficit has changed over time and check whether this claim stands up. (Data taken from the FY2013 budget issued by the OMB.)

(Terminology note: The deficit is the discrepancy between the receipts or revenue the government takes in and the outlays or expenses the government sends out over the course of the (fiscal) year. This is not to be confused with the debt, which is the total amount owed by the government, i.e. the sum of all the deficits less any mythical surpluses over the entire history of the Union.)

Now we can see that the first claim is actually true. The FY2007 budget deficit was in fact the lowest in five years and the fourth-straight decline. It leaves out the fact that in FY2004--the year from which it was declining--Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the White House. It also fails to mention that the CBO projected that $5.6 trillion would be removed from the national debt from 2002 to 2011, but instead $6.1 trillion was added to the debt due to the economic downturn & associated stimulus spending, the Bush tax cuts, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and other reasons:

Looking at the first chart, we see that deficits more or less increase during the Reagan and Bush administrations and decrease during the Clinton administration to the point of running surpluses. During W. Bush, deficits again increase, peaking in FY2004 before coming down than coming up again for FY 2008 and 2009. Deficits have remained high during the Obama years. (I've started with FY1980 because, with few exceptions, previous deficits cannot be seen on this scale.)

But before we give Clinton too much credit, remember it's Congress that actually passes the budget, so let's see how the deficit changes with the political composition of Congress. We'll add the percentage of Republicans in both the House and the Senate to the chart. (Since Congress should pass the budget for the following fiscal year, the line graphs are offset by a year, e.g. the first points show the budget deficit for FY1980, but the percentage of Republicans in Congress in 1979.)

There does seem to be a trend during the W. Bush years, where more Republicans coincided with reduced deficits. But no such correlation holds over the entire 1980-2011 timeline. We can see this more easily by graphing the deficit against percentage of Republicans directly:

Now we know that having more Republicans doesn't lead (or even tend to lead) to reduced deficits. But maybe you're saying, "But just like it takes a long time to change the course of a large ship, it will take time for Republicans to reduce the deficit. The deficits for which a Republican Congress is supposedly responsible may be caused by policies enacted by Democrats in the previous Congress." Well, that may be so, but if Republicans were serious fiscal conservatives, then they would at least be reducing the deficit even if they can't generate instant surpluses. So instead of graphing the deficit, let's graph the change in the deficit (the first derivative in calculus terms). If anything, that is even more poorly correlated to the number of Republicans:

So what can we conclude? Both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for the size of the national debt. If you're serious about reducing the debt, you shouldn't vote Republican, you should work to repeal the 22nd Amendment and elect Clinton/Gore in 2016.

Values Voting

The Senate finally ratified the new START Treaty, 71-26, more than eight months after it was signed by Obama and Medvedev. And they finally passed a nearly two-year-old bill providing compensation to 9/11 responders and clean-up crews, and even then, only after reducing both how much and how long funding would be available. But, you know national security and caring for the heroes of September 11 are not as important as tax cuts for the rich.

Welcome to the new Republican Party.

The Peculiarity of American Conservatives

Gordon Brown's recent "interaction" with Gillian Duffy got me thinking about how different American democracy is from others around the world. (Not that Americans wouldn't let their inflammatory comments get accidentally caught by a live mic: See Jesse Jackson's desire to neuter Barack Obama and Joe Biden calling health care reform a "big fucking deal.") A sitting head of state is talking one-on-one with a regular Jill for a few minutes straight. Now maybe this sort of thing only gets press when the candidate shoots themselves in the foot right afterward, but when I think of a presidential campaign in the U.S., I picture giant rallies, not candidates taking time for individual voters.

A further difference, as Joseph Romm points out, is that all three major British parties--Labour, Conservative, and Lib Dem--favor taking action on climate change, while Republicans in the U.S. remain defiantly anti-science. Even the military cannot sway right-wing minds on global warming. The opposition (on this and other issues) is so extreme that commentators are wondering if Republicans have insulated themselves from constructive criticism.

Julian Sanchez argues that this right-wing insularity comes from some combination of:

1. reactions to progressive viewpoints invading traditionally conservative areas via the Internet, and
2. conservative institutions (like Fox News) striving to counter a perceived liberal bias in institutions (like the New York Times) that are really striving for objectivity.

While this may be true, it begs the question, "Why isn't conservative opposition in Great Britain so insulated and belligerent?" Part of it may be that there are established conservative institutions in Britain that also strive for objectivity. Part of it may also be that British conservatives are insulated and belligerent by British standards.

But I contend that there is another reason for American peculiarity, and it stems from our differences in democracy. The United States is almost unique among OECD countries in having a presidential republic. (Mexico and South Korea are the only others, excluding the so-called "semi-presidential" republics like France and Russia, where both a president and prime minister wield executive power.) The GOP can accomplish their political goals by gumming up the Senate and ensuring that Democrats achieve as little as possible before the Republicans retake Congress. Almost every European nation has a parliamentary system, where consensus- and coalition-building is integral. There it doesn't make sense, for instance, for the Tories to make the Lib Dems their bitter enemies when the Lib Dems will likely decide who Britain's next prime minister will be.

Don't Let's START

On April 8, President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, signed a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in Prague. The treaty would limit each country to 1,550 nuclear warheads, a 30% reduction from the Moscow Treaty (aka SORT).

Of course, because Barack Obama supports it, the Republicans oppose it in true knee-jerk fashion. Never mind that any substance-based opposition is not based on fact. Never mind that arms control has a long history of bipartisan support, with the Senate ratifying the Moscow Treaty 95-0. Never mind that 1,550 warheads is more than a sufficient nuclear deterrent. Never mind that reducing the number of nuclear weapons will make the U.S. safer by reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism.

No, Republicans would rather oppose ratifying the treaty, which needs 67 votes in the Senate, just so they can make Obama look bad. But haven't we come to expect this kind of petty recklessness from the GOP?

One More Angle

With the recent commotion surrounding the bill for health care reform (and the fact that the bill is 1000+ pages), there has been a great deal of misunderstanding of the issue from all sides. Fortunately, Jonathan Cohn broke it down very accurately and comprehensibly on The Colbert Report last night. Check it out.

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The Specter Defection

On April 28, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched parties from Republican to Democratic. The Senator has been encouraged for years to defect by Harry Reid, Joe Biden and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. But the tipping point came after 161,000 Republicans registered as Democrats to vote in the Hillary-Obama primary in April 2008. Specter feared he lacked the moderate votes to win the upcoming GOP primary and promptly changed allegiances. Specter's calculations were derided by GOP chairman Michael Steele:

Arlen Specter committed a purely political and self-serving act today. He simply believes he has a better chance of saving his political hide and his job as a Democrat. He loves the title of Senator more than he loves the party--and the principles--that elected him and nurtured him.

But it is telling that a sitting senator felt that he had to switch parties to win. Does it not show how out of favor the Republican Party is?

The switch, along with Al Franken's eventual seating, will give the Democrats a 60-seat supermajority, theoretically enough to override a filibuster. The last time the sitting president's party had enough Senate seats and enough cohesion to regularly achieve cloture was 1937.

Which raises the musical questions: Will Specter vote with the Democrats? Does the switch really matter? Specter, after all, has not changed his ideology; he has merely gone from a liberal Republican to a conservative Democrat.

It will change things, just not as dramatically as one might hope. Since 2007, 158 motions for cloture have been filed. Specter's defection undermines Republicans' (perceived?) ability to filibuster. For low-profile issues, the GOP might save face and not even try.

Also, Specter may face an opponent in the Democratic primary, Joe Sestak. The threat from Sestak may push Specter to the left to prove his Democratic bona fides. If he does not, he may well lose the Democratic primary, and irony will have the last laugh.

Politics: You're Doing It Wrong

Maybe I'm naive, but I don't understand either politically or intellectually why prominent politicians and intellectuals are saying and behaving as they are. First,

President Obama

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Let me explain. I think what Obama said he would do is both good and extremely important. But trying to achieve everything he said he would--fix the economy, improve health care, ameliorate the education system, slow climate change, stabilize Afghanistan, and so on--is incredibly ambitious. And promising accomplishments in all of these fields is politically dangerous. Despite the difficulties, a failure (and I will be pleasantly surprised if he succeeds on all fronts) could be held against him and could cause his being voted out of office in 2012.

Obama must walk a fine line between hope and realism, and it just seems that his non-State of the Union address fell too far away from the realistic side.

Republicans

Lately, Republicans' and conservatives' statements have seemed incredibly vacuous. Take, for example, this editorial by Charles Krauthammer about Obama's non-SOTU. You would think, it being an opinion piece, that Krauthammer would explain what he thinks and why he thinks it. Not so. He merely describes Obama's plans in a negative fashion:

Conservatives take a dim view of the regulation-bound, economically sclerotic, socially stagnant, nanny state that is the European Union. Nonetheless, Obama is ascendant and has the personal mandate to take the country where he wishes. He has laid out boldly the Brussels-bound path he wants to take.

Let the debate begin.

"Let the debate begin." That's funny. One would think that Krauthammer would want to take part in that debate, but evidently not. 'Because it makes us look like Belgium' is not a good reason to oppose universal health care, limiting greenhouse-gas emissions, and providing college educations.

And claims that Obama is a socialist because he's raising taxes to Clinton-era levels are ridiculous. Ditto on claims of class warfare. No, what we've had, where "each family in the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution was effectively sending a $10,000 check, every year, to the top 1 percent of earners," was class warfare.

The sad thing is that there are legitimate arguments to be made. But Republicans seem to be unable to make them. You cannot say that we should not do everything Obama wants because you're concerned about the national debt: you presided over its near doubling over the past five years. And you need to provide an alternative plan. Besides tax cuts. Because they obviously have not worked.

Lewis Black used to joke that the Republican Party was the party of bad ideas and the Democrats were the party of no ideas. For now, at least, the tables seem to have turned.

Losing a Little More

Under Michigan state law, political parties are allowed to post election challengers at polling sites to prevent voter fraud. James Carabelli, chairman of the Macomb County Republicans, might be taking the law a bit too far.

About two weeks ago, the Michigan Messenger, an arm of the Center for Independent Media, reported that Carabelli planned on dispersing lists of foreclosed homes to the election challengers to "make sure people aren't voting from those addresses." Now Carabelli claims he never said it and is suing Michigan Messenger for libel. Right...

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign and DNC filed suit against the Michigan GOP for the plan, citing in particular a state law allowing people to vote if they've lost their homes within 60 days of the election.

Obviously, voter fraud is not the primary concern of either party, but the fact that the Republican Party would discount a legitimate vote is sleazy, if not particularly surprising.

For more.

Conservatism vs. Liberalism

Sorry there hasn't been much blogging lately. My dog ate my posts.

There has been something of an ongoing feud between Joe Klein, of Time magazine, and conservative pundits that started with this article, where Klein said:

This is a chronic disease among Democrats, who tend to talk more about what's wrong with America than what's right. When Ronald Reagan touted "Morning in America" in the 1980s, Dick Gephardt famously countered that it was near midnight "and getting darker all the time." This is ironic and weirdly self-defeating, since the liberal message of national improvement is profoundly more optimistic, and patriotic, than the innate conservative pessimism about the perfectibility of human nature. Obama's hopemongering is about as American as a message can get — although, in the end, it is mostly about our ability to transcend our imperfections rather than the effortless brilliance of our diversity, informality and freedom-propelled creativity.

Gasp! Part two:

Conservative skepticism has its place; it can be a valuable corrective when government goes flabby and corrupt or engages in wild neo-colonialist fantasies abroad[...]But, historically, those who believed in the perfectability of our nation[...]have been right far more often than they've been wrong. Those who have stood in the path of progress have been wrong far more often than they've been right. And those who spent the past seven years as propagandists for the one of the worst, and needlessly blood-soaked, presidencies in American history, have such a fabulous record of self-righteous wrong-headedness that they needn't be taken seriously at all.

You have to admire the phrase 'self-righteous wrong-headedness,' even if you disagree with its implication here. Part Three:

In our lives, we have seen conservatives use racism as a political tool, war as a witless quest for domination, patriotism as a scourge, government as an instrument of greed, religion and "morality" as camouflage for spreading fear, ignorance and bigotry.

The latest installment:

It is, as I said, very sad that the Clinton campaign would have anything to do with spreading this sort of innuendo [Yes, some Clinton supporters are still trying to make an issue out of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, even though Barack Obama addressed it in the best speech a politician has given in my lifetime.]...and entirely predictable that the Republican Party would. When I talked about "spreading the poison" that's what I meant: a purposeful distraction from what should be real issues in this campaign--two wars, serious economic problems, the need to shift to alternative energy sources for national security and environmental reasons. On his radio show last week, Hugh Hewitt disagreed with me that those were the real issues. He made his agenda clear: Obama's positions on Jeremiah Wright, gun control and homosexuality were what mattered to "real" Americans. Now that's cynicism, of the rankest sort. Let's hope it's not the election we get.

So the problem is two-fold:

1. Republicans have abandoned the decent purpose of conservatism--to counter the liberal tendency to fix everything through government intervention--as George W. Bush has presided over the largest expansion of government, especially executive, power since the Nixon administration.
2. Conservative pundits are hopelessly out of touch with mainstream America. I may be ensconced in the liberal, ivory tower of academia, but homosexuality and a few comments a candidate's pastor made this one time are more important than war, national security, and energy independence? Give me a break.