Seems like Standard & Poors has amplified what it meant by the “political dysfunction” that led it to downgrade the U.S. bond rating from AAA to AA status. From the beginning S&P was pretty specific that much of the problem was the GOP speech impediment that prohibits the use of the words “revenue” or “taxes.” Today, a S&P spokesperson added:

[P]eople in the political arena were even talking about a potential default,” said Joydeep Mukherji, senior directior at S&P. “That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable,” he added. “This kind of rhetoric is not common amongst AAA sovereigns.

In other words, all that blather about how default would be no big thing spooked the ratings agency – which, in turn, seems to have spooked the stock market. With this in mind, I ask you to stroll down memory lane and take a look at what some of Missouri’s GOP political leaders were saying at the height of the furor.

Todd Akin (R-2) wagged his metaphorical finger in our faces and declared that default “would shock us as a nation into saying that we really have to deal with this problem,” and “experience what it is like to live within our means.”  I guess we now know that it wouldn’t have been that spiffy after all, but at least Akin got part of his wish. He and his buddies did manage to inflict some wounds on our financial well-being.

Billy Long, that profound financial prognosticator, dismissed the whole issue of default as so much ado about nothing:

Let the date come and go, … That’s going to be on the president,” Long said. “There is money there. He can pay what he wants to pay, and if he doesn’t pay, that’s his bluff.

Based on this tweet, which Michael Bersin has dissected here at SMP, one has to believe that Vicky Hartzler just didn’t read S&P’s statement about why they downgraded the our bond rating or that she missed the good parts:

S&P’s decision to downgrade our credit rating is no surprise: the debt ceiling package wasn’t big enough–one reason I voted ‘no’.

Now what I want to know is who among these folks will conveniently forget what he or she said about default and/or the causes of the S&P downgrade, and who will keep on pretending that S&P has validated the GOP narrative à la Vicky Hartzler?

ADDENDUM:  In regard to the those who welcomed default (via Steve Benen):

A senior administration official said those who simply choose not to believe any of the warnings, “These are the kinds of people who get eaten by bears.

Eaten by bears? We should be so lucky. Here in Missouri we send them to Washington D.C. to make laws.

Sarah Steelman, who is running against Todd Akin (R-2) to be the GOPer who opposes Claire McCaskill, is proposing that the “super-committee” appointees, who will determine just who budget austerity kicks the hardest, pledge not to take lobbyist money:

“Thousands of lobbyists are just waiting to cut their special deal to preserve their piece of the pie,” Steelman said. “The leaders of both parties should only appoint members who agree to this pledge prior to serving on the committee.”

“This is not the time for our representatives in Washington to crawl back into their smoke-filled rooms and cut deals that put powerful special interests ahead of the people,” Steelman said.

Of course, if you follow the implications of this statement, all congresspersons should refuse to take lobbyist money all the time. If it’s wrong in this case, it’s wrong whenever legislators are making decisions that affect our lives and well-being. But that would be campaign finance reform, and I bet Steelman isn’t willing to go there.

It’s also instructive to note that she’s only calling on Claire McCaskill to join her in this pledge; not a word about her primary opponent, Todd Akin, or GOP Senator Roy Blunt. Maybe she knows a lost cause when she sees it?

Slightly edited for clarity.

During the last election, I had a conversation with one of my neighbors who had not one, but two “McCain-Palin” signs up in his yard. After attempting to convince me that Obama was an illegitimate Muslim foisted off on us by evil socialist conspirators, he also indicated that he wasn’t so keen on the McCain part of the McCain-Palin pairing. He would vote for McCain as the lesser of two evils, but he reserved his enthusiasm for Palin, a woman who is “just like us everyday people.” The obvious point being that the problem with government was that it was run by elites, the “best and brightest.”

I ask you to consider this point of view in the light of the the following facts:

— When George Bush left office the national debt was close to 11 trillion dollars.

— The biggest drivers of that debt were the Bush tax cuts and the Middle Eastern wars Bush initiated.

— The current debt is nearly 14 trillion dollars

— The biggest  additional driver of the increase in debt is the recession that began in 2008 as a result of the policies of the Bush administration and its GOP congressional cohorts.

— Thanks to a relatively small stimulus, we entered a weak recovery, but a recovery nonetheless.

— After getting all fired-up over the horrifying prospect of health care reform that would actualy cut health care costs, the Tea Party sent a bumper crop of folks “just like themselves” to Washington D.C.

— After only a year of the GOP Tea Party push to stop the very federal spending that was fueling the recovery,  economic growth is sputtering to a stop.

— If we let the Bush tax cuts expire – and we would still have the lowest tax rates  of almost all industrialized nations – we would substantially decrease the deficit.

In the face of facts like these, the “folks just like us” that the Tea Party sent to Washington in 2010 have done nothing but try to scare Americans about a deficit crisis that doesn’t exist instead of addressing our very real jobs crisis, a stance that has culminated in a push for a balanced budget at all costs – a budget balanced solely with spending cuts.

The GOP horror of deficits ignores the fact that folks “just like us” frequently need to borrow money when times are hard. Businesses and families borrow when they need to do so and as long as they borrow wisely and meet their obligations, such borrowing often leads to greater prosperity.  

Our government needs this flexibility as well. Don’t believe me? Consider our current economy which is slowing to a stop in response to decreased federal spending. Or just wait and see what happens when the indiscriminate cuts the GOP has extorted kick in. Better yet for us oldsters, wait until they go after Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  

Yet Missouri’s Tea Party contingent and the rest of the state’s GOP – spineless fools who got swept up in the flood of Tea Party bombast – doubled down and took the full faith and credit of the U.S. hostage in order to secure our economic downfall, a budget slashed via means of a knife held at the throat of a hostage economy. Consider the way our smug, down-home, “just like us” Missouri Tea Party congresspersons mindlessly regurgitate the balanced budget talking points, no matter how deeply discredited they may be among real economists:

Vicky Hartzler:

There is so much talk in Washington of the need for a “balanced approach” to our budget situation. America does not need a “balanced approach;” it needs a “balanced budget!”

Billy Long (R-7):

We don’t need a balanced approach, we need a balanced budget,” Long said. “While the party of Obamacare is busy lecturing Republicans on bipartisanship, Republicans have provided yet another common sense solution to tackle our country’s debt and get our fiscal house in order

Todd Akin:

Conservatives have stood their ground which has produced a new proposal that will now address the fundamental problem facing our nation.  Reckless deficit spending is putting us on a path to ruin.  A balanced budget amendment to our Constitution is the only proposal I have seen that would fix that fundamental problem.

Heard enough? As it was put in the French newspaper, Le Figaro:

The American politicians supposed to lead the most powerful nation in the world are becoming a laughing stock.

I’d laugh too, but I’m trying to figure out how to weather a double-dip recession at the same time that these goons are gutting our social safety net.

Would it have been any worse for those of us in the middle and working class if the Democrats had faced the terrorists down and let the economy default? Only time will tell. What I do know, though, is that I’m pretty sure that in the future I want the best and brightest running my government, not folks just like the worst of us.

 

Think Progress notes that Todd Akin (R-2), Sam Graves (R-6 ), and Jo Ann Emerson (R-8) voted to raise the debt ceiling in 2004 with nary a squawk about deficit spending. Think Progress‘ writers add that:

All of these Members of Congress can vote for a clean hike again and avert disaster – saving discussions about deficit reduction (and more importantly, jobs) for appropriations debates that take place once America’s financial future is safe.

If they could vote to raise the debt ceiling in 2004 when the national debt was at 7.4 trillion dollars, why can’t they do so now when the major reason that the debt has increased is the recession created by GOP economic policies between 2000 and 2008?   In regard to GOP hissy fits about spending in the Boehner plan, Steve Benen gets it just right:

What will go largely overlooked is that we already are trying things their [i.e., the GOP] way. Whether the GOP wants to admit it or not, the economy is advancing exactly as they want it to. The private sector is being left to its own devices; the public sector is shedding jobs quickly and scrapping investments; and the only permitted topic of conversation is about debt-reduction.

This is the script the GOP wrote. When it’s followed to the letter, Republican complaints are absurd.

Ask yourself, just why can’t these bozos let their deficit cutting stand on its own merits; why do they need to take the economy hostage to get their way if they really have a case? And why now are they trying to create even more chaos and uncertainty? Why are they willing to destroy the economic credibility of the United States? What has the GOP got against us – the American middle class – the folks their insane agenda is going to hurt the worst?

So far Missouri House members Todd Akin (R-2) and Billy Long (R-7) have gone on record with statements to the effect that allowing the United States to default on its obligations would be just jim dandy, wouldn’t do any damage at all, no sir! Of course, this is absolutely, demonstrably not the case.

So why do we care what these insane idiots think? We care because right now, by virtue of their position as part of a GOP majority in the House, they are ready to help their radical GOP colleagues trash the economy and make all our lives much harsher.

Steve Benen describes the current options when it comes to the debt ceiling impasse:

The House could (a) simply refuse to do their duty and cause a disaster on purpose; (b) learn to live with a compromise that raises revenues; or (c) grudgingly accept the McConnell/Reid plan.

As Bennen further points out, (a) is unacceptable and (b), given the current GOP insanity, is likely to be impossible, which leaves the third option, (c), as our only way out of this nasty imbroglio.

And dopes like Akin and Long  are poised to play an important role in determining what happens. According to the WaPo‘s Greg Sargent:

Late yesterday GOP Rep. Joe Walsh, who is backed by the Tea Party, began circulating a letter among GOP colleagues that urges GOP leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor to publicly oppose the McConnell plan and even to oppose it coming to the floor for a vote.

A Senate Republican aide tells me that GOP aides will be closely watching the number of signatures it amasses in order to gauge whether the McConnell proposal can get through the House.

If more than 100 House members sign Walsh’s letter, goodbye McConnell/Reid compromise; if it gets no more than 50 signatures, then we may have a winner that can save the credibility of the United States and avoid catastrophe (or as the President puts it, Armageddon).

I don’t know about you, but I’m emailing and phoning Todd Akin, who, sadly, happens to be my congressional representative, in order to let him know that when things go crash, we’ll know just who to hold responsible and there are lots of voices willing to make that case as publicly as possible for as long as possible. I know it’s not likely, given Akin’s proclivities, but just maybe he’ll think twice before signing on to Walsh’s idiocy.  

I’ve commented several times on Roy Blunt’s tendency to play fast and loose with the truth (see, for instance here, here and here). And It seems that his new job as a senator hasn’t changed this particular proclivity. In short, as ThinkProgress notes, Old Roy’s at it again.

Seems like Blunt has been sent out to provide cover for congressional Republicans who are, wittingly or otherwise, out to scuttle the recovery (and Obama’s re-election hopes?) by refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless they get a whole host of ideologically driven spending cuts – cuts they’ll never get if Democrats have what it takes up to stand up to this type of economic terrorism. Roy has been making the rounds of the talk shows claiming that the rating agencies are threatening to cut the U.S. credit rating because of the deficit (here’s the audio of Roy going at it during an interview on KTRS in St. Louis). Of course, this assertion is blatantly false since the agencies involved have been explicit that they are considering this move solely because of the possibility that Republican intransigence will lead to the first ever U.S. credit default.

You can’t default on your debts without consequences and neither can the U.S. government. The debt ceiling pertains to already obligated funds – not new spending, something we would expect Blunt to know. We would also expect that someone who is at least nominally qualified to serve as a U.S. senator would know what the ratings agencies have been very publicly saying. The obvious conclusion is that Roy knows he’s wrong on a number of fronts, knows that the truth is easily available, but has such minimal expectations in regard to the capacity of Americans to distinguish their front side from their back side that he thinks they’ll gladly take anything he says at face value.

I’m also willing to take odds that Blunt knows that his little story about the relationship between the deficit and U.S. credit ratings is not only dishonest in its own right, but gets its punch from another politically motivated fabrication to the effect that the deficit is an immediate problem. Consider, for instance, this graph, prepared by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (via Paul Krugman’s NYT Blog):

The blue line above is the interest rate on 10 year bonds. Note that it is going down; interest rates are decreasing.  As Steve Benen notes:

… .I realize the phrase “interest rate on 10-year bonds” probably isn’t one of those phrases that gets bandied about around American dinner tables, but the more serious a problem the deficit becomes, the higher that blue line would appear.

And therein lies the point: the blue keeps going down. Indeed, it hasn’t been this low in many decades. If the deficit were a drag on the economy, and the United States were facing some sort of debt crisis, that blue line would be through the roof. But that’s not even close to what’s happening.

Remember the movie Pulp Fiction – which popularized the idea of the crimeworld “cleaner,” an individual who, for a price, removes all evidence of a crime? Make you think of a particular junior senator from Missouri perhaps?  

I notice that Hotflash has posted a call to action, asking progressives to turn out Friday to petition our Democratic emissary to Washington, Senator Claire McCaskill, to do what Democrats ought to do reflexively – protect Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, three of the pillars that supported the growth of middle class prosperity in the last century, while mitigating the worst effects of poverty. A worthwhile endeavor for sure, but when the petitioners get to McCaskill’s office, I hope that they ask her why she cares more about the welfare of a few farmers who tied their prosperity to ethanol than she does about seniors and poor children all over the country.

That’s right, Claire plays favorites. As the Post-Dispatch noted, McCaskill was one of those farm-state Democrats that joined the 59 vote majority that killed Senator Tom Curburn’s (R-Oklahoma) effort to get rid of ethanol subsidies and open the U.S. market to more efficient alternative fuels produced in countries like Brazil. Ethanol subsidies are popular with farmers who grow corn and arguably with the fossil-fuel industry that mixes ethanol with gasoline, hoping  to reap mucho green credit for so doing – but with just about nobody else, including environmentalists. Nevertheless, since Missouri has lots of farmers who grow corn, it’s easy to see what Claire hopes to gain.

The Post-Dispatch riffs on the obvious dissonance between McCaskill’s loudly-proclaimed deficit-cutting fervor and her eagerness to prolong this particular example of wasteful government spending. And that’s an important point to make. Hypocrisy does gall, even when the hypocrites are politicians who are all expected to master the art early on in their careers.

What strikes me, though, is the sheer unfairness of her priorities. Farmers? Claire’ll be with ’em no matter how much it costs the government. No need to go whinging to her office. Poor children and seniors? Apparently we’ve got to beg her to keep them in mind, and when we’re done begging, we’ll parse her answers carefully to figure out where she’ll finally land – and how hard. We’ll have to cross our fingers that her better angels, her Democratic angels, prevail.

I’m away from Missouri for awhile so I won’t be joining the good souls who will meet at Senator McCaskill’s office on Friday. I only hope they don’t to forget to remind her that we don’t only have farmers here in Missouri; we also have lots of poor children and elderly who have nobody but her in the Senate to defend them against the got-mine mentality of the GOP.

By now you’ve heard lots and lots about how our esteemed Senator Claire McCaskill has been trying to establish some of the thrifty granny cred beloved, she believes, in outstate Missouri, by shopping around a plan to institute draconian automatic spending caps. You’ve probably also heard that this plan is  “insane” and “a depression maker” – and arguments substantiating these labels are more than convincing. So why hasn’t McCaskill been willing to cut her losses and walk away from this very bad idea?

It isn’t as if her own party doesn’t know better. An article in the Wallstreet Journal reported that the White House and leading Democrats “have mounted a drive to discredit the idea,” even bringing in White House budget director Jacob Lew to school Senators about why caps such as those proposed by Senator McCaskill and Tennessee’s Senator Bob Corker are a really dumb idea. Even Jay Rockefeller, no slacker when it comes to stiffing his own party, has called out the McCaskill-Corker legislation as not too smart. MoveOn.org released a letter signed by 75 prominent economists outlining the ways that McCaskill’s spending cuts approach would be a very serious mistake indeed.

So, once again, why is our ostensibly Democratic senator holding firm in the face of overwhelmingly strong evidence that that what she is proposing is economic idiocy? Could it be that she is that worried about the accusations of “socialism” sure to come from Tea Partying opponents like Sarah Steelman and, possibly, Rep. Todd Akin? Hasn’t she figured out that they are vulnerable now that people are beginning to wake up to the fact that taking an out-of-control chain-saw to government spending may mean cutting more than foreign aid and inner city welfare?  Getting rid of things like Social Security and Medicare isn’t really as popular as one might suppose.

Speaking of cutting Medicare and Social Security, identifying oneself with this particular spending cap proposal may be bad politics as well as bad policy.  McCaskill has stated that she does not support Medicare or Social Security benefit cuts (although she has also indicated that she would be willing to push up the eligibility age for Social Security benefits – a de facto cut). However, a big part of the problem with the McCaskill-Corker  spending caps is that they would entail such massive cuts to both programs that it makes the cuts proposed in Rep. Paul Ryan’s GOP budget fiasco seem mild. Does McCaskill really want to tar herself with that particular brush?

Instituting automatic spending caps is one of those ideas that seem reasonable at first blush and it’s easy to explain to the economically unsophisticated. However, it addresses the wrong problem – the deficit is not caused by out-of-control spending, but by the recession, the Bush tax cuts and two expensive wars in the Mideast. Its effects would be disastrous for those middle class and working people McCaskill claims to support. It reinforces false Republican narratives and weakens the Democratic brand. It doesn’t even make good political sense – why would a Democrat want to be known for trying to shove Medicare into a grave while it is still alive and kicking?  

Could it be that McCaskill believes that at this point she has gone so far out on this particular rotten limb that she has no choice but to hang on? I have often been disturbed by Claire McCaskill’s choices – but I’ve never thought she was dumb. At least not until now.

Today Senator Claire McCaskill (D) announced she was supporting legislation which would eliminate tax breaks for oil and gas companies:

Senator Claire McCaskill (D): …This really isn’t very complicated. This is very simple. There is more hot air around this building about deficit reduction than any other topic right now. And if we cannot end subsidies to the five biggest most profitable corporations in the history of the planet that come from the federal taxpayer then I don’t think anyone should take us seriously about deficit reduction.

Every dime that we will realize from this bill will go towards reducing the deficit. the fiscal commission has spent a lot of time talking about it, the gang of six is negotiating about it, uh, the Republican Party gives out con, conflicting statements every day about it.

Uh, the bottom line is this, if we can’t do this, if we can’t remove subsidies from these profitable big oil companies then I don’t know if we can ever get to the really difficult work that lies ahead. This ought to be the essence of low hanging fruit. And we ought to get busy, in fact, this ought to be hot lined. Uh, this ought to be a bill that goes to the floor, uh, very quickly and receives unanimous support. Uh, removing these special deductions that have allowed this, these profits to soar even above where they’re gonna soar anyway…

…I will say that the CEO of, of Conoco Phillips actually said in a hearing, and I’ll quote him, “With respect to oil and gas exploration and production we do not need incentives.” Um, and so, there is nothing about our bill that removes the incentives of the oil and gas industry to explore and to drill and to produce more oil. In fact, oil production domestically is much higher today than it was in the Bush administration. We have more, uh, rigs operating now since the point in time they began kep, keeping records, nine, down in nineteen eighty-seven. Oil production has been up in two thousand nine and two thousand ten, so, uh, in, in terms of our domestic capability.

So all of these are, are frankly false arguments and what we’re really talking about today has less to do with, with the pain that my constituents are feeling at the pump and more to do with what our country can afford…

…The legislation mandates that it goes towards deficit reduction. I support the bill because it goes towards deficit reduction. I will not support the bill if it goes for any other purpose…

It’s not going over well with the usual suspects:

McCaskill aims to strip tax breaks from Big Five oil companies

….The oil industry is preparing for the fight. Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, labeled the Democrats’ bill a “vindictive money grab.”

Replied McCaskill: “I would have been surprised if he said this is a great idea…They can hire 14 different associations to say this is evil….”

Vindictive? No, vindictive would be a clause in the bill requiring testing for illegal drug use by all employees of recipients of public aid, you know, like corporate welfare.

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows that I’m on a tear about how Missouri’s Democratic Senator McCaskill is undercutting progressive goals with her deficit peacockery – a term coined by The Center for American Progress to describe politicians who strut their deficit stuff instead of supporting serious economic solutions. It’s bad enough that McCaskill legitimizes arguable GOP claims about the need to prioritize the deficit during a recession, but she has gone much further and teamed up with Tennessee’s GOP Senator Bob Corker to propose spending caps that have been widely characterized, among other pejoratives, as “insane.”

Insanity like McCaskill-Corker may yet do in the Democratic party as a viable alternative to the know-nothing GOP. Today, we read that a small cabal of Democratic Senators may join up with Republicans who are willing to risk financial catastrophe in order to force budget cuts – cuts so harmful that they can only be secured by taking the nation’s economy hostage. McCaskill’s name is, so far, not publicly included on the list of Democratic quislings who want to trade budget cuts for raising the debt ceiling, but the irresponsible McCaskill-Corker spending cap is widely seen as the potential price that may be exacted.  

Do Democrats really want to highlight the difference between themselves and the Grand Old Plutocrats in 2012? Good luck with that as long as Democrats like McCaskill and her cabal are pushing for a spending cap that would inevitably necessitate cuts to Medicare and Social Security that could make the GOP look like pikers. As economist Jeffry Sachs notes, “the current budget negotiations have been a dialogue among the wealthy. The big debate has focused on which programs for the poor should be axed first.” Unfortunately, Democrats like McCaskill have completely bought into that perennial GOP framework.

The tragedy is that McCaskill’s type of deficit preening is unnecessary – she can still swan around gassing about fiscal responsibility, but without selling out her Democratic values. The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) has proposed a budget that, as Paul Krugman describes it, is “is actually much more of a real response to the deficit worriers than all the nonsense we’re hearing from the right.”

The CPC budget would balance the budget in 10 years without inflicting the harm to our public and social infrastructure that is inherent in McCaskill-Corker. It is, in Sachs words, “humane, responsible, and most of all sensible, reflecting the true values of the American people and the real needs of the floundering economy.” It provides for the type of investment that we need to return to prosperity. Instead, to our shame, Democrats like McCaskill are putting forward unbalanced, draconian solutions to meet a nonexistent crisis – there is a potential deficit problem in the future if the economic recovery fails, but there is no looming deficit crisis. Sadly, simplistic solutions like McCaskill-Corker have the potential to stall the economic recovery, perhaps even increase the deficit, all the while creating a world of hurt for the American people.

The question is, if McCaskill is both a real Democrat and serious about deficit reduction, why isn’t she out beating the hustings trying to sell the CPC budget or something similar instead of buoying up the GOP narrative? She could get all the deficit-fighting glory she thinks she needs, while standing up for core Democratic values – values she claims to support.  She’d be doing the right thing and the base would love her – as well as a potentially big chunk of those independents – and even some Republicans – who think that we ought to raise taxes on the wealthy before we cut benefits to working and middle class taxpayers.

But of course, such logic ignores the premise behind the peacock label – which, to my mind, has something to do with the way that peacocks and pea-brains go together.

Addendum:  Read this report where McCaskill, speaking about Medicare and Social Security, says:

Rest assured, I, along with a lot of my Democratic colleagues in the United States Senate, are not interested in destroying Medicare as we know it and not interested in going back on our word in terms of what senior citizens can expect from Social Security

Then read this analysis of the McCaskill-Corker spending cuts, prepared by the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, and tell me if McCaskill is trying to pull somebody’s leg – or does she just not understand what happens down the road if her own proposal is implemented?