The right-wing obsession with President Obama's "obsession" with raising taxes

By Michael J.W. Stickings

We're hearing it all the time from Republicans these days: Obama's "obsessed" with raising taxes. It's the same old tired partisan bullshit, of course, and a blatant lie, but the uninitiated, those unaware of how Republicans do their thing, might be excused for thinking, upon hearing this over and over again, that the president is maniacally trying to transform America into some sort of retro-Scandinavian dystopia, Scandinavia before right-wing neo-liberalism arrived on the scene.

Take James Pethokoukis, for example. In his latest smearfest of a post at Reuters, Pethokoukis opens, as usual, by stacking the deck against reasonable debate and an appreciation of the facts:

It's the great mystery of the debt ceiling debate: Why is President Barack Obama so darn adamant about raising taxes?

Really, that's "the great mystery"? Well, I suppose it's no mystery why Republicans, even those who should know better (and probably do) have caved in to the Tea Party and are pulling the country towards financial, fiscal, and economic catastrophe.

But how exactly is Obama "so darn adamant"? Dismissing progressives altogether, not to mention his party's base, the president has responded to the debt ceiling crisis by playing aggressively to the center. He has put Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid on the table, much to our chagrin. He continues to negotiate with a Republican Party that refuses to compromise and that is essentially holding the process -- and the country -- hostage. Indeed, he appears to have positioned himself not as some sort of Big Government leftist (not that such leftists even exist anymore in the Democratic Party, or on the American left at all, they're just straw men created by the Republicans to scare people) but rather as a moderate Republican, as the sort of Republican who used to run the GOP. If this were the '90s, Obama, at least on economic policy, would be very much at home there.

Even now, even with Republicans doing poorly in the polls over the debt ceiling crisis, even with Republicans divided and on the run, even after he turned the tables and backed them into a corner, gaining the upper hand, Obama continues to push for a Grand Bargain that includes massive spending cuts and only relatively small revenue increases (mostly by closing tax loopholes, not by actually raising taxes). The so-called Gang of Six re-emerges yesterday with a $3.7 trillion deficit-reduction package, a package that while bipartisan is Republican in terms of its priorities, a package that if passed may not actually benefit him politically, and Obama showers it with praise.

Now, maybe Obama is being so kind to it because he knows it will never pass the GOP-led House of Representatives, and so maybe he's still just trying to appeal to independents by presenting himself as open to compromise and serious about getting something meaningful done -- and so when the package goes nowhere he can let Republicans take the fall for sinking it. But he's been pretty consistent on the policy and at no point has he even come close to appearing obsessed with raising taxes. Not now, not before, not ever.

If anything, Obama is just being responsible. He knows full well, even if Republicans do not (and Pethokoukis does not), that the only way to solve America's deficit/debt problem over the long term is to increase revenue. And that can be done in part by closing loopholes and letting the Bush tax cuts, and particularly the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, expire. Though of course it was Obama who agreed with Republicans last fall to extend the tax cuts.

Pethokoukis also accuses Obama of violating Keynesianism by calling for tax increases. Well, I agree that the focus should be on economic stimulation (deficit spending) instead of deficit-cutting, but, again, Obama hasn't called for anti-stimulative tax increases. If anything, Obama wants more stimulus.

Obama's tax obsession becomes understandable when you realize the long game he's playing: Big Taxes to fund Big Government. Decade after decade. See, it's an almost universal belief among left-of-center journalists, economists, policymakers and politicians that Americans must pay higher taxes in coming years to cover the medical expenses of its aging population – not to mention all sorts of brand new social spending and green "investment." Dramatically higher taxes. On everybody. And if we have a debt crisis, maybe those tax increases come sooner rather than later.

This makes no sense at all. Across the board, taxes are at an extremely low level. Raising them slightly -- for example, by letting the Bush tax cuts expire -- would only mean a return to Clinton-era levels. And that was hardly an era of Big Government Socialism. In fact, it was a rather successful era for the economy. And if Obama's agenda is really all about "Big Government," what are we to make of his willingness to cut core entitlement programs? Is it all about health care? About, say, funding a government-controlled single-payer system? How could it be, given that the Affordable Care Act, while extending coverage to tens of millions, proposes only a reformed market-based approach to health insurance? Green investment? Please. Obama isn't even talking cap and trade anymore, and that, too, is a market-based approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, one that Republicans used to support (just as they used to support what's in the Affordable Care Act).

Okay, enough. I think you get the point. (If you don't, you need help.) Pethokoukis is just regurgitating the same old lies, the Obama-as-tax-loving-Socialist meme that has no basis whatsoever in reality.

If you really want to talk about obsession, look no further than these anti-Obama smearmongers on the right. They just keep repeating themselves, and looking increasingly desperate and stupid in the process.

Republicans who make things up and the media who let them do it

By Richard K. Barry

I know there is almost nothing that should surprise us about the extent to which Republicans will lie about President Obama, but the boldness of it still amazes me. What amazes me more, though, is that there appear to be no consequences to making shit up. They just do it, nobody says a word, and it becomes a part of the public record.

It's one thing when it happens on Fox News, because Fox's mandate is to present an alternate universe in which lies and truth are fully interchangeable. We get that. But so many other media outlets simply accepts demonstrably untrue statements as just another point of view.

Well, no!!! Some statements can be supported or refuted by evidence. When a statement can be refuted by evidence apparent to any reasonable person, that's what logicians like to call "bullshit."

And, yes, on the other hand, some statements are not of the kind that can be proven true or false, but that's what first year university logic courses are supposed to teach us - or failing that, common sense. It's a pretty simply distinction.

Here's an example of Michele Bachmann making things up on a recent appearance on Fox News as described by Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly:

Here's the issue. The president doesn't want to have to be confronted with priorities in spending because he has a lot of chutzpah. He spent a trillion dollars on the stimulus. It failed. He spent a trillion-and-a-half every year on deficits. They're his. And, also, Obamacare -- trillions of dollars. This is his spending. He's got to own it and deal with it.

We wouldn't be in this crisis right now if he wouldn't have spent that trillion on stimulus and a trillion-and-a-half more than he should have on the budget and now trillions more on Obamacare. But for those trillions in spending, Greta, we wouldn't be in this mess we're in. We'd still be in a bad spot, but nowhere near the hole. That's why -- take the shovel out of the president's hand so we don't dig any deeper. That's what will happen if we raise the debt ceiling and why I am adamant against raising the debt ceiling.

As Benen notes, "every claim Bachmann made is demonstrably false":

She was wrong about the size of the stimulus. She was wrong about the size of the deficit. She was wrong about the cost of the Affordable Care Act (it actually reduces the deficit, by a lot). She was wrong about the efficacy of the Recovery Act.

And perhaps most importantly, even if the Recovery Act and the ACA never existed, we'd still need to raise the debt ceiling. If President Bachmann were in the Oval Office right now, the need for a higher limit would be unchanged. Blaming Obama may make strange right-wing activists and their misguided leaders happy, but it doesn't make it true.

The only way we wouldn't have to raise the debt ceiling in 2011 is if George W. Bush and his Republican allies hadn't added $5 trillion to the debt and left Obama with a $1.3 trillion deficit to clean up. But it's obviously too late for that.

I guess my point is that, in this case, the facts are about numbers, the kinds of numbers for which pretty good records are kept. It doesn't matter though, because Bachmann just says shit and the shit becomes a part of the narrative.

And I really don't care about Fox, because they never have been a news organization, but I would like the news outlets that still might have some pride in their craft to stop the next Republican in his or her tracks who says something about the president's policies that is demonstrably, refutably untrue and maybe asked them to source their statement.

I know it's a radical thought, but could you do that for me? I'd consider it a personal favor.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

In Your Faces, Teabaggers!

By Carl 

Health-care reform, what you so cutely call "Obamacare," WORKS!

Rick Ungar of Forbes is reporting that recent data provided by the nation's largest health insurance companies reveals that a provision of the Affordable Care Act -- "Obamacare" – is bringing big numbers of the uninsured into the health care insurance system. The uninsured in this study include the sick and the young. 

The provision of the law that permits young adults under 26, long the largest uninsured demographic in the country, to remain on their parents' health insurance program resulted in at least 600,000 newly insured Americans during the first quarter of 2011.

Wellpoint, the nation's largest publicly traded health insurer with some 34 million customers, reports adding 280,000 new members in the first three months of 2011.

Add in the results of some of the other large health insurers including Aetna, who added just short of 100,000 newly insured to their customer base, Kaiser Permanente's additional 90,000, and Highmark's 72,000 new customers, and we begin to sense our health insurance pools are filling up with some badly needed young blood. 

BAM! -- as the kids say.

One of the most tragic aspects of the private health care shenanigans that was the old system was that millions of people were remaining uninsured, despite the facts that they were both human and subject to major risk taking behaviors, like driving too fast (or while drunk) or "planking" or what have you.

The rest of us covered those uninsured ninnies, and these aren't poor newbie adults we're talking about. Many of them have good jobs (or had, before Bush got hold of them) but simply opted out of insurance because, well, "More BEER! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Bringing these folks into the insured fold has a double benefit: one, their own insurance will now cover them when they do something clumsy which lowers our premiums and two, their entrance into the pool means that insurance companies can lower premiums to the rest of us, since these same people are less likely to suffer the chronic illnesses that come with aging like high blood pressure, obesity, high cholesterol, and heart disease.

The original Health and Human Services projection for additional insured Americans in 2011 was a modest 1.2 million. It looks like we're going to blow that out of the water.

And yet, insurance companies, for all the scaremongering by conservatives, have been drawing record profits. Gee...think it might have something to do in part with more insured Americans? I sure do.

Health-care reform is only just getting started. In my book, Obama did too little, but fortunately it's not too late, too.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Et tu, Mitch? (or, how Mitch Daniels has a health-care problem)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I noted yesterday that Republican desperation is driving the Draft Mitch Daniels movement.

Faced with an embarrassingly bad presidential field, Republicans are doing what they often do, which is look for a savior to rescue them from the abyss, and that savior, it seems, or so they seem to think, is Daniels.

The problem, I also noted, isn't just that Daniels lacks a dynamic personality and engaging charisma but that he's got some blemishes on his record that just won't fly with the Tea Party grassroots base of the GOP, nor perhaps with the social conservatives who continue to wield influence in the party.

He called for a truce on social issues in Indiana, for example, and, even more damaging, once proposed raising taxes. He might as well have been Osama bin Laden's accountant.

Well, there's more -- and it just gets worse. As The Huffington Post is reporting, Daniels has accepted Affordable Care Act money and has supported universal health coverage and... (pause for effect)... an individual mandate. He might as well have set fire to the flag, urinated on its ashes, and defecated upon the very idea of freedom.

But wait. There's still more:

Back in 2003, mandates were very much a conservative idea, making support for them by Daniels -- let alone fellow 2012 Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich -- either mundane or expected.

But there are other similarities between the health care policies Daniel's passed as governor and those that constitute President Obama's signature legislation. Both, for instance, require insurance companies to allow children to remain on their parents' accounts past traditional ages for college graduation -- Daniels allows dependent coverage up to age 24, Obama up to 26. Both required Medicaid programs to expand eligibility to individuals and families above the poverty level.

Like Obama, Daniels also put a premium on updating hospital records and information sharing. According to a February 21, 2005, Indianapolis Business Journal article, he "ordered the state Department of Health to come up with a regulation that requires every hospital to implement an error reporting system and provide data to the department, which will post it on the Internet." Separately, both Daniels and Obama increased taxes on cigarettes as a means of generating revenue for health care coverage elsewhere (and discouraging smoking).

So there you have it. Daniels, like Romney, has a huge health-care problem that he simply won't be able to overcome.

He hasn't even entered the race yet, but I think it's fairly safe to say he's toast. So much for the Great Republican Savior of 2012.