Three things to remember during the debate about the Fiscal Cliff Fiscal Curb

1) Ronald Reagan: "Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit."



2) A nonpartisan tax report which found no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth was withdrawn after G.O.P. protest.

3) Nobody actually cares about the deficit like they say they do:




(h/t to Digby for items 1 and 3)

Presidential Debate Overview

1. Romney kept his answers detail-free but full of lies. (He only got specific on his promise to off Big Bird.) From HuffPo:

Still, one issue continued to plague Romney: details. While he said he would end Obama programs, he was vague on how he would do so without eliminating a host of components he pledged to keep.  

"At some point, you have to ask, is he keeping all these plans to replace [programs] secret because they're too good?" Obama said. "Families are going benefit too much from them?"

But the “Lying for the Lord” was in full force. Here's David Gergen, former presidential advisor who served during the administrations of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton, so hardly a liberal:

  PoliticusUSA on Romney's five biggest lies (in just the first half of the debate) here.

And, from TPM: Top Romney Adviser: States Will Have To Cover People With Pre-Existing Conditions Under President Romney (so, yeah, he lied about that too).

2. For those wondering when Romney would swing to the center – shake that Etch A Sketch! – the answer was October 3, 2012:

Tonight’s debate saw the return of the Mitt Romney who ran for office in Massachusetts in 1994 and 2002. He was obsessive about portraying himself as a moderate, using every possible opening or ambiguity – and, when necessary, making them up – to shove his way to the center. Why he did not attempt to restore this pose earlier, I cannot say. Maybe he can only do it in debates. Or maybe conservatives had to reach a point of absolute desperation over his prospects before they would give him the ideological space. In any case, he dodged almost every point in the right wing canon in a way that seemed to catch Obama off-guard.

3. I still can't believe that Romney's 47% comment was absent from this debate. WTF? If Lehrer wouldn't bring it up, the President should have.

4. Also absent from this debate was any women's issues. We're used to seeing few to no women as candidates or moderators, but while we're in a War On Women, it would have been nice to have some mention made of the issues and not to have women only mentioned in random anecdotes. Romney did mention at least twice that doctors and people should decide on medical treatments and not the government – oh, the irony, it burns!

Also not mentioned: LGBT issues and the environment (except in a knock by Romney at green jobs). But of course, the deficit was covered ad nauseum because it's what's important to the Villagers.

5. While President Obama was far, far too passive, Romney played the bully. Apparently he thought he was the moderator and Lehrer didn't do much to disabuse him of this notion. If you watched any of this on CNN, you saw that women did not take kindly to uber privileged Romney running roughshod all over the debate. In fact, the male/female instant tracking graph running on CNN was a visual reminder of the vast gender gap throughout the evening.

6. And finally, speaking of CNN, their snap poll at the end of the debate – the one that showed Romney won the debate 69-25 – a diarist at Daily KOS finds something entirely astonishing:

According to the breakout, all the people surveyed are white, 50+, and from the South.

Additionally, it was top-heavy on men and those who were pro Mitt before the debate. So, totally fair and balanced, right?

Some Passing Thoughts...

From Thinkprogress:

The rumored deals flying around Washington today all sound pretty bad. And how could they not be? The White House started with a position that:

1. Failure to raise the debt ceiling is unacceptable.
2. The country should enact substantial deficit reduction in 2011.
3. Any deficit reduction package must include revenue increases.

But (1) and (3) were in significant tension. The White House strategy for getting (3) was to persuade the public that (3) was the correct position. They did that, and all polls showed that public opinion was on their side. But then an underpants gnome problem arose. They didn’t dissolve parliament and call for a snap election. Eric Cantor said “no” and once he said “no,” (1) collided with (3) and the White House dropped (3). Once you’re there, how is the deal not going to be bad?

And in conclusion:

I actually think that whatever the contours of the deal, at this point the biggest damage is to the overall system of government. Obama has successfully transformed massive debt ceiling hostage taking from an act of breathtakingly irresponsible brinksmanship into a proven effective negotiating tactic.

Many thanks to the Compromiser-in-Chief. Many, many thanks.

Reminder

From the New York Times editorial board on how the deficit got this big. It's their explanation of the above chart:

The second graph shows that under Mr. Bush, tax cuts and war spending were the biggest policy drivers of the swing from projected surpluses to deficits from 2002 to 2009. Budget estimates that didn’t foresee the recessions in 2001 and in 2008 and 2009 also contributed to deficits. Mr. Obama’s policies, taken out to 2017, add to deficits, but not by nearly as much.

A few lessons can be drawn from the numbers. First, the Bush tax cuts have had a huge damaging effect. If all of them expired as scheduled at the end of 2012, future deficits would be cut by about half, to sustainable levels. Second, a healthy budget requires a healthy economy; recessions wreak havoc by reducing tax revenue. Government has to spur demand and create jobs in a deep downturn, even though doing so worsens the deficit in the short run. Third, spending cuts alone will not close the gap. The chronic revenue shortfalls from serial tax cuts are simply too deep to fill with spending cuts alone. Taxes have to go up.

In future decades, when rising health costs with an aging population hit the budget in full force, deficits are projected to be far deeper than they are now. Effective health care reform, and a willingness to pay more taxes, will be the biggest factors in controlling those deficits.

But instead, let's cut Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Compensation, and let's make sure all those millionaires and billionaires keep those job creating tax cuts!

Happy Sunday.

Hey, Did You Know This??

From Washington Monthly (quoting the Wall Street Journal):

The federal government budget deficit shrank in fiscal 2010, but the big gap was only $122 billion lower than the record high set a year ago.

The U.S. spent $1.294 trillion more than it collected in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the Treasury Department said Friday.

The deficit amounted to 8.9% of gross domestic product. That's down from fiscal 2009, when the deficit of $1.416 trillion was 10.0% of GDP.

They put it another way:

The $1.294 trillion shortfall is smaller than last year's total; it's slightly lower than the deficit President Obama inherited from his predecessor; and the final figure was smaller than projections made by the administration and the CBO earlier this year.

Still way high, but Obama's first budget deficit was (now wait for it) lower than Bush's last.

And now a thought experiment:

Want to have some fun? Ask your favorite Tea Partier whether the deficit they claim to care so much about is higher or lower now than when Obama took office. They won't care for the answer, but it's true.

Any takers?