The New Republic

Well, I'm ready for the conversation too. Is this the "adult" conversation that the Republicans keep referring to? "Deficit Conversation" doesn't sound as sexy as "Adult Conversation" and the Democrats need to compete on this level. How about "Democrats will take the budget in a New Direction." Get it? NewD irection?

- Nusholtz

November 29, 2010 at 5:17pm

These paths to balance are a delusion. They will never be realized. More important, leaving aside the recessionary environment, there is no reason whatsoever why we cannot have structural balance today. We have the output, we just don't pay enough in taxes. We can put in place a tax structure that eliminates structural deficits now and declare a tax holiday, preferably on payroll taxes, in order not to throw a wet blanket on the recovery. Per my comment on one of the other threads, we can pay the operating budget with a 50% rate on individual income over $100,000 if we get rid of deductions, finances FICA with existing payroll tax rates, especially if we impose them on unearned as well as earned income, and finance universal health care out of carbon taxes and a national VAT plus a progressive, alternative consumption tax so the rich cannot defer gains and spend with paying taxes. We will have to bite the bullet on medical cost control whether it is publicly or privately financed and actually paying for it, rather than borrowing and paying with funny money, would private the necessary incentive to do that. The whole thing is being made vastly more complicated than it is.

- roidubouloi

November 30, 2010 at 12:25am

Oy. "would provide the necessary incentive to do that." Too late to be doing this.

- roidubouloi

November 30, 2010 at 12:26am

As said elsewhere, the solution: let the Bush tax cuts expire ($300-400+B/year), end the unwinnable wars in Iraq/Afghanistan (~$300B/year), institute real health care reform ( $200-300B/year after about 2 years) -- do a short term $500-700B well-directed stimulus to get unemployment down to 5-7%. That solution requires replacing BHO and 5-8 Senators with Progressives. BHO re-elected in 2012 would be a slow motion trainwreck vs a fastforward trainwreck if any current Republican hopeful were elected. Some choice.

- drofnats1

November 30, 2010 at 1:51am

Raising taxes as a first step simply isn't going to happen. Nor is it necessary. A realistic approach to long-term entitlements obligations, reasonable cuts in overseas military basing, and some other efforts in the Reinventing Government mode, and the political environment would support some revenue enhancements (especially if offset by things like a payroll tax holiday and/or cut). Left-wing fantasy aside, the pubic will never be in a mood to see their taxes increased while being simultaneously confronted with a bloated, over-reaching government that seems to be a rachet--always larger and more expensive, more intrusive, less accountable. Clinton understood this, which accounts for the fiscally responsible results of his tenure.

- Robert Powell

November 30, 2010 at 4:53am

Problem is that the notion of a "bloated, over-reaching government" is a canard, a right-wing fiction invented for purposes of conducting political and class warfare. About the only part of the government that can be considered significantly bloated is the military, per the Easterbrook article. The savings available elsewhere are peanuts compared to the deficit. Medical costs are a serious problem, but the problem is that we need cost control. There are only three significant contributors to the deficit -- the tax cuts that created structural deficits in the first place, the military, and medical costs. Such things as means-testing benefits are fine, but they are merely a form of tax increase on those better off. Fine, but not nearly enough to close the deficit. The simple reality, speaking of realistic approaches, is that those Republicans who profess to be for balanced budgets, or even reducing the deficit, are frauds because they will not touch any of the the three factors that together account for almost the entire deficit. The Democrats, at least, would trade means-testing benefits for increases in marginal income tax rates. There is political realism, made impossible by the persistent appeal to fantasy by Republicans since Reagan, and fiscal realism. You can insist on a "politically realistic" solution, except that the politically realistic solution you insist upon has exactly zero to do with the fiscal reality. Fiscal reality, being part of the actual world, does not respond to voodoo economics.

- roidubouloi

November 30, 2010 at 7:38am

I had to listen to Nevada Congressman John Shaddock on "Morning Joe" explain why we don't give money to the unemployed because: (a) they try not to spend it; and (b) they don't create jobs. And we should not raise taxes on the the job creators. I assume he believes that if consumer demand and taxes went up at the same time, nobody would work. And if consumer demand and taxes went down at the same time, the economy would prosper. I understand his philosophy: if you put your tax return under your pillow before going to bed, in the morning there will be a job. Captain Peter Wrongway Peachfuzz for Congress!

- Nusholtz

November 30, 2010 at 7:59am

The deficit / debt conversation has to take a back seat to the jobs / economy conversation. Where are the proposals that address our immediate problems? Why should the left join the debt conversation, when there is no conversation, let alone action, on the more pressing issue of 10% unemployment? And why would anyone take the right seriously on the debt issue? It is hard to imagine a productive "conversation" with these people who have run up the debt during the Bush years and turned supluses into deficits through reckless and ruinous tax policies -- policies they seek, even now, to extend into the future. Are we supposed to take Republicans seriously? These people are always for tax cuts, handing them out like candy, in good economic times and bad. They have made political hay since the early 80's selling the public on voodoo economics. Haven't we had enough yet? Any long-term economic plan needs to take into account the need for public investment - the problems we are passing on to the next generation from our failure to invest in infrastucture, in clean energy, and in our education system, are of greater cioncern than is the debt. Without these investments, our long term growth prospects are imperiled. No amount of debt reduction is going to compensate for the negative impacts of our failure to make needed public investments. And no sensible long-term economic plan can overlook the need for these investments. The conversations about jobs, infrastructure investment, and clean energy, need to take precedence over this dishonest and half-baked conversation about long-term deficits. Neil

- purcellneil

November 30, 2010 at 8:04am

Neither the Republicans in office nor those who vote them into office are interested in "fixing" the deficit. They are interested only in reducing their own taxes and looting what is left of the treasury exclusively in aid of their own interests. Period. They have shown ample and repeated evidence of this over the last 30 years. Ideology is bunk. The most short-term self-interest, of our society's most powerful interests, is all. We've been conducting ourselves in the public sphere in exactly the same way as we do in the private sphere for quite some time now. Doing so is the point of "conservatism." If you've been voting for these "conservative policies" with the expectation of a different outcome, or mistaken the sales pitch for governing intentions, what in the hell is wrong with your powers of observation? You do know the definition of insane? If you've been voting for these "policies" and have yet to find that they serve your better interests, perhaps its time to concede that what you have really been doing is allowing yourself to be conned into voting for interests that are not your own. Try to do a little actual, original thinking about what policies would be in your best interest, and that of the country and economy as a whole, and start fighting for them for a change. Think tanks and policy centers have no power. Only the voters do.

- esmense

November 30, 2010 at 9:41am

It may be possible to convince folks at TNR that we have just the amount of government we need in Washington, but that's a consistent "no sale" with the general public, which knows better. Most of us have more confidence in "The Rich" to put the money to good use. Look, we have 100,000 employees in the Department of Agriculture, and no one even knows what they do. Mostly they process tens of billions in farm subsidies, most of which go to giant agribusiness firms and all of which amount to economic war against the Third World--they should be on everyone's short list of things to cut. The Department of Education is an enormous middle-man between grants and the state education bureaucracies that already do most of the work. The Department of Energy is essentially an organ of the oil business. Can anyone tell me how the Department of Commerce is worth the money? It is estimated, conservatively in my view, that waste, fraud and abuse costs Medicare about $40 billion per year. Anyone want to defend the Homeland Security/TSA boondoggle? The list goes on. I recently saw the figure of about $109,000 as the mean salary for Federal employees. Marine NCO's make about $24k. This is not just unfair, it's absurd. No one who has had serious contact with Federal agencies for any length of time is going to make an honest case for why we need all this "government". People, especially the increasingly small percentage that's served in the uniformed armed services, know this viscerally. Now, let's talk practical politics.

- Robert Powell

November 30, 2010 at 11:38am

powell. Medicare has 2-4% overhead versus 20-40% for private insurance companies. Does that prove that privately run Dept of Ag would do worse with !M employees?? Everything is "compared to what?". As for what people believe, 50 million Frenchies WERE wrong in 1940.. and 300M Yankees can be wrong in 2010. And I've read that Robert Powell is an employee of Karl Rove paid 1M to blog mis-information.

- drofnats1

November 30, 2010 at 12:27pm

How many voters have the foggiest notion as to how the federal budget is laid out, where cost savings are, etc? Maybe 10%? This is the ignorance, like Powell's, upon which the R strategy is built - the misuse of terms, the changing the debate, and the lack of honesty all work because most voters don't have much of a clue. Republicans, Blue Dog Dems, and maybe BHO believe that the deficit is the biggest problem facing our country. And they believe it is up to our nation's poorest individuals to pay for it, because after all, they're the ones who got us into this mess in the first place.

- drofnats1

November 30, 2010 at 12:35pm

Mean salary of $109,000 for federal employees? Whatever Robert Powell is smoking, i want some too. According to http://www2.census.gov/govs/apes/08fedfun.pdf, the federal payroll for December 2008 (last data available) was $15,471,672,417 for 2,518,101 full-time employees (all employees was 2,768,886). That's an average of $73,730 per year, using only the full-timers as earning all the money. As for the "general public, which knows better" - get real, the general public knows only what the Wealthy-Class controlled Mass Media tells them they know.

- bonsaibush

November 30, 2010 at 12:46pm

There is waste in the Federal government, and there are unnecessary functions, to be sure. But the notion that this waste of money and effort contributes but a minor fraction to the deficit is ridiculous. If one is serious about the deficit, attacking waste is a waste of time and effort. That is a different problem, a problem surely, but not a very urgent problem for a country our size. If 10% of the non-military operating budget were waste, that is on the order of $80 billion. Yet, the entire non-military operating budget wouldn't suffice to close the deficit, meaning we would still have a large deficit even if the only thing in the Federal government were transfer payments and the military. "Keep it real."

- roidubouloi

November 30, 2010 at 1:08pm

Powell -- We have a big country, a big economy and therefore a big government. How could it be otherwise? Anyway, "big government" and "small government" are useless concepts, especially in terms of the complaints you seem to be making. A better way to express your complaints, as you stated them in your post, would be to complain about the private sector's capture and misuse of public funds. But there isn't a Tea Partier or honest Republican out there who would seriously join you in their complaints. Why? Because most middle class Americans benefit from government support for the industries that support them. Defense, agriculture (not just farmers but food processors, distributors, etc., etc.), energy, health care providers, the financial sector, entertainment and tourism, import/export, transportation and shipping, and more, are all supported in one way or another, to a greater or lesser extent, by tax payers. Those same industries are also, of course, employers of most Americans. I've worked in the "private" sector for more than 40 years, doing marketing for just about every industry I mentioned above. If you are really sincere in thinking "the government" has a bigger problem with "waste and fraud" than the private sector, you're naive. Waste and fraud are part of the human condition, whether the arena is private or public. (Have you never heard of Enron, the Savings and Loan Scandal, the recent mortgage market outrages, etc.?) In fact, the more we recruit people from the private sector to run the government "like a business" the more waste and fraud we get. Those guys always have a few good tricks (that serve their private interests) that they're anxious to teach, or use to bully, the bureaucrats. But here's the thing; unlike in the private sector, the public sector really is accountable to the voters and taxpayers. If those folks aren't doing their job in holding the government accountable it is either because they are actually benefitting from the way things are, or, they are being distracted and misled by foolish arguments, about things like "smaller government," that don't and can't address the real problems.

- esmense

November 30, 2010 at 2:21pm

The number of Federal employees earning more than $150,000 has doubled since Obama took office. http://www.slate.com/id/2276189/pagenum/all/#p2 Most of "the government" isn't elected, or particularly accountable. There's a fundamental contradiction in unions for government workers. The government already is a union. The results are clear in the above linked post. The idea that we have to privatize rather than simply eliminate the Department of Agriculture strikes my funny bone. roi: I understand the numbers. Willie Sutton's "bank" is surely where you locate it. But to get the cash, you've got to plan the operation in a realistic way. In this environment, that means political perceptions, some of which clash with our basic assumptions. Tax increases are only tolerated in an atmosphere of some trust in government, which could be facilitated by some realistic, logic-based cuts, or under major duress. Let's go with the former.

- Robert Powell

November 30, 2010 at 2:37pm

Er, that's exempting a couple earning $200k........

- Robert Powell

November 30, 2010 at 4:16pm

Powell. As a CEO, I recognize your tactic. If ya can't convince 'em with your data and brilliance, then blind 'em with your bullshit. Repubs have done the ,latter for years. Eight years of GWB would have done in al of hisl your BS, if Obama had not boiught into half of it. Ir may take a Palin or Pawlenty in power for four years to really do in a revival of Hooverian Republican economics combined with a Cheney/ GWB foreign policy and Know- Nothing social polices . Here the Republicans are REALLY returning to their original origin and beliefs of their many of their American Party Nativist founders, two of which like Palin were eventually Republican vice-presidential candidates (albeit they were elected). The American Party Platform was centered around: The platform of the American Party called for, among other things: Severe limits on immigration. [Substitute Hispanics for Catholics in 2010] Restricting political office to native-born Americans of English and/or Scottish lineage and Protestant persuasion. Mandating a wait of 21 years before an immigrant could gain citizenship. Restricting public school teacher positions to Protestants. [add fundamentalist] Mandating daily Bible readings in public schools.. Restricting the use of languages other than English. Sound familiar?? The more things change, the more they stay the same.

- drofnats1

November 30, 2010 at 5:21pm

"Tax increases are only tolerated in an atmosphere of some trust in government, which could be facilitated by some realistic, logic-based cuts, or under major duress. Let's go with the former." The wealthy are never going to trust government and never going to accept tax increases willingly as a civic duty. They are going to be imposed by the majority in the interest of the nation. The way to do it is to combine income tax increases for the wealthy with a payroll tax holiday for fiscal stimulus. 80% or more of Americans will be winners. Then, as the economy recovers, you let the payroll tax holiday phase out and, voila, income tax increase. If it makes you happy to cut some waste along the way, by all means. But let us not kid ourselves that any amount of waste cut will reconcile the rich to tax increases on their income. They think only of themselves. If a civic bargain is needed, in the form of some sort of entitlement concession such as means testing, fine.

- roidubouloi

November 30, 2010 at 5:52pm

Powell, you are really not getting it are you? People want the government to spend money on the things that benefit them. And there isn't a damn thing the government spends money on that doesn't benefit somebody. Even when the government spends money supposedly aiding "the poor" it does so in ways that are designed to provide even GREATER benefit to much more politically powerful constituencies -- real estate interests, the pharmaceutical and health care industries, agriculture, food processors, etc., etc. The problem isn't government spending, government unions (you know, in lots of rural communities most of the best middle class jobs are government jobs -- and who knows what would happen to rural America in the off season if we stopped paying decent wages for road work), or government waste. The problem is that everybody wants something from the government but too few people want to pay for it. All the banal arguments you've made here today are just the usual self-deluding excuses for not paying for government, no matter how "big" or "small" it may be.

- esmense

November 30, 2010 at 5:54pm

drofnats, today you have described Robert Powell both as a paid shill of Karl Rove and a CEO. Would you like to share your sources on this? And maybe RP would like confirm or deny your allegations himself... Google/LinkedIn tells me that a person named Robert Powell was until recently CFO of PG&E and is now CEO of Solar Power Partners in the San Francisco area. On the other hand Robert "Skeeter" Powell is Executive Director of David's Table, Inc in Greenville, SC. RP, even if you're not the boss at David's Table, maybe you too should take on the nickname "Skeeter." What the NoCal green-energy industry needs is a more Skeeters.

- AaronW

November 30, 2010 at 8:22pm

I can neither confirm nor deny, Aaron. "Skeeter" is good. I prefer "T-Bob". Actually, born a poor black child in Louisiana I pursued my education while working as a surveyor, alligator wrestler, and rodeo clown before embarking on a 25 year career in government service. I'm currently teaching history in a small English school in Gdynia, Poland, while studying for my next career in psychiatric gynecology. To borrow a phrase, posters' faith in government is charming. I'm still waiting for someone to tell me how the Dept of Commerce is worth the money, not mentioning the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy; massive overseas basing infrastructure, an excess of Carrier Task Fleets, non-means tested entitlements, $40 billion per year in Medicare fraud, a ridiculous GWOT bureaucracy that has already exceeded the pyramids in cubic office space, and plenty more where that came from. This is not petty cash roi. And when extorting money at gunpoint, it's good tactics to have a Good Cop and a Bad Cop. Your collective arguments seem to be "if we just raise taxes on the rich we can keep on doing the same stupid shit indefinitely!" No thank you very much.

- Robert Powell

December 1, 2010 at 8:22am

Mr Powell suggests the Department of Commerce may not be worth the $6.5 billion it spends each year. He is waiting for someone to tell him how it is. A quick visit to the Commerce Dept website gave me some idea of what they do at Commerce. I wonder if we couldn't do without some of it, but the Census, Patent Office and NOAA look like good things to keep, and in our global economy, it seems prudent to have the feds provide some support to the export trade. Could we do this all just as well for $5 billion? I don't know. But I don't think we can shut down Commerce without injuring ourselves. Aside from the fringe element, the only people who would shut down Energy or Commerce are those who are completely ignorant of what these departments do. I would suggest that we might find we need some of what Education, Agriculture and Energy do too. Maybe we could pull a billion from each of them, and still serve the needs of the nation. Again, I don't know. But I think it is right to challenge these budgets and drive for greater efficiency. More likely, there will be some support for an across the board freeze in budgets, salaries, headcount. This blunt, and blind, approach absolves the proponents of any responsibility to make hard choices or reconcile missions and resources. It is an approach people take when they don't know enough to make sensible decisions, and aren't willing to learn. In short, it fits the GOP perfectly. I'm sure we could save $10 billion or so in this manner. This may not be petty cash, it is clearly not on the critical path to balancing the budget, or reducing the debt. Now, $40 billion in Medicare fraud would be a juicy target. And health care costs are definitely on the critical path, along with military spending as Mr Powell also notes. Of course, Republicans just gained the House by portraying Obama's targeting of fraud and inefficiency in Medicare as a threat to senior citizens. So I would think it unlikely that Mr Boehner will be interested in taking up the Pelosi/Obama position at this point. Unless of course he was just playing the old folks for fools. Other than fixing Medicare, and squeezing the federal departments, and rationalizing the defense budget, there is of course the revenue side of things. Talk about doing the same stupid shit indefinitely -- extending the Bush tax cuts would fit that definition very well. I assume Mr Powell is also for fixing that boondoggle? Neil

- purcellneil

December 1, 2010 at 9:40am

Mr Powell, First off: Outside of subsidies for certain activities (to which we can argue all day about their effectiveness), there's a whole laundry list of things that Government does for you, that you'd sorely miss if we cut it out. The Dept of Agriculture does large-scale agro-research (that isn't going to be done privately) and food safety, the Dept of Education actually both works on national standards and provides significant funds for many local education projects (special education, teacher training, etc.) plus administers those nice Student Loans/Grants (and, let me tell you, you DONT want the private sector doing that job - they're far more wasteful and corrupt at it than the DoEd), the Dept of Energy makes sure that the Nuclear reactors are safe and sponsors all the cutting-edge energy research that only happens at the national level (remember the Green Technology boom? Yup - sponsored not by any big business, but by the DoE). The plain fact is that the vast majority of everything "Big Government" does benefits the country as a whole. We don't have a "massive" overseas base infrastructure - in fact, it's now by far the smallest it has been since WW2. In any case, those bases are cheap (at best, a couple billion per year for all of them). Defense spending can be cut, but bases are not any place to start. The fact of the matter is, that you could cut maybe 10% of the total non-entitlement and non-military government spending without anyone noticing; and that's optimistic for cutting waste. Afterward, you start to really seriously cut stuff people notice, and that's a major fight. Hell, I could completely do away with the ENTIRE domestic budget, and entitlements and defense would still cause a deficit at current taxation levels. We can haggle over things in the domestic budget all we want, but, at the end of the day, if you really want to close the deficit, it comes down to capping medical expenses, reducing defense significantly, redoing entitlements, AND increasing revenue. As little as we like it, increasing revenue is going to have to mean increasing taxes on everyone BUT the poor - the "middle class" is going to have to kick in, too. In all honestly, I think we're going to have to raise taxes on anyone $50k (family) or above.

- trims

December 1, 2010 at 10:33am

Robert Powell -- Whether the Department of Commerce is "worth the money" probably depends on what it has done for you and your industry's and region's economic interests. In 1970 when the Puget Sound region was suffering through what can best be described as an economic depression, as a result of the collapse of the local aerospace industry, I worked for a small tech startup that, long before the internet and pcs, was using computers to send written communications -- breaking local news, etc. -- over phone lines to cable customer's tv screens). The company, like so many other interesting and experimental start ups in the region at the time, went under. One reason for its failure and that of so many other new tech ideas, was that while there was lots highly educated talent with good ideas in the region, looking for ways to translate new technologies into successful consumer products and services, there were no private or public investors, yet, will to support such technological experiments. But, within a few years the Department of Commerce started pouring big bucks into the region aimed specifically at supporting high tech research and development and modernizing the region's ports -- and the region's high tech industry began to take off. Those investments were crucial to the development of the Puget Sound's successful modern economy -- based in very large part in high tech and trade. No one who has lived and worked in this region over the last few decades can say (honestly) that the Department of Commerce's efforts were anything but successful. You may not realize this, but in the area of high tech public investment in technology and infrastructure has ALWAYS preceded private investment. This is true all across the country. By the way, if you are a conservative Southerner, you live in a region that wouldn't be much better off than it was in the Great Depression if it hadn't been for massive federal investment in and support of energy projects in the region in the 50s and 60s (I know because my father worked on many of those projects and I saw the extreme poverty of the South at that time first hand). The development of those energy resources made it possible for the agricultural South to develop a modern industrial and service economy (and use a cheap labor strategy to lure jobs away from the Rust Belt).

- esmense

December 1, 2010 at 1:09pm

We have a lot more government than we need, and the above comments seem to indicate that even Big Government advocates know it. A few ideas: --instead of funding giant bureaucracies staffed with expensive unionized employees, why can't we pay universities for the research we want in areas like energy? --everyone is in favor of support for education, but why is it better to fund an enormous bureaucracy as essentially a middleman between taxpayers (where all the money actually comes from), and already existing state education bureaucracies. --farm subsidies are an abomoination, and administering them is mostly what the DoA does (minus some research--see above). --Things like the census don't need a Cabinet-level department to belong to; and support for trade doesn't either. One common thread above seems to be that The Federal Government is some sort of sugardaddy that "provides support" for all sorts of useful things. But think about it: where does Washington get the money for these things? The money comes from the taxpayers, who could get many of the things they need cheaper and more accountably without the middleman. Reasonable tax increases seem inevitable--I can do the arithmetic. But they will be politically much more feasible with some significant economy moves as a prelude.

- Robert Powell

December 2, 2010 at 2:36am

PS: I don't want to get down in the weeds on all the savings available from a more objective look at how much we actually need so much Federal government, or what some of the alternatives might be, but I can't let trims go without asking about "We don't have 'massive overseas base infrastructure--in fact it's...the smallest since WWII. In any case those bases are cheap..." Are you joking? Please read Gregg Easterbrook's excellent essay on this site. For starters, we have over 400,000 troops based overseas, including about 100,000 in Germany and Japan which have been peaceful democracies for over half a century. And as Easterbrook points out it's a lot more expensive to base them abroad. Out of 652 overseas bases, the amount to be saved by closing a good portion of them is gigantic, far more than the "couple of billion per year for all of them" he/she thinks they cost. According to Easterbrook we are spending $20 billion per year just on construction costs to improve them.

- Robert Powell

December 2, 2010 at 6:21am

Powell -- I don't know what a "big government advocate is." But I suspect it is mostly mythological -- like the sasquatch. A partisan myth, of course, rather than a popular one. Framing a discussion of government participation in the economy in terms of "big" and "small" is nothing more than admitting you are trying to sell an ideology, not trying to solve practical problems. I'm not interested in defending government, but I am interested in getting ideological daydreamers like you to wake up and face reality -- to start discussing "government" in practical rather than fantasy terms. The first step to doing that is to admit; 1. That you, like every American, have benefitted and continue to benefit from "government" in ways so myraid and essential to your way of life that you no longer are willing to (or perhaps capable of) recognizing them. That in fact you take them completely for granted, can't imagine a life where those benefits aren't a part of your birthright, and have for the most part forgotten their source. 2. That the one answer to all the "why" questions in your post is this; because the American people demand it. The government does pay universities to do research. Government in fact supports the very existence of ALL our great universities -- private and public. Nonetheless, education is still primarily in the hands of states and local communities. I'm not happy with many of the things done to "reform" education in the last decade, but I do realize those things have been done because there is a constituency (that does not include me) for doing them. Still, if you're looking for a vast federal bureaucracy to reform you'll get a much bigger bang for your buck by starting with the military bureaucracy. A friend, who has depended on her family's weatlth all her life, recently admitted to me that it is only now, in her 60s, that she realizes that she never understood that it was even possible for her to be poor -- she had so taken her family's affluence, that she had no part in creating, for granted. That lack of awareness had given her confidence to do some risky but wonderful things -- but it had also led her to naively do some very foolish things. Many Americans, inheritors of the benefits of an unprecedent national wealth that they had no hand in creating, are equally naive and deluded about the source of the wealth we have all enjoyed. And about the things we must do to maintain and grow it. All human endeavors need to be constantly montiored to prevent corruption, and every institution of power needs to be held accountable. But only a fool cuts off his nose to spite his face -- having become too dumb and arrogant to understand how dependent he is on breathing. If you believe the policies of our government over the last 100 years have been destructive to the nation, you might want to do a little reading about the average American's (short and poverty stricken) life before progressive policies were put in place. Or you might just want to try making a living in an economy like our neighbor Mexico -- that is, not living there on money earned in the US or using cheap labor to produce products to sell into the US market, but actually trying to make a decent living in a place with a very narrow middle class, serious corruption and limited physical, economic and social infrastructure.

- esmense

December 2, 2010 at 4:31pm

The last line of my last post should have read; "limited PUBLIC physical, economic and social infrastructure."

- esmense

December 2, 2010 at 5:25pm

A "big government advocate" is one who every time someone complains that government it too large, too expensive, and too intrusive, responds with a straw-man denunciation suggesting that the alternative is no government at all, then makes a list of all the wonderful things government does that couldn't possibly be done better, or without. Look, no one is advocating eliminating government. But when Bill Clinton left office government (state, local, and Federal) amounted to about 30% of GDP. It now acounts for 44%, which is too damned much and too rapid an increase. Just because politicians have found a constituency for every imaginable kind of spending doesn't mean the current situation is good for the country.

- Robert Powell

December 3, 2010 at 8:45am

If government didn't "work" Americans wouldn't demand so much of it. Does that mean we can keep demanding everything we want while refusing to pay for it? Of course not. But, you can't address the complaints you claim to have by denouncing the "size" of government (as Republicans have been dishonestly doing for the last many decades). That's a distraction, not a solution. You have to get specific, and you have to be honest about, and prepared to honestly deal with, the constituencies that are being served by the programs and policies you object to. (By the way, politicians don't have to "find" a constiuency -- those constituencies find them. What do you imagine the billions spent by the private business sector to lobby the public sector is all about?) You also have to accept that, unlike in the conservative fairy tale, it isn't our meager social programs for the poor (who honestly have no power in terms of influencing the actions of government) but the programs that serve the middle class and most affluent (who voter at much higher rates than the poor and provide financial support to the political parties) that must be either cut or paid for if you want to reduce the debt or deficit. When those who call themselves "conservatives" today are willing to ask those Americans who really benefit from government to either forgo the benefits they get, or, start paying for them, I'll start listening to what they have to say. In the conservative fairy tale government is an abstract and evil power that forces things on the (noble and innocent) "people" that they don't want. But that's just not true. In our democracy, government is a tool that people use to achieve what they want. And every action it takes is taken to achieve somethng that many Americans want. Of course, not all the people want the same things. Which is why every single one of us inevitably is required to pay for things that we don't want but a majority of others do. And why participation in our democracy demands that we both fight for our own interests and accept that not ONLY our interests will prevail.

- esmense

December 3, 2010 at 12:31pm

If you actually read my posts instead of using them as a launching pad for obnoxious lectures about what Republicans "really think", you would find a number of specific suggestions for things to be cut, most of which currently benefit upper-income groups--farm subsidies, corporate welfare, non-means tested entitlements, etc.

- Robert Powell

December 3, 2010 at 2:58pm

Powell -- but you don't acknowledge that cutting these things will have any negative impact, nor do you seem to understand how broad that impact will be. The things you so easily dismiss provide an underpinning for the prosperity and security of a great many of your fellow Americans. That's why those programs and entitlements developed in the first place -- and why they are so hard to get rid of. They, for the most part, solve problems and mitigate risks that the private sector and the "free market" can't solve or won't take on. You can't simply argue for cutting them because they are "bad" -- you have to also suggest how we can compensate for what is lost (with more precision that just relying on the magic of "the market" and free enterprise). It's one thing to argue for reforming what government does and how it does it, while recognizing that it performs valuable functions that greatly and broadly affect the lives of your fellow citizens. It's another thing altogether to argue that government itself is "the problem" and that making it "smaller" is the a solution to anything. The first approach deals with reality. The second is ideological blather designed to obscure reality.

- esmense

December 3, 2010 at 4:39pm

I don't think your interested in a serious conversation. Means-testing entitlements will hurt, uh, upper-income recipients. Cutting farm subsidies will hurt mostly millionaire farmers and big agribusiness. Cutting expenditures on overseas basing will hurt foreign businesses who rely on the patronage of our military personnel. Most of the rest of my suggestions are equally obvious in terms of specificity. Cutting the bullshit that implies every single line item in the Federal budget represents some kind of irreplacable common good would hurt the "arguments" of big government advocates.

- Robert Powell

December 4, 2010 at 2:50am

Powell -- But we won't cut subsidies for millionaire farmers and agribusiness. Why? Because those millionaire farmers are some of the most economically and politically powerful people not only in the red state "heartland" but also in states most often considered "blue." And because agribusiness provides the livelihoods of a huge number of workers -- from laborers to marketers to research professionals to equipment manufacturers, to product distributors, and much much more -- in those states and agricultural regions. There's really no political upside in taking on farmers and agribusiness. And we're certainly not going to do so with the political reality of a Republican party that has totally rejected pragmatism and compromise in favor of ideological purity and ad copy ideas. Means testing things like social security and medicare may seen like a good idea, but, once again, not likely to happen. Why? Because to get any significant savings you would have to limit benefits for an awful lot of solidly middle class people who feel they have invested in the program and whose retirement assets beyond Social Security -- the value of their homes, retirement investment, pensions -- are vulnerable to fluctuations in the market, inflation, the ravages of end of life health care costs, etc. Politically, means testing doesn't have a real constituency. That's why you hear much more talk today, mostly from Republicans, of changing the retirement age -- a method of achieving savings that, in terms of who lose benefits, works in reverse of means testing because the poor enjoy shorter lifespans than their more affluent, white collar contemporaries. A later retirement age lessens the benefit provided by those programs to the poor and working class -- those who labor in riskier, more physically dangerous occupations -- while not, in general, causing any real negative consequences for their much more affluent (and more Republican) contemporaries. This, especially if the Democrats abandon their working class constituencies in an effort to appease and woo more middle class and affluent voters and contributors, has a chance of actually happening. But there won't be anything equitable about it, and it may have unexpected and severely negative social consequences down the line. You might do better with closing military bases overseas, and I for one would like to see it happen, but I'm willing to bet that there are more vested US interests involved in keeping those bases open than you think. You still don't seem to understand that I haven't been arguing for "big government" -- I've been arguing against casting discussions of government functions and spending in terms of "big" and "small" government -- which I consider to be a marketing theme (designed to sell the idea of lower taxes, and to give the impression of addressing spending without really doing so). It is not a basis for discussing policy, for fruitful compromise, for pragmatic problem solving. It was, afterall, an advertising copywriter who wrote the line "Government isn't the solution, it's the problem." He was hired to sell a politician and tax cuts, not to suggest pragmatic governing solutions. During the 1980 presidential campaign I was working on the advertising/PR account of one of the country's largest defense contractors -- an industry that was, of course, one of THE major supporters of Reagan's run for President. The executives were giddy about Reagan's likely election and honest about why they supported him; he was going to cut their taxes AND increase spending on defense -- spending they would benefit from. In other words, they were giddy about getting something for nothing. That attitude is the real problem we face in this country. The first step in dealing with that problem is to start recognizing the difference between a marketing pitch design primarily to obscure that kind attitude and behavior and defend special interests and their tax cuts, and real discussions of policy, constituencies, consequences and budgets. Discussion which, if they don't include the need to raise taxes, will never be more than fantasy and BS.

- esmense

December 4, 2010 at 12:55pm