tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post7672115548407161429..comments2023-10-16T07:13:12.123-05:00Comments on A plain blog about politics: Budget PoliticsJonathan Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-49314420914634012332011-01-06T04:02:34.783-06:002011-01-06T04:02:34.783-06:00can someone help me please about our debate in pol...can someone help me please about our debate in politics??<br /><br />im actually from the negative side and im going to defend the proposition ,"that the campaign budget for election should have its limitation"Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-78189810014537480372010-10-17T16:58:01.028-05:002010-10-17T16:58:01.028-05:00Why would you think the Left is fiscally responsib...Why would you think the Left is fiscally responsible? Heck, they support all spending increases. They're just mad at W because THEY didn't get to enact the Great Society of Compassionate Conservatism New Deal Progressivism. But they're doubling down now. And hammering it all down our throats during the worst economy in decades.<br /><br />And the voters hate it, as we see.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-35611012215721042452010-10-15T15:03:55.107-05:002010-10-15T15:03:55.107-05:00To circle back a bit to the post and Sullivan is t...To circle back a bit to the post and Sullivan is that the point seems to be that Democrats have actively worked on reducing deficit in the last 30 years and that the Republicans (with the notable exception of Bush I) have worked to increase it.<br /><br />And yet bizarrely, the Republicans carry the title of fiscal sanity as their banner and yet neither Andrew Sullivan or almost anyone else with a voice is willing to call them out on it.<br /><br />Instead we get this pablum that both sides are equally to blame. BS. <br /><br />What Democrats need to do, and Andrew is right on this, is run on their record of sanity. They have been working hard to take a catastrophe and turn the country slowly around and yet no one is trying to take credit for that.Dannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-56342787352296865232010-10-14T16:55:17.092-05:002010-10-14T16:55:17.092-05:00I recall that Sullivan is in favor of a flat tax.I recall that Sullivan is in favor of a flat tax.Kylopodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06932528611103718373noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-39724323320820010232010-10-14T16:17:49.594-05:002010-10-14T16:17:49.594-05:00The problem you folks don't seem to grasp, is ...The problem you folks don't seem to grasp, is not that americans mind paying for their benefits ... it is that they don't like paying for others benefits.<br /><br />Couple that with the very large number who don't pay in to the system but are happy to take out, and over time you get a lot of people with "sense of entitlement".<br /><br />I may be from the Ron Swanson school, where the government has a hard time finding anything it can't completely screw up, but I think you all can see there is something important by linking what I put in to what I get out.<br /><br />Otherwise, it is just free money. I have no skin in the game, so who cares?trippytomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16390420633957263459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-72500902147943625022010-10-14T14:21:29.653-05:002010-10-14T14:21:29.653-05:00I did say Sully was an "associate" membe...I did say Sully was an "associate" member of the pain caucus. I almost said "fringe" member but decided that he's a little closer to the center of it than that -- but no, he's not hard-core, and he did support the stimulus. Still -- and while I don't have time at the moment to go hunt up specific passages -- I detect in his writing on this a refusal to believe that the welfare state, and especially SS and Medicare, can be made affordable. I've never seen him acknowledge, for instance, that SS is not really in a financial crisis (I think he's bought the right's rhetoric on that), and I don't think he's ever processed the fact that the Affordable Care Act is actually a deficit-reduction measure, specifically targeting Medicare (you know, with those "death panels" and whatnot). I'm not sure, but I think he may be a victim of the "household budget" fallacy, which essentially is a refusal to believe that government investment can actually solve social problems AND promote growth, thus making for higher future revenues. On the stimulus, he always refers to it as an "emergency measure" without any acknowledgement (that I recall) of its various measures for promoting forward-looking investment.<br /><br />So, on balance, he seems to me to believe, at bottom, that pain is good for us -- especially if by "pain" we don't mean "Andrew Sullivan doesn't get to vacation at the Cape every year" or anything radical like that.Jeffnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-28438117416587941782010-10-14T14:00:25.652-05:002010-10-14T14:00:25.652-05:00Matt,
The interest rate doesn't really matte...Matt, <br /><br />The interest rate doesn't really matter all that much. Marginal effects, but nowhere near enough to get the amount of press it does. The real action is and always has been in fiscal policy (which is why another round of QE from the fed isn't really going to do anything this time, either)<br /><br />What is really important to understand, though, is that (regardless of the institutional arrangments) the Fed and the Treasury are functionally part of the same entity. Neither can make a move without consulting the other, since everything they do has effects on the other. When the Treasury sells a bond, it's called "borrowing money", when the Fed does it, it's called "open market operations", but it ultimately has the same effect.Jim Bairdnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-2323234942691204572010-10-14T13:48:13.203-05:002010-10-14T13:48:13.203-05:00Jim,
Well, can't there be a problem if the ins...Jim,<br />Well, can't there be a problem if the instrument we have to manage the economy is "left-censored" in that we can't lower the interest rate past 0 without REALLY screwing things up?<br /><br />I like the argument about "who cares about the debt" much more when you also have the lever of interest rates to exercise some control over the whole enterprise. But I wonder if keeping an Ayn Rand disciple (see what I did there? Picked up on a Bernstein thread from yesterday!) at the helm of the Fed for almost 20 years ends up making the debt important.<br /><br />Not informed enough to know the answer,<br />MattMatt Jarvisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-1815988461322705922010-10-14T12:01:07.531-05:002010-10-14T12:01:07.531-05:00I refuse to read the testosterone-addled ravings o...I refuse to read the testosterone-addled ravings of Sully, but I did want to point out that you are both (all?) stuck in the wrong-headed "deficit dove" paradigm which has a sort of Augustinan "fiscal conservatism, but not now" vibe. W. did many bad things, but increasing the deficit was not one of them! There is no danger for a currency issuer in a floating exchange rate regime in running a deficit, and many dangers in not doing it - under any circumstances! <br /><br />If you want to know more about this and other aspects of what has come to be called "Modern Monetary Theory" (MMT), check out Warren Mosler's blog at http://moslereconomics.com.Jim Bairdnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-63350178814882404282010-10-14T11:54:28.725-05:002010-10-14T11:54:28.725-05:00Andrew,
You're right about my views on what p...Andrew,<br /><br />You're right about my views on what pols should do -- yup, I think they should do things that will get them re-elected. <br /><br />On the rest...I think several comments here are unfair to Sullivan on taxes -- he's endorsed higher taxes. I'm not even sure he's really "pain caucus"...well, pain caucus policies, yes, but not (IIRC) pain caucus rhetoric. He certainly would prefer spending as a lower % of GDP than most liberals, but he's OK with Keynesian countercyclical deficits. And he advocates defense cuts, so he's not just using deficit politics as an excuse to go after SS/Medicare.Jonathan Bernsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-65835695721230463472010-10-14T11:43:16.540-05:002010-10-14T11:43:16.540-05:00This is one of those issues where perception and r...This is one of those issues where perception and reality are so far apart as to be laughable if it weren't such an important issue. But the perception is something that the Republicans have pushed for more than 30 years, and they continue to push it whenever they can. And the media hardly ever challenges this perception. I wonder why that is?John Gloverhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05394497010385877915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-54140527149659417752010-10-14T10:39:18.556-05:002010-10-14T10:39:18.556-05:00Didn'y Sully come out and say he doesn't l...Didn'y Sully come out and say he doesn't like Obama's tax plan 'cause it would raise HIS taxes? That's pretty much the turn of the screw right there, isn't it?<br /><br />Every time any political actor from the dead center on right of the spectrum says "deficit" or "balanced budget" or anything similar, what they really mean is, "Absolutely obliterate my taxes, I don't care if you have to fire every police officer in New York City to do it."Colbyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14262426400735202537noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-10746554205325282432010-10-14T10:38:57.765-05:002010-10-14T10:38:57.765-05:00Sully, as you say, is good on these issues in many...Sully, as you say, is good on these issues in many ways, but he's also at least an associate member of the "pain caucus," i.e. he has some kind of puritanical notion that chopping middle-class benefits like Social Security and Medicare would be good for us. It's his residual Toryism, maybe; he comes out of the political tradition in Britain that opposed the welfare state. So, the idea that you can do two good things at once, like extend health coverage to millions of people while <i>also</i> (and thereby) reducing deficits, escapes him. My impression was that the whole health-care debate didn't interest him much -- never captured his imagination, as some other topics do -- and so he didn't really listen closely to the ACA's advocates. Therefore he's less able to cut through the right's phony rhetoric on this issue than we've come to expect of him.Jeffnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-63916163936213881992010-10-14T10:35:54.539-05:002010-10-14T10:35:54.539-05:00Oh, and on the deficit issue, Sully is just full o...Oh, and on the deficit issue, Sully is just full of shit.<br /><br />Of course Dems are the only party that has attempted to tackle the debt problem. But, you see, they also favor <i>increasing taxes</i>. And, no matter how reasonable Sully has become over the years, he still subscribes to the "Avoid tax hikes at any cost" dogma of the GOP.Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15913245096162048743noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-79830770137607383212010-10-14T10:33:13.937-05:002010-10-14T10:33:13.937-05:00When I read this on Sullivan's blog....
Incre...When I read this on Sullivan's blog....<br /><br /><i>Increasingly, it seems to me, the legislative branch is really not about legislating. It's about getting re-elected with often symbolic partisan gestures and passing laws to benefit those interests that will get you re-elected.</i><br /><br />....I said to myself, oh man, Bernstein must have just blown a gasket! I mean, Sullivan just described the way a democracy is supposed to work, right?! Politics is <i>supposed</i> to be all about getting re-elected. Politicians are <i>supposed</i> to pass laws benefiting those who will get him re-elected.<br /><br />I agree with all that, but you can see where Sullivan is coming from. His real complaint shouldn't be that politicans aren't willing to sacrifice their careers for a worthy cause; it should be that our culture simply does not reward politicans for acting in the national interest. Instead, it punishes them for it.<br /><br />And that, no matter how you slice it, is a major problem.Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15913245096162048743noreply@blogger.com