However, governing is about making choices, and Obama has not yet shown any more stomach for deficit reduction than Bush did.

The man hasn’t even been President a month yet.

It’s been made overly clear that the economy is broken, and that an enormous stimulus plan must be enacted to attempt to stop the disaster and jump start the system.  This jump start hasn’t even been signed yet and these wankers are comparing it to making a budget?

Listen, you fuckers, if we hadn’t given massive tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and launched an illegal war of aggression against a country that neither attacked us nor had the means to attack us, we’d be entering our ZERO DEFICIT years, per Clinton. 

Two terms of Dem President cleaned up the nonsense from St Ronnie’s deficits on down.  How about we actually let That One enact his plan and see if it works before nitpicking the shit out of it and complaining?  You know, reality-based thinking is back in fashion.

Just when you think that the Republicans can’t possibly get more ridiculous, they go and bring the stupid to whole new levels.

See, I don’t get the whole tax cut cult.  Seriously.  I know why they want to give it to their CEO buddies.  That’s a no-brainer.  The insistence that they want to cut taxes for average citizens is really… I mean… what good will they do for the vast and growing number of people who won’t be helped by tax cuts because they aren’t paying taxes because they don’t have a job, thus no income on which to pay taxes.

I don’t get the tax cut logic either.  I don’t see how it frees up any money now.  If it does anything positive for the general pocketbook (a very big if) it won’t be until next tax season anyway.

Now do we understand why Obama gave them a chance to play nice?

ONE chance.  Just one.  Now that they demanded and got concessions and then didn’t live up to the spirit of cooperation, they can officially go fuck themselves and they have only themselves to blame.

at some point, you have to realize that Republicans can only be worked with in the capacity that they themselves want to work with others, the same way you don’t put the kid who throws shit at people’s heads in with the other kids for art time until he learns how not to do that.

I know that.  You know that.  Every goddamned member of the liberal blogosphere knows that.  Almost every single person that doesn’t belong to the Republican party and/or live inside the Beltway knows that.

I’ve yet to see that Harry Reid knows that or, for that matter, that Barack Obama knows it.  If, as Ms Kate says, this was their one chance, then that’s good, I suppose.  Though I would wish he gave them a chance on something a bit less essential to our continued existence as a people.  But I’ll believe that this was their one chance when they aren’t actually given more chances.  I’m not holding my breath.

Stephen -

You’re not thinking enough steps ahead.

Harry Reid is a weakling and a fool.  Barack Obama is neither.  How many times have we wished that he would be more agressive, hit back harder, only to see him win out in the end because he looked calm and in control while his enemies lashed out wildly? 

During the first days of his presidency, while working on a bill that - as you pointed out - is “essential to our continued existence as a people” (in other words, when everybody is watching), he tries for bipartisanship.  He has meetings with Republicans both individually, and in committee.  He takes suggestions.  He makes concessions.  Everyone sees him doing this. 

And then they throw it back in his teeth.  Not a single vote in the House.  Everyone sees that, too. 

Okay, so he takes the same act to the Senate.  Cue endless debates and demands that amount to a filibuster.  While everybody watches and waits anxiously for something to happen.  Finally, they have to vote for cloture just to get the thing moving again.  That actually gets 3 whole Republicans onboard. 

About this same time, Obama goes on tour, taking his argument directly to the people about how much we need this stimulus package, and how there’s no time to lose. 

Meanwhile, the Senate version of the bill sails through on a straight up-and-down vote.  As we speak, the final bill - a compromise between the House and Senate versions - is prepared and ready for final congressional action.  Obama could be signing it within days.  And the Republicans - except for the three who have proven willing to actually play ball - are whining because they’ve been shut out by this point.  But no one cares because Obama has successfully framed the situation: he looks like he genuinely reached out in a spirit of bipartisanship, and they look like they’re willing to obstruct a crucial-to-our-survival bill out of sheer politics and spite.  And judging by those polls, Americans are noticing for once. 

In other words, Obama has once again given his opponents enough rope to hang themselves, talked them into tying the noose, throwing the rope over a beam, and sticking their heads in it (all the while thinking they were hurting him by doing so), leaving only the actual kicking-the-chair-away part to him.

As for the actual package itself, and how well he succeeded at what he set out to do?  I think a commenter at Talking Points Memo said it best:

Like everyone else, I’m waiting for the details. But from what I’ve heard so far, this seems to be a remarkable triumph for the new president.

A month ago, Obama economists Romer and Bernstein released job-creation projections that “assumed a package just slightly over the $775 billion currently under discussion.” Lo and behold, the final bill comes in at $789 billion. It reportedly includes Obama’s proposed tax cuts, comprising almost exactly the same proportion of the overall package. For the past month, media attention has focused on all the changes to the package, and on the controversies it has engendered. Obama has been criticized for failing to forge a bipartisan consensus, for not safeguarding his priorities, and for not taking a sufficiently aggressive role in the negotiations on the Hill. So it’s worth stepping back to take note of the fact that the final package looks remarkably like what Obama has wanted all along. In fact, it’s closer to that original proposal than to either the House or Senate versions of the bill. Remarkable.

Whether or not it’s the right package is a whole separate topic. But as a legislative achievement, coming so early in the term, this is astonishing.

Me, I hope Obama offers the Repubs another chance with each significant piece of legislation he sets out to pass, as long as he keeps being highly-visible about it, and keeps making his sales pitch for each straight to the people (which I suspect he will - that’s always been his way).  Either the Repubs will learn that it’s in their best interest to work with Obama, or they’ll demonstrate to the American public again and again that they’re more interested in obstructionism than doing anything constructive.  Either way, we win.

I don’t get the tax cut logic either.  I don’t see how it frees up any money now.

Let’s be a bit clearer - the stimulus is to keep the economy going.  Freeing up money better refers to the credit crisis, which is another problem - the reason why money was thrown at the banks.

Unless the credit crisis is dealt with - toxic assets taken account of and banks lending money again - the stimulus is like attaching jump cables to a car without an alternator - you can get it going, but the moment you remove the juice the car halts again.

Seems the Obama stimulus will get a lot of Obama’s campaign promises filled as well. Seems a lot of the tax cuts are for the middle class and even those who don’t pay federal income taxes will see tax refunds as well so it seems these tax cuts will actually help those most affected.

Seraph,

I get accused of that a lot.  I’m in the camp that says Obama shouldn’t have tried to craft a “bipartisan” bill, and then try to get Republicans to recognize its awesomeness - Obama himself has said this.  And I’m also afraid that playing a long-term game is dangerous; the GOP is very good at that.  No matter how significant or good this bill is - and it is both in many ways - it was weakened considerably by the bipartisanship everyone in DC is always nattering about, yet didn’t get any real bipartisan love.  It’s Obama’s bill, and if the economy doesn’t recover it’ll be all his fault.  Marginalizing the GOP for the long term isn’t going to be accomplished by helping them to wreck things while allowing them to escape all responsibility.  If the economy sucks in 2, 4 or 6 years, no one is going to care that Boehner and McConnell acted like poopyheads.

Obama himself has said this.

I think that confirms Seraph’s view of the world, far more than it does yours Stephan. It’s part of the whole “oooh, but I tried and I got burned so it was a mistake” = “frame”.

It seems that Obama has been underestimated his entire life.  (It’s interesting that he follows a president who has been overestimated for his whole life.  And we know where that got us…)

Being underestimated can be soul crushing if you’re too willing to listen to the opinions of others.

But it can also be a very powerful weapon in the hands of somebody skilled.

I don’t think he’s perfect, I don’t think he’s the messiah (or some other reichwing projection of how they felt about Reagan or Bush Jr.), but I have seen him pull things out of situations where no one thought he had a chance.  (Obama v. Clinton, Obama v. McCain, for example)

I think he may just turn out alright…

Just one nit: these aren’t kids. They’re grownups. And with grownups, you don’t just keep them from playing with the other kids until they’ve learned to behave, you arrest them and put them in jail when they assault other grownups. Can’t do that here, so I suggest as much public shaming as possible. The face of every republican legislator should be up on billboard asking why they want americans to die so that they can enact more tax cuts for the rich.

(By the way, just saying “tax cut bad” isn’t necessarily a helpful thing—tax cuts aimed at people not earning a lot of money so that they don’t get as much withheld from their paychecks every time get turned into spending pretty quickly, because they have to be. Tax cuts for people who are earning a lot of money go into their savings or investment accounts so that some bank can treble down on Big Sh*tpile.)

Call a fucking waahmbulance for Heritage and the rest of the wingnut welfare brigade.

Now do we understand why Obama gave them a chance to play nice?

ONE chance.  Just one.  Now that they demanded and got concessions and then didn’t live up to the spirit of cooperation, they can officially go fuck themselves and they have only themselves to blame.

I’m with Ms. Kate.  As far as I’m concerned, from here on out the President should “work with” Republicans only in the same sense that the Romans “worked with” Carthage.

I think that confirms Seraph’s view of the world, far more than it does yours Stephan. It’s part of the whole “oooh, but I tried and I got burned so it was a mistake” = “frame”.

Bingo.  Make sure everyone knows that he tried, make sure everyone knows that they responded with their usual spite and treachery, then explain that that’s why he’s only working with the ones who’ll work with him now. 

Look at those polls for proof that it works. 

I can practically hear the Repubs whining “Wait!  You’re not supposed to listen to him!  We’re saying bad things about him - why won’t you listen!  Why isn’t it working anymore?

I’m with Ms. Kate.  As far as I’m concerned, from here on out the President should “work with” Republicans only in the same sense that the Romans “worked with” Carthage.

Let’s not forget to sow the ground!

And I’m also afraid that playing a long-term game is dangerous; the GOP is very good at that.

Then it’s about time that the Dems learned how, wouldn’t you say?

Besides, the GOP has already suffered the worst possible thing that could happen to their long-term game: they won.  They had eight years to do whatever they want, and the American people got to see the results. 

Now we’re playing a new game, and they still haven’t learned the rules. 

It’s Obama’s bill, and if the economy doesn’t recover it’ll be all his fault.

That was always going to be the case, no matter who voted for it.  Just like Iraq is Bush’s War, despite the support it got from the Dems in Congress who were so very afraid of being painted as UnAmerican.  At least it looks like he got a very substantial portion of the bill he wanted (see the quote in my first comment), so he’s taking that risk on his terms. 

He just managed to humiliate the Republicans while he was doing it.  What more can you ask for?

If the economy sucks in 2, 4 or 6 years, no one is going to care that Boehner and McConnell acted like poopyheads.

No one’s going to remember that Boehner and McConnell acted like poopyheads in 2, 4 or 6 years, whether the economy is good or bad.  Our national attention span is very short.  That’s why I hope Obama gives them the same chance to fuck-up as often as he can, making sure he’s just as public about it as he was this time.  By the time this is over, they could be the party of Hoover again, instead of the party of St. Ronnie.

The real disagreement here is that y’all are talking politics while I’m talking policy.  Obama and Congressional Dems could have done better with this bill.  I don’t care about hypotheticals regarding bills and legislative accomplishments that haven’t happened, I care about governance. 

I don’t understand the idea that it’s ok to pass a weakened bill - possibly to the point where it won’t accomplish what it’s supposed to, at least according to people like Paul Krugman - because the GOP is supposed to lose one more seat in the House in 2 years than they otherwise would.  Wouldn’t it also be good politics to pass the very best bill possible and let Americans get a taste of good governance?  Fatten their wallets and Americans tend to reward you. 

And given the last 3 decades or so of Democratic behavior in the face of GOP Hissy Fits, along with the fundamentally conservative tilt of the Democratic contingent in Congress, I’m far more justified in my skepticism than those who believe that the Dems will reverse ingrained behavoirs simply because the Republicans didn’t play nice on this one bill.

I’m happy to be wrong, of course, but this talk of “now the Republicans will just get shunted to the side” is triumphalistic nonsense, and while I really do see Seraph’s point, continually giving in to the GOP’s Hissy Fits to prove how dumb they are just means less effective government and more real, live people who get hurt in the process.

No one’s going to remember that Boehner and McConnell acted like poopyheads in 2, 4 or 6 years, whether the economy is good or bad.

In two years, Obama and the Democrats are going to own whatever economy exists, no matter what kind of framing is going on, and frankly, that’s fair, because two years is enough to see some improvement over what we started with. If we’re struggling in 4 or 6 years, then we will lose again, no matter what’s happening. We just need to make sure we’re not struggling as badly by then.

“Fatten their wallets and Americans tend to reward you.  “

Somewhere, Al Gore just snorted coffee onto his keyboard.

Somewhere, Al Gore just snorted coffee onto his keyboard.

Well, it doesn’t help your cause to spend your campaign running against your own record.  After a pretty good run, Gore bought into Villager conventional wisdom and decided he need to tell everyone how different from Clinton he would be.  Lieberman’s selection was for no other purpose than flipping the bird at Bill Clinton and by extension his entire administration.  Why no one stopped to think that Gore was part of that administration is beyond me.

Stephen Suh,

I know what you’re saying, but the thing is that you have to be able to do both: handle the politics and deal with the policy. Smart politics will let him continue to work to implement good policies. One good policy that we will see the results of slowly an over time isn’t enough to get the country to go along with the things you want over the next few years.

If Obama hadn’t tried this and took a few hits the MSM would have been jumping up and down insisting that he immediately broke all his campaign promises. It wouldn’t matter if the bill worked, unless we saw (literally) instantaneous results, because the MSM could spend the next 2 years making a case that he isn’t the man he said he was and that a number of other factors made the economy improve, just like they try to frame every argument in a way that rewrites history.

You have to do both. It sucks that they have to make a few concessions, but that is to be expected. Progress takes time, so we need to work short and long term. This stimulus bill won’t solve all problems no matter how good it is. But if Obama can continue to show he really wants to do the things he said, and it wasn’t lip service, then people will continue to let him try things. And then he can really get some work done.

And that doesn’t mean I don’t think people should feel free to criticize him, because I think that is important. I think the White House needs to know we won’t just shut up because we like him, but I also think we need to keep from freaking out a bit. Its a hard habit to break out of though after 8 years of Bush. I just want to hear constructive criticism, not “the sky is falling.”

The real disagreement here is that y’all are talking politics while I’m talking policy.  Obama and Congressional Dems could have done better with this bill.

No, he/they couldn’t.  That’s obvious; we barely got what we got even with all of its warts.  I’ve been saying the samevthing as Seraph for a few days now, though not as well.  Obama is playing Chicago style politics with these dunderheads and they are utterly clueless.

As I said yesterday, and as Seraph said today:  We’ve fed them the rope, now it’s time to swing the trap.

We may have to use the “Nuclear Option” at some point in the Senate but we got by without doing it for now.  Many of the things that got trimmed can just go through the normal appropriations process.  This was only the first battle in the war and we won.

Unless the credit crisis is dealt with - toxic assets taken account of and banks lending money again - the stimulus is like attaching jump cables to a car without an alternator - you can get it going, but the moment you remove the juice the car halts again.

Agreed.  But the details of Geithner’s “stress test” to determine how financially solvent the banks are were sketchy, and no one STILL has a model and procedure for how to reprice toxic assets.  The two fundamental pieces to getting the credit market back together - figuring out what the mortgage- and asset-backed securities (and agency bonds) are really worth, and then determining from there the liquidity/solvency of the major investment and commercial banks - still hasn’t been done.  And this isn’t the kind of thing you do quickly in an “emergency”.  Citi, MS, Merrill, etc. are major international corporations, with dozens of international branches, and have both buy-side and sell-side subsidiaries.  It would take a team of dozens of people months - maybe years - to properly go through their trading records, compliance regs, risk management processes, credit analysis records, quant work . . . you name it.  Our government is trying to do it in a matter of weeks.  I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the repricing of assets and new credit ratings of bonds still turn out to be wrong.

But I think this is exactly why passing the stimulus is so important:  Even if the credit piece is still a nightmare, we can at least put a bandaid on the bleeding of jobs through encouraging consumer spending and promoting infrastructure development.

OT, but what the fuck is going on with the LICENSES of these PMs, traders, senior execs, credit analysts and the like?  At the VERY LEAST these people should be required to RETAKE their FINRA (ex-NASD) exams.  Want to keep your Series 7?  Retest.  CFA charterholder?  Start with Level 1 again, asshole, and feel the pain.  Seriously.  When a doctor royally fucks up and is subject to disciplinary action, sometimes his license to practice is revoked.  Same thing for lawyers.  Why not these guys?

Stephen, I work where science meets policy ... I know the difference between policy and politics BUT I also understand that policy will NEVER happen until politics says so.

You can demand a better or perfect world all you want.  But there are two types of policy: perfect policy, and actual policy.

Suh, Oh, I know that on the Gore thing.  I personally rank the Gore campaign as one of the worst-run, evah, in American history.

It’s not just Gore—it’s every Democratic and Republican President.  Carter was better than Ford, but Reagan got elected anyway.  The Reagan years were average at best, but Bush 41 got in.  It’s not enough to fatten American’s wallets; you also have to make the case that your opponent won’t.