The Big Budget Mumble (Krugman)

[kentuck]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/opinion/krugman-the-big-budget-mumble.html?ref=opinion

<snip>
In the ongoing battle of the budget, President Obama has done something very cruel. Declaring that this time he won’t negotiate with himself, he has refused to lay out a proposal reflecting what he thinks Republicans want. Instead, he has demanded that Republicans themselves say, explicitly, what they want. And guess what: They can’t or won’t do it.

No, really. While there has been a lot of bluster from the G.O.P. about how we should reduce the deficit with spending cuts, not tax increases, no leading figures on the Republican side have been able or willing to specify what, exactly, they want to cut.

<snip>
Now Republicans find themselves boxed in. With taxes scheduled to rise on Jan. 1 in the absence of an agreement, they can’t play their usual game of just saying no to tax increases and pretending that they have a deficit reduction plan. And the president, by refusing to help them out by proposing G.O.P.-friendly spending cuts, has deprived them of political cover. If Republicans really want to slash popular programs, they will have to propose those cuts themselves.

So while the fiscal cliff — still a bad name for the looming austerity bomb, but I guess we’re stuck with it — is a bad thing from an economic point of view, it has had at least one salutary political effect. For it has finally laid bare the con that has always been at the core of the G.O.P.’s political strategy.

....more

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Game, set, match. Suck on it, GOPers.

[bongbong]

2. repigs

"You mean we actually have to own up to the only core belief we have - that the 0.1% should get every single crumb, and everybody else should die? WAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. I wish someone would ask Dr Krugman about the unmentioned aspects of doing nothing.

Fiscal Cliff, Austerity Bomb, and I'm sure there are other very scary names out there, but what I haven't read, even in his columns, is the effects of the automatic 5% hike in the capital gains tax and return of the 55% inheritance tax. These are the Clinton era numbers that balanced the budget and were projected to generate a surplus, and from the conspicuous silence on them I suspect that these are the real reason behind the obviously manufactured urgency we are being treated to by everybody inside the beltway.

Budget cuts and the additional revenues will help calm the bond markets, which removes the reason we're given for Bernanke's ongoing giveaway (QE 3). The incoming Congress will be forced to deal with the fallout of the automatic cuts, which should be good for the Democrats as the republican House will have to introduce all the spending legislation this will require and the Dems will have to work really hard to come out of that looking bad. And it obviates the need for the threatened cuts to Medicare and restores the funding rate to Social Security.

I'll be waiting to hear about these issues...

[Scuba]

4. K&R

[DreamGypsy]

5. The GOP response is an aggrieved mumble.

Krugman's characterization of the contents of Boehner's letter immediately brought to mind the lyrics of the Simon and Garfunkel song The Boxer.

I am just a poor boy
Though my story's seldom told
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocket full of mumble such are promises
All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
Lie la lie...

Seems, after all the years, to be a pretty good reflection of politics as usual in the America.

And the years go rolling by me
They are rocking easily
I am older than I once was
And younger than I'll be
That's not unusual, no it isn't strange
After changes upon changes
We are more or less the same,
After changes we are more or less the same
Lie la lie...