In two videos, @Lawrence O'Donnell breaks down the REAL "IRS Scandal"...

Day 1: May 13, 2013:

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Day 2: May 14, 2013:

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Why I disagree with Jonathan Bernstein, and Marco Rubio is in for a looong year...

First off, Jonathan Bernstein, at his own blog A Plain Blog About Politics, made this point about the recent revelations about Marco Rubio's past:

The oddity of the Rubio situation is that I don't recall such an obvious VP frontrunner in any previous cycle. Now, preseason Veepstakes is notoriously silly; after all, guessing the pick even when there's just a few weeks to go and we know who is doing the picking rarely works out well. And the usual caveat applies: the bottom of the ticket doesn't really matter very much in November. So I'm not speculating about whether Rubio will actually get the nod. But it is, I think, worth pointing out that near as I can tell there's been a pretty solid consensus that Rubio is the obvious selection, and that such a consensus is unusual. My guess is that this story doesn't really shake the current consensus -- although whether everyone's expectations now have anything to do with who actually gets the pick is unknown and unknowable.

Well, I'm not so sure about that. Courtesy Chris Cilliza:

Say what you will about the birthers, but don’t call them partisan.

The people who brought you the Barack Obama birth-certificate hullabaloo now have a new target: Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a man often speculated to be the next Republican vice presidential nominee. While they’re at it, they also have Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana and perhaps a future presidential candidate, in their sights.

Each man, the birthers say, is ineligible to be president because he runs afoul of the constitutional requirement that a president must be a “natural born citizen” of the United States. Rubio’s parents were Cuban nationals at the time of his birth, and Jindal’s parents were citizens of India.

The good news for the birthers is that this suggests they were going after Obama, whose father was a Kenyan national, not because of the president’s political party. The bad news is that this supports the suspicion that they were going after Obama because of his race.

What a shock. Republicans are set to break their word on the Budget Control Act.

Did I call it...or did I call it?

I said in an earlier post, this:

For John Boehner, nothing is worth doing, unless you can screw the Democrats at the same time. My bet is he tries to go the Teabagger route, because he wants to do whatever it takes to kick a Conservative bill into the Senate, and have the Democrats there "take the blame" for shooting it down.

And now, we have confirmation from Talking Points Memo:

Looks like House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will try to close GOP ranks around existing legislation to fund the government rather than scrap a controversial requirement that disaster relief funds be offset with an unrelated budget cut. And that means they'll be moving ahead without Democratic support -- a risky gamble that could lead to a government shutdown if it fails.

"The Speaker's seeking more Republican votes," Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who led a House conservative rebellion on Wednesday, told reporters after an impromptu Thursday GOP meeting.

According to other Republicans, Boehner will swap out the existing disaster relief offset -- a hybrid vehicle manufacturing incentive -- with new cuts.

Remember there are consequences to this strategy, from Stan Collander:

[By moving to the right] to pick up tea party votes by (1) proposing bigger spending reductions for fiscal 2012 than were included in the bill that was defeated yesterday and (2) continuing to refuse to allow the Hurricane Irene-related disaster assistance to be provided unless others spending is cut to pay for it. The tea partiers want fiscal 2012 discretionary spending to be set at the level included in the House-passed budget resolution — AKA, the Ryan plan — rather than the higher level included in the debt ceiling increase/deficit reduction plan (the Budget Control Act) enacted on August 2.

The problem with this strategy, however, is that it will likely lose other votes from Republicans in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey — the states that were hardest hit by Irene. Note that three of these four — all but North Carolina — have Republican governors who have said that they want/need/must have the federal assistance. And House Democrats are very unlikely to go along.

Lemme repeat something. There was a deal between the White House and Congress as to how much spending would be cut made back in August. I'm sure you remember.

Now, in order to secure more Republican votes (some of which he may lose, but I bet they can twist enough arms), they are going back on their word.

Boehner is probably going to get this out of the House, and make it the Senate's problem...but hopefully the Senate will turn around and throw it back in the House's face, meaning Conference Committee here we come!

In the meantime, the Senate will be screaming over how the House went back on their word.

Oh, and by the way, they need to do all this by the end of the month.


Sooner or later, that 9% approval rating is going to look sky high.

So what's more important to Boehner, his ties to the Tea Party or the Country?

We're about to find out...even though, if we're honest, we already know the answer.

From Stan Collender:

The big question now is the one we’ve been wondering about for some time in analogous budget situations: Where do Boehner and Cantor go from here?

On the one hand, they can move to the right to pick up tea party votes by (1) proposing bigger spending reductions for fiscal 2012 than were included in the bill that was defeated yesterday and (2) continuing to refuse to allow the Hurricane Irene-related disaster assistance to be provided unless others spending is cut to pay for it. The tea partiers want fiscal 2012 discretionary spending to be set at the level included in the House-passed budget resolution — AKA, the Ryan plan — rather than the higher level included in the debt ceiling increase/deficit reduction plan (the Budget Control Act) enacted on August 2.

The problem with this strategy, however, is that it will likely lose other votes from Republicans in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey — the states that were hardest hit by Irene. Note that three of these four — all but North Carolina — have Republican governors who have said that they want/need/must have the federal assistance. And House Democrats are very unlikely to go along.

In other words, moving toward the tea party may not guarantee that the bill passes.

On the other hand, moving in the other direction on this one bill very likely will cause the tea party to split permanently with the two House leaders. The tea partiers have been leery of both Boehner and Cantor since the start of the year. In fact, a tea party supporter is running against Boehner in the GOP primary and the Virginia tea party has been threatening to challenge Cantor since before the 2010 election. Working with House Democrats at this point might get the bill passed but might also make it all but impossible for the GOP leadership to lead in 2012, that is, in the months heading into an election where anger about Congress is already at an all-time high.

For John Boehner, nothing is worth doing, unless you can screw the Democrats at the same time. My bet is he tries to go the Teabagger route, because he wants to do whatever it takes to kick a Conservative bill into the Senate, and have the Democrats there "take the blame" for shooting it down.

The President's Town Hall from Decorah, IA...now with Teabagger confrontation! (VIDEO)

For those of you with concerns about the President's strategy, how he handles negotiations, etc., the first two questions cover that ground pretty nicely.

And in case you're curious about the President's confrontation there toward the end with the Teabagger nation, it is here...and requires a strong stomach.

America's thank you message to the Tea Party... (VIDEO)

The President's statement on the S&P Credit Downgrade... (VIDEO)

...and a mention of fallen Soldiers in Afghanistan.

TPM: Way to go Liberals, you let the Teabaggers punk you...again.

Once again, according to TPM, the passive among you bear an awesome responsibility for the outcome of the Debt Ceiling Debate:

A telephone poll by the Pew Research Center for People and Press found that Republicans and Tea Party-affiliated respondents both paid more attention to the debt negotiations and were more likely to take action to influence the outcome.

Some 66% of the two groups followed news on the issue closely versus only 34% of those who had different views or did not offer a political opinion. Nor were they passive observers: some 66% of Republicans and Tea Partiers contacted an elected official during the standoff while only 5% of the rest did the same. This despite a direct appeal from President Obama to do exactly that.

As was the case in the midterm election, age was a crucial factor. Only 19% of 18-29 year-olds followed the story closely and 1% contacted an official versus 54% of those over 50 who followed the debate and 16% who contacted an official.

Chris Matthews hates the Debt Ceiling Deal, but wants you to remember this number (VIDEO)

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How to feel about the Debt Ceiling deal, and more detail about what's in it... (VIDEO)

Announcing the deal:


Spinning the deal:


My biggest problem with the deal is that there’s a deal in the first place. The details of the deal don’t matter to me so much as the philosophy behind it. I don’t believe we are in a position to start cutting stuff right now. Virtually the entirety of the Stimulus’s impact (and I thought it was positive) has been blunted by equally heavy budget cuts at the state level

So now, we’ve decided to spread Austerity to the Federal level as well.

And yes, I'm referring to Austerity like a disease...because it is.

So look at what we got, and tell me, does it really matter in the scheme of things? What’s the point when we start to cut at the worst possible time to start cutting?

As for the deal, here’s what we (Democrats) got:

• A debt-limit increase large enough to provide the government borrowing power to pay bills through 2012.
• A special congressional committee to consider broad deficit reduction can consider tax reform along with entitlement changes.
• If the committee's recommendations are not adopted, half of the automatic spending cuts to follow would come from defense.
• If the committee's recommendations are not adopted, programs for the poor, including Medicaid and Social Security, would be shielded from the automatic spending cuts to follow.

Here’s what we (Democrats) gave:

• The deal includes immediate spending cuts of about $1 trillion but no tax increases.
• If the special congressional committee's recommendations are not adopted, consequences include spending cuts but no tax increases.
• If the special committee's recommendations are not adopted, Medicare provider payments are not shielded from the automatic spending cuts to follow.

This came via the Washington Post. I like the fact that it highlights the Debt Ceiling increase as a Democratic get, even though its supposed to be (and would normally be) an American “get”. Clearly, the Republicans did not give a shit about whether we defaulted or not, just like they don't give a shit about the deficit.

Here’s what they (Republicans) got (also, they produced the slide above):

• No tax increases.
• $1 trillion in cuts to discretionary spending over the next 10 years.
• A special congressional committee to consider broader deficit reduction can consider entitlement changes along with tax reform.
• The debt-ceiling increase will be matched dollar for dollar in deficit reduction, through adoption of the work of a new congressional fiscal committee or through automatic spending cuts that will occur if the committee's recommendations are not adopted.
• If the committee's recommendations are not adopted, half of the automatic spending cuts to follow would come from domestic programs.

Here’s what they (Republicans) gave:

• The immediate deal includes no entitlement reform.
• The immediate spending are cuts less than the GOP had sought.
• The special congressional committee could consider tax reform.
• If the special congressional committee's recommendations are not adopted, half of the automatic spending cuts to follow would come from defense.

I mentioned this last night as a question, but I’ve had a change of heart. I’m starting to feel one of the benefits of this deal might be that it lays the groundwork and terms for the next Budget Fight. What I want to see is if this is voted on, will the Tea Party renege on the deal, and demand even more cuts?  My bet is that they will, and how will America see them then?

Lawrence O'Donnell: Rejecting proposals serving a larger strategic purpose (VIDEO)

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You do remember how the President mentioned that compromise has become a dirty word, right? (VIDEO)

Well, you should.  He mentioned "compromise" a bunch of times in last night's speech:

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Actually, Chris (and mind you, Randi Rhodes totally caught this earlier today), this goes back to the beginning of the year:



Was it just me, or did you hear Leslie Stahl audibly gasp when he said that?

Some men (with bad hair) just want to watch the world burn...

From Huffington Post...:

On Monday, Donald Trump urged Republicans to reject any deal with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling and let the country risk default. Economists and administration officials have warned that defaulting on our debt would have dire economic consequences, but for Trump there is an upside: the crisis would prevent President Barack Obama from being reelected.

"Frankly the Republicans would be crazy unless they get 100 percent of the deal that they want right now to make any deal,” Trump said on "Fox and Friends" Monday. "If this happens, for instance if this stuff is going on prior to an election, he can’t get reelected. He possibly can’t get elected anyway. … The fact is, unless the Republicans get 100% of what they want, and that may include getting rid of Obamacare, which is a total disaster, then they should not make a deal other than a minor extension which would take you before the election which would ensure Obama doesn’t get elected, which would be a great thing."

President Obama's speech on the Debt Ceiling for July 25, 2011 (VIDEO)

On the Debt Ceiling itself:

Now, what makes today’s stalemate so dangerous is that it has been tied to something known as the debt ceiling -– a term that most people outside of Washington have probably never heard of before.

Understand –- raising the debt ceiling does not allow Congress to spend more money. It simply gives our country the ability to pay the bills that Congress has already racked up. In the past, raising the debt ceiling was routine. Since the 1950s, Congress has always passed it, and every President has signed it. President Reagan did it 18 times. George W. Bush did it seven times. And we have to do it by next Tuesday, August 2nd, or else we won’t be able to pay all of our bills.

Unfortunately, for the past several weeks, Republican House members have essentially said that the only way they’ll vote to prevent America’s first-ever default is if the rest of us agree to their deep, spending cuts-only approach.

If that happens, and we default, we would not have enough money to pay all of our bills -– bills that include monthly Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits, and the government contracts we’ve signed with thousands of businesses.

For the first time in history, our country’s AAA credit rating would be downgraded, leaving investors around the world to wonder whether the United States is still a good bet. Interest rates would skyrocket on credit cards, on mortgages and on car loans, which amounts to a huge tax hike on the American people. We would risk sparking a deep economic crisis -– this one caused almost entirely by Washington.

So defaulting on our obligations is a reckless and irresponsible outcome to this debate. And Republican leaders say that they agree we must avoid default. But the new approach that Speaker Boehner unveiled today, which would temporarily extend the debt ceiling in exchange for spending cuts, would force us to once again face the threat of default just six months from now. In other words, it doesn’t solve the problem.

First of all, a six-month extension of the debt ceiling might not be enough to avoid a credit downgrade and the higher interest rates that all Americans would have to pay as a result. We know what we have to do to reduce our deficits; there’s no point in putting the economy at risk by kicking the can further down the road.

But there’s an even greater danger to this approach. Based on what we’ve seen these past few weeks, we know what to expect six months from now. The House of Representatives will once again refuse to prevent default unless the rest of us accept their cuts-only approach. Again, they will refuse to ask the wealthiest Americans to give up their tax cuts or deductions. Again, they will demand harsh cuts to programs like Medicare. And once again, the economy will be held captive unless they get their way.

This is no way to run the greatest country on Earth. It’s a dangerous game that we’ve never played before, and we can’t afford to play it now. Not when the jobs and livelihoods of so many families are at stake. We can’t allow the American people to become collateral damage to Washington’s political warfare.

On the Teabaggers:

Now, I realize that a lot of the new members of Congress and I don’t see eye-to-eye on many issues. But we were each elected by some of the same Americans for some of the same reasons. Yes, many want government to start living within its means. And many are fed up with a system in which the deck seems stacked against middle-class Americans in favor of the wealthiest few. But do you know what people are fed up with most of all?

They’re fed up with a town where compromise has become a dirty word. They work all day long, many of them scraping by, just to put food on the table. And when these Americans come home at night, bone-tired, and turn on the news, all they see is the same partisan three-ring circus here in Washington. They see leaders who can’t seem to come together and do what it takes to make life just a little bit better for ordinary Americans. They’re offended by that. And they should be.

The American people may have voted for divided government, but they didn’t vote for a dysfunctional government. So I’m asking you all to make your voice heard. If you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your member of Congress know. If you believe we can solve this problem through compromise, send that message.

Apparently, they did.

Jonathan Bernstein puts the blame for the Debt Ceiling crisis squarely where it belongs...

Amen, Brother!

I have no idea what’s going to happen in the next week. One hopes that enough Republicans are only bluffing with their craziness, or can be talked out of their craziness (by who? Who will they listen to?) at the last minute. Or perhaps eventually, if there’s no other way, the president will take unilateral action — the Constitutional option — after all. But the idea that there was some obvious way for Democrats to deal with this situation strikes me as naïve. This isn’t about poor bargaining or fecklessness by the Democrats. It’s about dealing with the consequences of the fact that Americans elected to Congress a whole bunch of people who are either trying to impose fringe policy views despite apparently having no understanding whatsoever of their consequences — or are so driven by opposition to the president that their highest priority is opposing him, regardless of those consequences.

Translation: America, you voted for these idiots, prepare to deal with the consequences.

Ezra Klein: "You can’t get a deal unless you can get the votes. And what’s been clear for some time is Speaker John Boehner cannot get the votes."

Ezra Klein's 11 days until disaster, three options to prevent it:

It always feels different in the room. In the room, everyone wants a deal. They want their name on legislation, in history books. They want to do the big things and make the hard choices. Then they leave the room and they learn their supporters don’t want the choices made if they’re going to be hard. They learn their colleagues know their names won’t be in the history books, and so they’re more concerned with making sure their names are on their desks in the next congress.

But you can’t get a deal unless you can get the votes. And what’s been clear for some time is Speaker John Boehner cannot get the votes. If you need more evidence, look at the letter Boehner sent his caucus, which is more about pretending that he supports Cut, Cap and Balance -- an absurd and unpassable policy that includes a constitutional amendment making tax increases nearly impossible and capping spending at levels not seen since 1957 -- than it is about informing them as to what’s happened in the negotiations. It’s as if the president walked away from the table and sent out a letter saying that Boehner wouldn’t agree to single-payer health care, and so the negotiations are over.

But that’s what made the latest round of interest in the $4 trillion deal so peculiar. The policy was essentially unchanged from the $4 trillion deal that Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor walked away from two weeks ago -- a deal that included about half as much in tax increases as Simpson-Bowles or the Gang of Six . When they walked away, it was because they couldn’t find the votes for a compromise, even one tilted towards conservative interests. Despite all the excitement about them returning to the table this week, no one had ever answered the first question that needed to be asked: Had they found the votes? And if so, how?


We now know the answer.

It’s easy to get caught up in the political machinations. It’s easy to begin speculating about the hopes, constraints, and hidden agendas of the players. It’s easy to sound like an insider and say that the House GOP cannot accept a deal until the very last minute, or unleash some long analysis of how the president’s evident frustration will play with the voters, or say that the real story here is the relationship between Boehner and Cantor. But here’s the bottom line: We have 11 calendar days to raise the debt ceiling. Already, there’s some evidence that our dithering is hurting the economy. If we truly fail to raise the debt ceiling, however, we will unleash a market panic that will, at the least, return us to recession, and if it’s not quickly quelled, metastasize into a financial crisis that we will not soon recover from.

Earlier today, I spoke with David Beers, director of Standard Poor’s sovereign debt department. He explained that it wasn’t economic factors that had put America’s credit rating at risk, nor world events. It was credit-rating agency’s increasing fears that our political system was no longer up to the challenges that face it. “What we’re saying now,” said Beers, “is we question whether despite all the discussions and intense negotiations, if they can’t reach this agreement, will they be able to reach it after the election?”

If we convince Standard Poor’s that our political system has failed, they will downgrade our credit within three months. If they do that, interest rates on our debt will spike, perhaps by 50 basis points, perhaps by more. An easy rule of thumb is that if interest rates rise by 50 basis points, we will lose 600,000 jobs in this country.

At this point, there are three serious options on the table. A $4 trillion deal that includes some revenues, a $1 trillion-$2 trillion deal that’s all spending cuts but leaves much of the job until after the election, and a deal in which Republicans don’t come to a negotiated agreement with President Obama but they grant him the authority -- and let him take the blame -- for raising the debt ceiling. Those are our three options, and Congress needs to pick one. Time is running short.

Again, I apologize for posting complete pieces, but when you want to highlight something, and you don't know where to cut...

Steve Benen: You can't fix stupid...

Yeah, Mr. Benen was WAY more polite than I'd ever be in his latest offering:

Jonathan Bernstein had a piece on this today, but it's a point that's been circulating for a while.

One really, really important point to remember about House Republicans right now: There's a very good chance that a whole bunch of them just have no idea what they're doing. [...]

[H]ow do you negotiate with people who just have no idea what they're talking about? Here's another example, from the NYT write-up of the party-line vote against [Cut, Cap, and Balance]: "[T]he outcome was a foregone conclusion and leaders of both parties said the Senate needed to dismiss the House plan to show Republicans that the proposal was dead."

This is just depressing if true; it implies that an unspecified number of rank-and-file Republicans are, I don't know how else to put it, either too detached from reality or too stupid or too incompetent to know that CCB was DOA without actually seeing the Senate results.

Right. In this case, Jonathan is referring to Republicans who don't understand the basics of how a bill becomes a law. His piece on this highlighted a GOP House member, who's likely to run for the Senate next year, who doesn't seem to realize what it means when the Senate "tables" a bill.

But this keeps coming up because congressional Republicans don't seem to understand, well, much of anything.

One Republican lawmaker appeared on national television this week, and was asked to defend his pro-default approach to governing. He replied, "I don't trust the words of any source."

Another GOP lawmaker said a few days ago that our national credit rating will get better if we fail to raise the debt ceiling. Another Republican House member argued that if the government raises revenue, it will make the debt worse, because taxes lead to "fewer revenue dollars."

Common norms suggest we're supposed to simply acknowledge that the parties have sincere, philosophical differences. But eventually, I'd love to see the political world come to terms with the fact that Republicans aren't just being right-wing; they're also being dumb. I know that's impolite. I also know it's justified.

Remember, as the President said at his Town Hall in College Park today, this is all about the Republican House, not the Senate. If the President just had to deal with the Senate, the Debt Ceiling extension would have passed months ago.

Kevin Drum: Fun with numbers...

Of course, a lot of this is the Stimulus funds winding down, and being replaced with...nothing:

I should point out, that I'd move the blue back to January 4th, when the Republicans took over the House, and proceeded to concentrate on such things as the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, protecting Tax Breaks for Big Oil Companies, trying to end Abortion Rights where-ever they saw it, and...of course, reading the Constitution out loud on the House floor, while skipping the parts that were inconvenient.

Jobs Bills?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Anyone?

Jonathan Bernstein: "Relatively responsible GOP leaders are offering [Teabaggers] various choices on how they’d like to give up.

Again, I try not to post entire articles when I read them, but when they're good, they're good...and this one's really good."

Thus, I present Jonathan Bernstein's: Is GOP quietly negotiating a surrender in debt ceiling fight?

Where do things stand in the debt limit mess? My best guess: What we’re really seeing right now is Republicans attempting to implement an organized retreat and surrender.

Here’s why. Conservatives entered into the debt limit with entirely unrealistic expectations. Moreover, having already lost battles they apparently (and, again, unrealistically) expected to win on health care and the government shutdown showdown earlier in the year, many Republicans committed even more strongly to their unrealistic expectations on the debt limit. But Dems insisted on new revenues drew a hard line on restructuring entitlements — and all signs were that they would not give.

So Mitch McConnell’s original proposal to transfer control of the debt ceiling to the president with absolutely no deficit reduction was basically a strong warning to Republicans: you’re not going to get what you really want. He was letting them know that they could choose to negotiate their best surrender — or, if they refused to do so, they would wind up getting almost nothing at all.

I think that’s also the best way to understand the Gang of Six revived package — it offers Republicans another way out of their mess. Of course, it’s almost entirely symbolic. Down the line it’s possible that some actual legislation can emerge from it, but there’s no chance that “down the line” will be before the debt limit is extended, and there’s no way to guarantee that “down the line” will ever happen. But this is nonetheless an escape hatch of sorts — Republicans could package a debt limit increase with a symbolic vow to implement the Gang of Six proposal later.

So what choices to Republicans have now? They can choose the clean McConnell plan — no actual deficit cutting, but lots of symbolic blame for raising the debt limit thrown at Barack Obama and the Democrats. They can choose a modified McConnell, which would probably be packaged with a relatively small amount of spending cuts. Or they can package a debt increase with a symbolic Gang of Six vote, which would not by itself reduce the deficit.

The key thing here is that every one of these options is a surrender.

Yes, it’s true that under some of these options Republicans get spending cuts. But they would be nothing even remotely like what some of these folks, particularly the Tea Partyers, ran on and have been promising their constituents. And what’s basically happening now is that the relatively responsible GOP leaders are offering them various choices on how they’d like to give up.

"That these folks are truly irrational in Washington..." (VIDEO)

Lawrence with Andrew Ross Sorkin. And yes, they're talking about Teabaggers.

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