Sullivan Challenges Rove

As a famous American conservative once said, "Facts are stubborn things".

Facts are stubborn things, like the amount of spending and borrowing this year, which dwarfs the past.

Sullivan also thoroughly discredits himself, unlike Rove, ironically, by actually, this late, blaming Bush.

Lets face it, spending has been an issue every since Bush Jr. got into office. Say what you will about Bush Sr. and Clinton, but they took the deficit pretty seriously, Bush Sr. to the point of going back on his promise to not raise taxes and costing himself a 2nd term most likely. And there is no doubt that the Obama administration things have skyrocketed so high its even stuns those grown accustomed to the deficits of the Bush Jr. era.

But its kinda hard to know how much to blame on spendy democrats when so much of the money is going out in an effort to stave off the collapse of our banking institutions. Its not Obama's fault they generated a situation where the economy almost collapsed. There was no solution but massive gov't bailout, just like every other case where corporations had the leashes loosened in the name of capitalism. Pseudo-capitalism really, since part of the founding principals of a market place are certain rules regulating the limits on any one entity having too much buying or selling power to themselves. Rules that may limit near term gains but ensure that we don't have problems like the ones we are currently in. Lets remember it was corrupt and incompetent business that put us in this mess. Anyone wanna come up with a solution to that? How about implementing criminal accountability of some sort for the heads of organizations that play so recklessly and willfully with the money of others. Limiting the scope of what banks can do with the money in their charge. Making people accountable for foolishness that has happened enough times that we really should know better by now.

I'd like to critique Obama's fiscal responsibility, but with this mess its screwed with whatever plan he might have had for the economy so you can't really tell if he knows what he is doing or not. Reminds me of Tom Hanks in The Money Pit. Buys a house which turns out to be totally falling apart, spends the next 6 months of his life trying to keep one thing after another from falling apart.

Oh my.

Here are a few stubborn facts on the state of things as of just last January:

1) The ultimately toxic housing bubble peaked in Obama's first year as a junior senator.

2) A Republican president presided over the entire housing bubble and the beginning of the financial crash.

3) The beginning of the bailout was executed by Republican appointees -- Treasury Sec. Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Decisions made under their watch included the inception of TARP, the bailout of AIG and the bailout of our auto industries, three hallmarks of our response that continued under Obama.

I sometimes wonder just how different things would be if Republicans won the White House in 2008. I find it hard to believe they'd be much different. So does former Reagan Treasury official Bruce Bartlett:

In an email this morning, Mr. Bartlett points out that “If one goes through the March update (pp. 6-7) and the August update (pp. 52-53) and adds up all the changes to the January estimate, you find that the deficit increase since January consists of $46 billion in lower than expected revenues due to the economy (11.5%), $129 billion in higher spending due to technical re-estimates (32.2%), and $226 billion due to legislative changes to both spending and revenues (56.3%).

“This suggests that we would have had a deficit of at least $1,361 billion this year even if McCain had won (January deficit plus lower revenues and technical changes and no legislative changes),” he writes - and, “that’s assuming no stimulus and that the economy would have performed as well without it.

“That’s only 14% less than the deficit currently projected,” said Mr. Bartlett. Plus, ”some of the legislative changes are due to higher defense spending and other non-stimulus related programs,” he said.

Mr. Bartlett said Mr. McCain “undoubtedly would have supported some sort of fiscal stimulus,” but “It might have been more tax- than spending-oriented, [which] would have increased the deficit nevertheless.

Absent any kind of serious policy proposals, Republicans aren't going to be able to position themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility--because there is no reason to believe it's true.

"But its kinda hard to know how much to blame on spendy democrats when so much of the money is going out in an effort to stave off the collapse of our banking institutions."

Is it being spent correctly? Are the institutions using that money correctly? (Nice bonuses again this year...)

"I'd like to critique Obama's fiscal responsibility, but with this mess its screwed with whatever plan he might have had for the economy"

Incorrect. This has been a year after the election -- it is not Bush's fault any longer, and what has been the real issue (to people concerned about the real matters and issues) is the spending and debt that the Democrats have undertaken this year, dwarfing the past. (The nature of the spending and other actions Washington has taken have increasingly concerned and repelled Americans, as well.)

"I sometimes wonder just how different things would be if Republicans won the White House in 2008. I find it hard to believe they'd be much different."

They'd agree to some of the stimulus spending, even inappropriate spending that benefited their districts and states, while correcting some of the other worsts. They'd probably be more favorable to tax reductions (which are also stimulatory) though the debt might not necessarily approach what we have been struck with as a result of the misspending to gargantuan amounts and extremes (as if the wrong lesson were learned from the election and the public's willingness to relent on at least some temporary stimulative measures). We certainly wouldn't see much overreach by Washington and the Dems, no lunatic "climate" political-policy legislation, and no rush (at the wrong time, when restraint is in order outside purely stimulative measures, when themselves always should be questioned and conceded reluctantly) to engage in federal-takeover and expenditure-increasing health care "reform," for example.

This is easy to assess.

Former Reagan Treasury official Bruce Bartlett made a different assessment:

Bruce Bartlett, a supply-side economist who worked in the Reagan Treasury, says the budget deficit if Republican candidate John McCain were elected would have been nearly as big as the one the Obama White House is projecting for the current fiscal year.

Also:

Mr. Bartlett said Mr. McCain “undoubtedly would have supported some sort of fiscal stimulus,” but “It might have been more tax- than spending-oriented, [which] would have increased the deficit nevertheless.

“If we assume that McCain’s stimulus would have been half the size of Obama’s that leaves us with an estimated deficit of $1,474 billion under McCain—only 7% less than the deficit now estimated,” he concludes.

"Absent any kind of serious policy proposals, Republicans aren't going to be able to position themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility--because there is no reason to believe it's true."

True, despite the reality of this year in that the GOP is being prevented from doing much. They have a recently poor fiscal record (capitalizing the "C" in "compassionate conservative" -- [GAG] -- buying votes, too) and otherwise being like Dems Lite, which is a major reason they lost support in 2006 as well as in 2008. Compounding their problem is the reality (which doesn't merit the hype that their opponents misuse routinely) that they've reduced themselves to being little more than the Opposition (of questionable loyalty this decade, due to their "compassionate" misbehavior). Plenty of us are no fans of the Dems, but we have never been lock-step followers of the GOP the way the Left routinely fastens itself to the Democratic Party.

As for the GOP's current problem, its "Proposed RNC Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates" says more than enough (there's a lot of "we support ... by opposing" in it):


(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing, denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership[.]

Kind of amazing really that anyone would take Rove seriously at this stage of his career. He should have been tarred, feathered and run out of the country long ago. Ah well, we're a forgiving bunch eh? ;-)

What JSpencer said!

"Incorrect. This has been a year after the election -- it is not Bush's fault any longer"

From the same silly, immature, childish peanut gallery that still blames Clinton for everything, nine years later...

Grow up, kiddies!

[chuckle] [rolling eyes] [sigh] [sniffle]

dear Ron and JSpencer. From my author grapevine, I hear Rove has a book coming out in the spring 2010, and we will hear much more from him. I also hear in the underground that some book publishers/editors (shocking) are publishing he and others as their personal way of attempting to tip the scales of pub op. (Big pubs like Bertalsmann as you know have great influence still by which voices they squelch and DONT publish... all under the guise of course of economic realies, yet many of their ultra con books dont sell through. Doesnt matter, those books of ultra conservatives are literally subsidized by the mainstream novelists who bring in the big bucks. Pub is known for robbing Peter to pay Paul, as we say )

Also on grapevine Ron, is rumor of 'plan' to sequentially release various targeted titles into US pop in an orderly blitz leading up to 2012 election. This will include a flurry of further Keys, Tancredo, Huckabee, Bayh, Mormon-man, sorry my file drawer just slipped closed, and the new ultras from NYT-- the D man, and fresh blood, as well as Buchanan, both Bay and brother, and ultra conserv bishops of churches, and the old women, michelle and ann, and the young women, including Miss McCain.

watch for it. It will likely be a publishing phenom the likes of which we've never seen before. One 'un-named source' who spoke on condition of anon, said that the idea is to take over the front tables at B and N, and other chains, including Costco, Walmart, airports, etc. To dominate.

My question still stands: Who will lead the way in the science of peace?

thanks,
dr.e

One 'un-named source' who spoke on condition of anon, said that the idea is to take over the front tables at B and N

Ha!

Interesting thread. The idea that a year washes away 8 of Bush's disasterous economic policy is pretty offensive. When you've got an economic mess the size of the Exxon Valdez spill, you can either sit by blithely and watch the life around you die in a sticky pool of blackness, or you can start the hard work of cleaning up, and hoping that someday your efforts will make the toxic land around you livable once more. Either way, you're looking at a great deal of damage, and both will come with great cost. I personally would have preferred a bigger bailout, more quickly disseminated, without the 450B in tax cuts, and tightly focused on certain industries and public works. That's pretty much what China did, and what Canada did, and both are looking a far sight better than we are right now as far as their recovery. I also would have liked to have seen a TARP system that was about the same size, but more carefully conceived in ways that the righties seemed to think was "governement controlling business".

Dr. E -- That's pretty frightening grapevine information. Looks like the so-called "invisible hand" really belongs to a bunch of right-wingers trying to control the market. It kind of reminds me of 20 or so years ago when GM went around and bought back and destroyed all its own electric vehicles and tried to covertly cover up that they'd ever even existed.

I don't read anything by Sullivan anymore. I feel his credibility is blown. Maybe he makes a valid argument, maybe not, but I wont waste any of my time reading him anymore after he donned the tinfoil hat over Trig Palin.

I don't read anything by...

Ignorance is bliss.

So, is anyone interested in cutting anything out of the budget? Obama came up with 12 billion of the most harmless, politically painless cuts, and got snubbed by congress. How can we get to reducing the deficit if even the easiest cuts can't be made?

Facts are stubborn things, like the amount of spending and borrowing this year, which dwarfs the past.
Please go to the following link and explain how the current deficit dwarfs W's or St. Ronnie:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy06/pdf/hist...
From Table 1.1 deficits in millions.
1977 ............................................................................... 355,559 409,218 –53,659
1986 ............................................................................... 769,215 990,441 –221,227
2005 estimate ................................................................ 2,052,845 2,479,404 –426,559
The numbers in Table 1.2 as a percentage of GDP are just as bad. Republicans never were fiscal conservatives.
Reagans deficits were 4 times Carters.

"anyone would take Rove seriously at this stage of his career"

Rove may well be looking to join or replace Dick Morris sometime (at Fox?).

* * *

"The idea that a year washes away 8 of Bush's disasterous economic policy is pretty offensive."

The issue (which may have eluded you) is that Obama and his team's errors and wrongdoings cannot be blamed on Bush. When they blame Bush or when anyone blames or uses Bush as a prop, it's a big DQ.

"How can we get to reducing the deficit if even the easiest cuts can't be made?"

If all else fails (or the Dems continue), the debt can be allowed to build until a debt trap occurs, or before that, the Chinese stop buying our debt or our dollars. It's arguable if the Dems, in particular, will wait that long before inflating the currency deliberately not only to monetize the debt, but to use cheap money as opiate of the masses -- or as the "economic and social lubricant" that "a correctly chosen, reasonable amount of inflation" will be said to constitute. (Also arguable is if people like Krugman will not only approve of it, but have advocated it before it happens, and will argue the rate or amount is not sufficient, that more is better and indeed imperative.) If there's actual, nominal, formal default on the debt, that's simply additional entertainment for us.

Steve, I'm looking for someone to teach me how it is that one can place a comment in a grayed out area and then proceed outside the box to comment on it..............how is that done?

spirasol, You just type: [blockquote]selected text you are quoting[/blockquote] (changing the "[ ]" brackets with "< >" and it will look like:

selected text you are quoting

If you use the Firefox browser they have an add-on called BBCodeXtra and it makes blockquotes, links and other html coding easy.

So who is to blame for the debt that threatens EVERYTHING? It's the system in which all of the incentives are geared toward the narrow and short term interests that fuel re-elections. Only if we get angry enough can we create new incentives powerful enough to overwhelm the status quo, but even if the nation's imminent peril finally gets our political "leaders'" attention, all the wrong incentives will remain in place. We are going to have to look to structural changes in our political system in order to achieve real reform. Here is the question for everyone worried about the debt: How do we get our elected leaders to take long term national problems seriously? Term limits? Clean election laws? A more democratic (small ''d") House of Representatives? Redistricting Reform? A Constitutional Convention? Each of these is problematic in its own way, but none present challenges nearly so great ass our national debt. See http://www.truthinaccounting.org/

I am not a fan of George W. Bush, but he did try to reform Social Security. Bush offered to take his beloved private savings accounts off the table, and he offered to means test the program, but still the Dems said no. It was the only serious attempt at any kind of entitlement reform. The Republicans may not have strong credentials as fiscal hawks, but it seems to me that the Democrats have no credentials at all since Bill Clinton left office, and even then his best years were when the GOP controlled Congress.

"Bush [...] did try to reform Social Security. [...] the Dems said no"

As I've reminded people many times before -- don't know if it got through the fog, though, then or now.

The Dems have also not reformed Medicare, before proceeding to expand federal health entitlements.

" How do we get our elected leaders to take long term national problems seriously? "

All the means you listed are good, along with subjecting our federal government to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Coming clean on unfunded future liabilities as well as the current debt is overdue.

Thanks Steve K, I guess I'll try the BBCodeXtra. THanks for the tip!

"Bush [...] did try to reform Social Security. [...] the Dems said no

As I've reminded people many times before -- don't know if it got through the fog, though, then or now."

You're really going to defend Bush's attempt at "reforming" Social Security? No mention of how obvious that plot line was? (Hmmm...there's this whole pile of money just sittin' there, and none of my buddies can make any money off it...what shall we do? Privatize!) So maybe it's not that all us crazy lefties are too densely fogged over to see that the Dems blocked that, but that we actually stand up and applaud the fact that our seniors' money hasn't gone down the tubes like everything else in the stock market.

"You're really going to defend Bush's attempt at "reforming" Social Security?"

No, Roro. [sighhhhhhhhhhh] Please don't be illogical and overly emotional, AGAIN.

I have been on record numerous times as criticizing the effort. Since you are acting as if you don't know about it (you weren't reading then), here is a recapitulation. My criticism was not the low-IQ instant lefty reaction that it was some kind of incrementalist dismantling of the program (I'll use smarter language than the lefties used and use, then and now), or helping the same Wall Streeters that Obama is in bed worth, arguably more so this year. I had identified the central defect, that it was still a federally run program and sets up the possibility of making the federal government someday a gargantuan, and the largest by far, institutional investor in the USA and probably on the planet (including China). Already this year, we have seen Washington's wrongful intervention into and interference with the private sector in a number of instances, with threats of more to come. What the Bush takeover would have left available to future politicians in Washington would have been much larger, with an enormous potential for Washington to become the worst kind (worse than this year) of institutional investor "activist," with all kinds of demands for things like "social responsibility," installation of federal officials into management and directorships in corporations, revisions of corporate charters (if not someday federal corporate charters, whose potential would be advanced), "Israeli divestiture" and constraints and demands on things like dividends and finance, "industrial policy" throughout the private sector, and other nightmares.

The *** obvious *** point here was that at the time, when the Dems, who OWN Social Security and had the chance to rescue the program in the manner they preferred, to keep the program's characteristics in the form they preferred, and to clinch additional voter shares for a generation, by saving the program before the surpluses peak and then decline (which is incontrovertible proof of failure), and then run deficits, actually insisted on doing nothing, and defended the status quo, incredibly. (The most notorious example of their incredible decision and the incredible attitude driving it was by Maurice Hinchey, saying that Social Security "would be more valuable later" if we left it alone [now, to fail later].)

Not only was I critical of the Bush effort (about which you made an obviously wrongful set of assumptions and statements), but the real point here, *** obviously ***, is that the Dems, who had the ideal chance and in fact, responsibility, to act, obstinately chose not to. That is the major point made during that time, and repeated on this thread. That is *** the *** point, the central point, here.

Meanwhile, the Dems are also doing nothing to reform Medicare, Social Security, or the minor entitlements (that they said must be reformed -- but who believed them?), ironically (hypocritically) while expanding federal entitlements at the same time.

Join those of us who are directing criticism where it belongs, not where it doesn't.

You really are the most ridiculous person ever, DLS. I know that I'm attacking you and not your argument, but I'm happy to own that at this point. Look at what you wrote. If I made an assumption from your statement that you were being critical of the Dems for opposing Bush's proposals re Social Security (as was the quote you based it on), it's only because that was clearly implied. And there was nothing remotely "emotional" about my response -- I am perfectly happy to own up to my emotions as well, when I have passion for an issue. When you accuse people of being overly emotional when they're not being remotely emotional, it just makes you look like an idiot who is using the old, tired silencing method of seeing emotion or passion as a reason for discounting someone's argument. The funny thing is, of course, if either of our posts show emotion, it's most certainly yours. [sighhhhhhhhhhhh] [big frown-y face][shakes head sadly] Seriously: get over yourself.

roro80:

You forgot:

[rolling eyes] [sniffle] [chuckle] [GAG] [etc] [etc]

"You really are the most ridiculous person ever, DLS. [...]"

This doesn't surprise me. No logic, no limits...

What I wrote ages ago criticizing Bush's Social Security reform attempt, and the Dems' deliberate refusal to engage in reform themselves, was written. The issue here and now was that same failure (along with the Dems' current failure to reform this year, while expanding entitlements). Nothing I wrote on this thread merited your responses.

[teehee] Thanks for the morning [chuckle], DLS.

You're welcome, Ms. Unstable, Overreactive Biochemistry.