PLANK DECEMBER 5, 2012
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It’s hard to overstate liberals’ sense of relief that Obama is finally negotiating like someone who’s encountered a deck of cards once or twice in his life. It wasn’t just the hard-ass opening bid he made last week—$1.6 trillion in revenue, higher tax rates for the top two percent, $50 billion in infrastructure, extended unemployment insurance, money for mortgage modifications… all in exchange for about $600 billion in spending cuts. It was that the administration followed up the proposal with an absolute refusal to engage further until Republicans made a specific counteroffer, putting the onus on the GOP to spell out its almost-certain-to-be-unpopular demands. As Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner put it on “Face the Nation” Sunday, “What they have to do is tell us what they’re prepared to do. And what we can’t do, Bob, is sit here trying to guess what works for them.”
So far as I can tell, there’s only one hint of trouble in how Obama has approached the fiscal cliff: the debt ceiling. The administration’s initial ask included a proposal for getting Congress out of the business of raising the limit so as to avoid the kind of fiasco that the GOP instigated last summer. At first it seemed like the sort of maximalist demand tossed in for purely symbolic reasons—in this case, to signal an official end to presidential wussiness. But the background chatter suggests the administration is serious about folding the debt-limit into the current negotiations in order to secure at least a one-off increase. The president seemed to reiterate the point in his first post-election television interview on Tuesday.
On its face, taking care of the debt limit now makes perfect sense. We’re due for an increase during the first half of next year, and the GOP has been pretty clear about its fondness for using the limit as a tool of extortion. “We’re not going to find ourselves at some big party celebrating [a fiscal cliff deal] in February and then turn around in March and have another doomsday scenario with the debt ceiling,” Dick Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Senate, said last week. “We’ve got to get this done as one big package.”
And yet this logical-sounding calculation doesn’t really hold up. There is, for one thing, the cost. By insisting on extending the limit as part of the fiscal-cliff deal, Obama is destined to end up with either substantially less of what he wants (revenue, stimulus) or substantially more of what he doesn’t (cuts to spending, especially to entitlement programs). As John Boehner archly observed when Obama first raised the issue, “There is a price for everything.” There’s simply no way you make a demand the other guy considers painful during a negotiation like this without compensating him for it in the end.
Of course, Boehner’s demands might be an acceptable price to pay if it were the only way to avert another one of the doomsday scenarios that keeps Durbin awake at night. After the midterm elections in 2010, Geithner’s own chief of staff proposed folding the debt-limit issue into the lame duck negotiations that were ongoing at the time. (See my recent book on Obama’s economic team for more on this.) Given that the GOP had just given the president’s party a painful electoral beat-down and had real leverage, that was a reasonable strategy for avoiding the quagmire that ensued 2011, even if it would have meant a lousier deal than the one the administration eventually hammered out.
But this time around the situation couldn’t be more different. It’s the president who’s just won a sweeping mandate and the Republicans who are on the defensive. There’s simply no way that, less than two years after Republicans very nearly forced the country to default, the House leadership is going to push things to the brink all over again. It’s not like it played out so well for them the last time around, with the public disproportionately blaming the GOP for the debacle. And this time, voters will be even less tolerant of these games for precisely the reason Durbin mentions: We will likely have just been through a drawn-out, wrenching, publicly contentious negotiation over the fiscal cliff.
Boehner, for one, seems to understand that allowing his party to be led by its most unhinged elements isn’t a recipe for success. On Monday, he bounced three of the most conservative House GOP freshmen from their committees because they’d bucked him too often--hardly the actions of a man keen to set himself on fire to retain the Tea Party’s respect.
All of which points to an obvious debt-ceiling strategy for Obama: Make minimal effort to defuse it during the fiscal cliff negotiation. Once that’s resolved, simply announce to Boehner that you have no intention of bargaining over raising the limit—that whether Boehner wants to flirt with another financial crisis or calmly ease the increase through the House is entirely his choice. I guarantee he will not choose option A.
Democrats will worry that Obama doesn’t have the backbone to see this strategy through. After all, it requires accepting the chance, albeit vanishingly small, that the GOP does in fact plunge us into the abyss, a level of brinkmanship Obama has generally shrunk from in his first term. But there is at least one instance of Obama holding firm in a situation like this. During the final debt-ceiling negotiations in July of 2011, Republicans were adamant about only raising the debt ceiling for a few months. Obama said “no deal.” He insisted that the ceiling be extended past the 2012 election, so that the GOP wouldn’t be able to shake him down all over again. Geithner pleaded with him to accept the shorter-term deal and at least postpone the crisis. But Obama understood that allowing the GOP to renew its threats during the campaign would set a terrible precedent, and he eventually got his way.
The same goes in this instance. Obama is shrewd enough to see that failing to break the GOP’s attachment to debt-limit thuggery will completely upend the balance of power between the president and Congress. Indeed, while addressing a group of business executives on Wednesday, Obama warned that, “If the Congress in any way suggests they are going to tie negotiations to the debt ceiling and take us to the brink of default once again as part of a budget negotiation… I will not play that game because we’ve got to break that habit before it starts.” I have faith that he can hold the line to kill off this destructive precedent once and for all. All the more so given how weak Boehner’s position will actually be.
(An aside: The GOP’s fiscal-cliff bargaining position is sufficiently awful that that even many Republicans are advising Boehner to fold on the middle class tax cuts and postpone the fight over tax reform and spending cuts until next year’s debt-limit renewal, a la 2011. All the more reason for Obama to announce he’s not negotiating over it. The correct response, which Obama seems to understand, is: “Great, let’s figure out how to rein in the deficit. As soon as you raise the debt ceiling.”)
In the end, Boehner really has nothing—not just on the fiscal cliff, where Obama’s leverage is obvious thanks to the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, but also when it comes to the debt limit, which Obama can make disappear like the bad dream it is. Like any good negotiator, Boehner is of course trying to turn that nothing into something. But that’s no reason the administration should do his work for him.
19 comments
I'm not sure how a $1.6 trillion opening bid is hard ass. Lest we forget, the US has "borrowed" about $2.7 trillion from the social security trust fund (i.e., used payroll taxes rather than income taxes to pay government operating expenses). Wouldn't any hard ass opening bid at least cover repayment of the amount borrowed from the trust fund. Indeed, I've argued that we should adopt a temporary tax, a surtax, imposed on high income earners, to repay the amounts borrowed from the trust fund; after all, borrowing from the trust fund made the Bush tax cuts possible. According to my math, we will be $1.1 trillion short even with this hard ass opening bid. Those familiar with history know what's coming down the tracks: another whopping increase in the payroll tax! I might say "hard ass, my ass". I suppose hard ass isn't what it used to be.
- rayward
December 5, 2012 at 3:12pm
Personally I'd like to see Obama use his lame duck status to try and drive a stake through the heart of the debt limit once and for all. In other words, don't make any bargain involving it, don't do anything to put it off, dare the Republicans to try again. If they do, invoke the 14th amendment and let it go to the Supreme Court. Good chance you win and kill the debt limit (as a non-symbolic threat, anyway) and worst case you lose. How would even a loss hurt Obama (compared with fighting this battle every year for the next four)? He might be out of office by the time it's decided, for one thing, and if not it may not come before court till after he's had a chance to nominate a new justice or two. And if he loses while in office, he looks good for standing up to extortionists, and may contribute to the death of the debt limit by political rather than judicial means.
- boyski
December 5, 2012 at 3:34pm
This is completely artificial. The debt limit is an imaginary piece of leverage. Insofar as the Democrats believe in and are afraid of it, it has power. It has just about the same amount of power as one day of the fiscal cliff. Which is to say, not much at all. This is a 'deem and pass' situation. If the president declared via the 14th Amendment that the debt ceiling no longer exists, that would be the end of it. He may well be preparing this option as we speak, since this is the same guy who liberally exercised his recess appointment powers. Now, the signal is 'I will not play that game because we’ve got to break that habit before it starts.' It is afforded with power once you start seeing Boehner scurry back to his caucus that Republicans need real leverage, since Obama and the business community will ignore the debt ceiling and proceed with the notion that the rather elementary ability of the Congress to pay off its legally sanctioned and duly incurred debts will not be questioned.
- chaitless
December 5, 2012 at 3:48pm
Is there any way to screw up the country's credit rating if there wasn't debt limit fights?
- Nusholtz
December 5, 2012 at 4:33pm
It does seem the Republicans are taking two bites at the apple -- one, when they pass the spending bills that are in deficit. Then two, when the time comes to PAY those bills, refusing to sign the check. It's like charging goods in the store, then when the credit bill comes due refusing to pay and trying to renegotiate the price of what you've already bought. Frankly, Obama has all the cards here, even though the Republicans keep pretending they didn't lose the election. If they're as obstructive as they were in 2011, Obama can stand pat, let the Bush tax-cuts expire for everyone, and blame the Republicans. If they STILL want to be obstructive, they can attempt to use the debt-ceiling or even spending bills to close the Government -- with associated negative feedback on the Tea-Party and the Republicans. Meanwhile, the deficit is cut in half through the additional revenues from the Clinton tax-rates. I really don't think the Republicans can afford to be intransigent over the spending cuts for the military -- so that's one card Obama holds to prevent their holding the debt-ceiling hostage. Again. The only think the Democrats and Obama have to fear, is fear itself. If they accept a bad compromise, merely to prevent the fiscal cliff, then we all lose.
- AllanL5
December 5, 2012 at 4:47pm
I'm watching Boehner talk about cutting deductions to make revenue and I'm wondering if the people in Las Vegas are apoplectic. One of the itemized deductions is gambling losses. Some people get a 1099 for hundreds of thousands of dollars even though they made no profit gambling because their losses are equal to or greater than their winnings. You take away their deduction for losses and gambling without a profit will become very expensive. How would you like to pay taxes on thousands of dollars sitting in slot machines?
- Nusholtz
December 5, 2012 at 7:11pm
I have to disagree with Mr. Scheiber in this case. If the debt ceiling is not a serious threat, then it won't cost much to deal with it in negotiations. If it is a serious threat, then it must be dealt with in negotiations while Obama holds the cards. It cannot be both ways, as Scheiber would have it Durbin is right. It makes no sense to make a deal and then have it shortly re-opened with a debt-ceiling fight. None. But this points to the very simple way to deal with the threat -- forever -- without insisting on taking the symbolism of the debt ceiling away from the Republicans, which is what they will fight about. There simply should be no spending/appropriation bill signed, now or ever, without an accompanying increase in the debt ceiling tied to that bill sufficient to ensure that whatever Congress is then authorizing to be spent can be spent without a subsequent debt ceiling fight. The Congress must appropriate funds. That is a constitutional requirement. If the Republicans want to shut down the government at the point when an appropriation is needed by refusing to authorize the spending, that is constitutionally appropriate. They can do that and pay the political price (see, e.g. Bill Clinton). The debt-ceiling hostage crises are not constitutionally appropriate. They are terrorism. If the president simply refuses ever to sign a spending bill that does not include adequate tax and debt financing for the authorized spending, there can never be another debt-ceiling fight. The debt-ceiling would remain as a symbol, but it can never be used to extract concessions. If the Congress wants to authorize spending without sufficient financing for that spending, it is not really authorizing the spending and the president should just say no to the sham. End of problem.
- roidubouloi
December 5, 2012 at 11:04pm
I disagree with most people on this, I would take $50 billion in infrastructure, extended unemployment insurance, money for mortgage modifications, and a debt limit deal like the one McConnell proposed (Congress could only override a veto) in exchange for a one year hold on the budget cuts and tax hikes. Why raise rates and cut spending when interest rates are at record lows and unemployment is so high? It seems Democrats are so determined to make Republicans and Grover Norquist eat shit, but any deal now will hurt a lot of people on the low end at the cost of socking it to the rich. And after a year the Republicans will have zero leverage outside of the normal budget process and we all remember how much shutting government down hurt under Gingrich. Roid, the problem with your idea is that Republicans can pass a budget without the increase in the limit and dare Obama not to sign it. Why would Obama want to get tagged with shutting down the government? Just get rid of the damn thing once and for all. Everyone can win (I think at this point Republicans would eat their own children if they didn't have to pass upper class tax cuts right now) there will be more money for the poor, a stimulus package, and no cuts. Next year Obama could then negotiate entitlement reform completely above board to show he takes the deficit seriously. And at the end of the year hopefully the economy should have bounced back enough to take the hit of the higher taxes and cuts.
- blackton
December 6, 2012 at 1:20am
Blackton's late night (1 02am) idea is intriguing and perhaps less wild than it might at first seem; I am chewing on it. In any event, in reality it is far too late to do it right now. Trying to figure out how it relates to the deficit being essentially GOP obfuscation (why was it not the No.1 topic in Dec '08 like it is now, when we have an improving economy but one that could use another big stimulus push?). If Republicans are using every parlor trick in the book to oppose big efforts to improve employment (tax breaks for the rich ain't it, now seriously, GOP folks) via a stimulus (larger than the good but token $50B on the Obama table), what can be done until the post-defeat psychosis calms down in the brain stem? Romney genially liked the idea of that giant stimulus in 2009, remember? Bringing it up now would make the GOP snarl in public and cry at home privately, so it is tricky. But we can't forget JOB, job, jobs in this weird deficit mania whipped up out of --in many senses---nowhere but Opportunismville.
- atlasqq
December 6, 2012 at 12:05pm
Addendum: I just saw a Rasmussen poll that said only 19% favor new stimulus spending. Even assuming bias in the technique and question form, it is clearly an uphill climb to talk about spending. Someone should study the way the discourse favored an enormous stimulus so much four years ago, and why it is a dead fish right now? Yes, some things are obvious (Obama afraid of running as a tax-and-spender), but this is a big turnaround that needs further understanding. Nonetheless, it would be nice to see some of the putative new Obama courage used to push this notion a bit, even if he thinks it is not nice, rude, or unpopular to the low-information mob.
- atlasqq
December 6, 2012 at 12:16pm
One thing is constant advertisements that try to focus attention on the debt, and don't mention unemployment. Another thing is that unemployment is at 7.8% and falling -- that's "good enough" that further stimulus isn't seen as "needed", along with that hyperfocus on the debt. Another is that Republicans keep praying to Supply-Side Economics to save us -- in their view only further Tax-Cuts will Stimulate The Economy. Thus we don't need Stimulus Spending -- despite all evidence to the contrary. What we DO need is expiration of the Bush tax-cuts, and then "stay the course" on Obama's other policies -- implement Obamacare, implement Dodd-Frank, keep refinancing CDO instruments, and for God's sake don't cut social spending and put anyone else out of work. Cutting the military is probably a good idea, but we'll get savings from pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan pretty soon.
- AllanL5
December 6, 2012 at 12:39pm
roudubouloi: that's a reasonable objection - but i think it's not quite right. (i was actually going to address it in the piece but seemed like too much of a detour.) basically, if it were the case that Boehner and the GOP realized that the debt-ceiling isn't very valuable to them, then it wouldn't matter whether obama threw it into the fiscal cliff negotiation or just waited and faced them down when the ceiling has to be raised next year. but Boehner et al actually still think of it as a valuable source of leverage and will demand to be compensated for parting with it. it's only as we approach the moment of truth next year that they will be disabused of this - the polling on their second attempt at extortion will be stupendously bad for them, the business community will be pounding on them like never before, obama will be stiff-arming them, etc. at that point they will see that the debt limit doesn't afford them the leverage they think it does, and boehner will have no choice but to throw in the towel.
- Noam Scheiber
December 6, 2012 at 12:40pm
blackton, I wouldn't take great issue with your budget priorities, but the trade-offs you describe are completely unnecessary. First, we have to understand that the tax and spending issues are functionally unrelated. They are tied together only by Republican anti-deficit rhetoric. On the tax side, the Democrats need nothing at all from the Republicans that they will not beg and crawl to hand over. If the Dems either let the Bush tax cuts expire, or make clear that they absolutely will allow them to expire, and put a "middle-class" renewal thereof on the table, the Republicans will jump from the Capitol dome before they would refuse to approve the "middle-class tax cut." And if they refuse, it would be even better. On the spending side, the only thing wrong with the sequester is that is is still not severe enough on military spending cuts -- as they are the source of the problem and we should not gut the entire government to pay for our military excesses. But the sequester is so much harsher for Republican spending priorities, including the fact that Republicans, despite their rhetoric, don't actually want to cut spending unless it is spending on the poor (excluded from the sequester), that they will accept any deal the Democrats offer, again so long as the Dems are willing to go over the fiscal cliff. What the Republicans want most is so-called "entitlement reform" which really means continuing to raid social security and Medicare so that the Republicans can continue to spend money on the operating budget side -- which the love to do -- without having to raise taxes even more. They want entitlements to get out of deficit or even run surpluses so that we can continue to do what we did for years, spend the entitlement surpluses on the operating budget. There is no reason other than stupidity for the Democrats ever to agree with this, not today, not tomorrow. Even the inane Bowles-Simpson commission didn't address entitlements, just declaring that there would be some absurd amount of savings from entitlements, to be figured out later. The thing is, entitlements don't need to be reformed, except on two ways that are anathema to Republicans. Social security payments are not too generous, and neither are Medicare payments in general, with the glaring exception of the drug benefit that prohibits the Federal government from negotiating drug prices. That exception must go. The only acceptable reforms of entitlements would be to increase revenues, by means-testing and/or broadening the tax based to include all earned income, or better yet, all income so that the revenue support is not regressive. On the Medicare side, we are only going to reduce the costs by denying care or managing costs. The Republicans want to deny care. This is morally repugnant. The alternative is to manage costs, getting rid of the drug exception, giving serious teeth to the ACA committee designed to set cost and consumption standards. Until the Republicans are willing to do these things THERE IS NOTHING TO REFORM without fundamentally gutting the programs. The Democrats refused to do this in the sequester to get out of the debt-ceiling hostage crisis and they should refuse to do this now and forever. If social security and Medicare are to be destroyed so that the Republicans can continue to hand out corporate welfare, agribusiness subsidies, and waste money on excessive weapons, let they destroy these programs (if they ever have the power) without any cooperation from the Democrats. If the Dems refuse entitlement reform at this juncture, and offer up a middle-class only extension of the Bush tax cuts, they can get whatever deal they want, including more stimulus spending, just for agreeing not to let the military spending cuts go into effect now. We don't have to agree to mangle social security and Medicare, we don't have to extend the horrid upper-income tax cuts, and we shouldn't. The longer term thing to understand is that the operating budget should be in fiscal surplus when we are in a full-employment economy. Taxes must pay for the operation of government. The place where we can run deficits if necessary is in the entitlement programs, because those are largely a demographic matter. Those programs were designed to swing between surplus and deficit depending on the demographics. Now we are in a deficit phase because of the baby boom bulge. Revenues for entitlements should be reformed so that, when the baby boom is gone, the accumulated surpluses of these programs come to zero. In the meantime, we should be running deficits in those programs. As I said above, what Republicans want is a truly horrific policy of cutting social security and Medicare so that the savings (lower or no deficits in entitlemenst) can be used to finance military and corporate welfare spending and so that we can run operating deficits to keep upper income taxes low. This is a nightmare for the economy and for the American people. We should not do this, not today, not ever. If we need more stimulus spending, that deal can be made, as I said, just for agreeing not to implement the military spending cuts.
- roidubouloi
December 6, 2012 at 12:42pm
Ray writes: "I'm not sure how a $1.6 trillion opening bid is hard ass." I think the full value of the expiring bush tax cuts (across all earners) would be >$3T, so I think you are right. Howard Dean came out and said today everyone needs to pay more, that taxes need to go up across the board. And right he is. Let's pay for the government we asked for. Let's make sure the $60K earner is feeling the full sting of our welfare programs. And THEN we can remind the $60K earner that the welfare recipient has more disposable income than he has. And the welfare recipient has a free week, and the $60K earner has a 40 hour a week commitment. Our revenues have returned to pre-meltdown levels, and yet our spending is still very far out of kilter. The ChiTrib has a good editorial today asking where the spending cuts are. They start by reminding us all about the the candidate, and his promises to make tough choices, to stop kicking the can down the road wrt reform of Medicare. And we all remember his promises to cut the deficit. They note the spending cuts are nothing: Just $400M (MILLION!) Over 10 years!!! versus $1.6T in new taxes. This is not balanced. And keep in mind, this is $400M in new cuts to the already bloated budget. We've completely lost the 2007 size of government as a reference. That is gone forever. Remember the (no laughable) days when Obama said he'd go through the budget line-by-line. Ahhhhh..... The $1.6T in new taxes cannot come from just the wealthy. And the spending cuts or nothing but change that fell into the cracks of a couch. Read the editorial here www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-cliff-20121205,0,2354777.story It even gives a mention of J Cohn, calling him "Obama-friendly", which would kind of like me saying "I like my wife and kids."
- seattleeng
December 6, 2012 at 1:37pm
Yes, the "$60K earner should feel the full sting of welfare" so that the top 10%, who have 50% of the entire GDP of the United States of America, don't have to. Let's understand what libertarians are about. They detest any sort of re-distribution of wealth as a matter of ideology because they believe the garbage they read in Ayn Rand when they were 16 years old. So, raising taxes on those below the median income or near the median income (instead of cutting their income taxes to zero, which is what we should do) is the libertarian version of "starve the beast." They figure that if they can make any redistribution onerous enough to the middle class, that there will be a public revolt, government income support will come to an end, and everyone who doesn't make in excess of $60K a year can go to hell, starve, do without healthcare, live in a hovel in the richest country on the face of the earth. Why? Because libertarians believe that those who make a lot of money are the sole authors of their wealth and those who don't are the sole authors of their lack of wealth and that anything that alters this state of affairs, whether through taxation or market regulation, is unjust. According to libertarians, those who benefit from any sort of market regulation or redistribution are "moochers." Never mind that without their labor the economy would come to a halt. This has absolutely nothing to do with economics. They tell lies constantly to try to make it appear so because they know perfectly well that their actual agenda is loathsome to the vast majority of Americans. Therefore, they endeavor constantly to cloak their ideological agenda with what they claim is economic inevitability: "If we do anything to interfere with the market distribution, we will all be poorer for it, across the board." This is the BIG FAT LIE. It is voodoo economics that has absolutely no empirical basis whatsoever. None. It is as much nonsense as the belief that the earth is flat. In reality, the 17% INCREASE alone in the GDP share of the top 10% since 1980, which comes to about $2.5 trillion in the current economy, is sufficient to pay for the entire operating cost of the Federal government. We could have ZERO income tax up to $150,000, a 50% bracket above that, and no deficit. Whether we choose to do this is a political choice, but it should be argued on those grounds. The claim that someone making $60K MUST pay taxes to support someone making $20K is A GREAT BIG FAT LIE TOLD BY LYING LIARS WHO DON'T HAVE THE BALLS TO DEFEND THEIR DISGUSTING IDEOLOGY WITHOUT RELYING ON LIES. See, e.g. Mitt Romney and the 47%.
- roidubouloi
December 6, 2012 at 3:35pm
"The $1.6T in new taxes cannot come from just the wealthy." Fucking nonsense. This is $160 billion a year. The top 10% are taking in $2.5 trillion a year more today than they would be if they had the income share they had in 1980, and they weren't exactly poor then. The $1.6 trillion over ten years isn't even a scratch on their budget for lawn care. "Our revenues have returned to pre-meltdown levels, and yet our spending is still very far out of kilter." For exactly two reasons and nothing else. Since 2000, discretionary non-defense spending has actually declined by 5% relative to GDP. The major increase is the growth in military spending from 3% of the economy to 6%. That is $450 billion in today's economy. The other big hit is the absurd Bush drug benefit where we are prohibited from negotiating prices with drug companies and just shovel tax dollars at them. Fix those two problems, let all Bush tax cuts expire (the simplest and fastest route) and the operating deficit is gone. Will the supply-side wackos stand up for a 50% cut in defense spending and getting tough with drug companies?
- roidubouloi
December 6, 2012 at 3:41pm
blackton, On your point about the debt ceiling: You assume that the Republicans can adopt whatever budget they want. They can't. Even if they could, the way budget negotiations work is a big game of chicken where the president (see, e.g. Bill Clinton) can refuse to sign a budget that he doesn't want daring the Republicans to shut down government. However, once the deal is cut, there is no necessity whatsoever for allowing it to be reopened via the debt ceiling. If the deal is one that both sides accept, adding a provision that allows it to be paid for would be absolutely trivial. The president merely has to insist that the deal they make and agree upon is the deal and must be financed, or it is not a deal and the government gets shut down.
- roidubouloi
December 6, 2012 at 3:44pm
"The other big hit is the absurd Bush drug benefit where we are prohibited from negotiating prices with drug companies and just shovel tax dollars at them." Listen - I am as anti-Welfare as they come. Abolish this bit of corporate welfare and we can start talking about sticking it to the poor folk on the dole.
- icarus-r
December 6, 2012 at 4:51pm
Hey Seattle, remember that idiot who claimed a mere 250,000 votes from four states would have swung the election from Obama (though how one can claim 250,000 is trivial is beyond me). Well, it seems that idiot was an even bigger idiot than I recently said. Here are the latest Ohio numbers: 166,214 Virginia 149,298 (and still not done counting) Florida 74,309 NH 39,643 For a total of 429,464 which is around 75% larger a number. In North Carolina Obama only lost by 92,004 votes. when will Republicans face that they got wiped out?
- blackton
December 6, 2012 at 8:32pm