Bipartisan negotiation

Democrats want GOP lawmakers to give up their employer's healthcare

CBS:

A group of House Democrats has released a letter to Republican congressional leaders calling on them to announce which of their members will be forgoing their congressional benefit health insurance (which is subsidized by the government) in light of their party's opposition to health care reform overhaul legislation.
"If your conference wants to deny millions of Americans affordable health care, your members should walk that walk," four Democrats write in the letter, which is addressed to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican leader John Boehner. "You cannot enroll in the very kind of coverage that you want for yourselves, and then turn around and deny it to Americans who don't happen to be Members of Congress."

This is sadly revealing--when did we decide the state should treat citizens as employees?

Perhaps we should also join Members of Congress in drawing government paychecks? I seem to recall Lenin getting here first.

Changing of the guard

Draft Mitch Daniels

Yes.

He is way better than the GOP's current field.

My dream nominee would be Gary Johnson, but let's be real—there's no way he can overcome both neo- and social-conservative opposition.

Mitch Daniels will at the least have an outside chance of overcoming tea party populism.

I need to know more of how his foreign policy would contrast with Obama's before I could endorse him in the general. But let's also not get ahead of ourselves.

Row, row, row your boat

Not so gently down the stream.

Blast From The Past

Cover of Time magazine, circa 2009 C.E.

March of the establishment write-ins

Murkowski may get company

Tea party ad

Woohoo.

Here comes impeachment

Jonathan Bernstein warns.

I'll probably be voting GOP anyway, or at least abstaining.

Now we're stuck with Elena Kagan

And I'd thought Sonia Sotomayor was too prosecutor-friendly for her refusal to hear evidence.

Kagan's nomination and certain confirmation are a disaster for liberty, for reasons Daniel Larison and Radley Balko explain.

Obama's overall record on civil liberties has been surprisingly terrible for a constitutional law professor. I don't have time right now to elucidate on all his slights, but I'm done making excuses. I expected this to be one of his stronger areas, and instead he's turned out to be worse than I would have expected from, say, Hillary Clinton.

I believe this is the turning point.  As Radley put it in 2008:

Here’s why I preferred Obama to McCain: The GOP gave up all pretense of any limited government principles. They’re no longer trustworthy on the issues where they’re supposed to agree with me. Obama, on the other hand, made some promises about government transparency, hinted at a less bellicose foreign policy, and I like what he said about Guantanamo, torture, and executive power. In other words, he was better on the issues where Democrats are supposed to agree with me. It’s really that simple.

Yet we no longer agree where we were supposed to agree.

I'm throwing in my towel and will not support Obama in 2012.

(A Republican candidate will have an even steeper hill to climb to earn my support, but as of now: a plague o' both their houses.)

Aren't we are all individualists now?

Conor Friedersdorf on why a more libertarian GOP is desirable.

Hand out

Fallback position

Fiscally conservative adult entertainment?

Porn star Stormy Daniels finally announces her party affiliation for her run for Senate in Louisiana:

While this decision has not been an easy one, recent events regarding Republican National Committee fundraising at Voyeur, an L.A.-based lesbian bondage-themed nightclub, finally tipped the scales.

As I have said for well over a year, it is time that our government and our tax policy begin rewarding entrepreneurship and creativity again. It is time again to inspire positive risks and out-of-the-box thinking in the interest of growing a strong economy and a strong America.

For me, this spirit can be summed up in the RNC's investment of donor funds at Voyeur.

As someone who has worked extensively in both the club and film side of the adult entertainment industry, I know from experience that a mere $1,900 outlay at a club with the reputation of Voyeur is a clear indication of a frugal investment with a keen eye toward maximum return.

(via)

The second time as farce

From Yglesias' comments:

Is there a word for the process whereby a political party gets so emotionally invested in defending a past mistake that they start to celebrate the mistake, and eventually transform it, willy-nilly, into a central plank of their philosophy?

R: What do you think about waterboarding a prisoner?
D: Waterboarding is torture.
R: Is not. We never torture.
D: Is so.
R: Is not, and anyway, torture might be morally justified in some cases.
D: What?! are you crazy?
R: I'm just saying, in some cases, it might be actually be necessary.
D: This is crazy. I'm taking over.
R: sulks for a year, then finally says: I’m starting to get really nervous. We can't be safe, because you refuse to torture.
D: Jesus, we're just re-establishing the Reagan standard.
R: Torture! Torture! Torture! Freedom has never been safe without torture! Torture is the centerpiece and fulcrum of all our Constitutional liberties! Give me torture, or give me death.

Personally, I think it's a losing proposition to make “torture” the centerpiece of your brand identity. But Cheney clearly disagrees.

Deficit curbing fiscal commission: Deal or No Deal?

(cross posted at Library Grape)

As a reminder, here are charts of the fiscal mess we're headed for under current policy:

To sum up: the baseline scenario has discretionary spending gradually reducing, Social Security remaining about constant, and existing medical entitlements alone ballooning to an absurd 13% of GDP by 2050.

Well before then, near 2025 total debt will cross 100% of annual GDP, the ugly situation Greece finds itself in today that's been trashing the euro in recent trading.

Rather than candidly floating specific, politically perilous proposals such as a liberal analogue to Republican Paul Ryan's proposed budget, President Obama is looking to offload the work to a bipartisan "fiscal commission". The plan was to pass this legislatively and require Congress to vote on the resulting proposals. In the past, some Senate Republicans have been supportive of this idea, but they shamelessly joined in obstructing it. The president will now appoint the commission by executive order, so I assume this means Congress can't be required to vote on any resulting proposal.

Still, Greg Mankiw explores ideas for what we might come up with:

If you were a member of the fiscal commission, what would you try to achieve?

The answer for liberals is easy: They want to raise taxes to fund the existing, and even an expanded, social safety net, while politically insulating the Democrats as much as possible from the charge of being the "tax and spend" party. President Obama can then campaign in 2012 that he did not break his no-taxes-on-the-middle-class pledge, but rather a bipartisan group broke it. That is, the President wants to take credit for fixing the fiscal situation but duck responsibility for having imposed higher taxes.

But what if you are conservative? This is harder. You can try to stick to your no-tax-increase pledge. The problem is that doing so would require spending cuts larger than are politically realistic. If I were king, I bet I could find sufficient spending cuts. But I am not expecting to be anointed any time soon. If the fiscal commission is going to succeed, tax increases will have to be part of the deal.

A reasonable position is, perhaps, that the commission should not succeed. After all, it is the president's responsibility to put out a budget. The one he just released is, as I argued in my recent Times column, not a sustainable one at all. He just passed the buck to the fiscal commission. Perhaps conservatives should not allow him to do that but, instead, should try to force him to put out a sustainable budget on his own. After all, isn't that Peter Orszag's job?

But let's suppose that you are a conservative and you want the fiscal commission to succeed. You will have to agree to higher taxes as part of the bargain. But what should you aim to get in return? Here is my list.

1. Substantial cuts in spending. Ensure that the commission is as much about shrinking government as raising revenue. My personal favorite would be to raise the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare. Do it gradually but substantially. Then index it to life expectancy, as it should have been from the beginning.
2. Increased use of Pigovian taxes. Candidate Obama pledged 100 percent auctions under any cap-and-trade bill, but President Obama caved on this issue. He should renew his pledge as part of the fiscal fix. A simpler carbon tax is even better.
3. Use of consumption taxes rather than income taxes. A VAT is, as I have said, the best of a bunch of bad alternatives. Conservatives hate the VAT, more for political than economic reasons. They should be willing to swallow a VAT as long as they get enough other things from the deal.
4. Cuts in the top personal income and corporate tax rates. Make sure the VAT is big enough to fund reductions in the most distortionary taxes around. Put the top individual and corporate tax rate at, say, 25 percent.
5. Permanent elimination of the estate tax. It is gone right now, but [will be reinstated soon, and] most people I know are not quite ready to die. Conservatives hate the estate tax even more than they hate the idea of the VAT. If the elimination of the estate tax was coupled with the addition of the VAT, the entire deal might be more palatable to them.

One thing is clear: The Democrats in Congress would hate the five demands above. But that is precisely the point. The fiscal commission is giving the Democrats something of very high value: political cover from a major tax hike. If Republicans are going to give them that, they should get something very big in return. If the conservatives on the commission could achieve my five goals above, it might be a deal worth talking about.

Let's make this a bit more concrete. Suppose our goals definitely involve:

1. Reducing future projected deficits to something manageable, like under 1-2% of GDP within a few years time, and keeping it there.
2. Raising any necessary new revenue with a new, European-style VAT.
3. Pigovian carbon pricing (cape and trade, or a carbon tax) is off the table initially; anything we agree to later will simply lower the overall VAT commensurately.

The price for agreement will be along the lines Mankiw describes above:

1. The retirement age will be gradually (over the next ~10 years) increased to something like 70+ and thereafter pegged to life expectancy.
2. Distortionary taxes like the individual and corporate income rates will be capped at a figure like 25%.
3. Permanent elimination of the estate tax.

So, bleg: what's your negotiating position with respect to the above? Can we make a deal?

A libertarian children's story

Original:

Republican Guy recently asked his friends' little girl what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said she wanted to be President of the United States (POTUS) some day. Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so he asked her, "If you were POTUS what would be the first thing you would do?"

She replied, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people."

Her parents beamed with pride.

"Wow...what a worthy goal," Republican Guy told her. "But you don't have to wait until you're POTUS to start. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where this homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house."

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked him straight in the eye and said, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"

Republican Guy said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."

Democratic counterpoint:

Democratic Gal recently asked her friends' little boy what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said he wanted to be President of the United States (POTUS) some day. Both of his parents, conservative Republicans, were standing there, so she asked him, "If you were POTUS what would be the first thing you would do?"

He replied, "I'd give cars and boats to all my parents’ friends."

His parents beamed with pride.

"Wow...what a fabulously generous goal," Democratic Gal told him. “But you don't have to wait until you're POTUS to start. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the country club where your parents friends hang out, and you can give them the $50 to use toward new cars and boats.”

He thought that over for a few seconds, then he looked her straight in the eye and said, "Why don’t my parents’ friends come over and do the work, and you can just pay them the $50?"

Democratic Gal said, "Welcome to the Democratic Party."

(Underneath her breath, muttering: "Your parents’ friends wouldn’t be caught dead in my neighborhood, guy, much less doing any manual labor.")

Libertarian response:

Libertarian Person (Elpie) recently asked his friends' little child what it wanted to be when it grew up. The child said he/she wanted to be President of the United States (POTUS) some day. Both of the child’s parents, one a liberal Democrat and one a conservative Republican, were standing there, so LP asked the child (Kid), "If you were POTUS what would be the first thing you would do?"

Kid replied, "I'd like to see everyone have stuff."

Kid’s parents beamed with pride.

"That’s great," Elpie told Kid. "But you don't have to wait until you're POTUS to start. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll give you the address of the US Treasury, and you can send the government the $50 to spread among all the fine people in the country."

Kid thought that over for a few seconds, then he looked Elpie straight in the eye and said, “The government can go fly a kite, I’m keeping the $50 and deciding for myself who or what to spend it on."

Elpie said, "Welcome to the Libertarian Party."

(ht Brian Wright)

Why Palin won't win the nomination

Ambers is somewhat encouraging.

Rep Paul Ryan (R-WI) has a daring budget proposal

This was brought up at the presidential Q&A with House Republicans. Ezra explains here. I like the solutions and am in favor of it.

But you have to figure Republicans will be killed at the polls if they seriously coalesced around cutting Medicare this way. Though a serious proposal on the merits (as Obama acknowledged in the Q&A), being politically nonviable it will only serve to keep tea partiers happy and assist Republicans in painting Democrats as not serious about Medicare's insolvency.

Really it's the public that's not serious. Medicare future deficits are unsustainable, but we still aren't willing to tolerate service cuts or tax increases to close the gap.

U.S. Senate social graph

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(via DIA)