By now everybody knows that House Republicans have proposed massive cuts to discretionary spending in the name of cutting the deficit – never mind that such cuts, while wreaking havoc in the lives of middle and working class Americans, will do almost nothing to deal with the actual deficit. Or never mind that the deficit could be halved by 2021 if these same GOPers weren’t so hellbent on preserving the Bush tax cuts – cuts that are one of the main reasons we have a deficit to start with. Or never mind that many of the cuts will actually drive up federal spending and increase the deficit in the long run (see also here).

Many of us have been somewhat bemusedly watching these antics, hoping that the Senate’s usually rather spineless Democratic majority will, for once, provide a bulwark against the GOP cost cutting charade. Recently, in an effort to pressure the Senate to do just the opposite, our obstreperous little GOPers have produced one of those group  publicity stunts letters wherein they figuratively stamp their collective GOP feet and demand that the Senate Democratic majority follow their ill-informed, ideologically driven lead and pass the self-assertion exercise disguised as a budget that they have sent forward, national welfare be damned.  Prominent among the signers of this epistle is Missouri’s own Billy Long (R-7) and Vicky Hartzler (R-4).

In fact, as the Turner Report notes, in her  latest newsletter, Miss Vicky waxes eloquent about the heroic resolve to deal with the depredations of big government spending that led her to sign this insolent opus:

The previous Congress failed to pass a budget for 2011, forcing new Members to deal with the mess left behind. We have come up with proposals that cut spending and create jobs, but the Senate will not do its job. Mr. Reid, pass a bill!

I’d like Senator Reid to pass a bill too – just not the slap-dash atrocity put together by the intellectual midgets that the Tea Party sent to Washington D.C. For one thing, contrary to Hartzler’s assertion, their proposals will do the exact opposite of creating jobs – their simple-minded approach to cost-cutting could actually lead to a 700,000 job loss. That’s not a comforting prospect to those of us who live in the real world and who want to see the economic recovery continue.

The other problem with Hartzler’s zeal, however, lies in the fact that she supports a bill that ignores some real budgetary fat – oil and agricultural subsidies, for instance. I know that Miss Vicky knows about at least one of these unnecessary giveaways because she’s one of those on the dole. As ABC’s Good Morning America noted today:

… some of the Tea Party’s leaders have a case of “Hill Hypocrisy” for attacking government spending while taking millions in government money. ABC’s senior political correspondent Jonathan Karl reported “the Tea Party movement is all about slashing federal spending, but at least five House members  with Tea Party connections have themselves collected more than $100,000 each in federal farm subsidies, totalling [sic] more than $8 million since 1995.

One of those five agricultural welfare recipients is little Miss Vicky. So before Hartzler – who likes to boast about her Christian credentials – signs any more letters demanding that the Senate Democrats cut spending that benefits the poor and the middle class, not to mention our economic recovery, she ought to consider the scriptural admonition, found in John 8:7, that only he who is without sin should cast stones.

 

Via TPM, in a fund-raising letter Senator Claire “Deficit Scourge” McCaskill pledges not to cut Social Security benefits:

I don’t think anyone is going to propose cutting Social Security benefits — if they do, I’ll vote against those cuts,” she writes.

Of course, the proof is always in the pudding and what people mean by “cuts” varies. Lots of politicians, for instance, don’t seem to realize that raising the age for social security eligibility is in effect a benefit cut.  Nevertheless, this is heartening, and I agree with TPM’s Brian Buetler that, given McCaskill’s weak position, “this suggests the poltiifcs [sic] of Social Security is still on the side of those who don’t want to see benefit cuts.”

McCaskill also deserves kudos for targeting her deficit cutting zeal toward some areas that really are wasteful and unnecessary. In that regard, she sets herself apart from our House GOP delegation which unanimously voted this week to preserve huge taxpayer subsidies for the oil industry. She says very succinctly:

One of the first items on the chopping block should be subsidies for big oil corporations which are among the richest and most profitable companies in the world.

To which I say … Amen lady!

Read the entire letter here. Lots of good-sounding stuff, but I’ve been misled by McCaskill in the past when she’s wanted money, so I’m still waiting to see what she delivers.

This morning lots of blogging space is properly being given over to indignant chortling about John Boehner’s declaration that the U.S. has to make dangerous and destructive spending cuts because the country is “broke.” The punchline consists in the fact that he is at the same time insisting on retaining funds for a boondoggle defense project that will benefit his home state. I’m speaking of funding to develop a second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter – a project that even the Pentagon wants to abandon. A wasteful earmark by any other name … eh?

But Boehner isn’t the only GOPer playing Simple Simon –  you, know – do as I say, not as I do. Among the five significant categories of wasteful spending identified by Think Progress’ Zaid Jilani where big cuts could be made without significant repercussions are agribusiness subsidies:

The federal government “paid out a quarter of a trillion dollars in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2009.” “Just ten percent of America’s largest and richest farms collect almost three-fourths” of these subsidies.

Of course these five areas of expenditure, which almost all, like farm subsidies, benefit the wealthy, have been treated as if they are off-limits by the GOP. Which brings us to Vicky Hartzler (R-4), who when she is not trying to impersonate one of the people’s representatives, is a well-to-do Missouri farmer who has benefited handsomely from those very farm subsidies. Her own good fortune in retaining taxpayer support, no doubt, makes it easy for her to cheer the destruction of programs that benefit those poor and middle class deadbeats who not only benefit from, but often survive thanks to the programs she and her House cronies want to stamp out because we are, you know, “broke.”  

Rep. Billy Long (R-7) seems bemused about how physically large the U.S. budget document is:

FY2012 hit my desk, 4 Volumes – Budget – Historical Tables – Analytical Perspectives – Appendix & it weighs more than any Bass I ever caught

If you go to his Web page, however, you will better understand his apparent surprise that a sophisticated, powerful country with a population north of 300 million people might need more than a three page budget. That good ol’ Billy, who’s been on a budget cutting spree with his GOP homeboys, is a man of few words is readily apparent in the section devoted to his views on spending cuts and debt which reads in its entirety:

Spending Cuts and Debt affect us all and dealing with these issues are important to my work in Congress.

Is this what people mean by “laconic”? In case you think he dealt with the issue elsewhere, here’s Billy on the related topic of the economy and jobs – and, I assure you, there’s no more than this:

The issues of Economy and Jobs are important to our district and to my work in Congress.

Billy may not know all the facts – or any of the facts – but he does seem to want to keep quiet about it. Not so Vicky Hartzler (R-4) who had this to say about President Obama’s 2012 budget:

Citizens of the 4th District want their government to cut spending and help create jobs, … This budget proposal fails these tests in every respect. We’ve got to do better for our children and grandchildren.

Somebody ought to tell her what John Boehner acknowledged today – the budget cuts that the House – including little Vicky – wants to enact  will cost mucho jobs*. And what’s worse, Boehner admitted that he and, presumably, his rank-and-file GOP House members, don’t really care. Vicky ought to check in with her leadership now and then. At the very least, she needs to know what it is she owes to the children and grandchildren, doesn’t she?  

And while Vicky’s working on her attitude, she ought to have a word with Rep. Akin (R-2) who seems to be reading from the same script. I suspect if I were to visit the pages of the rest of our House GOP members, I would find statements that indicate that these folks are all equally careless about the nature of the real world and the role of finance.

After all, the incessant GOP babble about “fiscal reality” is coming from people who went after the 2011 budget like a troop of blind-folded axe murderers. If enacted, their proposed cuts would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and put vastly more vulnerable people at risk.

In fact, the Center for American Progress (CAP) tells us that the House Appropriations Committee shoe-horned a hack-job on the budgets of 12 of the 15 federal agencies into a two week period. This time frame means that:

… not only will those voting on the proposal have little opportunity to understand it but the authors themselves will not have fully vetted or completely understood what they are proposing. There have been no hearings, no requests for testimony, and no opportunity even for staff charged with proposing the cuts to do agency-by-agency analysis of the possible negative consequences. Members will vote next week on the package without fundamental knowledge of how major budget changes in literally thousands of federal programs will impact the country in general or their own constituents in particular.

Then, of course, there is the fact that the cuts, although plenty destructive, don’t really amount to a hill of beans when it comes to deficit cutting:

The $44 billion that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is insisting we take out of the domestic spending is “peanuts.” With a $1.5 trillion deficit it could be lost as a rounding error. But applied to only a selected sliver of the entire budget it could do immense damage to critically needed government infrastructure and services.

There is also the fact that in many of the agencies these cuts will mostly result in  personnel cuts – CAP gives the example of the FBI –  where termination costs will wipe out most of the savings, not to mention the expense that will be incurred when displaced stafff move onto the unemployment rolls. But, oh frabjous day, the hatchet job will have the effect of rendering agencies like the FBI nearly toothless.

I’ve read that ol’ Billy Long is sitting back and savoring the pleasures of a job completed in regard to the 2011 budget the House has produced: “we got her done” he is quoted as saying. I wonder if he and the rest of the gang has any idea what it is they’ve actually done? Are our elected GOP officials even capable of a process that, as CAP puts it, “insures we all understand what we are cutting and what benefits and costs of those cuts will be”? Yet indications are that these same thickwits are aching to shut the government down in the name of budget cuts the impact or effectiveness of which they don’t begin to fully fathom – all so some Tea Partiers can make a “dramatic statement.”

* Link added to TPM article describing the scope of job loss.

Juke or Jook: fake, (football) a deceptive move made by a football player.  Synonyms: fraud, imposter, pseudo, fake, faker, pretender,  role player, shammer, sham.

How long will it take for Missourians to wake up to the fact that we’ve sent a pack of jukes to D.C. and to Jefferson City to take care of our financial welfare. You know what jukes are, right? Jukes point left and run right, carrying our ball right along with them, leaving us with nothing and no prospects for anything. Right now there’s lots of jukin’ going on.

The primetime juking is happening in Washington where the chawbacon economists that have hit the capital have been pointing left and screaming “I see a deficit,” while running right and trying to make sure that government can no longer do any of the things we want it to do. This week GOP House members announced their support for cuts in spending for infrastructure, national parks, scientific research, food assistance to low income women and children, community health centers, etc. There’s lots more pain in the their plans than I have space to list (see list of proposed cuts here), but the kicker is – get this – for all the suffering and lost opportunities these cuts represent, they won’t do diddly about the deficit. As Think Progress puts it:

In the grand scheme of deficit reduction, these cuts will do absolutely nothing, but they will have extremely detrimental effects for those who depend upon the targeted programs. This shows the folly of the GOP’s approach to budgeting, which leaves huge parts of the federal budget immune to cuts (like the Pentagon), while taking an axe to non-defense discretionary spending. These cuts outlined above total about $1 billion, while simply retiring (and not replacing) one carrier battle group and its aircraft wing would save $1.5 billion.

So, our GOPers in the house are planning to take a wrecking ball to vital government programs that have nothing to do with the problems they cited when they persuaded us to give them the wrecking tools. They’re doing this even though, when polled, Americans don’t support the proposed cuts and they will cost thousands of jobs. But that doesn’t bother our jukes; pols like, for instance, Missouri’s Billy Long (R-7) are sure they’ve done something big. According to the Turner Report, ol’ Billy  is patting himself on the back and fatuously proclaiming, “we got ‘er done.”  

Back home in Missouri, the local jukes are also hard at it. Remember how they whined about jobs and job creation before the election? And what are they doing to create jobs? Attacking unions, undercutting workers, doing their best to insure that if, by some miracle, any jobs are created, they’ll be the sort that nobody but the most desperate will take. These ideologically driven strategies are supposed to create a “business-friendly” climate, but as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch observed:

Business-friendly is one thing. Business-promiscuous is quite another. Before the state goes past second base with these suitors, it would be wise to ask why – given all the pro-business initiatives of past years – the economy is still in a funk. Businesses were given tax breaks, tax credits, tax incentives, low corporate taxes and tort reform. So where are the jobs? Or did they just pocket the savings?

Of course not all jukes are created equal. And by that I mean competent; I also mean our new State Auditor, Thomas Schweich. When faced with the task of analyzing the financial impact of the proposed mega sales tax/income tax swap that is being engineered by political sugar daddy Rex Sinquefield, Schweich ended up looking like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights.

The facts, after all, aren’t that favorable to the unfair tax, so poor little Schweich, fearing to offend King Rex from whom all favors flow, claimed that the job just couldn’t be done. Nope. No way.  No mathematical skills, models, or reasoned estimates could be employed  – although use of those tools is an everyday thing for financial types – like auditors – who are able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The upshot: Schweich looks like a fool;  he pointed left, but just hasn’t got what it takes to run the ball to the right.

The unFair tax proponents are themselves juking in a number of directions. One of the most interesting is the proposal to cap the sales tax at 7%. As numerous analysts have shown, such a low cap is absurd if one expects the swap-out to be revenue neutral. And, of course, those of us who raise this point are missing the whole jukin’ game. These daddies don’t have the slightest interest in revenue neutral – they want to force cuts, the more the better. Here, one should note that in some dialects being juked has another connotation – as in baby, you’ve been screwed.

GOP juke economics are ultimately an exercise in ideological strategy. If there is less money, there will necessarily be less government spending on those vital programs that so disturb the John Galt roleplayers and excite the wrath of Tea Partying grannies  whose bile rises at the thought of all those welfare queens living high on the taxpayer dollar. When the consequences fall on all of us, though,  Missourians who voted GOP will have nobody to blame but themselves.

In case you want proof that GOP nowadays stands for nothing more than Gut the Obama Presidency – no matter how badly it damages the public welfare – I’ve got a story for  you. The essential background involves the way GOP pols won’t shut up about the “failed” stimulus, even though almost all analyses of the facts show that the stimulus spending was one of the factors that saved us from a flat-out depression. Some of you have also no doubt read about the numerous instances where GOP pols who voted against the stimulus and who continue to lie about its success, have also tried to take credit for projects that the stimulus brought to their states.

Which brings us to the 112th congress where the House of Representatives is dominated by the gentlemen of the Spiteful Old Party who are getting ready to kick, scream, and hold their breath until they turn blue and pass out, or until they get their way. And it seems that what they want is to destroy the economic benefits created by the stimulus – for no more reason evidently than to deny the other guys a tangible success, even one that has already been misrepresented almost out of political existence.  

One of the ways they are planning to achieve this goal is by canceling the authority to expend the small amount of unspent money allocated to the stimulus – although such funds are almost all already committed to in-process projects. This move packs, as Think Progress observes, a double whammy:

… By cutting off stimulus funds to current projects, Republicans could leave projects half-finished and force mass layoffs at stimulus-funded sites. This wasteful idea is even more cynical given the fact that Republicans have taken credit for major stimulus projects that are still ongoing and could be affected by their new anti-stimulus budget:

Guess what Missouri project fits this description? If you guessed the Highway 141 expansion that isn’t due to be completed until September 2012, you’d be right. And guess what Missouri Tea Party Caucusing GOPer is giving his imprimatur to recalling the funds for the project? This time, you’d be right if you said Todd Akin (R-2). Now remember back to the time when work on the Highway 141 project first began, and Rep. Akin was on hand to bless the highway project and try to garner his little bit of credit for the jobs it would create and infrastructure improvement we would all enjoy. He wasn’t a bit shy about trying to hog the camera then.

Akin has been pretty blatant about claiming credit for stimulus projects in the past – we wrote some time ago about how he falsely tried to take credit for securing funds for the old Gravois bridge that was rebuilt with stimulus funds he voted against. Of course, ignoring the source of the funds for the expansion of Highway 141 in St. Louis County wasn’t in the cards, so Akin tried to hijack part of the credit for the project while simultaneously backhanding the stimulus:

This was paid for by a bill that I hate.. I didn’t vote for it and I still wouldn’t vote for it and on the other hand.. we ended up getting the money for this project which I think is a very high priority,” he said.  “It’s unfortunately just a very small part of that bill.

Much of the spending in that bill went to similar projects and to tax cuts. I wonder what it is Akin hates? Especially now that he wants to leave all those projects in the lurch without funds that have already been allocated.

While it’s sometimes fun to watch a hack politician try a delicate balancing act, the performance leaves me with another question. Just what would it take to wake up the complacent individuals who have continued to vote for Akin in election after election? Surely, few individuals, even everyday, rank-and-file Republicans, want to endorse hypocritical politicians who can turn on a dime and sacrifice the welfare of their constituents in order to score political points?  

About a week ago, Claire McCaskill was intereviewed by Dan Marsh on St. Louis Public Radio KWMU’s “Talk of the Town” radio program. (You can hear the interview here; McCaskill’s segment begins about half way in.) McCaskill is a smart lady although she spouts lots of pure twaddle (more about that later in another post), along with pushing some really bad ideas – like spending caps (which she is confident will be enacted “now” – by which one expects she means now that she has more Republican allies). She nevertheless does get some things right.

In this particular interview, her shining moment came on the topic of tax policy. McCaskill quite correctly insisted that spending cuts were not the be-all and end-all of deficit reduction strategy. To her credit, she broached the issue of generating revenue. She offered some very cogent observations about reforming the tax code in order to generate greater revenue while lowering the tax burden. Her main points can be paraphrased as follows:

— A fairer tax code means more revenue and lower taxes.

— Reform has not been tackled because the much vaunted size and complexity of the tax code does not affect most taxpayers, 70-75% of whom do not itemize. The tax code was written for the benefit of the wealthy, and its complexity reflects the success of many lobbyists over many years.

–Subsidies for almost all segments of our economy have been thrown into the tax code; if we were to clean out the “junk” and the government were to stop “cutting checks” to, for instance, the oil industry, along with scores of other industries, we would solve the revenue problem.

Although I don’t have numbers to back up McCaskill’s claims, the argument is not hers alone but is gaining intellectual traction even within the Obama administration. Wasteful subsidies are beginning to get more attention in general. The Washington Monthly, for instance, just published an article by Jeffrey Leonard, significantly titled “Get the Energy Sector off the Dole,” that argues persuasively for gutting all energy subsidies, even those for green or alternative energy sources.

However, Leonard may be relying on will-o-wisps to support his further argument that the time for subsidy reform may have come. Specifically, he is hopeful that an alliance with the more libertarian, anti-government spending Tea Party types might actually provide the political clout to finally get the job done. And it’s a logical supposition based on the libertarian rhetoric of some of the new GOP legislators he quotes.

Alas, I’m a Missourian now, and in respect to optimistic hopes of beneficent, cooperative Tea Partiers, I offer two words: Vicky Hartzler. We all remember how Hartzler went to war during her campaign against government spending and interference – except for the corn subsidies that she and her husband receive and which she tried to rationalize as essential to national security. I can also pull up two more discouraging words: Roy Blunt. Coasting to a win with support of the Missouri Tea Party types, Blunt floated a jobs plan that was arguably little more than a giveaway to the very industry interests who most profit from tax subsidies.  Indeed, if you look at the GOP as a whole, within a month of election, thirteen new members of the House GOP appointed industry lobbyists to manage their offices. More such appointments have followed. I am very much afraid that Tea Party concern with government spending will stop when the money is not being directed to any of the various shades of undeserving poor who inhabit their fantasy “handout nation.”  

Nor are Harzler and her GOP confrères alone in their reluctance to make changes that come close to home or otherwise upset the fat cats who pay for campaigns. Senator McCaskill herself has stepped up to the plate to defend ethanol subsidies recently. If even McCaskill, who certainly knows the score, won’t walk the walk, I’m afraid we’ll have a long wait before we see significant reform.  

Thanks to the Democratic leadership in the U.S. House and Senate, who persevered in the face of ongoing Republican obstruction, Missouri will receive almost $400 million dollars to stave off teacher layoffs and cuts in Medicaid. This means, as Michael Bersin pointed out earlier, that jobs have been saved. Many of our neediest have been given breathing space for another year. The state, which is balancing on the edge of a fiscal knife, may avoid, for one more year at least, transformation into the third-world outpost that GOP legislative leaders seem to want to create.

It’s no surprise, though, that those same just-say-no Republicans who tried to kill the bill  are hell-bent on distorting this tiny extension of stimulus spending.

Blaine Luetkemeyer, for instance, wants to turn the tables and present his obstruction as an effort to save jobs:

It was a bad bill, pure and simple. It’s another bailout,” Luetkemeyer said. “Our challenge is to find ways to help businesses keep doing what they’re doing.

Luetkemeyer is partially right. Finding ways to help small businesses grow and expand is important if we are going to crawl out of this recession – but the way to do it is not to destroy the consumer base that provides the fuel for economic growth.  

Todd Akin tried another tack: play on the sense of resentment that seems to animate so many Republicans. Akin asks us to begrudge the money going to those grasshoppers in spendthrift states who fiddled while industrious Missouri ants suffered and cut their social spending right through to the bones of the neediest among them:

It wasn’t easy but our legislature balanced Missouri’s budget. And most Missourians individually make difficult and responsible spending choices every day. Yet today’s bill will force Missourians – and all Americans – to spend the next decade paying off six months of new spending, most of which will benefit states that had neither the courage nor the wisdom to balance their own budgets.

The next decade paying it off? Akin is more economically challenged than I thought – the bill is not only “paid-for” out of cuts elsewhere, but it will cut $1 billion from the deficit.

Roy Blunt couldn’t be bothered to vote on this spendig bill because he was too busy campaigning in Missouri – which is to say gallivanting around the state lying about his record as a leader of the Republican Congress responsible for a recession that cost the country nearly eight million jobs. When the Carnahan campaign called him on his dereliction, however, he quickly jumped on the resentment and begrudgery band-wagon so capably driven by Akin:

Now she’s [i.e., Carnahan] supporting another $26.1 billion bailout for states that have failed to manage their budgets so they can kick the can down the road another year. Missourians are saying ‘enough is enough.

I don’t know about all the Missourians that Blunt evidently thinks he speaks for, but this Missourian has had enough. Enough of lies about the stimulus, enough of obstruction, and more than enough of what is happening to our state because these prime jackasses think that they can keep on keeping on if only they make sure that the economy tanks so they can blame it on the Democrats. Ezra Klein eloquently sums the situation up:

…there’s no debate over what state and local aid does: It allows the continuation of programs that are already ongoing, the preservation of jobs that people already occupy, the protection of tax rates that are currently in place. It doesn’t promote economic expansion, which is a somewhat uncertain business. It prevents economic contraction, which is a much more predictable project.

If states have to cut $120 billion from their budgets, that money — and the things it does — will just leave the economy. There will be fewer jobs, higher taxes, less financial aid. None of that is speculative. There’s no theory in which it doesn’t happen.

Conventional wisdom – you know, those clichés that animate corporate media analysis – has it that you can’t raise taxes in tough times when revenues shrink, so you must cut spending in order to balance your budget. Republicans, as authors and seminal propagators of these clichés, are firm about this tenet. Consequently, Governor Nixon, a realist faced with a majority Republican legislature, is going about the business of “fixing” our state budget problems by slashing essential spending – while the legislature plans an orgy of tax cutting that is sure to bring a smile to the faces of their I-got-mine-but-I-want-more constituency.

Meanwhile, everybody agrees that the issue is jobs, but nobody seems to notice that the budget cuts that are being made will mean lots of lost jobs – real tangible jobs, lost right now while we are struggling hardest to keep our heads above water. To be precise, Mark Zandi of Moody.com estimates that state budget cuts will cost the U.S.  900,000 jobs unless more stimulus funds reach the states in time.

The proposed tax cuts, on the other hand, might or might not mean a few more jobs sometime in the future. Objective data does not really confirm that lowering tax rates necessarily leads to job creation. As a case in point, Missouri has seen mediocre job growth over the last decade when compared with many states with higher taxes.

Still our Missouri Republicans insist dragging us all, as Zaid Jilani at Think Progress puts it, down:

… the path of the “deficit peacocks,” who demand cutting social spending while ruling out tax increases on those who have benefited immensely from years of conservative policies.  

This choice has not been universal; Jilani describes states such as Oregon and Wisconsin where progressive policymakers have decided that:

… at a time when the tax burden between the wealthy and the middle class is “narrower than at any time in modern history”  …[to] look for ways to responsibly raise revenues while protecting their states’ spending on vital programs.

Looks like we will get another chance to test Keynesian solutions against “free market” business giveaways – and one can only shudder when thinking about how, if the tax cutting mentality continues to prevail, the Missouri misery index will almost surely soar in the coming months.