[jeffkrol]

Reagan's Budget Director: GOP Policies 'Have Crippled Our Economy' | The Nation

What does this architect of Reaganomics say?

"Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts—in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance—vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes," Stockman writes in a lengthy analysis of the current economic condition published Sunday in The New York Times. "This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one."

Where are Republicans really wrong right at the moment? In proposing to maintain the Bush-Cheney administration's massive tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

"If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation's public debt—if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015—will soon reach $18 trillion. That's a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation's wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase," writes the former conservative congressman and OMB director, who shaped the "Reagan Budgets" of the early 1980s. "More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell's stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy."

Stockman's complete article is here.

But genuine conservatives and Main Street Republicans – the ones who maintain a measure of loyalty to the American experiment – might want to ruminate a bit on the Reagan aide's closing argument that the current crop of Republicans politicians are, in particular, guilty of "hollowing out of the larger American economy."

"Having lived beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore. In the past decade, the number of high-value jobs in goods production and in service categories like trade, transportation, information technology and the professions has shrunk by 12 percent, to 68 million from 77 million. The only reason we have not experienced a severe reduction in nonfarm payrolls since 2000 is that there has been a gain in low-paying, often part-time positions in places like bars, hotels and nursing homes," writes Stockman. "It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans—paid mainly from the Wall Street casino—received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent—mainly dependent on Main Street's shrinking economy—got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market's fault. It's the decaying fruit of bad economic policy."

Yep I really want that back........ people better start growing up.
Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockman.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2
Followups........
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-klinghoffer-conservatis...,3905768.story

From neocons to crazy-cons
Once the conservative movement was about finding meaning in private life and public service. But it has undergone a shift toward demagoguery and hucksterism.

Once, the iconic figures on the political right were urbane visionaries and builders of institutions — like William F. Buckley Jr., Irving Kristol and Father Richard John Neuhaus, all dead now. Today, far more representative is potty-mouthed Internet entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart, whose news and opinion website, Breitbart.com, is read by millions. In his most recent triumph, Breitbart got a U.S. Department of Agriculture official pushed out of her job after he released a deceptively edited video clip of her supposedly endorsing racism against white people.

What has become of conservatism? We have reached a point at which nothing could be more important than to stop and recall what brought us here, to the right, in the first place.

Buckley's National Review, where I was the literary editor through the 1990s, remains as vital and interesting as ever. But more characteristic of conservative leadership are figures on TV, radio and the Internet who make their money by stirring fears and resentments. With its descent to baiting blacks, Mexicans and Muslims, its accommodation of conspiracy theories and an increasing nastiness and vulgarity, the conservative movement has undergone a shift toward demagoguery and hucksterism. Once the talk was of "neocons" versus "paleocons." Now we observe the rule of the crazy-cons.

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Last edited by jeffkrol; 08-04-2010 at 09:54 AM.

[johnmflores]

Another example:

They're Not Embarrassed Crooks and Liars Media

[jeffkrol]

Another example:

They're Not Embarrassed Crooks and Liars Media

LOVED it, everyone should watch it.......

[gokenin]

Does it really shock anyone ? Are you going to tell me that if the situation were reveresed that the Democrats wouldn't be doing the same thing? politicians flip flop about everything as long as it can be used to get them re-elected this is nothing new. I just dont see why it shocks or amazes or even flusters anyone these days? Am I just to cynical ? Then again I remember the old saying when can you tell a politician is telling the truth? when his mouth is shut. Ah well lets get the Republican bashing band wagon going again.

[Parallax]

gokenin, you can't bee too hard on the Democrats for their strategy. There are really only two ways a politician (or a political party) can make himself look good by comparison to the voters. He can tout his accomplishments, or he can point out his opponent's shortcomings. For the Democrats there is no choice here.

[jeffkrol]

I'm more intrested in your opinions of conservatives attacking conservatives with statements such as:

This debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.

Soon, the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget — entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion.

By fiscal year 2009, the tax-cutters had reduced federal revenues to 15 percent of gross domestic product, lower than they had been since the 1940s. Then, after rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures, George W. Bush surrendered on domestic spending cuts, too — signing into law $420 billion in non-defense appropriations, a 65 percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier. Republicans thus joined the Democrats in a shameless embrace of a free-lunch fiscal policy.

It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent — mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.

this is your own HARD CORE conservatives showing how they screwed up BIG TIME... and I have yet to see how the new Repubs are going to fix it.... Continuing Bush tax cuts??? Give me a break.. You need to earn respect not just "boo hooo attacking us again-isms"
WHERE are the new republicans????
This is DAVID STOCKMAN talking not Harry Reid et al. Yeeshh you guys have thick skulls...........
Condemn your past and show me the "new you"....... I'll buy in.

By fiscal year 2009, the tax-cutters had reduced federal revenues to 15 percent of gross domestic product, lower than they had been since the 1940s. Then, after rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures, George W. Bush surrendered on domestic spending cuts, too — signing into law $420 billion in non-defense appropriations, a 65 percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier. Republicans thus joined the Democrats in a shameless embrace of a free-lunch fiscal policy

I guess
TRUTH is a bad strategy...... sick.

it’s a pity that the modern Republican Party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach — balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline — is needed more than ever.

NO Democrate could have said it better............

[gokenin]

I'm more intrested in your opinions of conservatives attacking conservatives with statements such as:




this is your own HARD CORE conservatives showing how they screwed up BIG TIME... and I have yet to see how the new Repubs are going to fix it.... Continuing Bush tax cuts??? Give me a break.. You need to earn respect not just "boo hooo attacking us again-isms"
WHERE are the new republicans????
This is DAVID STOCKMAN talking not Harry Reid et al. Yeeshh you guys have thick skulls...........

I do find it funny however that you are using David Stockman to make your point if you remember he was run out of washington on a rail by the democrats due to the failure of the supply side economics that he advocated during the first term of the Reagan presidency. He was the father one could say of unlimited deficit spending so he would be the proto-Obama spender

[jeffkrol]

Maybe he just paid attention...........

[Parallax]

I'm more intrested in your opinions of conservatives attacking conservatives with statements such as:........

jeff, remember that politicians are politicians first, members a team/political party second. Political cannibalism is nothing new, nor should it be surprising. ANY politician's number one priority is to get re-elected.
.

[gokenin]

Maybe he just paid attention...........

who are you talking about your comment are getting to vague for me to follow there

[jeffkrol]

who are you talking about your comment are getting to vague for me to follow there

Stockman paid attention to what has happened.........
I have yet to see any proof that he personally favored "deficits don't matter"
And frankly neither dpo I. It's what to cut, what to spend on that we differ on. National health care 9or the elimination of it's predatory practices) is a priority in my mind. The rest is always arguable.... Stockton, though I could have argued against on numerous points, has/had the basics right. Thus my "sleeping with the enemy" position.

But it was not generally understood that the new budget director had already lost a major component of his revolution—another set of proposals, which he called "Chapter II," that was not sent to Capitol Hill because the President had vetoed its most controversial elements.

Stockman had thought "Chapter II" would help him on two fronts: it would provide substantially increased revenues and thus help reduce the huge deficits of the next three years; but it would also mollify liberal critics complaining about the cuts in social welfare, because it was aimed primarily at tax expenditures (popularly known as "loopholes") benefiting oil and other business interests. "We have a gap which we couldn't fill even with all these budget cuts, too big a deficit," Stockman explained. "Chapter II comes out totally on the opposite of the equity question. That was part of my strategy to force acquiescence at the last minute into a lot of things you'd never see a Republican administration propose. I had a meeting this morning at the White House. The President wasn't involved, but all the other key senior people were. We brought a program of additional tax savings that don't touch any social programs. But they touch tax expenditures." Stockman hesitated to discuss details, for the package was politically sensitive, but it included elimination of the oil-depletion allowance; an attack on tax-exempt industrial-development bonds; user fees for owners of private airplanes and barges; a potential ceiling on home-mortgage deductions (which Stockman called a "mansion cap," since it would affect only the wealthy); some defense reductions; and other items, ten in all. Total additional savings: somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 billion. Stockman was proud of "Chapter II" and also very nervous about it, because, while liberal Democrats might applaud the closing of "loopholes" that they had attacked for years, powerful lobbies—in Congress and business—would mobilize against it.

The Education of David Stockman - Magazine - The Atlantic

Still, Stockman was even more impressed by the performance of the new Republican majority in the Senate. After a week of voting down amendments to restore funds for various programs—"voting against every motherhood title," as Stockman put it—moderate Republicans from the Northeast and Midwest needed some sort of political solace. Led by Senator John Chaffee, of Rhode Island, the moderates proposed an amendment spreading about $1 billion over an array of social programs, from education to home-heating assistance for the poor. Stockman had no objection. The amendment wouldn't cost much overall, and it would "take care of those people who have been good soldiers." Senator Pete Domenici, of New Mexico, the Senate budget chairman, decided, however, that the accommodation wasn't necessary, and he was right. The Chaffee amendment lost.

"It was the kind of amendment that should have passed," Stockman reflected afterward. "The fact that it didn't win tells me that the political logic has changed."Not entirely, however. While the Senate majority was rejecting additional money for the coalition of social programs, it was also tinkering with an important item in Stockman's balance of equitable cuts—the Export-Import Bank. The great multinational industrial firms that received the trade subsidies from Ex-Im were already at work, arguing that U.S. sales abroad and jobs at home would suffer without the Ex-Im loans and guarantees. The Republicans, led by Senator Nancy Kassebaum, of Kansas, where Boeing is a major employer, voted to restore $250 million to the Ex-Im budget. Later, the House raised the figure even higher, with little resistance from the White House.

"We weren't really closely in control," Stockman explained. "The mark-up went so fast, and those amendments came out of the woodwork, and we weren't prepared to deal with it." Stockman seemed nonchalant about his defeat. The principle of cutting the Ex-Im's corporate subsidies, which had seemed so important to him in January, was now regarded as a minor blemish on the Senate victory. "It did open a little breach that is troublesome," he conceded.

"I've never believed that just cutting taxes alone will cause output and employment to expand.

"I don't believe too much in the momentum theory any more," he said. "I believe in institutional inertia. Two months of response can't beat fifteen years of political infrastructure. I'm talking about K Street and all of the interest groups in this town, the community of interest groups. We sort of stunned it, but it just went underground for the winter. It will be back ... Can we win? A lot of it depends on events and luck. If we got some bad luck, a flareup in the Middle East, a scandal, it could all fall apart."

STOCKMAN'S dour outlook was reinforced two weeks later, when the Reagan coalition prevailed again in the House and Congress passed the tax-cut legislation with a final frenzy of trading and bargaining. Again, Stockman was not exhilarated by the victory. On the contrary, it seemed to leave a bad taste in his mouth, as though the democratic process had finally succeeded in shocking him by its intensity and its greed. Once again, Stockman participated in the trading—special tax concessions for oil—lease holders and real-estate tax shelters, and generous loopholes that virtually eliminated the corporate income tax. Stockman sat in the room and saw it happen.

"Do you realize the greed that came to the forefront?" Stockman asked with wonder. "The hogs were really feeding. The greed level, the level of opportunism, just got out of control."

Indeed, when the Republicans and Democrats began their competition for authorship of tax concessions, Stockman saw the "new political climate" dissolve rather rapidly and be replaced by the reflexes of old politics. Every tax lobby in town, from tax credits for wood-burning stoves to new accounting concessions for small business, moved in on the legislation, and pet amendments for obscure tax advantage and profit became the pivotal issues of legislative action, not the grand theories of supply-side tax reduction. "The politics of the bill turned out to be very traditional. The politics put us back in the game, after we started making concessions. The basic strategy was to match or exceed the Democrats, and we did."

But Stockman was buoyant about the political implications of the tax legislation: first, because it put a tightening noose around the size of the government; second, because it gave millions of middle-class voters tangible relief from inflation, even if the stimulative effects on the economy were mild or delayed. Stockman imagined the tax cutting as perhaps the beginning of a large-scale realignment of political loyalties, away from old-line liberalism and toward Reaganism.

And where did principle hide? Stockman, with his characteristic mixture of tactical cynicism and intellectual honesty, was unwilling to defend the moral premises of what had occurred. The "idea-based" policies that he had espoused at the outset were, in the final event, greatly compromised by the "constituency-based" politics that he abhorred. What had changed, fundamentally, was the list of winning clients, not the nature of the game. Stockman had said the new conservatism would pursue equity, even as it attempted to shrink the government. It would honor just claims and reject spurious ones, instead of simply serving powerful clients over weak clients. He was compelled to agree, at the legislative climax, that the original moral premises had not been served, that the new principles of Reaganism were compromised by the necessity of winning.

"I now understand," he said, "that you probably can't put together a majority coalition unless you are willing to deal with those marginal interests that will give you the votes needed to win. That's where it is fought—on the margins—and unless you deal with those marginal votes you can't win."

In order to enact Reagan's version of tax reduction, "certain wages" had to be paid, and, as Stockman reasoned, the process of brokering was utterly free of principle or policy objectives. The power flowed to the handful of representatives who could reverse the majority regardless of the interests they represented. Once the Reagan tacticians began making concessions beyond their "policy-based" agenda, it developed that their trades and compromises and giveaways were utterly indistinguishable from the decades of interest-group accommodations that preceded them, which they so righteously denounced. What was new about the Reagan revolution, in which oil-royalty owners win and welfare mothers lose? Was the new philosophy so different from old Republicanism when the federal subsidies for Boeing and Westinghouse and General Electric were protected, while federal subsidies for unemployed black teenagers were "zeroed out"? One could go on, at great length, searching for balance and equity in the outcome of the Reagan program without satisfying the question; the argument will continue as a central theme of electoral politics for the next few years. For now, Stockman would concede this much: that "weak clients" suffered for their weakness.

29 years later same old, same old...........
I recommend reading the whole darn thing.......
The Education of David Stockman - Magazine - The Atlantic

[johnmflores]

Yes, it happens on both sides of the aisle. But both parties should be called out on it whenever it happens. If the media spent more time doing some real journalism, some real reporting instead of reporting on Chelsea Clinton's wedding, we'd be better off.

We spend our time here pointing fingers left and right while our pockets are being picked left and right. Marx was wrong after all, the Internet is the opiate of the masses.

[jeffkrol]

jeff, remember that politicians are politicians first, members a team/political party second. Political cannibalism is nothing new, nor should it be surprising. ANY politician's number one priority is to get re-elected.
.

I believe the second triangle should be Corporation Hierarchy of Needs....

[Parallax]

I believe the second triangle should be Corporation Hierarchy of Needs....

That fits, as well. The difference is that is legitimately the reason for a corporation to exist. It is their duty (to the shareholders) to climb that pyramid. That is not the duty of a politician.

[jeffkrol]

I have an issue w/ "ANY MEANS POSSIBLE" in politics and business.....
I'm sorry that you completely dismiss the article I posted.....................
Now if you want to argue that the current Dems are repeating the failed policies so be it. Now if you can show me how the new repubs vary from the same failed policies I guess that would form a common starting point.
On my end I accept tax increases as necessary. Program cuts as well but gravy to the thieves that caused the problem in the first place?? No way in H$LL....... Didn't work before, won't work now. Historic fact and pretty indisputable if one opens their eyes..
AND I still have not found a coherent refut of what Stockman said........... funny. Of course my UN search engine is biased.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/forget-teddy-roosevelt-if_b_667772.html

The Bush tax cuts were the brainchild of conservative economists and once received the blessing of Alan Greenspan. But Conservanomics is quickly become a church with no bishops. Greenspan opposes extending the cuts, as does Reagan Budget Director David Stockman, who left the trickle-down faith a while back (although he's still a deficit hawk). The only unequivocal advocate these tax breaks seem to have left is Sarah Palin, whose palmreading tells her that the "tax increase" (actually the expiration of a temporary cut) would "affect every single American who pays an income tax."

Actually, under current plans they would only affect those who earn more than $250,000 a year. The only ones proposing otherwise are people like Zakaria and Crook, whose pieces read as if they were using the same outline: 1. Oh, how politics interferes with sound policy; 2. Both parties have it wrong; 3. Let the cuts expire for everybody, right now; 4. "I hate our current tax system, anyway; 5. Close with one last ironic line about politicians.

"Obama must break his tax promise" (to preserve breaks for the middle class), says Crook. "Raise My Taxes, Mr. President!" offers Zakaria, who magnanimously volunteers on behalf of the far less wealthy middle class as well. "Extend all the tax cuts for two years," says Crook. End 'em all now, says Zakaria. Crook's argument represents a fallback strategy for tax defenders, so in that sense Zakaria is less extreme (and less beholden to what we know understand truly is "voodoo economics.") But here's the problem with both arguments. In an attempted "gotcha," Zakaria observes that Democrats were opposed to these cuts when they were originally proposed. What's changed now, he asks, especially with a deficit on our hands? Here's what's changed: The recession. It's still here, and it's bad.

Dems want to "have it both ways" by ending only high-earner cuts, says Crook. But it's the middle class that's been hurt by this recession, and it's the middle class that has cut spending just when we need it most. Jobs are critical, too:

Of course then there's this...........
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/04/sharron-angle-says-democr_n_670833.html