Monthly Archives: January 2013

The Spending Cuts Achieved by the Tax “Deal”

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Here, in no particular order, are some.

  • tax subsidies for special business interests:
    • wind tax credit $12.1 billion
    • tax break for cellulosic ethanol—$59 million
    • tax break for impoverished producers of Hollywood—$248 million
  • extending extra jobless benefits for another year—$30 billion

Oh, wait—those weren’t cuts….

Just to put a cherry on top, the Congressional Budget Office scores the Senate bill as adding $4 trillion to the national debt by 2022.

Oops.

Update: Sorry, I don’t know what happened.  An earlier iteration of this post led with an inordinate amount of word processing commands before getting to the post itself.

Shameful

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Here’s an example of the Republicans’ shamefulness, and perhaps of their lack of understanding of their shame.

Republicans are more terrified of Democrat threats than they are of the effort required to fight back, to take the initiative, or to do what’s right for our country—the latter two of which are why we hired them in the first place.  Tuesday’s surrender on the tax “deal” came against the backdrop of Democrats saying

they would pin the blame squarely on House Republicans if the tax hikes were not averted.

An aide to the House Republican leadership (carefully not allowing himself to be identified) said what mattered:

We had a bad hand from the start, but we’re avoiding being blamed for taking us off the cliff.

Yeah.  Avoiding blame is what’s important to the current crop of…Republicans.

They aren’t alone in the shamefulness or in the lack of understanding, though.

Senate Democrats overwhelmingly backed the deal, sold on the idea the President got far more than he gave up by getting $620 billion in tax hikes and a net of only $15 billion in spending cuts.

…

The official added that Obama “broke the Republicans’ backs on a 20-year pledge” not to raise tax rates.

“It is one of the most consequential policy achievements of the last couple decades,” the official said.

The…Democrats…weren’t interested in what’s best for our country, either.  Their sole goal was to destroy the Republican party.  That was their consequential policy achievement, not the recovery of a failing economy.

The Next Financial Crisis

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This is the coming debt ceiling fiasco.  Secretary Tim Geithner, in a carefully timed announcement, said just after Christmas that the United States would reach its borrowing limit by the end of the year.  He noted, though, that there were games that he could play with borrowing and accounting that could extend the actual default date for a couple of months.

President Barack Obama wants Congress to grant him unlimited authority to borrow—to spend—entirely on his own recognizance; to eliminate any formal debt ceiling, in other words.  As he announced in his victory speech late on New Year’s Day after having eviscerated the Republican Party, leaving it a faction-ridden, impotent, waste-of-space, he’s going to demand yet more tax increases and more spending in order to continue his Big Government “investments.”  The debt ceiling is just a useless distraction.

On the other hand, the Republicans can recover, if they can just stop whining about their defeats long enough to be a serious voice for those hired them to the Congressional job.  (As an aside, the whining may be an indication of the necessary shame for their repeated surrenders.)  Here’s a suggested agenda outline with which the Party can regain its dignity and integrity, and reconnect with its Conservative principles.  And if they can stick to this, and correct their communications failure, they’ll actually have a chance to implement much of this agenda and to recover enough politically to not get swept entirely from Congress in 2014 and to avoid continuing to abandon our country to one-party rule in 2016.

  1. Negotiate in public.  If they negotiate honestly and in accordance with the Conservative principles they claim to espouse, they’ll have nothing of which to be ashamed, and so no reason to hide in the shadows.
  2. Acknowledge whose money it is that the Federal government collects in taxes, whose money it is the Federal government spends, and who it is that must pay the debt the Federal government incurs when it borrows.  Challenge the Democrats to do the same.  Make frequent public notice of any equivocation.
  3. Say, in no uncertain terms, what is the fair share of taxes to be paid by all Americans.  Challenge the Democrats in the Congress and White House to do the same.  In 2009, the top 1% (those singled out by the just passed bill) paid 37% of all Federal income taxes, while the bottom 50% paid 2%.  Make frequent public notice of any equivocation.
  4. Negotiate—in public—to reform our tax code to meet those shares.
  5. Eliminate business taxes, and loopholes (credits, subsidies, etc) altogether.  It’s the individual American, in his role as customer, who pays most of those taxes, anyway, in the form of higher prices used to recoup some of that tax bill.  We don’t need to be taxed more than once.
  6. Say, in no uncertain terms, on what it is appropriate for the Federal government to be spending our money.  Challenge the Democrats to do the same.  Make frequent public notice of any equivocation.
  7. The Democrats will try to distract the public by attempting to pass legislation concerning immigration reform and gun control.  Republicans should ignore these distractions and force the Democrats to begin talking about the debt ceiling now, rather than waiting again until the last minute with their intent of using the then-approaching deadline to pressure another bad deal.
  8. Promptly pass a budget bill in the House that includes significant spending cuts (at a 3:1 ratio in spending cut dollars for debt ceiling raise dollars, which then defines the debt ceiling raise limit), offer separate legislation concerning tax reform (and pass it in the House), offer separate legislation concerning spending and borrowing reform (and pass it in the House), and offer legislation that raises the debt ceiling and that contains the budget’s spending cuts (and pass it in the House).  This legislation all can be completed from the House’s perspective within January, which would leave the decks clear for the debt ceiling fight.  All of this also will set a Republican-controlled baseline for the debt ceiling debate.
  9. Challenge Obama daily to join the debate on the debt ceiling.  Make frequent public notice of his refusal to deal with the problem.

We Americans have the critical role in this agenda, though.  We must hold the Republicans, and the Democrats, to this agenda, and we must loudly and enthusiastically call out any equivocation by individual Congressmen of either party and by the President, with particular emphasis on attempts to conduct the debt ceiling discussion in secret, and further on agenda items 2, 3, 6, and 9 above.  And in 2014 and 2016, fire those Congressmen who do insist on secrecy and equivocation.

I’ll have specific suggestions for continued tax reform and for spending cuts in later posts.

Do Away with our Constitution

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That’s what Louis Michael Seidman, writing in the New York Times last week, wants to do.  He claims to have been teaching Constitutional law for quite a long time, but that’s hard to believe, after reading his epistle (though, in fact it’s true–at Georgetown, where he teaches Constitutional law, but from this writing, it seems to me he teaches very little of the Constitution).  On the other hand, another great Constitutional scholar, Ezra Klein, agrees with him.

Here are some of Seidman’s…rationales.

Imagine that after careful study a government official—say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress—reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for the country.  Suddenly, someone bursts into the room with new information: a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves might have disagreed with this course of action.  Is it even remotely rational that the official should change his or her mind because of this divination?

Well, since that disagreement actually was centered on what the Constitution, the supreme Law of the Land, allows, yeah, he would have to give up his divination.  Especially since the Constitution was designed to maximize the likelihood that he represents American citizens, his collective bosses, and to ensure that their view of what is best for the country outweighs his own.  Suppose, contra, that after a careful study a government official—say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress—reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for him personally.  Should that judgment be allowed to stand?

Constitutional disobedience may seem radical, but it is as old as the Republic.  In fact, the Constitution itself was born of constitutional disobedience.  When George Washington and the other framers went to Philadelphia in 1787, they were instructed to suggest amendments to the Articles of Confederation, which would have had to be ratified by the legislatures of all 13 states.  Instead, in violation of their mandate, they abandoned the Articles, wrote a new Constitution and provided that it would take effect after ratification by only nine states, and by conventions in those states rather than the state legislatures.

And how terrible that was.  Instead of being approved by the conclave of diplomats that was all that the Congress was under the Articles, or by unanimous approval of 13 disparate and independent States’ legislatures, it was approved by something far closer to the people themselves—those conventions, which were selected by an especially broad franchise of voters and one far more broad than the franchise that was allowed to select Seidman’s precious legislators.  It was the Sovereign people who ratified the new Constitution, thereby explicitly validating the decisions of those constitutional disobeyers.  Moreover, the remaining four States were not bound by a Constitution which their citizens did not ratify; they were free to go their own way, as the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations did for quite a few years before seeing the political and economic advantages of joining the union.  That separate way also included the option of continuing under the Articles, with a Congress now consisting of diplomatsdelegates from those four States, and a new effort at amendment.  In the end, though, the citizens of all thirteen States individually and separately ratified the Constitution, adding to the validation.

No sooner was the Constitution in place than our leaders began ignoring it.  John Adams supported the Alien and Sedition Acts, which violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.  Thomas Jefferson thought every constitution should expire after a single generation.  He believed the most consequential act of his presidency—the purchase of the Louisiana Territory—exceeded his constitutional powers.

And all of these men’s relevant actions or failures to act were overridden by the existence of that Constitution—which also acts as a brake against Seidman’s “considered judgment” government official.  Moreover, that these men had feet of clay (including his slave owners) is an argument for holding government men fettered by a Constitution, not for allowing them freedom to run riot.  As one of those disdained “white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves” but who could foresee the future of a society governed by men, noted,

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.  If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.  In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Thus, that document that some find confusing because it was written more than one hundred years ago.  And which has stood us in good stead since was ratified.

Returning to Seidman’s words:

Before the Civil War, abolitionists like Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison conceded that the Constitution protected slavery, but denounced it as a pact with the devil that should be ignored.

Neither that they were abolitionists or that they “conceded” anything did not make them right.  In the event, slavery should have died out (literally) by 1808, but the slave States reneged on that bargain.  In the end, the Constitution was Amended, after that Civil War, to explicitly abolish slavery.  The argument simply to ignore the law was found as wanting then as it is now.

The fact that dissenting justices regularly, publicly and vociferously assert that their colleagues have ignored the Constitution…should give us pause.  The two main rival interpretive methods, “originalism” (divining the framers’ intent) and “living constitutionalism” (reinterpreting the text in light of modern demands), cannot be reconciled.  Some decisions have been grounded in one school of thought, and some in the other.  Whichever your philosophy, many of the results—by definition—must be wrong.

Nor need the two schools be reconciled.  Judicial activism is wrong.  Judges’ oaths of office commit them, on their honor, to uphold the Constitution, not to amend it ab ecclesia de banco.  Moreover, the Constitution is a living document, as Seidman and his “living constitutionalists” aver; however, it is that same Constitution’s Article V which shows how it thrives and evolves.  As one of Seidman’s living constitutionalists, Justice Robert H Jackson, said, the Constitution (Jackson actually was referring to the Bill of Rights) is not a suicide pact.  Jackson was right; however, what is suicide is deviating from the Constitution—including altering it without the requirements of Article V.

I could go on, but that’ll do for now.  The rest of his diatribe is of a piece.

In the end, our Constitution is all that stands between us as a nation of laws and us as a nation governed by a few men who make the laws; it is all that stands between us as a nation whose government protects those individual rights, liberties, and duties that are part of our Creator’s endowment and us as a nation whose government presumes to grant (or withdraw) our rights, liberties, and duties.

If Seidman is dissatisfied with our Constitution, I’d like to see the text of his proposed Amendment(s).  Article V, after all, as he well knows, is how our Constitution lives.  That our Constitution causes so much frustration by getting so far in the way of facile “solutions” is one of its strengths.  In the end, if he can’t convince mere men of the greatness of his ideas, perhaps his ideas aren’t so great.

Oh, one more thing.  Seidman opens his piece with this:

[A]lmost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

But nowhere in the rest of writing does he name any of those “evil provisions,” or even any of the “archaic, idiosyncratic” ones.  That’s the integrity of leveling a charge and then declining to support it.

Obama’s Freedom

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From a person calling herself Jezebel comes this:

Ugh, you rubber cement-huffing nincompoop….

Anyway, I’m all for Hobby Lobby (and all other organizations that think birth control is totes gross) ignoring the law.  If they keep this up for long enough, we won’t have to worry about the fiscal cliff.

And I suppose that now’s as good a time as any to confess publicly that “Hobby Lobby” is the nickname I’ve given my vagina.

Name calling as pseudo-logic.  How very Progressive of her.

And this pseudo-argument from Think Progress, in their post misleading titled “Hobby Lobby To Deny Contraception To Employees, Ignoring Court Order:”

This ignores two obvious points—first, that Plan B is not an ‘abortion-inducing’ drug, as Hobby Lobby claims, and second, that the company may well end up paying more to avoid covering contraception than they would simply providing access.  It also takes a twisted view on the ‘Freedom of Religion’ argument; the company is actually forcing its owner’s religious beliefs on all employees, no matter their personal religious views.

I’ll ignore their first point as irrelevant (Look! Shiny!) and proceed to their second, which is blatantly cynical.  Think Progress actually is arguing in all seriousness that religious freedom—any freedom—is solely a pecuniary, fiscal thing, having nothing to do with principle or morality.  How little the Left understands individual liberties and duties.  How little the Left understands the threat to their own freedoms Big Government represents.

But their argument begins and ends with a disingenuously false premise.  Of course, the owners of Hobby Lobby are not at all denying contraception to their employees, nor are they imposing their own religious beliefs on anyone.  Those employees remain free to obtain birth control on their own, to obtain contraceptive “coverage” from other insurers, to engage in any other activity, all in accordance with their own religious beliefs.

Moreover, this refusal to participate in the HHS intrusion inflicts no other harm on their employees, either, including the costs of contraception now to be borne by those employees.  Sandra Fluke’s foolish remarks notwithstanding, contraception is freely available, and nearly free, for instance for $7/mo at any Walmart.  Condoms (the forgotten contraceptive) are just as cheap.

Hobby Lobby’s owners are simply exercising their 1st Amendment rights (that conveniently ignored clause that says, “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise [of religion].”)  They’re simply declining to participate in a market for materials their religious beliefs hold to be immoral, while not at all impacting the ability of anyone else to participate in exactly that market.

But there’s another problem here.  When Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor refused a request from Hobby Lobby for a temporary injunction staying enforcement of HHS’ contraception insurance rule pending adjudication of the primary case, she continued the injustice rather than mitigated it.  In the balance was whether Hobby Lobby’s owners should be forced to suffer enormous economic damage or to violate their religious teachings, and so to suffer enormous moral damage, against whether Hobby Lobby’s employees should be required to go elsewhere for extremely low cost contraception and emergency contraception.  And this balance would have been purely temporary: resolution through the courts is in progress.

Sotomayor’s reasoning is instructive.

While the applicants allege they will face irreparable harm if they are forced to choose between complying with the contraception-coverage requirement and paying significant fines, they cannot show that an injunction is necessary or appropriate to aid our jurisdiction[.]

No.  $1.3 million in daily fines aren’t at all “irreparable harm.”  The moral damage of violating religious principles isn’t harmful at all.  After all, holding at bay that irreparable harm isn’t at all necessary or appropriate to aid the Court’s jurisdiction.  Never mind that it is the purpose of the Court to decide cases in accordance with the law—here the Constitution—and so to minimize overall damage.

And

Even without an injunction pending appeal, the applicants may continue their challenge to the regulations in the lower courts.

But pay, in the meantime, the frightful fiscal or moral cost that Sotomayor so casually dismisses.

Instead, Justice Sotomayor’s ruling said, “Kneel and bend your neck, sucker.  We already know the right answer.”  She carefully chose not to take the low cost—morally, fiscally, or legally—path.

But that’s freedom, Progressive style—Obama style.  Do it our way; we’ll take care of you.  But if you’re really so stupid as to disagree with us, we’ll vilify, demonize, you.  Because, in the first place, logic has no place in the discussion, and in the second place (yes, as in secondarily), your freedom is ours to determine.

Update: A Federal district judge appears to have a better understanding of relative costs and legal efficiency than does our Supreme Court Justice:

US District Judge Lawrence Zatkoff ruled Sunday in favor of Tom Monaghan and his Domino’s Farms Corp., near Ann Arbor.  Monaghan, a devout Roman Catholic, says contraception isn’t health care but a “gravely immoral” practice.

Zatkoff granted Monaghan’s emergency motion for a temporary restraining order until a final decision is made in the case.