Democrats and Democracy

In a Press Conference this morning, Obama said that the average American shouldn't worry about stuff like the Debt limit, that's what professional politicians are for:

This brings up a couple of questions:

First, why does your party call themselves "Democrats"? When Jackson split off from the Democratic-Republicans he called his party the "Democrats" because they were populists who more directly reflected the will of the people. On the two major issues of your Presidency (three if you include your action in Libya) you have explicitly rejected the will of the people because you thought you knew better than they do. I actually think that's sound governance in a Republic, but then I've also explicitly stated that I don't believe in Democracy, I reject the direct election of Senators, I think we should raise the voting age, and I think we ought to restrict voting to those who are informed (and preferably pay taxes). All positions absolutely anathema to a Democrat.

Second, and more important, why are you pulling the American people into a debate on how a deal to raise the debt limit is structured? You have held something like 4 press conferences in the last couple weeks all of which are intended to point to to an American people who are too busy cooking dinner to have an informed opinion on whether or not a debt limit raise is good policy that we should raise taxes with the debt limit instead of only cutting spending. In your opinion, isn't that something professional politicians should take care of for us behind closed doors? If you can't be bothered to explain why we should raise the debt limit, why explain how the deal should be look?

This is particularly important since these speeches have been utterly insincere. Several Republicans (and to my knowledge not a single Democrat) have asked for the actual negotiations to be open to the public. Despite working to put food on my table, I've actually tried to follow this pretty closely, but there's no way anyone (including the people in the media who have written columns on what a great deal somebody is rejecting) have any actual insight into what's going on in these negotiations. But, despite the fact that I can't find what is actually being debated, I do know enough to know that you are lying to us. I know this because the revenue increases you talk about aren't even a percent of the spending you claim to be offsetting, you have noted in these remarks the drastic cuts you're willing to take while simultaneously asking for increases in spending on pet projects that would be at the top of the Republican list to cut, and most importantly you continually say you want a "long term" fix when the only budget your party has produced in nearly 3 years (your 2010 budget) increased the debt every year in its scope (and was rejected by every member of your party).

If you don't believe the people have enough time to understand the big picture, can you please stop the demagoguery over the details?

PS. I should probably note, I support a debt limit increase, but I would rather have no increase than a bad deal. There's no point in having a debt limit if it's just going to get increased every time the government maxes out our credit card again. I disagree with the assertion that we will default if we don't get a debt increase. We can cover debt repayment with only 10% of receipts at current revenue levels and I would argue the 14th Amendment states that the President must use 10% to do that (which leaves about half of current government functions funded). I'll admit that Obama is probably going to cut the most irresponsible programs he can to show how important our limitless debt is, so we'll have closed National Parks and no FBI while ethanol subsidies and free breakfast in schools continue, but that's still not as bad as an actual default.

Can we please cancel them?

During a speech earlier this week Obama threatened that if we didn't change the depreciation schedule on private jets,

then the kinds of cuts that would be required might compromise the National Weather Service. It means that we would not be funding critical medical research. It means that food inspection might be compromised. And I’ve said to some of the Republican leaders, you go talk to your constituents, the Republican constituents, and ask them are they willing to compromise their kids’ safety so that some corporate jet owner continues to get a tax break. And I’m pretty sure what the answer would be.

This was, in fact, an important theme of the conference, having been repeated almost verbatim in two parts of the speech. Lots of people are making much of the fact that a change in the depreciation of private jets isn't going to yield a billion dollars, let alone the hundreds of billions those programs eat up. There's also the issue that we somehow managed to give kids scholarships, pay for medical research, and fund the National Weather Service and the FDA on the $2.9 trillion Bush spent in 2008 ($240 billion deficit) instead of the $3.55 trillion Obama spent in 2010 ($1420 billion deficit). I don't think it is generally realized that the "stimulus" wasn't a one time expense, it was a permanent, massive increase in the federal budget, from which Obama now claims we can't possible retreat. But that's not the point of this post.

Also, I happen to agree with Obama that the special depreciation scale Obama proposed and the Democrat Congress passed in 2009 as part of that stimulus for private jets was a bad idea and should be scaled back. Unlike Grover Norquist, I only care about tax rates, not breaks. Special credits are fiscally indistinguishable from spending programs. But that's not the point of this post either.

The point of this post is that not one of the programs the President mentioned is within the Constitutionally defined role of the Federal Government. If it takes keeping an awful airplane depreciation scale to defund the NWS (excepting those areas where it is important for defense, which can be rolled into the defense department), the FDA, Federal funding of medical research, federal interference in education, and things having to do with kids' safety, then I'll keep the depreciation.

Collective bargaining rights

There's a lot of confusion, even on reputable sites, about what exactly "collective bargaining rights" entail.

Under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, pretty much all private employees in the United States have the "right" to hold a vote where if half of the employees accept union representation, the employer must negotiate with the union on behalf of all of the employees. In a non-right-to-work state they can also force all employees to pay dues. That is to say that the "right" to collective bargaining is the "right" to prevent an employer and an employee from entering into a private contract (and in some cases the "right" to force an employee to pay for representation they don't want). Or, to put this another way, one of the great examples of the need for unions, the United Mine Workers strikes of the late nineteenth century, was orchestrated by people who did not have collective bargaining rights. The striking mine workers each decided strike, there was no law preventing the mines from hiring someone else if they could find someone.

Additionally, what is being proposed in Wisconsin isn't removing collective bargaining rights from public employees (a step that Walker could legally take if he wanted to). Half of the teachers could still force the other half to accept union contracts, but they couldn't force them to pay dues and they would have to vote to recertify (keep the union as their representative) every year.

In Defense of Obama

He has less than two years left, so this may be the last time, but I must come to the defense of the Obama administration. I've heard several times in the last two days that Obama is stepping all over separation of powers by deciding the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional without an edict from the court and refusing to press the case. This is as daft as the observers on the left who mocked incoming congressmen last year for saying that they would care about the constitutionality of pending legislation. The Constitution does not say that the Courts are the ultimate arbiter of Constitutionality. If Congress passes a law and the President believes it unconstitutional, he shouldn't defend it. There is even a provision that the Senate and House can appoint their own counsel to defend their laws before the Courts if this happens.

I'll note that I fully expect them to do so, and I fully expect Obama to come out and say that it's a distraction that they're taking up defense of a law he refused to defend in a time of budget constraints. That will be unacceptable politicking, but his decision not to fight for a law he thinks is unconstitutional is perfectly reasonable. I'll also note that I wouldn't be surprised to find a Republican administration in 2013 refusing to defend Obamacare because they believe it Unconstitutional. When that happens the mainstream press will go berserk claiming (as some on the right do now) that the administration is shirking their duty and it's up to the Courts to decide if it is unconstitutional. The mainstream press will be wrong just as the right wingers are now.

Note to Gov. Walker: take a page from Reagan.

It's all over the news that there are protests at the State Capitol and the Governor's private residence in Wisconsin. What might also be in the news, but I haven't seen as much, is that the teachers and students present are there illegally. They're taking advantage of sick time to join in a political rally and based on video I've seen they're encouraging students to be truant as well.

I'm not going to advise Walker to arrest the teachers for contributing to the delinquency of a minor (though it is appealing to me). I will, however, advise him to take a page from Reagan when he had a group striking illegally: fire them all. I have no tolerance for people who don't show up to work and I doubt the majority of Wisconsin citizens do either.

Balancing the budget

I happen to agree with Sessions, which I'm sure colors my judgement, but I don't see how any thinking person who has looked at the facts can not think that Mr. Lew and the President are being extremely disingenuous in their statements. In 2008 we had a deficit of $460 billion on a total outlay of $2.97 trillion (roughly 19% of GDP). I think this is way too high, but that's irrelevant to this discussion. In 2010 we had a deficit of $1.29 trillion on outlays of $3.46 trillion (roughly 25% of GDP). Obama is increasing that to $3.8 trillion (25% of GDP) in his proposal and never bringing it down from there. He also never gets back below 20% of GDP in spending. He balances the budget by assuming away entitlement spending, stating that there will be reductions he doesn't specify, ignoring interest on the debt, and assuming he can get receipts (taxes) up to 20% of GDP.

This is like my saying that I make $50,000 and I started this year $50,000 in debt and spent $52,000. I'm looking at bankruptcy, so I come up with a plan for the bankruptcy judge: I'm going to get out of the hole by making loans against my retirement and spending $55,000 this year (and increase from there every year in the future) and by ten years from now I'll be making $100,000 and only spending $100,000 (if we ignore debt repayment) so then, when my budget is balanced, we can start to worry about how to pay back those loans and catch up on retirement.

This would be horrifically misleading even if I had a good plan for increasing my income, but the budget assumes receipts at 20% of the GDP, which is a record level. No matter how high taxes go, we have never taken in more than 20.9% of GDP (1946) or sustained more than 19%. (see here) The OMB uses static scoring, so they just assume that if they charge more in taxes that they will get proportionally more in receipts, but reality doesn't work that way.

It's not that hard

With common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops, we will roll back government spending to prestimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone

That's what the Republicans promised when they were elected. The $100 billion is the effect of their promise, not the promise itself. The promise is a good one (except maybe that seniors, veterans, and defense are common-sense exceptions). Before the failed spend-a-palooza "stimulus" we had a budget that was too high. Allowing that to become the new baseline and whining about how the government is going to shut down if we don't keep the unprecedented, temporary, emergency levels of spending we went to in a vain attempt to recover the economy is one of the biggest crimes of the last congress. So going back to pre-stimulus, pre-TARP 2008 spending levels should be the starting place for any conversation about spending. I think we should go much, much further, but I'm not willing to even talk about it until we get the trillion dollar barrel of pork injected into the baseline in 2010 out of the discussion.

So, when Hal Rogers talks about cutting $100 billion from Obama's massively inflated FY2011 budget proposal, he's dissembling. The incoming Republicans didn't promise to take whatever Obama proposes and cut $100 billion (and certainly not less than $100 billion), they promised a return to 2008 spending levels. And to hear even Paul Ryan, who I like (unlike Hal Rogers, who is a first class appropriator), talk around the issue makes me mad. Here's how you keep the promise the Republicans made:

1. Ask the Congressional Records Office for a copy of the 2008 budget
2. (optional) Submit that to the floor with a rule that any amendment offered must not increase the size of the budget.
3. Send it to the Senate

Was that really that hard?