PLANK DECEMBER 23, 2012
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All you need to know about the current state of the fiscal cliff negotiations is that Republicans are scorpions and Democrats are frogs.
Do you know the story of the scorpion and the frog? A scorpion asks a frog if he can piggyback across a river. The frog says he’s afraid the scorpion will sting him. The scorpion points out that if he were to sting him then they both would drown. Persuaded, the frog invites the scorpion onto his back. When they’re halfway across the river the scorpion stings the frog. Gasping for breath, the frog says, “Why did you do that? Now we’ll both drown.” The scorpion replies, “I know. But I can’t help it. It’s my nature.”
The scorpion’s sting is, of course, the House GOP’s refusal to pass even House Speaker Boehner’s “Plan B” limiting the scheduled Jan. 1 tax increase to income above $1 million. This act of self-destruction invites a bigger automatic tax increase. But Republicans just can’t help themselves. The House GOP's refusal also increased Obama’s leverage, because in Washington’s version of this fable, the frog (President Obama) shakes the scorpion off his back, swims to shore, and lives happily ever after. Only the scorpion drowns. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve observed that this is one lucky frog.
Sen. Joe Lieberman insists on sticking to the original version of the tale. If America goes over the fiscal cliff, Lieberman said Dec. 23 on CNN’s State of the Union, “it will be the most colossal, consequential act of congressional irresponsibility in a long time, maybe ever in American history.” We all drown! But that isn’t true. It will merely be the most colossal, consequential act of Republican self-sabotage in a long time.
President Obama left Washington for his Christmas vacation in Hawaii urging congressional leaders to put together a stopgap deal blocking the Jan. 1 sequester (i.e., steep budget cuts), extending unemployment benefits, and allowing the scheduled Jan. 1 tax increase only on income above $250,000. That isn’t going to happen. We know it won’t happen because Boehner couldn’t get enough Republican votes behind his much more GOP-friendly Plan B. Conceivably Boehner could try to put together a coalition of Democrats and Republicans to pass Plan B, but that would put his speakership (which is up for renewal in a couple of weeks) at serious risk. Also, what would be in that for the Democrats? Much better to wait till Jan. 1, when Democrats can dare Republicans to oppose what by then will be a tax cut for incomes below $250,000.
(Boehner may lose the speakership anyway, but that wouldn’t change the underlying dynamic of the negotiation. It might even improve it by freeing his successor to surrender more quickly because he or she lacks any taint from prior negotiations. The appropriate attitude about whether Boehner will get to remain as speaker, in case you’re wondering, is not to care. Say it with me: “I don’t care.”)
Congressional Republicans have to have known that they could cut a better deal on taxes before the Jan. 1 deadline than after. Certainly Grover Norquist knew, and encouraged them to vote for Plan B, even though it violated his silly “I’ll never vote for a tax increase ever, swear to God” pledge. But the Club For Growth, which carries a considerably bigger stick than Norquist’s Americans For Tax Reform, took a more literal view of the situation and forbade Republicans to support Plan B. The Club For Growth, and the Republican members of Congress who either agreed with it or were cowed by it, could not acknowledge that there were some circumstances under which voting for a tax increase would be the lesser of two evils, even if all you cared about was keeping taxes low. They couldn’t do that because it would be the thin edge of the wedge. Also, they just couldn’t bear to shatter the perfect record Republicans have pointlessly maintained for 22 years in never, ever supporting tax increases. (The Tea Party, which seems to feel the same way, is also urging Republicans to dive off the fiscal cliff, though the Tea Partiers’ self-destructiveness appears to be less self-aware.)
The same automaton-like behavior that kept House Republicans from supporting Plan B will compel them to vote for a tax cut after Jan. 1. It may not be Obama’s tax cut. It may not even be Obama’s ill-conceived compromise version of the tax cut, which raised the threshold to $400,000 and proposed Social Security benefit cuts at the very moment the president should have realized he was holding all the cards. But they’ll have to vote for some tax cut, and then it will be Obama’s job to wait them out until they vote again, this time for something more reasonable. I hope it’s Obama’s $250,000 threshold, but Obama may have blundered into accepting a threshold closer to $500,000.
The pressure on Republicans ought to be so great that Obama can also forestall the worst of the sequester cuts and win extension of unemployment benefits and the payroll-tax cut and various low-income tax credits, including the Earned Income Tax Credit. I’m guessing he can shoehorn some stimulus spending in there, too, and win at least a two-year postponement of the next debt-ceiling fight. Remember, the automatic income-tax increase won’t be Obama’s only leverage; Obama also will have leverage involving less-publicized increases in the capital gains tax and the inheritance tax, not to mention automatic cuts in defense spending.
As this interactive chart prepared by Time magazine’s Michael Crowley makes clear, Obama can put off most of the bad stuff through the month of January. In nearly every respect, the fiscal cliff poses no more of a threat than the Mayan apocalypse. The single exception is the stock market. It will almost certainly go bonkers. But even that will have a beneficial effect, because Republicans will take the blame for angering the gods of capitalism, and will have to work overtime to appease them. Here’s hoping Obama will have the fortitude to be a patient frog while the viper thrashes and drowns and Lieberman, the Washington Post editorial page, Erskine Bowles, and Maya MacGuineas all issue urgent pleas for surrender.
Republicans’ vote against Plan B pretty much guaranteed they’d be cast as the bad guys, and may even have rescued Obama from his own premature concession. I know that sounds simplistic. But honest to God, sometimes life really can be this simple.
18 comments
You want to know what's wrong with Republicans? See "Senator arrested for Drunk driving." No, that is not news. This is: "Politico notes Crapo is Mormon and has said publicly that he abstains from alcohol." What a bunch of crapo.
- icarus-r
December 24, 2012 at 8:58am
The modified scorpion frog analogy is probably closest. Otherwise, this is like a movie plot where the rescuer tries to make a deal with the hostage taker knowing that if the deal falils he has bought the time needed to put a successful rescue effort in place, except that the rescuer has to keep rescuing the hostage every few months, and the hostage taker is delusionally claiming that it is he, the hostage taker, who is protecting the hostage from the rescuer.
- Nusholtz
December 24, 2012 at 10:17am
But the effective outcome is their policies will make us all as poor as hillbillies. I simply don't get how ruining the economy makes the super rich better off. Unless people like the Koch brothers are outright secret nihilists than there is no logic to turning down Obama's last offer. As people like the Koch brothers absolutely require there to a viable middle class to buy all of their consumer products how can they remain rich? As countries like China mature economically they will be far less likely buy American brands as local ones will rise up to challenge them (with the chinese government collusion to support their own plutocrats) It isn't even a question of them saying, hey, Demographically we can wait the Democrats out as the country is becoming more and more Conservative since it is the exact opposite. I find their behavior utterly inexplicable. I think at least 20 House Republicans won with less than 55% of the vote, many of these seats are in NJ, NY, Pa. Ohio, Wisc. Ill. etc. and many are properous upper middle class districts. I get Bachmann will never change but how many of these other Republicans must know they are being dragged down to oblivion?
- blackton
December 24, 2012 at 12:12pm
Blackton, the behavior of the Koch brothers is inexplicable if you assume that what they care about is being rich. They are already rich, and rich they will remain. However, if you assume that what they care about is power, it starts to make a little more sense. The middle class may suffer, which won't bother the Kochs because they are already rich, and rich they will remain. But if they lose power (or should I say lose MORE power), if senators and representatives don't jump when they say so, and don't sign pledges they want them to... that would hurt. A hurt that all the millions can't make go away.
- Tobbar
December 24, 2012 at 1:13pm
Happy holidays all. May God, whatever your believe Him to be, bless you all and your families with peace. - v
- Tristan
December 24, 2012 at 3:59pm
Likewise Tristan!
- ironyroad
December 24, 2012 at 4:16pm
Happy holidays all! & here's hoping we don't all drown in the river.
- Sophia
December 24, 2012 at 5:49pm
Yes, let's raise taxes as high as possible and borrow as much money as possible and spend as much as possible with as little accountability as possible. Sovereigns, throughout history, have taken this approach. And it never leads to tears.
- homeros
December 24, 2012 at 8:01pm
I don't think we quite understand what is happening here. It is not simple politics. It is a cultural and ideological death rattle. Some parties simply fade away and are replaced by a new variation. Other, more radical ones, are tempted by Armageddon. Look at the shift we see in America manifest in the presidential election. The fearful and the fanatic are not chastened; like good soldiers they welcome Götterdämmerung. Don't believe the rich big boys are in the driver's seat. It's beyond that. At the same time, my fear is that the fundamental mechanisms that preserve the decency and viability of our society--the middle class and checks on the aggregations of power--will not hold amidst the confusion.
- Vogelfam
December 24, 2012 at 10:06pm
What do you mean, homeros? Nobody on this thread is advocating that path. Vogel -- I'd agree, but with the proviso that what you say ignores one peculiarly American fact: that one of the reasons the Götterdämmerung is welcomed is that the president isn't racially white. That shrivels the drama down to a fairly pathetic level, I'd say. Or . . . ?
- ironyroad
December 25, 2012 at 12:08am
irony, i wish i didn't have to agree with you. but then i do have my eyes wide-open. happy new year to you all!
- kras
December 25, 2012 at 3:56am
Happy Holidays Everyone! Here's to next year's New Year's Resolution! Let's hope its the New Year's Resolution to end all Resolutions, and I mean including the debt ceiling fight.
- Nusholtz
December 25, 2012 at 9:48am
G-zooks homeros. Asking the wealthy to pay Clinton-era tax rates, at a time when they've done extremely well and the middle class and working poor and most seniors, disabled people are getting creamed, and the infrastructure is falling apart, that is not what you're claiming it is. Domestic spending has fallen by the way, probably it have risen until the economy is roaring again, which it won't as long as the rich are stashing their money overseas and doing their darndest, from what I can tell, to grab and even expand their power regardless of election results. So I'm worried that both vogelfam and irony are right. The tax and spend argument is a red herring, being used.
- Sophia
December 25, 2012 at 12:54pm
Meant, domenstic spending should have risen. We should have passed infrastructure and other jobs bills bills but no. It's better to "starve the beast," ie the people's elected government, right? Wait until the next round of catastrophic storms hit then get back to us. Red states will be calling FEMA, bet on it.
- Sophia
December 25, 2012 at 12:56pm
Hope everyone has a good Xmas day, however they are spending it!
- ironyroad
December 25, 2012 at 3:30pm
Day with a big D, that should be :)
- ironyroad
December 25, 2012 at 3:31pm
Homeros - you must have accidentally replied to the wrong thread. Taxes are clearly not being raised "as much as possible". We are clearly not borrowing "as much money as possible" as our interest rates are at all time lows. So low in fact that its like the market doesnt view our spending as particularly out of line with historical norms, it's just that our taxes are too low. And the money is being spent with a great deal of accountability. One of the prime criticisms of the stimulus is that the controls were too strict, and that slowed the disbursement of funds. The fraud rate to date (and its all available for anyone to look at) is so low as to almost be a rou ding error. This will likely increase as time goes by, but all that says is that the accountability is there, it just takes time for these things to be reported/detected, investigated and then prosecuted.
- Nari224
December 26, 2012 at 10:48pm
"Sovereigns, throughout history, have taken this approach." Oh yeah, because when I look at the United States, I immediately think of that serial defaulter, Edward III. For example, there was all the wars he engaged in without an adequate tax base and without the ultimate support of his people, all in the name of either conquering distant lands or pacifying them. Mighty military machine, too; and quite successful, as far as it went. Ruinously so. Important lesson to be learned there: in fact, Barbara Tuchman wrote an entire book to demonstrate how our era reflected the 14th c. "let's raise taxes as high as possible and borrow as much money as possible" There is something deliciously ironic (is that the word I am looking for? Or should I settle for "moronic" instead?) about this line. Because of course half of the stimulus was in the form of tax cuts. So the borrowing was necessary because taxes were being lowered, not raised. But who's quibbling, as long as you make a nonsensical statement not rooted in any real policy or political reality, but one that is in accordance with an idealised version of the Republic, in which no one but the poor pays taxes, the Imperium rests on the capacity of private mercenaries pillaging desert sheikdoms, and gates and semi-automatics keep the hordes out. God Forbid that the old be secure in their dotage or that the rich pay a margin of their unused and unsuable wealth for the upkeep of national parks or the monitoring of volcanos. "spend as much as possible with as little accountability as possible." Perfect description of the Pentagon - are you sure you don't write for The Nation?
- icarus-r
December 27, 2012 at 11:05am