Replies to post #147583 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

Getting to Crazy

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 14, 2011

There aren’t many positive aspects to the looming possibility of a U.S. debt default. But there has been, I have to admit, an element of comic relief — of the black-humor variety — in the spectacle of so many people who have been in denial suddenly waking up and smelling the crazy.

A number of commentators seem shocked at how unreasonable Republicans are being. “Has the G.O.P. gone insane?” they ask.

Why, yes, it has. But this isn’t something that just happened, it’s the culmination of a process that has been going on for decades. Anyone surprised by the extremism and irresponsibility now on display either hasn’t been paying attention, or has been deliberately turning a blind eye.

And may I say to those suddenly agonizing over the mental health of one of our two major parties: People like you bear some responsibility for that party’s current state.

Let’s talk for a minute about what Republican leaders are rejecting.

President Obama has made it clear that he’s willing to sign on to a deficit-reduction deal that consists overwhelmingly of spending cuts, and includes draconian cuts in key social programs, up to and including a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. These are extraordinary concessions. As The Times’s Nate Silver points out [ http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/house-republicans-no-tax-stance-far-outside-political-mainstream ], the president has offered deals that are far to the right of what the average American voter prefers — in fact, if anything, they’re a bit to the right of what the average Republican voter prefers!

Yet Republicans are saying no. Indeed, they’re threatening to force a U.S. default, and create an economic crisis, unless they get a completely one-sided deal. And this was entirely predictable.

First of all, the modern G.O.P. fundamentally does not accept the legitimacy of a Democratic presidency — any Democratic presidency. We saw that under Bill Clinton, and we saw it again as soon as Mr. Obama took office.

As a result, Republicans are automatically against anything the president wants, even if they have supported similar proposals in the past. Mitt Romney’s health care plan became a tyrannical assault on American freedom when put in place by that man in the White House. And the same logic applies to the proposed debt deals.

Put it this way: If a Republican president had managed to extract the kind of concessions on Medicare and Social Security that Mr. Obama is offering, it would have been considered a conservative triumph. But when those concessions come attached to minor increases in revenue, and more important, when they come from a Democratic president, the proposals become unacceptable plans to tax the life out of the U.S. economy.

Beyond that, voodoo economics has taken over the G.O.P.

Supply-side voodoo — which claims that tax cuts pay for themselves and/or that any rise in taxes would lead to economic collapse — has been a powerful force within the G.O.P. ever since Ronald Reagan embraced the concept of the Laffer curve. But the voodoo used to be contained. Reagan himself enacted significant tax increases, offsetting to a considerable extent his initial cuts.

And even the administration of former President George W. Bush refrained from making extravagant claims about tax-cut magic, at least in part for fear that making such claims would raise questions about the administration’s seriousness.

Recently, however, all restraint has vanished — indeed, it has been driven out of the party. Last year Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, asserted that the Bush tax cuts actually increased revenue [ http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/its-unanimous-gop-says-pay-for-unemployment-benefits-not-tax-cuts-for-the-rich.php ] — a claim completely at odds with the evidence — and also declared that this was “the view of virtually every Republican on that subject.” And it’s true: even Mr. Romney, widely regarded as the most sensible of the contenders for the 2012 presidential nomination, has endorsed the view [ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2010/12/14/173688/romney-deficits/ ] that tax cuts can actually reduce the deficit.

Which brings me to the culpability of those who are only now facing up to the G.O.P.’s craziness.

Here’s the point: those within the G.O.P. who had misgivings about the embrace of tax-cut fanaticism might have made a stronger stand if there had been any indication that such fanaticism came with a price, if outsiders had been willing to condemn those who took irresponsible positions.

But there has been no such price. Mr. Bush squandered the surplus of the late Clinton years, yet prominent pundits pretend that the two parties share equal blame for our debt problems. Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, proposed a supposed deficit-reduction plan [ http://www.cbpp.org/files/3-10-10bud-rev7-7-10.pdf ] that included huge tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, then received an award [ http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/01/paul_ryan_and_american_fiscal_policy ] for fiscal responsibility.

So there has been no pressure on the G.O.P. to show any kind of responsibility, or even rationality — and sure enough, it has gone off the deep end. If you’re surprised, that means that you were part of the problem.

© 2011 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/opinion/15krugman.html [comments at http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/opinion/15krugman.html ]

[StephanieVanbryce]

The Morality Of Political Hostage Taking



Johnathan Chait August 4 2011

Will Wilkinson objects to Democrats referring to Republican debt ceiling tactics as terrorism: [ http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/08/defusing-fiscal-risk ]

The political tactics that seems to each of us most dangerous and irresponsible inevitably reflect deeper assumptions about the way economies and governments do and ought to work. Of course, not every set of assumptions about market and state are equally reasonable. But we should not be too hasty to ascribe criminal, enemy-of-the-state status to those who see things differently.

His colleague Matt Steinglass points out that Mitch McConnell himself compared the tactic to hostage-taking, and proceeds to argue: [ http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/08/defusing-fiscal-risk-0 ]

There is some interesting thinking to be done on how a hostage that isn't worth shooting can possibly be a hostage that's worth ransoming. I think it comes down to social conventions and where they place the burden of expectation. Any hostage-taker always tries to create a system of expectations in which the party asked to pay the ransom is responsible for whatever happens. Forcing Democrats to pay the ransom once helps to institutionalise this expectation. After all, how could Republicans be expected to know that Democrats wouldn't pay the ransom a second time? But everyone should then understand why many Democrats now feel that the first order of business, before anything else can be done, is to dispel the impression that you can hold the American economy to ransom for whatever political priority you may deem most important, and Democrats will eventually cave. Democrats will not be able to achieve any of their priorities until they re-establish the understanding that when Republicans make threats, they, not Democrats, are responsible if the threats are carried out.

That's a great point. I also think that Wilkinson is missing the more fundamental distinction here. It's common for parties to vote for legislation that the other party thinks will have horrific effects. Democrats think the Paul Ryan budget would lead to mass suffering. Republicans said the same about the 1993 Clinton tax hikes. We should learn to accept the fact, as Wilkinson says, that parties will advance policies with strongly different assumptions about the market and the state.

The difference is that the Republicans this time threatened to carry out a policy that they themselves believed would have horrific effects. I can't think of any precedent for that in national politics. It's also behavior that seems to differ in degree but not in kind from actual hostage taking. A hostage taker does not want to murder an innocent person, but he is willing to risk that outcome, and seeks to leverage his willingness to risk that outcome in order to obtain concessions. Now, one distinction is that your typical hostage taker wants money, whereas the Republicans wanted policy concessions that, as Wilkinson notes, they genuinely believe will improve the world.

But what about politically motivated hostage takers? They exist, too. Is there any important moral difference between threatening to kill somebody in order to achieve a policy goal and threatening to deliberately unleash global economic chaos in order to achieve a policy goal? I can't see any.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/93208/the-morality-political-hostage-taking