Can Barack Come Out & Play?

So the government didn't shut down after all, like it did in the mid-90s. Seinfeld isn't on in primetime anymore, either. Ezra Klein reminds us that 2011 is not 1995:

The substance of this deal is bad. But the way Democrats are selling it makes it much, much worse.

The final compromise was $38.5 billion below 2010’s funding levels. That’s $78.5 billion below President Obama’s original budget proposal, which would’ve added $40 billion to 2010’s funding levels, and $6.5 billion below John Boehner’s original counteroffer, which would’ve subtracted $32 billion from 2010’s budget totals. In the end, the real negotiation was not between the Republicans and the Democrats, or even the Republicans and the White House. It was between John Boehner and the conservative wing of his party. And once that became clear, it turned out that Boehner’s original offer wasn’t even in the middle. It was slightly center-left.

But you would’ve never known it from President Obama’s encomium to the agreement. Obama bragged about “making the largest annual spending cut in our history.” Harry Reid joined him, repeatedly calling the cuts “historic.” It fell to Boehner to give a clipped, businesslike statement on the deal. If you were just tuning in, you might’ve thought Boehner had been arguing for moderation, while both Obama and Reid sought to cut deeper. You would never have known that Democrats had spent months resisting these “historic” cuts, warning that they’d cost jobs and slow the recovery...

...The Obama White House is looking toward the Clinton model. After all, Clinton also suffered a major setback in his first midterm, Clinton also faced down a hardline Republican Congress, Clinton also suffered major policy defeats, and yet Clinton, as the story goes, managed to co-opt the conservative agenda and remake himself into a successful centrist. The Obama administration has even hired many of Clinton’s top aides to help them recapture that late-90s magic.

The piece is here.

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Texas Misstep

On the road to secession in Rick Perry's Texas:

Right now, triumphant conservatives in Washington are declaring that they can cut taxes and still balance the budget by slashing spending. Yet they haven’t been able to do that even in Texas, which is willing both to impose great pain (by its stinginess on health care) and to shortchange the future (by neglecting education). How are they supposed to pull it off nationally, especially when the incoming Republicans have declared Medicare, Social Security and defense off limits?

People used to say that the future happens first in California, but these days what happens in Texas is probably a better omen. And what we’re seeing right now is a future that doesn’t work.

That's Paul Krugman in today's New York Times, talking about the mess in Texas, whose redneck, teabagging governor bragged about "billions in surplus" during his reelection campaign. Like most things in Rick Perry's world, that was a tall Texas tale:

How bad is the Texas deficit? Comparing budget crises among states is tricky, for technical reasons. Still, data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities suggest that the Texas budget gap is worse than New York’s, about as bad as California’s, but not quite up to New Jersey levels.

The point, however, is that just the other day Texas was being touted as a role model (and still is by commentators who haven’t been keeping up with the news). It was the state the recession supposedly passed by, thanks to its low taxes and business-friendly policies. Its governor boasted that its budget was in good shape thanks to his “tough conservative decisions.”

Oh, and at a time when there’s a full-court press on to demonize public-sector unions as the source of all our woes, Texas is nearly demon-free: less than 20 percent of public-sector workers there are covered by union contracts, compared with almost 75 percent in New York.

But couldn't a posse of tough-talkin' Texans see those budget storm clouds a-brewin' over their hog-heaven horizon?:

What about the budget? The truth is that the Texas state government has relied for years on smoke and mirrors to create the illusion of sound finances in the face of a serious “structural” budget deficit — that is, a deficit that persists even when the economy is doing well. When the recession struck, hitting revenue in Texas just as it did everywhere else, that illusion was bound to collapse.

The only thing that let Gov. Rick Perry get away, temporarily, with claims of a surplus was the fact that Texas enacts budgets only once every two years, and the last budget was put in place before the depth of the economic downturn was clear. Now the next budget must be passed — and Texas may have a $25 billion hole to fill. Now what?

Given the complete dominance of conservative ideology in Texas politics, tax increases are out of the question. So it has to be spending cuts.

Pull yourselves up by yer gosh-derned bootstraps, l'il cowpokes:

Yet Mr. Perry wasn’t lying about those “tough conservative decisions”: Texas has indeed taken a hard, you might say brutal, line toward its most vulnerable citizens. Among the states, Texas ranks near the bottom in education spending per pupil, while leading the nation in the percentage of residents without health insurance. It’s hard to imagine what will happen if the state tries to eliminate its huge deficit purely through further cuts.

I don’t know how the mess in Texas will end up being resolved. But the signs don’t look good, either for the state or for the nation.

So America's most obnoxious state has fallen on hard times despite its oily governor's routine claims of its low tax, lax regulatory superiority. Welcome to the rodeo, governor. But now where are you going to get the money to secede?

Krugman's column is here.

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Bernie Sanders: Working Class Hero

From Andrew Leonard on Salon.com, who wrote this while Bernie Sanders' full-throated wail was in progress:

On CSPAN, six hours after first taking the podium to filibuster against the tax cut deal at around 10:25 Friday morning, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is still talking. The CSPAN subtitle is "U.S. Senate: Tax Cuts & Unemployment Benefits," but for the last few minutes he has been blasting trade polices that disadvantage American workers.

But that's fine. His epic rant -- perhaps one of the most extraordinary critiques of how the American economy has been managed over the last several decades delivered in living memory -- is an endless sequence of connecting the dots from one outrage to another. Even as I wrote this paragraph, he segued effortlessly from trade policy to Wall Street.

"But it is not just a disastrous trade policy that has brought us where we are today. The immediate cause of this crisis, and it gets me just sick talking about it ... is what the crooks on Wall Street have done to the American people."

Sanders then delivers a capsule history of deregulation, blasts Alan Greenspan, notes that in the late '90s he had predicted everything that ultimately happened, but failed to rally legislative support to stop the runaway train -- "and the rest is, unfortunately, history."

From there, a class warfare sideswipe: "Understand, that in this country when you are a CEO on Wall Street -- you can do pretty much anything you want and get away it."

"And what they did to the American people is so horrible."

On to the bailout! His scorn is so caustic it could disintegrate an aircraft carrier: "We bailed these guys out because they were too big to fail, and now three of the four largest banks are now even larger. "

As Sanders' great oration enters its seventh hour, it is, by its very nature, impossible to summarize. It is a ramble, a rant, a critique, a cry of rage, a wail of despair, and a call to action. And it is amazing. I've heard stories of filibusters in which senators read phone books. And I've watched with disgust as for years Republicans have merely threatened to filibuster, without ever actually being forced to exercise their vocal cords. But here is Bernie Sanders, seven hours in, calling for the biggest banks to be broken up, voice still hale and hearty, and looking like he could easily go another seven hours.

Give credit to the citizens of Vermont, who know how to elect someone not afraid of speaking truth to power.

Here's one of my favorite passages from ABCNews.com:

“How can I get by on one house?” Sanders said. “I need five houses, ten houses! I need three jet planes to take me all over the world! Sorry, American people. We've got the money, we've got the power, we've got the lobbyists here and on Wall Street. Tough luck. That's the world, get used to it. Rich get richer. Middle class shrinks.”

Both Sides Now

The Senate voted today and the Ghost of Dubya continues to hover...

From the New York Times:

The Senate on Saturday rejected President Obama’s proposal to end the Bush-era tax breaks on income above $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals, a triumph for Republicans who have long called for continuing the income tax cuts for everyone.

The Senate also rejected an alternative proposal, championed by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, to end the tax breaks only on income exceeding $1 million.

Republicans voted unanimously against both proposals, and Democrats said it showed that they were siding with “millionaires and billionaires” over the middle class. Republicans said they were refusing to let taxes rise on anyone given the continuing weakness in the economy.

Or as one of their mouthpieces put it:

Palin Supporters: Um, Er, D'oh!

And Now A Moment From The Party Of 'No' (Ideas.)