Daily Archives: 12 December 2013

Some Thoughts on the Ryan-Murray Budget Deal

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Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips has this one:

This budget compromise is not just bad policy, it is bad politics.  The American people remember hard-won bipartisan spending limits set by the sequester, and are not pleased to see their conservative representatives so easily go back on their word to rein in government over-spending.

The deal does, after all, increase spending to a skosh over $1 trillion (just about halfway to the Democrats’ spending call of $1.058 trillion from the current spending of $0.967 trillion), while increasing, slightly, defense spending (rather than the more draconian cut the sequester had scheduled for 2014) and increasing, slightly, discretionary spending—all paid for with spending cuts and fees elsewhere, with chump change left over for a net deficit reduction.  Yes, yes, this is a current increase in spending paid for with future cuts and fees.  See below.

American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas has one, too:

The solution is not to walk away from progress and add over $60 billion in spending over the next two years.  We are not impressed by the cost cutting gimmicks and urge members of Congress to tell the budget conference to get back to work[.]

What’s your plan, guys on which the conference committee should “get back to work?”  With what votes, particularly in the Senate, do you claim your alternative (you do have something more intelligent than just “No,” yes?) can pass?

Certainly, there’s much to dislike in this compromise, but it’s good enough for the next year (albeit it covers the next two).  More importantly, blocking it is tactically stupid: it moves the focus in an election year to Republican intransigence, whether that’s a fair perception or not.

I have one, also.  Take the deal, lose the distraction.  Keep the election year focus on the failed Obamacare, on the anti-business Dodd-Frank, on the Democrats’ tax and spend demands, on the Democrats’ blowup of the Senate (picking any two (so long as one is Obamacare) in order to have that focus).  Win elections, then do the budgets that are necessary, repeal Obamacare (you do have a replacement plan ready to proffer, yes?), eliminate the CFPB, and so on with the votes to do so actually present in the House and in the Senate.

Quit being chuckleheads.  Quit being the Party of Stupid.

Mr Cohen Addresses the Iran Nuclear Weapons Deal

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…in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier in the week.  David Cohen is the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the Treasury Department, and he admits that he is the principal in “crafting and enforcing our sanctions program” against Iran.

With this…interest…in mind, Cohen defended his sanctions program as they exist under this nuclear weapons deal [emphasis added].

[T]he relief package…lion’s share…comes from granting Iran access, in installments, to $4.2 billion of its own revenues currently trapped outside Iran.  In addition, US sanctions on Iran’s petrochemical exports and its auto industry will be temporarily suspended.

We estimate that this additional trade could generate about $1.5 billion in revenue over the next six months….
…
[T]he deal also allows Iran to transfer $400 million of restricted Iranian funds to defray tuition costs for Iranian students studying abroad.

If the Iranians comply with their obligations under the Joint Plan, over the next six months they will stand to receive $6 billion to $7 billion in relief, mostly by gaining access to their own money.  Not $1 comes from US taxpayers.

What a monumental failure of understanding.  The problem with this deal, in Cohen’s context, is not that none of the monies going to Iran are coming from us, it’s that these are monies going to Iran.  Full stop.

These are $6 billion to $7 billion to which Iran did not have access until we lifted eased the sanctions.  Full stop.

These are $6 billion to $7 billion which the Iranian government will not use to better the lot of the Iranian people.  No, this is money with which Iran will

reverse that neutralization [of its stockpile of near-Highly Enriched Uranium]; money with which to reconnect those centrifuge cascades and to generate additional ones; money with which actually to develop the engineering capacity to assemble a deliverable warhead (which, recall, requires no missiles—although Iran now will get a taste of money with which to continue that development—but only a train car or a collection of suitcases separately carried into the target zone); money with which to fund its terror operations, its support of its Syrian and Iraqi operations; etc; etc; etc.

Full stop.