There is no doubt the roll out for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign is one of the quickest self-immolations in U.S. political history. But what has received little comment is the extent to which the entire episode shows just how strong Barack Obama may be in 2012 and how poorly Republicans are positioning themselves to run against him.
Former Speaker Gingrich led the House from 1995 to 1999 during the Clinton era. He officially announced his candidacy for the 2012 Republican nomination for the presidency on May 11. Within four days his campaign was a shambles, reeling from self-inflicted verbal wounds and assailed by his fellow Republicans. Though Gingrich's prospects were already touch and go due to his multiple marriages, ethics lapses and policy flip flops (for instance, he was for the health care mandate before he was against it and supported intervention in Libya until Obama did it, after which he opposed it) his real problems began when he went on NBC's "Meet the Press" with David Gregory on May 15, a scant four days after jumping into the race. You can see the "Meet the Press" interview or read the transcript here.
Speaking of the budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) that defunds much of Medicare and turns it into a voucher program, Gingrich criticized it as "right wing social engineering." He was immediately excoriated by Republican media and candidates for not supporting party orthodoxy. Gingrich took so much heat from them that within days he was completely disavowing his statement, claiming a conspiracy on the part of Gregory, playing up his "great friendship" with Ryan and pledging his absolute fealty to the party line on taking Medicare apart.
The irony, of course, is that Gingrich was right in the first place. Medicare is probably the most popular federal program ever instituted. To put a cap on it and start pricing it out of the means of senior citizens would not only be unconscionable social policy, leading to the inevitable bankruptcy or early deaths of untold numbers of people, it would also make certain an overwhelming GOP defeat at the polls in 2012. If the eventual GOP nominee runs on a platform of gutting Medicare you can expect to see him or her lose by an even greater margin than John McCain did in 2008. One only has to think back to the Tea Party types who flooded town hall meetings in 2009, shouting for their congressperson not to vote for "socialized medicine" but also to "keep your hands off my Medicare."
The brouhaha indicates the extent to which the GOP is overreaching and out of touch with the public. Their only chance with the moderate center of the electorate is to disavow the Ryan budget's slashing of Medicare. Yet all but four Republican House members voted for it. They are already going to have targets on their backs for that. Any presidential nominee who wants to win is going to have to run away from that position. But as the Gingrich flap demonstrates, their base may not permit that to happen. If not, expect easy sailing for Obama's re-election and a very good chance for the Democrats to recapture the House.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Our Taxes Are Low
There is no shortage of opinion, spin, ideology and outright propaganda in discourse over the issues of our day. And then there is fact. McClatchy reporter Kevin G. Hall did a little research lately and turned up an interesting set of such facts on the subject of federal taxes. To the contrary of what most conservatives believe and say, federal taxes are at the lowest percentage of national income since at least 1950. Go to the article here.
The historical average since World War II is that 18% of gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the national economy, has gone to federal taxes. When times were prosperous, in the year 2000 after the longest expansion in U.S. history, that percentage grew to about 21%. After the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 that fell to 15%. And then last year, 2010, it fell lower yet, to 14.4%.
The bottom line is that we are not overtaxed, but undertaxed, not only by world standards but even by our own historical standards. If getting a handle on the deficit is a concern, and it should be for the long term, though in the short term reviving jobs is a far more pressing matter, then there is no way to get there without increasing taxes. The simple math is that revenues are running 4% of GNP below historic norms and spending is running at about 6% of GNP ahead of the norm.
To balance the budget, if anyone is truly serious about it, would require increasing taxes about $600 billion a year and reducing spending by about $900 billion a year. To get an idea of what this would require, immediately withdrawing from both Iraq and Afghanistan would save less than $200 billion. Now, a fair amount of any deficit will take care of itself if the economy improves significantly, and that should be the first order of business. But part of any realistic solution must also include restoring revenues to their historic averages, and that will require a tax increase, particularly on those in the top income levels. As Hall points out, their effective tax rates are the lowest they've been since before World War II.
So when you hear politicians say they have a plan to balance the federal budget without raising taxes, be assured they are spouting ideological rhetoric, not talking any kind of mathematical sense.
The historical average since World War II is that 18% of gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the national economy, has gone to federal taxes. When times were prosperous, in the year 2000 after the longest expansion in U.S. history, that percentage grew to about 21%. After the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 that fell to 15%. And then last year, 2010, it fell lower yet, to 14.4%.
The bottom line is that we are not overtaxed, but undertaxed, not only by world standards but even by our own historical standards. If getting a handle on the deficit is a concern, and it should be for the long term, though in the short term reviving jobs is a far more pressing matter, then there is no way to get there without increasing taxes. The simple math is that revenues are running 4% of GNP below historic norms and spending is running at about 6% of GNP ahead of the norm.
To balance the budget, if anyone is truly serious about it, would require increasing taxes about $600 billion a year and reducing spending by about $900 billion a year. To get an idea of what this would require, immediately withdrawing from both Iraq and Afghanistan would save less than $200 billion. Now, a fair amount of any deficit will take care of itself if the economy improves significantly, and that should be the first order of business. But part of any realistic solution must also include restoring revenues to their historic averages, and that will require a tax increase, particularly on those in the top income levels. As Hall points out, their effective tax rates are the lowest they've been since before World War II.
So when you hear politicians say they have a plan to balance the federal budget without raising taxes, be assured they are spouting ideological rhetoric, not talking any kind of mathematical sense.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The End of Osama Bin Laden
Osama Bin Laden died on May 1, 2011, shot twice by a U.S. Navy SEAL at his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan. This is the way we all expected his end would come, avenged by crack American special ops forces. One thing that particularly gratifies me is the timing of Bin Laden's demise, for he lived just long enough to see proof of the failure and futility of his life's work.
Like most fanatics, the al-Qaeda founder's ideology and appeal were built on intolerance and hatred. In his case, this meant intolerance of any deviation from his medieval views on religion and society and hatred of all who failed to share those views.
If the Muslim world had problems they were the result of scapegoats and bogeymen, especially Westerners in general and Americans in particular. Just how the indiscriminate murder of these imagined enemies would in any way improve the lives of Muslim people was never fully explained or even thought through. But then it never is, any more than Hitler's hatred of Jews, Stalin's paranoia of kulaks or Ottoman antipathy to Armenians made any rational sense. It was about focusing disaffection on the other, the outsider, to create unity in fear and fellowship in service to the sinister.
This spring Bin Laden must have watched in dejection as a wave of revolution spread across the Middle East. Revolution was what he was always fomenting, but these popular upheavals for freedom, rights and democracy appealed to hope, not fear. Unlike his vision, they embraced the future, not a barbaric past of whippings, beheadings and inhuman subjugation of women.
And unlike his record of carnage and destruction, these movements were actually about building
something. Marchers throughout the Muslim world were demonstrating people power in the service of uplifting the human spirit rather than chaining it, following in the footsteps of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, rejecting Bin Laden's path of chaos and blood. He lived just long enough to see his message eclipsed, his means repudiated and his ethos supplanted.
Troopers entered his bedroom and the criminal's final scene unfolded. But by then the plot had been completed. Whether he realized it or not, time had passed him by. He had already become what men like him despise most: Osama Bin Laden had become irrelevant.
Like most fanatics, the al-Qaeda founder's ideology and appeal were built on intolerance and hatred. In his case, this meant intolerance of any deviation from his medieval views on religion and society and hatred of all who failed to share those views.
If the Muslim world had problems they were the result of scapegoats and bogeymen, especially Westerners in general and Americans in particular. Just how the indiscriminate murder of these imagined enemies would in any way improve the lives of Muslim people was never fully explained or even thought through. But then it never is, any more than Hitler's hatred of Jews, Stalin's paranoia of kulaks or Ottoman antipathy to Armenians made any rational sense. It was about focusing disaffection on the other, the outsider, to create unity in fear and fellowship in service to the sinister.
This spring Bin Laden must have watched in dejection as a wave of revolution spread across the Middle East. Revolution was what he was always fomenting, but these popular upheavals for freedom, rights and democracy appealed to hope, not fear. Unlike his vision, they embraced the future, not a barbaric past of whippings, beheadings and inhuman subjugation of women.
And unlike his record of carnage and destruction, these movements were actually about building
something. Marchers throughout the Muslim world were demonstrating people power in the service of uplifting the human spirit rather than chaining it, following in the footsteps of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, rejecting Bin Laden's path of chaos and blood. He lived just long enough to see his message eclipsed, his means repudiated and his ethos supplanted.
Troopers entered his bedroom and the criminal's final scene unfolded. But by then the plot had been completed. Whether he realized it or not, time had passed him by. He had already become what men like him despise most: Osama Bin Laden had become irrelevant.
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