Words Have Consequences – 800,000 Consequences

It used to be that if a politician said something stupid, he or she could deny, deny, deny. In the age of YouTube, that is no longer true.

First, Gov. Sarah Palin talked about the “pro-America areas of this great nation” as if some parts of America are anti-American.

Then Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) accused Sen. Barack Obama of having anti-American views. She also said “I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?” Rep. Bachmann has tried several times to deny that she made the statement, despite the fact that anyone with a computer and internet connection can watch her statement on YouTube. As a result of Rep. Bachmann’s statement, over $800,000 in new contributions from over 31,000 people have poured into the coffers of Democrat El Tinklenberg.

Now Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC) just said something equally dumb. He said "liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God." After denying repeatedly that he had made the statement, an audio recording turned up and he was forced to say that, yes, he had made the statement after all. It will be interesting to see the increase in fund raising by Rep. Hayes' opponent, Larry Kissell.

In the age of YouTube and ActBlue, it is easy for voters to be informed and then to express their outrage in a tsunami of fund-raising. I would suspect that one of the reasons that Barack Obama raised $150 million in September is because of the lethal combination of the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican VP candidate and the McCain attack ads.

Words have consequences - sometimes 800,000 consequences and sometimes even more.

Karl Rove’s Poison Pill

Tonight when Karl Rove makes his New Year’s resolution, I’m betting it has something to do with helping Hillary Clinton win the Democratic nomination. Rove’s suggestion of her inevitability has been picked up like a mantra by the GOP, Rove’s surrogates and even many in the media. Rove knows there is only one way for the Republicans to win the Whitehouse in 2008 and that is to divide the country.

Let’s face it. This country is roughly 1/3 conservative, 1/3 liberal and 1/3 moderate. It’s the middle 1/3 who choose a president. A Clinton nomination would be so polarizing; there is no way that the moderate middle will cross over to vote for her. Of course, the Republicans could also nominate a polarizing person, increasing the likelihood of a third-way political party led by Bloomberg and company.

As an independent voter in Iowa I’ve got a ringside seat to the fight for the presidency and I have to tell you it’s pretty ugly. I have supported Republican candidates in the past – before they decided that torture is a moral right; habeas corpus is an inconvenient legal technicality; and that they have the right to declare anyone they choose to be an enemy combatant. At the same time, as a moderate voter, I can’t see myself supporting Hillary Clinton for president.

So, now the choice for the Democratic Party is clear:

• There’s a divisive Hillary Clinton nomination.
  
• There is battlin’ John Edwards. I think he’s an amazingly good man. I supported him early on, but he’s run a take-no-prisoners campaign, and that’s not what it takes to unite the country. Sorry, John.
  
• And there’s the one candidate who stands for uniting red states and blue states – Barack Obama. Obama is the middle way. He is the one who can win my vote.
  

Failure by Filibuster

It’s the end of the year and a good time to take stock of what we’ve accomplished over the last year. What were you hoping the Democratically-controlled Senate would have accomplished in 2007?

• Addressing global warming and energy independence?
  
• Universal healthcare?
  
• Closing the income gap?

If you had your heart set on any of these priorities, you must feel mightily disappointed. You might wonder why Congress didn’t do more. Well, the answer can be found in a simple set of numbers - 49, 51, 60, 62, 110, 134, 1973, and 2008.

There are currently 49 Republicans and 51 Democrats in the Senate. It takes 60 votes to override a filibuster (technically, vote for cloture), which the Republicans used an unprecedented 62 times to block all business in the Senate. In fact the 110th Congress is on a record-setting trajectory to force a cloture vote 134 times, the most since the cloture option was implemented in 1973. Well, there’s a cure for that – vote your priorities in 2008.

The graph below, from an article published by the Campaign for America’s Future, puts the blame squarely where it belongs on the shoulders of the Republicans and their strategy of Block and Blame.




According to Block and Blame: The Conservative Strategy of Obstruction in the 110th Congress, “So far in just the first session of the 110th Congress, Republicans have required cloture votes against filibusters 62 times. The Republicans are on pace to force 134 cloture votes, more than double the recent historical average…”

Did you get that? The Republicans are using the power of the filibuster to choke the legislative process. Republicans promised to end gridlock and instead they delivered roadblocks. They promised bipartisan cooperation. Instead they gave us partisan obstructionism

Call it what you will – Roadblock Republicans, The Grand Obstruction Party, Failure by Filibuster – but in the end it’s the American people who pay the price for party politics.

We might have been let down by the Senate’s performance in 2007, but in 2008, it’s payback time. Vote for a president who represents your priorities and give him or her a Senate who will represent you, not party politics.

Score: Republicans 1, People negative 59.1 billion

It's interesting to watch the debate on the Alternative Minimum Tax…and by “interesting” I mean the same kind of detached dread that one must feel if one is awake in an operating room as one’s right hand is amputated.

In 2006 the freshly minted Congress, in an act of sanity restored the "pay-go." That’s the simple premise that if we are going to authorize spending money, we’ve got to figure out what we’re not going to spend somewhere else.

Spending money is about choices. This is a simple fact of life that you and I have to live by every day. If I buy the new iPod 16Gig Touch (at nearly $400), I am not going to go buy a new laptop this month…or groceries either, but that’s another story. In economics it’s known as opportunity cost. There are only so many resources to go around, and if we spend those resources in one place, we’ve got to figure out where we are not going to spend money.

Here are the sad facts that no one seems to be willing to say out loud. As I write these words, the US federal deficit is $9,176,331,074,081.58 ($9.2 trillion), and it continues to rise by over $1.5 billion per day. Oh, I forgot to add, if you include unfunded Social Security, Medicaid and other empty government promises, the actual debt is more like $59.1 trillion. Since there are 303,818,150 US citizens, that means that every man, woman, boy and girl you know owes $194,524.26. For a family of four, that means you owe $778,097.03 over and above the taxes you’re already paying.

Go find someone you love, look them in the eye and explain how you’re going to repay the $194,524.26 you owe. With all of the talk by the Republicans about “tax and spend” Democrats, it’s interesting that they are perfectly willing to be “deficit and spend” Republicans. And by “interesting,” I mean…well you know.

OK, so now we understand the situation. Perhaps that explains why the House of Representative insists that, to fix the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), the money has to come from somewhere. No more deficit and spend.

But in the Senate, where the Republicans have used the power of the filibuster to block all business, a compromise was reached that fixes the AMT, but further runs up the debt. The House is stuck between their promise of fiscal responsibility and a hand grenade with the pin pulled. In the end the House will have no choice but to cave on this issue and fix the AMT without offsetting funds.

So, the Republicans are going to win the spin war. They’re going to make it look like the Democrats are the ones who are holding up your tax break while the deficit rises uncontrollably. Score that one, Republicans 1, the people 0…or more correctly, a negative $59.1 billion.

Five Questions for Sam Brownback

On January 30, 2007 Sam Brownback was nice enough to give me 8 minutes of his time. Senator Brownback named as his top priorities:

1. A flat tax
   
2. Privatizing Social Security
   
3. A culture of life - i.e., pro-life
   
4. Supporting marriage – against gay marriage
   
5. Curing cancer in the next 10 years

I also asked about Extraordinary Rendition and the death penalty. You can see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UazlxBIdYUY

How the Cookie Crumbles

As anyone who has read my postings know, I like to write about all kinds of issues, but every now and then someone says is so well that I can't improve on what they said. In the category of "I couldn't have said it better myself," click here to see an excellent explanation of how the federal budget works using Oreo Cookies as an example.