It started right out of the box, a year ago:
If there’s a single event for which Obama himself is to blame, one decision that explains his predicament, it is his mishandling of the stimulus at the dawn of his administration. Put aside the debate over whether it has “worked,” and forget the White House’s absurd trick of talking about jobs “saved or created” (for the record, I save or create 500 push-ups every morning). Obama made a rookie mistake outsourcing his first major domestic policy decision to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Old Bulls of the Democratic Party, and that blunder has done lasting damage to his presidency.
May it continue. And based on his behavior, it seems likely to.
This may have been a good reason for those of us in the pro-liberty camp to have preferred Obama getting the Democratic nomination over Hillary. If you have to have a statist in the White House, better a befuddled, ineffective one than someone smarter and more savvy.
Obama made a rookie mistake outsourcing his first major domestic policy decision to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Old Bulls of the Democratic Party, and that blunder has done lasting damage to his presidency.
This was a direct result of his youth and lack of experience. The old hands that ran Congress effectively told him, “Nice job winning the election. Now get out of our way and let us do what we’re going to do.”
In other words, they told him to “sit down and color.”
I’m pleased to say I predicted this, which is why I was far more cheerful last November than many who were appalled by the accession of the God President. It was very plain during the campaign that this guy was (1) a fool and (2) fantastically arrogant. A Greek tragedy in the making.
The Clinton machine, whatever else one may think of them, are smart and observant political operators. They were dangerous. But Obama the blue pill is some kind of violent purgative for the Democratic Party. He is exactly the mechanism by which the “Old Bulls” to which Goldberg refers are now being systematically destroyed.
Harry Reid won’t be re-elected. Nancy Pelosi is likely to go back to representing Baghdad by the Bay and write Camelot memoirs of her brief shining moment — can anyone imagine her like Tip O’Neill, Speaker for 10 years? She’s going to be defenestrated by her own party, I think. Chuck Schumer is going to have to channel Daniel Patrick Moynihan to survive, and Democratic Chairs (or ranking members, ha ha) are going to start paying close attention to angry freshman Democrats who are pissed at their brand-new careers going in the toilet so the old 60s retreads can relive protests on the Mall one more time. We shall ooooooovercome!
Here’s another example of the so-called “bipartisanship” that characterizes Democrat strategy for the past year. Once again, evil Rethuglicans spurn the sincere entreaties of the Democrats.
/spit-take
Obama = Tim Allen in “Home Improvement.” He sees government as the ultimate power tool, and what he thinks he can build with it far exceeds his actual capabilities.
…somewhere in the WH, right after President BOHICA has lost his job in his first term, I imagine the senior Dems and “His On the Way Outness’, recreating the scene from “Animal House”, after they’ve thrashed the Lincoln…kinda
Pelosi (holding up a history book): Hey, quit your blubberin’. When I get through with this baby you won’t even recognize it. 20 years from now, they’ll STILL believe Bush screwed up everything well into NEXT year.
Tim Kaine : Barry, buddy, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You fucked up – you trusted us! Hey, make the best of it! Maybe we can help.
Obama : [crying] That’s easy for you to say! What am I going to tell Michelle and the girls? They really liked living here, do I have to give the dog back too?!!
…”sincere entreaties of the Democrats.”
“I won.”
Porkulus = 2,000 Bridges-to-Nowhere
Ted Stevens must be shaking his head.
One of my favorite software engineering texts is The Art of Systems Architecting (3rd ed., Meier & Rechtin). Appendix A in that book is a collection of systems architecting maxims or heuristics, and one of my favorites says, “In designing a new software program, all the most important mistakes are made on the first day.”
I’ve found that principle applies in a wide variety of domains, as per your post above. Note that the book itself covers domains outside of software engineering — including social programs and politics — and is quite wise as to the political aspects and pitfalls of all large systems and projects. ..bruce..
So Larry says Obama was cowed by the “old hands” because he was inexperienced. Carl thinks Obama let Pelosi and Reid handle the stimulus bill because he’s “fantastically arrogant”.
Which is it?
As for Goldberg, he’s simply wrong when he writes, of the ARRA, “there were no Republican ideas in it.” It only passed because of measures (e.g. the AMT fix) inserted to appease GOP Senators. It contains hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts that were pushed by the GOP. The GOP legislators who voted against it are now having their pictures taken at ribbon cuttings for the projects it funded. GOP opposition to the ARRA is about politics, not policy.
Obama’s big mistake was expecting anything but obstruction from the GOP. He should have left Biden and Salazar in the Senate to safeguard those seats, and pushed Vilsack, Sebelius and Napolitano to run for the Senate rather than putting them in the cabinet. Instead, he should have offered cabinet jobs to more GOP Senators with Democratic governors (e.g. Grassley, Snowe, Collins). He should have pushed Reid to eliminate the filibuster when the new Senate session began in 2009. To quote Ezra Klein, “The government can function if the minority party has either the incentive to make the majority fail or the power to make the majority fail. It cannot function if it has both.”.
So Larry says Obama was cowed by the “old hands” because he was inexperienced. Carl thinks Obama let Pelosi and Reid handle the stimulus bill because he’s “fantastically arrogant”.
What makes you believe that inexperienced and arrogant are mutually exclusive? Obama is both and it shows.
“He should have pushed Reid to eliminate the filibuster…”
That’s right junior, remove the possibility of dissenting voices. That’s the way to freedom, alright.
Jerk.
Obama’s big mistake was expecting anything but obstruction from the GOP.
I’ve heard that before somewhere. I don’t see evidence of this claim especially with respect to the Stimulus bill.
So Larry says… Carl thinks… Which is it?
Er…oops. The mind-control beams from VRWC Central aren’t as reliable as they used to be, what with climate change buggering the weather in subspace. Apparently either larry or I is off-message. Sorry!
Anyway, speaking for myself, I don’t actually think Obama was buffaloed by the old guard, because I don’t think his agenda, to the extent he thought about it, differed materially from there’s. They welcomed him, and he they, with glad cries and open arms.
I actually think he left the details to the old Democratic steers in Congress because he’s lazy, like most successful professors, and prefers to have the bright graduate students work out the details while he grades and offers helpful suggestions, and, furthermore, he doesn’t really give a shit. The only true item on his agenda is Top o’ The World, Ma! Look at meeeee!
[Stimulusaurus] only passed because of measures (e.g. the AMT fix) inserted to appease GOP Senators. It contains hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts that were pushed by the GOP.
Wha are you smoking, Jim? This bill passed with zero Republican votes in the House, and only 3 (RINOs Snowe and Collins, and soon-to-be Democrat defector Specter) in the Senate. The guy who asked for the AMT fix, Chuck Grassley, didn’t vote for it. Can we conclude that Democrats are not so bizarrely mentally conflicted that they voted for an AMT fix they themselves hated, even though it would attract exactly zero GOP votes? I mean, what would be the point? And where, pray, are those hundred of billions of tax cuts pushed by the GOP? Point ’em out, if you can. Then explain why no Republicans voted for them.
Obama’s big mistake was expecting anything but obstruction from the GOP
There is zero evidence that he expected or gave a rat’s ass about any such thing. Indeed, quite the contrary. Team Obama seemed to have felt (“we won”) that with their majority in the House and filibuster-proof majority in the Senate they could do anything they damn well pleased, with the barest fig-leaf pretense at consulting Republicans, which more or less consisted of asking them whether they’d rather be hanged or swallow hemlock. What? You’d rather live? You damned obstructionist wretches!
Well, ye reap as ye have shown. Apparently the American people are serious about accomodating some of the wishes of the minority, and they’re going to jam that down the Democrats throat, sideways, with all the corners showing. Enjoy!
To quote Ezra Klein…
Oh please. Ezra Klein needs to age about 10 years and grow up a bit before he’s worth quoting on anything more than Youtube videos. Has he considered how Clinton managed to get stuff done with a Republican Congress, or Reagan with a Democratic Congress? What’s changed? Surely not the man at the top, no. Must be something in the water those crazed Republicans drink…all 150 or so of them…yeah, that’s the ticket….
He should have pushed Reid to eliminate the filibuster when the new Senate session began in 2009.
Amen, brother. Had he only done so, Babs Boxer and Chuck Schumer would be certain to loser their Senate seast this November, and that would give me great pleasure. It’s not to late, is it? Why don’t you write to the White House and suggest it?
To quote Ezra Klein
A man whose sole talent is being expert at getting people to believe he’s an expert.
“[ARRA] only passed because of measures (e.g. the AMT fix) inserted to appease GOP Senators.”
He had a majority in the House, and a supermajority in the Senate, but “Obama’s big mistake was expecting anything but obstruction from the GOP.”
What is incongruous about these statements?
(Oh, yeah. Name one “tax cut” in ARRA. Should be easy since there were “hundreds of billions of dollars” of them.)
Your last statement isn’t quite fair, MfK. There were things that arguably qualify as tax cuts, meaning people paid less taxes then they would’ve otherwise. I’m looking at the Wikipedia list here…hmm..arguably stuff like expanding the time window during which companies can offset curent profits from previous years losses from two o five years, worth $15 billion they say.
However, the big ticket “tax cuts” are actually wealth transfer programs, which Democratic Newspeak allows you to call “tax cuts” because the whole process goes through the IRS. For example, the biggest item ($115 billion) is a refundable payroll tax credit of $400 per person in 2009 and 2010 that is “phased out” for those making more than $75k. In other words, those making more than $75k will have some of their tax money sent to those making less. The amount of your “tax cut” has zero to do with how much taxes you pay. In fact, you can get the “tax cut” even if — particularly if! — you pay no taxes at all. You just get a $400 check from the government.
The second largest, Jim’s bugbear, is rolling into ARRA the routine yearly modification of the AMT so the level at which it begins to bite rises with inflation, as Congress has done for probably a clear decade. This “tax cut” — here “tax cut” means postponing an otherwise scheduled tax increase, ha ha — is worth $70 billion.
All the rest which even its proponents call “tax cuts” is small stuff. But I’m sure buried in there is what the rest of us think of as tax cuts: someone paying less taxes than he would otherwise.
The biggest spending chunks are:
(1) Expand Medicaid, $87 billion.
(2) “Save or create” jobs in education by sending $45 billion to the
teacher’s unionsschool districts.(3) Extend unemployment benefits, $40 billion.
(4) $28 billion for
unionshighway and bridge construction.(5) Subsidize COBRA payments temporarily, $25 billion.
(6) More Food Stamps, $20 billion.
(7) $19 billion for “health information technology.”
So, more or less shovel money to people who have almost nothing, and to Democratic interest groups, in equal amounts. One for you, one for me…
If there’s a line item in there that increases the probability of someone landing a new, permanent, private-sector job, I have yet to come across it. And, apparently, given that this “stimulus” has “stimulated” just about zip in the 10 months since it’s been enacted, no one else can find it either.
So, more or less shovel money to people
So that’s what Obama means by shovel-ready jobs…
And the reason why they keep tinkering with the AMT is that when the morons wrote the law back in the late 1960s, they never adjusted it for inflation. The AMT is a classic example of a law written to punish the rich. It was inspired by the case of a few hundred wealthy families who used the exemptions in the tax code to end up paying no income taxes. Rather than close the exemptions, Congress (completely controlled by Democrats) set up the Alternative Minimum Tax system to ensure the rich would have to pay income taxes. Only, by not adjusting it for inflation, “the rich” now constitute millions of middle income families, especially those who live in high tax states.
“Inexperienced” and “arrogant” pretty much go together, from my observation. The experienced have gotten their share of hard knocks, and those who are smart enough to absorb the lessons are less arrogant.
I think it’s important to quote Ezra Klein. So we can make fun of what a doofus he is.
“Inexperienced” and “arrogant” pretty much go together, from my observation.
The same for “arrogant” and “ignorant.” I frequently see the two characteristics in the same person.
And for the record, ignorant doesn’t mean stupid. It means you don’t know something. As the humorist Will Rogers noted so accurately about 80 years ago, “Everyone is ignorant, only on different subjects.”
We’re all ignorant about different things. Admitting our ignorance is the first step towards wisdom. Ignorance can be cured. Willful ignorance is a different matter.
“We’re all ignorant about different things. Admitting our ignorance is the first step towards wisdom. Ignorance can be cured. Willful ignorance is a different matter.”
So–just to clarify things further–Jim and Barry’s relationship to basic economics would be an example of “willful ignorance,” would it not?
larry, the Federal tax code itself wasn’t originally indexed to inflation, so it’s no surprise the AMT wasn’t.
You can thank The Gipper for indexing the Federal tax code to inflation in the first part of his 1981 tax overhaul. “Bracket creep,” the way your tax rate automatically went up each year with inflation, used to be a regular horror story of the 70s. Reagan fixed that.
Yes, the stupidity of not indexing the tax code was a feature, not a bug. Over time, inflation served to bump people into higher tax brackets even when their income had not increased in real dollar terms. Too bad they didn’t index the AMT back in the 1980s when they indexed the rest of the tax code. That would’ve been the best time.
Team Obama seemed to have felt (”we won”) that with their majority in the House and filibuster-proof majority in the Senate they could do anything they damn well pleased
Fact check: when ARRA passed there were 58 votes in the Democratic caucus, not 60. Which is why ARRA included items for then-GOP Senator Specter and still-GOP Senator Snowe.
Oh please. Ezra Klein needs to age about 10 years and grow up a bit before he’s worth quoting on anything more than Youtube videos.
So he’s wrong because he’s young? Are you sure you want to lead with that argument?
Has he considered how Clinton managed to get stuff done with a Republican Congress, or Reagan with a Democratic Congress?
That’s an excellent question. The quote Jim Fallows (who should be old enough for your tastes):
So LBJ’s Senate liason could write about Medicare that “If all our supporters are present and voting we would win by a vote of 55 to 45,” even though it took 67 votes for cloture in 1965.
What’s changed?
One thing that changed is that the 1975 reform that brought the cloture requirement down to 60 votes also made it possible to filibuster without holding the floor by speaking endlessly. But even after the 1975 rule change filibusters did not become routine. It seems that it took a couple decades for Senators in the minority to realize how they could use the filibuster to routinely require a supermajority. Here’s a graph of the resulting growth in filibusters:
Amen, brother. Had he only done so, Babs Boxer and Chuck Schumer would be certain to loser their Senate seast this November, and that would give me great pleasure. It’s not to late, is it?
Unfortunately, it is — the Senate can only change its rules on the first day of a new session. And I agree with the sentiment above: the majority party should be able to pass bills, and then suffer the wrath of the voters if the resulting laws aren’t popular. The situation we have now, where neither party can actually enact its program, subverts the feedback loop of democracy.
Carl:
Thanks for looking up the hundreds of billions in ARRA tax cuts for me.
And, apparently, given that this “stimulus” has “stimulated” just about zip in the 10 months since it’s been enacted…
The mainstream economic forecasters, IHS, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s, all disagree with you. McCain adviser Mark Zandi thinks the “stimulus was key” to the strong 4th quarter growth of U.S. economy.
And now they’re adjusting their original jobs numbers to show that over 800,000 more jobs that originally reported were lost last year. Good job, guys!
“McCain adviser Mark Zandi thinks the “stimulus was key” to the strong 4th quarter growth of U.S. economy.”
Of course it was key, because government spending is included in the growth formula. But, it was a sugar high, and it’s gone now.
This is like giving a credit card to a welfare family and saying “see, they bought lots more stuff.” But, now they’ve hit the limit, they’ve done nothing to enhance their earning potential, and they’re worse off than they were before, carrying a mountain of debt they can never repay.
But, it was a sugar high, and it’s gone now.
Actually it isn’t, because much of the ARRA money is yet to be spent (remember all the GOP complaining last year about how a lot of the money wasn’t going to be spent until 2010 and 2011?).
If that money hadn’t been spent unemployment would be higher, foreclosures would be higher, state and local governments would have cut services (and laid off employees) even more, and businesses would have lower revenues. Things are bad, but they’d be even worse without the ARRA.
“If that money hadn’t been spent unemployment would be higher, foreclosures would be higher, state and local governments would have cut services (and laid off employees) even more, and businesses would have lower revenues.”
Nearly 70% of the money has been spent or is committed, and the impact already anticipated. Face it. It’s a dud.
You are presenting a false choice. Though it is impossible to prove, unemployment may have been higher had the government done nothing. But, I am not saying the government should have done nothing. I am saying it should not have done this.
Rapid growth is not conjured up by government fiat. It comes when businesses are free to invest and grow without the fear of an ever expanding governmental leviathan increasingly skimming off the increasingly meager profits and mandating costly regulations which have no economic basis or long term viability. The global economic history of the last century offers stark confirmation of this fact.
As I implied in my analogy, the stimulus provides empty calories. Keeping people working for the sake of keeping them working can only work for so long. Sooner or later, gravity asserts itself, and with no real growth in productivity or innovation, the whole structure will come crashing down.
Face it. It’s a dud.
Economists, including Republicans, strongly disagree.
I am saying it should not have done this.
Which part should it not have done?