Tag Archives: Democrats

Dems Score Meaningless Points

BY JOHN FEEHERY

 Reprinted from the Feeherytheory.com

  My father, a rabid White Sox fan if there ever was one, would always talk derisively about Cubs third baseman Ron Santo as Mr. Clutch. 

 “If you ever needed a guy that would hit a completely meaningless home run when it didn’t matter and strike out when it did matter, Ron Santo is your guy,” he would say with a laugh.  I was thinking about Ron Santo when I heard that the conference committee on the Wall Street reform package had just concluded.  

 The Democrats were very proud of themselves, with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd exchanging hi-fives and getting standing ovations from their colleagues.

 Some commentators have said that with the health care package that passed earlier this year and with this financial services package that will pass next week, theoretically, the President is really putting “points on the board.”

 But in my mind, those points are kind of like the points that the reserves get in garbage time, when the game is already over.  They aren’t going to help the Democrats win any elections, and more importantly, these legislative victories aren’t going to create any new jobs.

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Cleaning Up a Gusher of Debt

BY GARY ANDRES

            When tiny globs of gooey brown oil began washing up on Gulf shores, it foreshadowed a more ominous environmental calamity lurking just over the horizon.  These first signs were troubling enough. But they also revealed a more daunting threat riding incoming tides that might prove impossible to fix.

            The Gulf disaster is a metaphor for our federal spending and debt crisis.   Globs of budgetary red ink have been washing up in Washington for some time now.  Cleaning up the immediate problem is hard enough. But the difficulty policymakers face addressing the current fiscal mess only underscores a larger challenge.

            The Senate’s efforts over the past month, trying to enact a state aid/unemployment/tax extender bill are illustrative. The Democrats’ original plan exemplified politics as usual.  These initiatives all cost the federal government money.  But instead of making the tough choices necessary to pay for these benefits, they proposed just adding more to the deficit.

            But with an election looming and nervous voters increasingly cranky about unsustainable debt, the original Senate plan, which increased the federal debt because it offset less than a third of the  $190 billion in spending, ran into a buzz saw of opposition.  Democratic leaders continue to ameliorate concerns by scaling back the package or finding other offsets.

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We Don’t Need No Stinking Budget

BY JOHN FEEHERY

 Reprinted from the Feehery Theory

 The president’s top budget guy announced today that he’s leaving.

That should come as no surprise. After all, congressional Democrats announced that they weren’t going to do a budget this year anyway.

Who needs a budget?

Our country is doing fine financially.

Sure, we’ve got historically high debt to deal with. Sure, we have tax policy that is about to get a lot more interesting at the end of the year, when a bunch of tax provisions expire. Sure, we have Social Security starting to go broke quicker than anybody anticipated. Sure, we have a huge problem with chronic unemployment in the private sector and bursting employment in the public sector. Sure, almost every state seems like it is ready to belly-up financially.

Sure, we have all of those problems, problems that are all budget-related. But that doesn’t mean we should do a budget.

We don’t need no stinking budget. 
Budgets require tough choices. Budgets require (at least notionally) that the numbers all add up. Budgets require leadership. 

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Secret Sauce of Politics

BY GARY ANDRES

Reprinted from Weekly Standard

Political enthusiasm is the secret sauce of American politics.  When it comes to producing calories for winning elections, it’s the difference between a Big Mac and Lean Cuisine.

But what stimulates this vote-producing electoral flavoring?  One party sometimes gets an energy jolt through a combination of forces.

This year Republicans received the extra dollop of zeal on the political menu.  Predictable historical conditions explain part of the equation.  The “out” party normally enjoys an enthusiasm gap because the “outs” want to become the “ins.”

But Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress also contribute to the GOP’s edge. Their policies and performance – since January 2009 — engender emotions that will create additional GOP electoral punch in November.

At one level, the Republicans enjoy an expected enthusiasm gap. History provides some insights here. In November 1994, with Bill Clinton in the White House and his party in control of Congress, a Gallup survey asked voters if they were “more enthusiastic” or “less enthusiastic” about voting compared to previous elections. Self-identified Republicans said they were more excited by an 11-percentage point margin.

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The Party of Debt

BY Gary Andres

 Reprinted from Weekly Standard

 Two seemingly unrelated news stories unfolded in Washington last week — developments that could further stoke the flames of voter discontent across America. Taken together, these reports could also label the Democrats with an ugly and hard to erase moniker heading into the November elections:  They are now the Party of Debt.

 The first piece of news concerned Congressional Democrats’ plan to forgo passing a budget blueprint this year – an unprecedented display of fiscal policy malpractice.

 A January 2010 Congressional Research Service report demonstrates that only four times in the past 35 years have lawmakers not adopted a concurrent budget resolution (a document projecting long term spending and revenue goals). And even when the two legislative bodies have failed to reach an agreement, in every year since the enactment of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, at least the House has produced its own blueprint and given members a chance to vote on it. How do we get our fiscal house in order if lawmakers can’t even develop a plan?

 Democrats might still reverse course and produce a budget this year.  But as recently as yesterday, Senate Budget Committee chair Kent Conrad told the Washington Post the chances of doing so were “fading.”

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You Say You Want A Devolution

BY GARY ANDRES

From the Weekly Standard

Public opinion about the appropriate role of the federal government moves like the moon cycle, causing tidal shifts in citizen attitudes and election outcomes. After watching Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress over the past year and a half, attitudes about Washington are changing again, possibly giving those who advocate devolving power to the states a political advantage in the midterm elections.

Political scientist James A. Stimson nailed the ocean metaphor in his insightful book, Tides of Consent: How Public Opinion Shapes American Politics. Stimson demonstrates that the overall public mood about government starts to run counter to victorious political parties soon after they win.  For example, voters typically elect  Democrats when a more liberal, pro-activist federal government sentiment hits an apex.  But for the big government crowd, Election Day is about as good as it gets.  Going forward, sentiment soon starts to shift in a more conservative direction.
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