On the far right is the percentage of the minority party who supported the particular piece of  legislation.

Y                     N

1935 Social Security Act

House

Dems.                                                                  284                  15

GOP                                                                      81                   18                    82%

Senate

Dems                                                                  60                    1

GOP                                                                   16                    5                        76%

1965 Vote Establishing Medicare

House

Dems.                                                                 237                  48

GOP                                                                     70                   68                    51%

Senate

Dems.                                                                   57                    7

GOP                                                                     13                    17                    43%

1981 Reagan Tax Cuts

House

Dems.                                                                48                    199                   19%

GOP                                                                 191                      1

Senate

Dems.                                                               37                    10                      78%

GOP                                                                 52                       1

2001 Bush Tax Cuts

House

Dems.                                                            28                   153                     15%

GOP                                                              211                      0

Senate

Dems.                                                            12                      31                     36%

GOP                                                               45                        2

2002 Iraq War Vote

House

Dems.                                                           82                    126                     39%

GOP                                                          215                       6

Senate

Dems.                                                         29                      21                      58%

GOP                                                             48                       1

Now compare these historic numbers to key votes during the last two years.

2008 Fiscal Stimulus

House

Dems.                                                         245                     7

GOP                                                                0                 176                       0%

Senate

Dems.                                                          55                       0

GOP                                                                3                    36                       8%

2010 Healthcare Bill

House

Dems.                                                           218                  32

GOP                                                                  0                 175                      0%

Senate

Dems.                                                             57                      3

GOP                                                                   0                   39                      0%

2010 Financial Reform

House

Dems.                                                              234                  19

GOP                                                                    3                  173                    2%

When the United States makes a major decision, we should do it – as much as possible -  as one people.  We are a country evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.  Ethically, working together is the right thing to do, and practically, highly partisan government sets in motion bitterness, acrimony and destructive politics that endanger the country.

Centrists are spending much too much time concerning themselves with the rhetoric of the Tea Party.   Actions speak louder than words.  In the two years that constituted  the last Congress, Congressional Democrats totally disregarded the wishes of half of the country.  Republicans in Congress were not obstructionists; they were irrelevant.  House Republicans were completely locked out of all decision making in that branch.  Democrats in power have been partisans first and Americans second.    When a stray Democratic Senator reached out to Republican members like Olympia Snow or Bob Corker, the White House shut down the negotiation.  Then the President would cynically visit Capitol Hill and plead for bipartisanship.    In the past two years we have seen the most partisan government in this century, even after an election in which Obama suggested that he would, as President, transcend partisanship.    Should we really be surprised that conservative America is angry?

]]> http://www.centermovement.org/topics-issues/politics/the-historic-level-of-partisanship-in-the-last-congress-and-the-so-called-climate-of-hate/feed/ 0 http://www.centermovement.org/topics-issues/economic-policies/political-economy-101-reforming-the-tax-code/ http://www.centermovement.org/topics-issues/economic-policies/political-economy-101-reforming-the-tax-code/#comments Mon, 22 Nov 2010 03:37:01 +0000 Adele Wick http://www.centermovement.org/?p=60596 Almost two weeks ago – on November 10, to be exact, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles released a draft of what they believe is the best way to start fixing America’s Number One Problem: burgeoning – and already huge — government deficits and associated government debt.  According to Simpson, with this plan they “have harpooned every whale in the ocean and some of the minnows.”   We’ll focus here on the tax whales.

Simpson may have chosen his metaphor because the problems he and Bowles been tasked to address are truly oceanic in scale. Or perhaps Simpson was making sly reference to going public with their template while our President was across the Pacific Ocean, getting pounded by a tsunami of criticism for “quantitative easing “ (QEII) at the G-20 summit meeting in South Korea.  What Obama pitched as expansionary monetary policy designed to combat American unemployment of an obdurate 9.6%, other G-20 participants saw as exchange-rate manipulation.   “If QEII works,” blasted his foes,  “it will be by willfully devaluing the dollar at the expense of our recoveries!”

Printing money also delays the domestic day of reckoning.  When the government can pay its bills and buy its debt by printing money, it can avoid necessary fiscal reform and keep interest rates on that debt lower than they would otherwise be – until nominal rates begin to rise to incorporate expected inflation.

Simpson and Bowles have a better solution for raising revenue, and it’s bipartisan.  (Simpson is a Republican and former Senator from Wyoming; Bowles is a Democrat and former President Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff.)  The Co-Chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform want radically to reform the IRS tax code, eliminating or at least limiting all deductions and replacing marginal rates that currently range from a low of 10% to a high of 35% with three brackets: 8%, 14% and 23%.  The corporate tax rate would also be cut from 35% to 26%.

This plan is good Economics.  The best way to tackle deficits and debt is to grow our way out of these problems, and the best way to enhance growth is to improve incentives on the margin, where we get the most bang for the buck. Presidents Bush 43 and Obama made big mistakes in giving lump-sum gifts of cash, respectively, to Americans below certain income levels and Senior Citizens of all income levels. Long-term reduction of tax rates on extra income make people work longer and harder and spend more.  Lump sums have no effect on work and minimal consequences for spending.  They look good politically – and then only to the recipients and the economically naïve.  There’s nothing pretty in pandering.

Over time, if lower tax rates increase economic activity and growth, they may actually increase tax revenues.  To speed up and ensure the process, however, Simpson and Bowles suggest limiting or eliminating deductions as well.  This is also an economically wise policy plan, but it may be politically foolish – and catastrophically so.

Special interests build around deductions and rally to increase them.  Their setbacks will be focused and visible, while the benefits will be diffuse and difficult to pin down.  The housing industry – including real-estate agents, bankers and lawyers — will become fear mongers, insisting that eliminating or radically reducing the deductibility of home mortgage interest payments will prevent their markets from recovering.  Insurance companies will bray about increasing personal health-care costs if premiums become a taxable part of earned income.  Low-income and large-family individuals and couples will go public with their extra hardships.

The oil, gas, and auto industries may join the protest: Simpson and Bowles also recommend raising the federal tax on gasoline from 15 to 33.4 cents/gallon.  This change, too, is commendable for the country as a whole.  It advances efforts to reduce carbon imprint and urban sprawl and it operates as a user fee to cover a greater percentage of road and bridge maintenance.

The most important factor in determining tax reform, however, is President Obama.  Was he seeking serious recommendations and results or just political cover when he established his bipartisan fiscal commission?  How – and when — will he respond to the Simpson/Bowles draft?   Our President, who pledges better communication with us folks as his strongest response to midterm shellacking at the polls, has been home from Asia for a week and has yet to weigh in on the matter.   Perhaps he’s testing its traction.  Twelve Members of Congress and six private citizens comprise the panel he created, and fourteen of them must approve the Simpson/Bowles recommendations before they’re considered by Congress.

As the lead  editorial in Sunday’s New York Times succinctly put it, “There is no way to reduce the deficit without strong leadership from President Obama and honest cooperation from the Republicans. The ideas are out there. Now we are waiting for the politicians.“

“Honest cooperation from the Democrats” will be essential, too.  Particularly if Simpson/Bowles advances from the commission to the Senate, where Democrats still hold a majority.  And then there’s the matter of spending cuts, even more politically fraught.  Here’s hoping we can act as Americans with concerns about future generations rather than opting for short-term expediency on party lines.

Returning our country to fiscal sobriety cannot be accomplished without pain and sacrifice.  We’ll be moving there more for future generations than for ourselves.  Most of our politicians are therefore following the President and opting for silence at this stage.  With issues this large and this serious, no plan is likely to be popular with the electorate. Why, then, take a stand on something that may prove ephemeral?

Three notable exceptions spoke out quickly and decisively.  Republican Paul Ryan, who has his own “Roadmap for America’s Future”, clearly prefers his own approach, but applauds the bipartisan effort to compromise and start solving problems.  Senator Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina and Tea Party darling, gives the draft two thumbs down.  Minority Head of the House Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, calls it “simply unacceptable”.

Ryan, DeMint and Pelosi are talking about all the whales and some of the minnows harpooned by Simpson and Bowles, while this first in a series of posts covers only tax orcas and their first stab at capture.  We need to study how the draft recommends reigning in spending before voting with our thumbs and deciding what’s acceptable and what’s not in the proposal as a whole. We must also leave many of the details to the experts.

Reducing both deductions and tax rates is a good start to raising both revenue and growth. What’s already abundantly clear is that there’s lots of blubber in the federal tax code and therefore lots of blubbering from special interests. That’s why we’re talking about “Political Economy 101″ and not just “Economics 101″.

“We propose investigations, detentions and prosecutions of high government officials, but we cannot resist [Karzai].  He won’t sign anything. We have great, honest and professional prosecutors here, but we need support.”

Karzai is possibly the biggest obstacle to defeating the Taliban because insurgencies feed on corrupt government.  If we are to have a chance of success against the Taliban, President Obama has rightly and repeatedly pointed to the necessity of the United States having a responsible Afghan partner.  Competing with Karzai for the “most unhelpful ally award” are factions within Pakistan’s intelligence services who support Taliban operations in Afghanistan by allowing militants and arms to cross the border.

We need to reevaluate our relationship with supposed allies who are in reality undermining our war against the Taliban. U.S. options in Afghanistan are dwindling along with  America’s political will to support the war.    It is time for US policy to adapt to the facts that we have no credible partner in Kabul and that Pakistan is likely to remain duplicitous.   We also need a fallback strategy consistent with a modest US military presence in Afghanistan.

First, it’s time to take away Karzai’s American Express Card.  Karzai and his cronies must no longer be permitted to line their pockets with US tax dollars, making themselves rich and at the same time discrediting the government they claim to run.  The United States and its NATO partners should increasingly find ways to go around Karzai’s officials and deliver foreign aid directly to local legitimate Afghan leaders and institutions.    Whether or not America can find loyal and reliable allies in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan remains to be seen.  But we must try before the inevitable withdrawal of most US forces from the region.  Distributing the lion’s share of the cash ourselves will make this task easier.

Second, it is also time to  get quietly tough with Pakistan.  As Secretary of State Clinton has publically charged, Pakistani officials – somewhere – know the whereabouts of Osama Bin Ladin.  The billions of dollars the US gives in aid to Pakistan must be contingent upon a consistent anti-Taliban and anti Al Qaeda policy.  Unfortunately, the publicly scheduled withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan minimizes our leverage.  To the Pakistanis the United States is obviously not a reliable partner.  Pakistan’s security forces will continue to play their traditional Islamist allies against their traditional enemy, India.  The only hope is that the Taliban, which for the first time recently waged a war inside of Pakistan, will continue to make itself loathsome to ordinary Pakistanis, and that its barbaric acts will moderate any reversion to Pakistan’s old pro-Taliban foreign policy.    Some smart Pakistanis must surely realize that the Taliban will eventually turn on them when it has sufficient strength.

Since Pakistan shows little sign of changing its ways,  the United States will turn to India for mutual support.  This is not  necessarily a bad thing.  As the world’s most populous democracy, India is America’s natural ally on the Asian continent.  Indians and Americans are equally enemies to Islamist extremism.  India is also the essential counter-weight to the growing power of China.  With many shared values and interests, India will agreeably do some of the heavy lifting for us in the region.

Historically, the battle for the region that today comprises Afghanistan and Pakistan is called “the great game.”   The United States would have played this game much better if the resources and political will that went into the invasion of Iraq gone to Afghanistan instead.  Had this happened, we might have left something behind  more permanent and more satisfying to the Afghan people as well as to our own interests.  But now American will and the resources we are willing to commit are slim to exhausted.  President Obama is unlikely to spend his diminished  political capital on Afghanistan.  The United States will play out its current hand under the leadership of General David Patraeus, a proven warrior.  Perhaps he will once again pull an ace out of his sleeve.

More likely, a relatively modest contingent of US troops will soon find themselves removed from the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan, and based in friendlier areas to the north from which we will make endless surgical strikes against Islamist militants festering in the area on either side of the mountainous the Pakistan – Afghanistan border.  Life for Pashtuns seems headed for particularly miserable future under Taliban rule and NATO bombardment.  In “the great game,” all parties seem headed for an unhappy stalemate.

I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends…

The invasion of Iraq and related issues have made us forget how good and wise George W. Bush was with his approach to Islam and Muslims in America in the immediate aftermath of 911.

In opposition to a proposed Islamic community center (not a mosque) a few blocks from Ground Zero, President Bush’s gracious words have recently been matched by Imam Feisal, who can be heard here defending the community-center proposal at  in New York, amid rude catcalls.

President Bush understood, in a way conservatives today obviously do not, that to alienate moderate Muslims is to promote their radicalization.  In an unsightly spectacle,  conservative politicians are falling all over themselves to fan the flames of religious bigotry, presumably for political gain.  Say what you want about George W. Bush, but he usually followed his conscience  - for good or ill – regardless of political considerations.

President Barrack Obama, for his part, quite rightly supported  building the community center, at least at first.  But then, like his conservative adversaries, Obama swayed under popular pressure. He backed off from his initial statement of support, saying that he did not necessarily back the community center after all.  Then the White House felt the heat from the other side, and reversed itself again.  How strange that George W. Bush should be a better defender of Muslims in America than our progressive President, Barrack Hussein Obama.

Former Bush adviser Karl Rove now argues that the President has no business interfering in New York’s local matters and should know better.  But more than likely, his former boss would have understood that how Americans treat Muslims in the United States has an impact on our foreign policy.  It is imperative that the war on terror not be perceived as a war on Islam.

In the online publication Slate, journalist William Saletan brilliantly refutes the arguments of the community center’s critics, and concludes:

This was never a war between us and the Muslim world. It’s a war between us and al-Qaida. The central battleground in this war isn’t Iraq, Afghanistan, or Lower Manhattan. It’s Islam. That’s the ground al-Qaida is fighting for. It’s the ground Imam Rauf wants to take back. He wants to build an Islam that loves America, embraces freedom, and preaches coexistence. Let’s help him.

There could be no greater tribute to American freedom than to encourage the building of that community center near Ground Zero.  It is an opportunity to vividly demonstrate what a free, open and tolerant civilization looks like.  It is a chance to show just how different we are from the terrorist fanatics who want to destroy us.

Experts first told us that 5,000 barrels of oil were gushing from the well every day.  Then they said it was really more like 25,000 to 30,000 barrels, the equivalent of a new Exxon Valdez spill every eight to ten days.   Tuesday’s Washington Post reported that in fact the daily total is 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil.  It should surprise no one if these estimates go up yet again.

Now a friend who works for the Coast Guard and specializes in environmental disasters at sea tells me that insiders are saying the hemorrhaging oil may actually be the lesser of two aspects of the calamity.   As the oil pours out, it’s accompanied by 188,000 to 527,000 metric tons of methane gas.  This gas has the potential to completely destroy all aquatic life throughout the Gulf of Mexico at depths below 400 meters.

While this appalling scenario has been largely ignored by the mainstream media, bloggers were writing about the possibility of a Gulf-wide “dead zone” in mid-May.  Here is a particularly good description of the threat posted at the Daily Kos.

For years scientists have been monitoring a dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi, where an over-abundance of Nitrogen runoff from American agriculture takes oxygen out of the water, killing sea life.  The dead zone is made worse, by the way, as a result of America’s ill-conceived government-backed ethanol industry.

Just as the Nitrogen bonds with Oxygen and takes it out of the water, so the Carbon in the Methane gas pouring out of the BP well is also removing Oxygen.  Currents may carry lonely Carbon molecules throughout the entire Gulf of Mexico in search of Oxygen with which to bond, turning to CO2 and water, and making the entire Gulf one humongous dead zone.

BP is currently capable of siphoning off a maximum of 18,000 of the now-estimated 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil spewing forth.  The corporation plans to bring in other ships and claims a capacity to siphon off up to 80,000 barrels by mid July, but do these figures include removing the gas, and if so, how much?  Gas volume to oil volume is about 3000 to 1.   BP also intends to add a “choke” line which is intended to bring oil and gas to the surface and then burn both, but the Washington Post reports this will have the capacity of eliminating only an additional 10,000 barrels per day, and these would appear to be barrels of oil.  How much gas will continue to escape into the water?

Desperate situations call for radical measures.  One such proposal is to set off a nuclear bomb below the floor of the Gulf, and thus collapse the well hole.   As farfetched as this idea sounds, the old Soviet Union successfully employed this method on land.  Here is an interesting (as well as entertaining) video clip describing the event.

Former President Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary Robert Reich is calling for more radical legal action.  Specifically, he wants BP to be put under temporary receivership.  As Reich forcefully argues, BP needs to be made subservient to American taxpayers until the cost of the disaster for which they are responsible is paid in full.  Any incentives to protect investors and profits first need to be removed.

So far, the response of the Administration has been disappointing.  One reason voters elect Democrats instead of Republicans is that they expect Democrats to protect the environment.  If the Republicans are as irresponsible as the Democrats say when it comes to environmental protection, then why was there not a systematic review of off-shore drilling regulation when they came to power?  At least one would have expected such a review when the Administration proposed more off-shore drilling.

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu implausibly claims that the Administration was “planning for the worst case scenario from the beginning.”  If this were true, the ships now being called for would already be in place.  Likewise, the President’s speech last night does not inspire confidence.  On the one hand, a little contrition and humility were in order, but this President doesn’t do contrition and humility (he is much better at blame).  On the other hand, we were left wondering if the plan going forward is sufficiently bold.  All Americans share in the horror of their fellow citizens from the Gulf states who are watching the oily tide come in.  Please, somebody do something.

One Congressman, Paul Ryan (R-WI), who is the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee, has offered a detailed plan designed to put the United States on a fiscally sustainable path.  In so doing, he has drawn a big fat political bull’s eye on his own back, daring the Democrats to attack his ideas, which they and their allies have done with glee.  But without a plan of their own, Democrats should keep their mouths shut.  For courage alone, Ryan and his ideas deserve respectful consideration.

Congressman Ryan, in his “Road Map for America,” proposes nothing less than a radical transformation for the delivery of most government services.  Under Ryan’s plan, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security would dramatically change as would the way many Americans buy health insurance.  Ryan would also fundamentally reform corporate taxation by replacing corporate income taxes with corporate consumption taxes.   Ryan invites his fellow citizens to dig as deep they want into the details at his website.  The scope of what Ryan proposes is vast, so here is only a taste of his ideas.

For Social Security reform, Ryan refloats the long-held Republican position that workers should be able to put away or invest a portion of their payroll taxes for their own retirement.  Democrats love to demagogue this idea by accusing their opponents of wanting to “privatize” Social Security, as if the Social Security safety net would necessarily disappear under such a proposal.  Among other safeguards, Ryan would have the federal government guarantee a return equal to the rate of inflation. Opponents would like to categorize such “privatization” as radical, but it’s not. Over thirty countries from around the world allow workers to invest at least a portion of money they would otherwise pay in payroll taxes in private but regulated retirement accounts .   In Ryan’s plan, future Social Security benefits are cut for workers who are 55 or younger in 2011, but beginning in 2012 they will be entitled to invest some of their payroll taxes, which would almost certainly guarantee them much more money at retirement than under the current system.

Democrats, bashing Ryan’s plan like a piñata, claim that he wants to “abolish” Medicare and Medicaid.  While technically somewhat true, Ryan does not propose to leave the old and impoverished without healthcare insurance, out to forage in hospital dumpsters for discarded medical supplies, or to shout medical questions at passing doctors.  Rather, Ryan proposes to move to a model similar to the one offered by Democrat Ron Wyden, author of an innovative universal healthcare proposal that President Obama pretended did not exist during the course of this past year’s healthcare debate.  Under Ryan’s plan, all Americans are encouraged to buy their own insurance, with generous tax credits and vouchers for those who cannot afford insurance on their own.  Medicaid patients might have high deductible  plans with their health savings accounts (HSAs) funded by the government. The long-term care portion of Medicaid would remain intact.  Instead of Medicare, an elderly person would get, on average, $11,000 per year to buy insurance, a sum indexed annually to an inflation rate the falls between the overall rate of inflation and the current rate in healthcare cost increase. It is fair to question whether Ryan is offering  a big enough subsidy, or if his revenue assumption are too generous to balance the budget.   These are reasonable questions that Ryan would probably be happy to debate, but more often his ideas are pummeled by politically motivated cheap shots.  Those who attack Ryan should answer some questions of their own:

1)      How are we going to get our spending and debt under control?

2)      What are the most efficient means to provide the services we all want and need?

In the areas of medical-services delivery and social security, Ryan proposes consumer-centered  and market-driven models, as opposed to the big-government model we currently rely on but is going broke.  In everything we buy as consumers – from vegetables, to home electronics, to auto insurance – we rely on a market to deliver the best combination of quality and price.  Does medical insurance really have to be that different?  And no  individuals in their right minds would prefer to give money to the government to spend immediately, with only an IOU in return, rather than invest their own money, for their own retirement, securely stowed in their own account.

Both political parties need intellectually weighty, honest and articulate leadership to inspire the nation to address the immense and complex challenges of deficits and debt that truly threaten the America we know and love .  Conservative leaders, rising out of a populist tradition, have been insufficiently brainy and articulate.  Paul Ryan, should he assume leadership of the Republican Party, would completely reverse this trend.  President Obama, while possessing some impressive intellectual credentials, has been disappointingly dishonest on many issues, most notably those involving the true cost of his healthcare plan.

If Paul Ryan were to lead the Republicans in 2012, he would force a substantial debate about the issues that really matter – the nation’s debt and deficit, and the related public services on which we depend.  Ryan’s quick-mindedness would make Democratic dissembling more difficult and might bring out some of the nobleness of character that so many Americans thought they saw in candidate Barack Obama.

Ryan sits on the President’s deficit commission, which is all well and fine; we hope they can find a bipartisan solution behind their closed doors.  But Democrats should man-up (or woman-up in the case of Speaker Pellosi), by standing and delivering their own deficit and debt reduction program.  They should engage the passionate young conservative reformer, Congressman Paul Ryan.   It is time for bright and honest people to make the hard choices.

It is certainly a strange time not to have a federal budget.  Budget resolutions are non-binding, but like a family budget, they do provide a framework for controlling spending.  The federal debt is scheduled to rise to over 90% of GNP in five to ten years, leading to a Greece-style economic collapse. But unlike Greece, there is no one out there to bail us out.  A fiscal 911 is on its way, except it won’t be a surprise. When will we act to stop it?

Before the Democrats took office  the national debt was $56,000 per household.  Now it’s $72,000 per household.  These figures do not count the $379,000 per household in unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare.

Some have said for a long time that we need a lockbox for Social Security and Medicare.  But through their inactions our politicians have always responded, “We don’t need no stinking lockbox!”  They have spent all of those payroll taxes, including those paid by some of America’s lowest-wage workers. Nothing is there but an IOU.  Demographics have turned a reasonable program into a pyramid scheme worthy of Bernie Madoff while Congress, term after term, has buried its head in the sand.  Re-elections are, after all, more fun than hard choices.

And now, in times of increasingly harder choices and oncoming fiscal calamity, Congress is not even planning to restrain spending through the use of a tool as routine as a budget.

Forget terrorism, global warming or any social problem that might come to mind.  In the United States and in Europe, debt is the crisis of our time, and our “leaders” – President Obama, House Speaker Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Reid – are willfully looking the other way.  Moreover, they have made the situation much worse through the creation a new entitlement – an attempt at universal healthcare insurance – without first reforming the old entitlements.  Indeed, like the bandits in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,  they robbed to get what they  wanted: they stole from Medicare, a program already going broke.

The Democrats poured in $125.9 billion so far to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (institutions Democrats refused to reform years ago), with no effort to change the programs partially responsible for the financial collapse.  Fannie and Freddie need no stinking badges either, just taxpayer cash.  Now they want $19 billion more to save private profit at public expense.  At least bailed-out corporations in wholly private industry, from Goldman Sachs to GM, are paying back owed taxpayer money.  If you want to know why Fannie and Freddie are not being reformed, just look at who they are paying off with campaign donations.

Certainly not all of this debt is the Democrats’ fault.  Congressional Republican majorities have not lifted a finger to reform entitlements either.  President George W. Bush added a Medicare drug benefit without paying for it, and launched the war in Iraq, which was wrong for a lot reasons, including its massive expense.  But Bush, to his credit, tried to reform Social Security.   Congress said no.

Unless something changes, Obama, Pelosi and Reid will be remembered as the Neville Chamberlains of the Great American Fiscal Collapse. Politicians don’t seem to appreciate the extent to which the American people demand action on spending and the debt.

Concern – or fury – over federal spending and the growth of the national debt is at the heart of the Tea Party movement.   The Left likes to pretend that the Tea Party consists of racists and other nitwits without any legitimate arguments to make about the direction of the country, but demonizing the Tea Party won’t work.  Most Centrists and Independents, and even many Democrats, though they do not watch Glenn Beck or believe that Sarah Palin is presidential timber, share Tea Party concerns about out-of-control federal spending.  They will vote to purge any politician, Democrat or Republican, who appears to put a political career above the fiscal stability of the country.  Tuesday’s results and recent elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts offer ample evidence of this.

Congressional leaders obviously lack the courage to pass a budget.  They don’t want to showcase their fiscal irresponsibility, call for higher taxes or cut spending, so they refrain from passing a budget and hope no one notices.   But citizens are paying attention.  Here’s betting that the American people won’t sit by and watch the United States destroyed from within by irresponsible politicians who care more about their ideologies and political careers than they do about the long-term good of the country.   Politicians who don’t bother to write a budget to live by in these fiscally perilous times betray the public trust and are unworthy of the offices they hold.

The White House and Democratic leadership went ballistic.  They said that McConnell arrived at his conclusion after meetings with Wall Street executives and pollster Frank Luntz.  In the words of President Obama, “Lo and behold, when he [McConnell] returned to Washington, the Senate Republican Leader came out against the common-sense reforms we’ve proposed.”  Obama  continued,  “In doing so, he made the cynical and deceptive assertion that reform would somehow enable future bailouts — when he knows that it would do just the opposite.”  The President essentially called McConnell a liar.

It’s true that McConnell had just met with the Wall Street Executives.   Luntz had also apparently suggested that attacking the prospect of future bailouts would win points with voters.  Here perhaps was a way to kill finance reform and make the Democrats look bad.  It is also true that during the recent campaign cycle Mitch McConnell raised $1,147,924 from the Securities and Investment industry.  Certainly this man cannot be trusted with finance reform.

Instead, we can more surely rely on the President’s “common-sense reforms”  to defend taxpayers against Wall Street greed, yes?  But wait.  According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, five of candidate Obama’s top donors came from the financial sector, including his number-one contributor, people and PACs associated with Goldman Sachs, who donated a whopping $994,795 to his Presidential campaign.  In addition, Citigroup gave Obama $701,290; J.P.Morgan, $695,132; UBS, $543,219; and Morgan Stanley, $514,881.  All of these firms were “too big to fail” and most were eventually given taxpayer cash.  But not so Lehman Brothers, which was allowed to fail.  Funny, but Lehman Brothers is not on Obama’s campaign donors list.

It’s also true that the revolving door between the White House and Goldman Sachs swings open and shut so much that it threatens – like our democracy – to become unhinged (See here).

Investment bankers can be fairly accused of many failings, but stupidity is not one of them.  They reasonably expect a return on every investment they make, including those investments in politicians.

There must be some place a taxpayer can turn for some clean finance industry regulation written by a disinterested lawmaker.  Perhaps that self-taught master of the finance industry, progressive hero and Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank?  Nope.  Barney Frank, during his current two-year election cycle, has collected $111,400 from the finance industry.  He also deposited another $151,249 from the insurance industry, though this would never affect his judgment regarding bailout-related legislation for insurance companies like  taxpayer-fed insurance giant AIG, would it?

Democrat Chris Dodd, who oversees banking legislation in the Senate and is the author of current  financial reform legislation, is under a cloud for a sweetheart deal he personally got from Countrywide Mortgage.  Dodd, who won’t be seeking reelection, is also widely blamed for a loophole in bailout legislation that allowed AIG executives to give themselves juicy bonuses after collecting bailout money.   Dodd, by the way, raised $1,286,598 for his campaign war chest from the financial industry he oversees.

Ah well.  Maybe the Republicans are actually better and will take over after the fall elections.  Not so fast.  Dodd’s Republican replacement would be Richard Shelby, who collected $537,888 from financial interests.  Sure, it’s not half the sum scooped up by Dodd, but Shelby is from Alabama, with much cheaper media markets than Dodd’s Connecticut; Shelby doesn’t need so much cash to insure his own reelection.

All of this begs the question:  Is this any way to run a democracy?

Otherwise phrased:  Is institutionalized bribery any way to make public policy?

Why do the American people stand for such legal corruption?  Part of the answer is partisanship.  Politicians, and their aiders and abettors in the media, constantly stoke partisan passions and thereby distract ordinary people of various political stripes from the common interests they share against entrenched privilege and power.  Just at the moment when a citizen might start to get concerned about a legislative system based on institutionalized bribery, an angry partisan voice points a finger at the other side, and we all descend into raging and rabid recriminations.  We become dizzy and light-headed with partisan fervor and forget the good democratic common ground on which we all should be standing.

No one who takes a single dime from the banking industry should be permitted to vote on – let alone write -  legislation that purports to regulate that same industry.  Yet this is how legislation in America is made.  Shame on us for what we have allowed our political system to become.  It is high time to  consider the great divide, not the one that splits left and right, but the chasm between insiders and outsiders, the one that separates ordinary citizens from those who claim to represent them, but routinely act otherwise.

The doctrine that reserved America’s right to respond to a conventional attack with nuclear weapons is a product of the Cold War.  President Eisenhower, in his famous speech warning about the dangers of a rising American “military-industrial complex,” worried that an arms race with the Soviet Union would militarize American society.    Under Eisenhower’s leadership, the United States opted to develop less costly nuclear weapons rather than trying to keep pace with the Soviet Union’s massive conventional weapons build-up.   If thousands of Soviet tanks ever crossed into West Germany, America claimed to be ready to nuke Moscow.  As the horrors of nuclear war became more widely considered, the credibility of this threat weakened.  Would the United States really risk the destruction of Washington, New York, and Chicago to save Berlin, Rome and Brussels?  Today, unlike the 1950s, the United States is predominant in conventional military forces.  It was high time to overturn this old, disproportionate and not-especially realistic policy and show a more peaceful American face to the world.

The new treaty with Russia is likewise prudent policy.  It is sensible as a stand-along document, but it is even more important as a restart of a diplomatic process leading to further cooperation between the United States and Russia regarding nuclear weapons and related subjects.  Trust-building measures, reductions in tactical nuclear weapons, cooperative strategic defense and the isolation of Iran are all extremely important objectives that can only be realized through a deepening of diplomatic relationships between the United States and Russia.  The dream of a world free of nuclear weapons is one Barack Obama shares with the late Ronald Reagan.  Continuing in that bipartisan spirit, Secretary of State for President Reagan, George Schulz, and Secretary of Defense for President Clinton, William Perry, writing for the New York Times this week,  conclude that further nuclear weapons reductions are “eminently possible” but contend that “comprehensive discussions are a necessity as we work our way  toward ever more significant nuclear disarmament.”  As the Democratic President Obama leads the nation further down this path, Republicans would be irresponsible not to follow.

Finally, the ongoing conference in Philadelphia, as reported here, is also part of a long-term bipartisan effort to catalog and control the world’s most dangerous nuclear material, and above all, to keep it out of the hands of terrorists.  The conference builds on the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, begun in 1992 and sponsored in the US Senate by the bipartisan team of Sam Nunn (D-GA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN).  The program was designed to secure nuclear materials in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.  As a new Senator Barack Obama is said to have been tutored on proliferation issues by Senator Lugar, the Senate’s Republican senior statesmen on this and most other foreign policy issues.

Much more needs to be done to safeguard the American public, along with people everywhere, from the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.   International diplomacy, led by a United States that is respected in the world, constitutes a vital aspect of our common defense. All Americans should stand united in this effort.

He prescribed an echo cardiogram.  “It’s probably nothing,” he said, “but we need to make sure you don’t need a valve job.”

The doctor was my new old doctor. That is, he had been my doctor when I was single.  Now my wife and I had moved back into the area and I wanted a physician closer by.  I had always liked this doctor.

About $1600 later, after the echo cardiogram, I was given a clean bill of health. I say “given” but in fact they gave me nothing except a bill.   They did not even call.  I had to phone the doctor’s office, where someone casually informed me that I was fine.

A few weeks later my wife went to this same doctor.  And guess what?  She was diagnosed with a heart murmur too.  Quite a coincidence, no?  Knowing my story, she refused to schedule the echo cardiogram even though the doctor said it was “urgent. ” Instead my wife consulted a second doctor who found no heart murmur.

Clearly our doctor either 1) has a hearing problem,  2) is part of practice that profits from piling on extra charges, 3)  practices an extreme form of defensive medicine or 4) responds to some combination of these three.  Thinking back,  I also remembered an unnecessary x-ray years ago.

This anecdote is relevant to our recent healthcare reform debate in the United States because my wife and I have a high-deductible plan.  The $1600 came out of our own pockets.    We are going to fire our doctor.  In so doing, my family strikes a small blow for healthcare efficiency.

But if we had a more luxurious plan, one with no or just a small deductible, we might have shrugged the whole episode off.   To paraphrase George Will, folks who pay at the door at the Great American Heatlhcare Banquet  consume all they can.

The lesson for healthcare reform is obvious.  Universal high-deductible plans could substantially drive down healthcare costs.  Doctors who over-prescribe medical services will be put out of business.

High-deductible plans are not just for the young,healthy and wealthy.  And they could be made progressive by a voucher system that helps fill the medical-savings accounts of low-income workers.

For a still more paternalistic approach, citizens or their employers could be required not only to buy high-deductible plans, but also to make contributions to their own health-savings accounts (as you can read here, Whole Foods already does this for its employees).  Those most struggling to make ends meet could be given vouchers both for the plan and  to help fill their own health-savings accounts.    Arguments about helping the working poor pay for healthcare should not get in the way of getting the structure right.

Unfortunately the Democratic legislation that passed in the House Sunday does not encompass this kind of cost-saving reform.  At the healthcare summit with Republicans, President Obama showed his disdain for high-deductible plans .  He argued that such plans would keep people from going bankrupt, but that consumers would not seek out preventive care.  He implied that he had failed to fully consider some creative alternatives or that consumers just are not smart enough to look after their own health.

So often it seems that left-leaning politicians seek control from the top without considering the myriad effects below.  Some effects are hard to predict, but many are not.

Consider the rational course of action for me and my family now that the President has signed the healthcare legislation into law.  Instead of  being a small force for healthcare efficiency, my family and I will probably become a drain on the system.   We will be tempted to drop our children’s insurance coverage, since under the new law we can always insure them later if they get very sick.   Insurance companies will not be allowed to turn us down.  With our current high- deductible plan we are already accustomed to self-insuring up to $5000 a year anyway.   We might simply take what we had been spending on their insurance and beef up our health-savings account instead.

In 2014 every citizen without health insurance will be forced to pay a penalty of  up to $2085 (though I am not sure if my family will qualify for this maximum) and no one, including adults, can be denied insurance due to pre-existing conditions.  The $2085 sum is more than $5000 less per year than my family’s current high-deductible policy.   Our family will have no incentive to buy insurance.  I may pay the penalty, drop insurance for the whole family, self -insure for the smaller bills, and buy insurance only if we experience a medical crisis.

At some point — maybe after the insurance companies are wiped out and the government starts paying all of the bills — fines will have to rise to the level where paying them instead of carrying insurance makes no financial sense.  The insurance I will be required to buy will have  a very low deductible or none at all,  so it will be more expensive than my former policy.  But tax payers will subsidize  me and my family so long as our income is under $88,000.

Maybe we will pay less than we do now.  Maybe we will pay more.  Who knows?  But our low- or no-deductible plan mandated in the future and subsidized by other taxpayers will pay our way into the Great American All-You-Can-Consume Healthcare Banquet.    We will automatically  say yes to any expensive test our doctor prescribes.  Why wouldn’t we?  Doctors, with incentives based on profit or fear of law suits, will continue to pile on helpings of tests and treatments.

Cost controls are already necessary and will increasingly become more so, but they will not include cost controls managed by healthcare consumers like me and my family or driven by market forces.   The structure of the healthcare bill clearly indicates that a bureau or panel in Washinginton will decide what treatment is necessary and what is not.  Insurance companies will either disappear of become completely regulated.  Progressives who favor a single payers healthcare system should have faith.  It is coming, and taking us all along for the ride.