The Destructive Center
by Paul Krugman (or cross-posted at Common Dreams)
What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?
A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.
Even if the original Obama plan — around $800 billion in stimulus, with a substantial fraction of that total given over to ineffective tax cuts — had been enacted, it wouldn’t have been enough to fill the looming hole in the U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to $2.9 trillion over the next three years.
Yet the centrists did their best to make the plan weaker and worse.
Paul Krugman ends his this week’s opinion piece with this:
Now, House and Senate negotiators have to reconcile their versions of the stimulus, and it’s possible that the final bill will undo the centrists’ worst. And Mr. Obama may be able to come back for a second round. But this was his best chance to get decisive action, and it fell short.
So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren’t good.
For rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. “Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,” he declared on Saturday, and “the scale and scope of this plan is right.”
No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t.
Pretty strong words. Do you agree with him or disagree? Why?
“And Mr. Obama may be able to come back for a second round.”
This is what the Rushpuppets are afraid of the most, that the initial bill will arrest the steep decline enough to warrant more of the same, unless they get enough of their own ideas in the bill to muddy the water, to allow them to claim it was their part of the plan that actually caused the improvement.
I think the $2.9Tr over the next three years is based on zero intervention, and even the $800B package lowers that enough in the first year, that the new projection will look better over time. The Collins-Nelson amendment has passed with 61 votes, and the House could just pass the bill as is, if Obama can get them to do so.
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”
- Pete Townshend
I hate to be stupid, but I can’t understand why there is even one penny of tax cuts in there. I hate taxes as much as the next guy, but tax cuts will do nothing to help displaced workers and small businesses that already are paying little or no taxes, and they are the engine of the economy. The way to kickstart that engine is not tax cuts, but increasing employment and loading up the money supply to help small businesses to breathe.
So the only reason for the tax cuts is to get a couple of Republican votes. Well, fuck them. Let them try to filibuster themselves into the grave.
(Maybe that’s why I’m not president, ya think? Reason #342.)
BTW, there are some types of tax cuts or reforms that could really help. Nevermind cutting income taxes.
As a small business owner, I’d be hiring another employee tomorrow (literally) if I didn’t have to screw with the complexities and expenses of payroll. I can afford neither the time nor money to deal with stupidity like worker’s comp. I just got done fighting the IRS after a protracted 4 year battle over their belief that tax paperwork for my last business was not filed properly. They were trying to charge me thousands of dollars in taxes, thousands more in penalties, and interest, but I did everything properly and didn’t owe them one penny. The rules are so complicated, the IRS can’t even understand it. Basically, you’re forced to pay specialists like accountants and payroll companies, and then tax attorneys, just to deal with these stupid government agencies and rules, and the money for that comes from… where?
This experience plus all the other employee-related rules and regs, makes me avoid hiring even though I need the help and these are good paying jobs – $15 – $30 / hour.
The government should make it easy, not difficult, for businesses to hire people. Step 1 – universal health care, eliminating employer funded benefits and worker’s comp ripoffs. Step 2 – stop making the employer the government’s enforcer.
So how about a few less tax cuts for criminals on Wall Street and whining CEOs who earn millions, and a few reforms to help the small business owner that’s got everything on the line every day, and is just trying to make a living wage?
When I saw that Wall Street cat on CNN complaining that the proposed $500,000 cap on CEO pay for companies on the public dole was too much of a hardship, I wanted to jump through my TV and throttle him. All those fat white guys like to talk about the evils of an entitlement society, but nobody on earth thinks they are more entitled than those same fat white guys.
Personally, I think that cap is about 5x too high. If you’ve fucked up your company so badly and so relentlessly that you require taxpayer bailout, really you shouldn’t even have a job at all, much less go on TV whining about being stuck with only a half million salary plus millions in deferred stock options. Heavens, how ever will I pay for my jet fuel?? Tell you what, ace, if you want $50 billion in taxpayer money to patch up your own mess, how about we require you to scrub public toilets every day until your debt is repaid?
*** end of rant ***
Good rant Gorn,
There might be a lot more small businesses if healthcare wasn’t at issue. I wouldn’t work for a big company except for the cost of insurance. Small shops are much more entertaining and you wear more hats than at the big places. I only get to run the same three machines now, I used to get to move all over the shop, doing programming and setups, only running jobs when everyone else was fully engaged.
Don’t be such a stranger Gorn, we need to read a good rant regularly here.