A very popular president goes out of his way to earn Republican support, doesn't get it, and nonetheless passes his bill.

From Free Exchange:

"Stimulus strategery

Posted by:

Economist.com | WASHINGTON

Categories:

Political economy

OBVIOUSLY, there are good reasons to be sceptical of the stimulus plan. I happen to think that the balance of the arguments out there weigh in favour of the plan—strongly so, in my opinion—but reasonable people can disagree. It's no wonder that economists on the right and the left can be found on both sides of the issue, though there is a clear partisan lean—conservatives are more likely to voice scepticism, and progressive leaning economists are more likely to support a larger plan.

But that's the economists. They needn't ever fear coming face to face with voters looking to decide their fate (thank goodness!). Republican legislators, on the other hand, are coming off an historic political rout. In a nation that's suddenly, and overwhelmingly, Democratic, in which an extremely popular Democratic president faced with a major economic calamity has sought, seemingly in good faith, to build bipartisan support for his stimulus package, even dropping Democratic priorities from the bill (to the chagrin of progressive groups) to try and recruit GOP members to his side.

And every last Republican member of the House of Representatives voted against the bill, which passed all the same.

Now, I understand that the Republicans that survived the November election are the ones that come, for the most part, from very conservative, very safe districts. They can afford to spurn the president, for the most part. But just from a simple strategic standpoint, how does this make sense? A very popular president goes out of his way to earn Republican support, doesn't get it, and nonetheless passes his bill. To me this suggests one thing and one thing only—Barack Obama shouldn't give two figs about what the GOP caucus has to say on any issue, large or small, for the remainder of this Congress' duration.

The GOP may already have determined that their best hope is to aim for a good year in 2010, but there are two long years, during which a lot of critical policy decisions will be made, before that time. Republicans may have just rendered themselves irrelevant in those debates. That doesn't strike me as the kind of thing that's likely to please one's constituents."

My turn:

Don the libertarian Democrat wrote:

"A very popular president goes out of his way to earn Republican support, doesn't get it, and nonetheless passes his bill."

You are correct. The bill is a compromise of spending and tax cuts. The GOP is saying that only a plan totally based on their ideas is acceptable, which is a farce.

Burke said the following:

"All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. "

This GOP is a farce.

1/29/2009 5:56 AM GST

In a recessionary economy, tax cuts do not necessarily encourage consumers to spend and businesses to hire.

From Salon:

"How to lie about tax cuts

Here's what appears to be the House Republican strategy going forward: lie, misrepresent, and obfuscate. And when you get called on it, just ignore reality and repeat yourself.

A Wednesday afternoon case in point: The Republican leadership is now declaring that their economic recovery plan, which consists primarily of tax cuts, will result in the creation of 6.2 million jobs in two years. As the authority for their claim, they cite none other than Christina Romer, President Obama's Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.

From a press conference:

...We have an analysis by the president's senior economic adviser who also shows that tax cuts actually provide more immediate relief and more jobs than spending, so you get more -- a bigger bang for the buck.

Well, using the methods and economic models developed by the president's top adviser -- and when those are applied to our Republican plan, it shows the Republican plan could create as many as 6.2 million jobs over the next two years.

Now, let's just be clear about where these estimates come from, the nation's top economic adviser, the president's nominee to chair the Council of Economic Advisors, Dr. Christina Romer, and her peer-reviewed research.

Now, it is true that in their classic paper, "The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks," Christina Romer and her husband David Romer found that certain types of tax cuts in certain types of economic situations provided considerable "bang for the buck."

But as has already been endlessly hashed out in the econoblogosphere, their findings primarily applied to tax cuts that were enacted during periods when the economy was healthy. In other words, when the economy's normal job creation engine is plugging along nicely and companies are turning profits and unemployment is relatively low, a tax cut can provide an added stimulus.

But the Romers did not find the same was true when the economy was in recession. Explicitly: "Policymakers' efforts to adjust taxes to offset anticipated changes in private economic activity have been largely unsuccessful."

There is an intuitively obvious explanation for this, which will be familiar to anyone who has been reading How the World Works this week. In a recessionary economy, tax cuts do not necessarily encourage consumers to spend and businesses to hire. When confidence in the economy is low, people are inclined to pay off their bills and boost their savings. Tax cuts might provide a little more cushion for consumers and businesses to wait out the storm, but they are unlikely to incite a wave of euphoric shopping.

Pointing out, again that the House Republicans are misrepresenting the academic research on tax cuts is unlikely to make House Minority Leader John Boehner or Minority Whip Eric Cantor change their tune. But it might help to explain why after two consecutive walloping defeats for Congressional Republicans, the two men have little power to make their obfuscations change policy.

― Andrew Leonard"

And Don:

GOP On Stimulus

I do agree with the administrations attempt to target tax cuts for investment. As well, I liked the idea of a sales tax cut or payroll tax cut that would be phased out in the future. This could give some incentive to spending now. How much either of these proposals would help is hard to gauge, but so is infrastructure spending.

The GOP position is not serious. They are simply looking for a reason to vote no, without appearing to be political. After all, the administration's position is a compromise. Holding out for everything that you say that you want is not serious government.

-- Don the libertarian Democrat

"The net effect is again an increase in polarization."

Nolan McCarty on Party Polarization:

"Polarization

By Nolan McCarty on December 24, 2008 9:51 AM | No Comments

In the aftermath of the 2006 election, the era of polarization was declared over in such astute analyses as this one:

The impetus behind such conclusions was the extraordinary success of "Red State" Democrats such as Jon Tester and Heath Shuler. But few pundits took note of the fact the these Red Democrats were only moderate or conservative on a few social issues, but quite populist on economics and trade( TRUE ). Even fewer considered the consequences of the extinction of "Blue State" Republicans for polarization in Congress.

But now that Congress has adjourned sine die, Keith Poole has fired up the NOMINATE machine, and we can look at what impact, in any, the 2006 elections had on the level of party polarization in the House and Senate.

This first figure is an update of the data presented in our book with Howard Rosenthal showing the average difference between Democrats and Republicans on the DW-NOMINATE conservatism scale.

Do you see the dramatic collapse of polarization in congressional term beginning in 2007? Me neither. In fact, polarization rose in the 110th Congress just as it has almost every term since 1975. The House had set a record for polarization in the 109th, but the 110th broke it. The Senate broke its own record set in 1867.

So what might the future bring? To get a prediction that is hopefully at least as accurate as Joe Klein's, I have forecast the average conservatism of Democrats and Republicans for the next congressional term in the following way:

1. Assigned all returning members their DW-NOMINATE score from the preceding term.
2. Assigned all new members the average DW-NOMINATE score for their party and region. In other words, a new Democrat from the Midwest gets the average of all midwestern Democrats and a new Republican from the South is assigned the average of all southern Republicans.

Essentially, this procedure captures the effects of the regional distribution of partisan seat shifts. A seat shifted from Republicans to Democrats in the Northeast increases polarization whereas a Democratic pickup in the South decreases it. So here is what the House and Senate may look like next term.

In each of the figures, the red line is the average conservatism of Republicans, and the blue line is the average conservatism of the Democrats for each term since 1969. The triangles are my prediction for the next term. The Democratic average is expected to change very little, but the Republicans will be considerably more conservative. This, of course, is due to their continued hemorrhaging of seats outside the South. The net effect is again an increase in polarization.

All of this is predicated on the assumption that there will not be any major deviations from recent historical patterns. Of course, things could change. In the conclusion of our book (written in January 2005), Keith, Howard, and I speculate that a financial crisis triggered by a housing bubble might lead to a swing in the public's partisanship and ideology that might cause the Republicans to moderate. So we have the crisis, a modest swing in public attitudes, but if the congressional votes on the bailouts are any indication, the Republicans haven't take that last step."

A very interesting analysis.

"Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates. "

Since I've mentioned giving, here's Nicholas Kristof in the NY Times:

"Bleeding Heart Tightwads

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

This holiday season is a time to examine who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but I’m unhappy with my findings. The problem is this: We liberals are personally stingy.

Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.

Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, “Who Really Cares,” cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals.

Other research has reached similar conclusions. The “generosity index” from the Catalogue for Philanthropy typically finds that red states are the most likely to give to nonprofits, while Northeastern states are least likely to do so.

The upshot is that Democrats, who speak passionately about the hungry and homeless, personally fork over less money to charity than Republicans — the ones who try to cut health insurance for children.

“When I started doing research on charity,” Mr. Brooks wrote, “I expected to find that political liberals — who, I believed, genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did — would turn out to be the most privately charitable people. So when my early findings led me to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error. I re-ran analyses. I got new data. Nothing worked. In the end, I had no option but to change my views.”

Something similar is true internationally. European countries seem to show more compassion than America in providing safety nets for the poor, and they give far more humanitarian foreign aid per capita than the United States does. But as individuals, Europeans are far less charitable than Americans.

Americans give sums to charity equivalent to 1.67 percent of G.N.P., according to a terrific new book, “Philanthrocapitalism,” by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green. The British are second, with 0.73 percent, while the stingiest people on the list are the French, at 0.14 percent.

(Looking away from politics, there’s evidence that one of the most generous groups in America is gays. Researchers believe that is because they are less likely to have rapacious heirs pushing to keep wealth in the family.)

When liberals see the data on giving, they tend to protest that conservatives look good only because they shower dollars on churches — that a fair amount of that money isn’t helping the poor, but simply constructing lavish spires.

It’s true that religion is the essential reason conservatives give more, and religious liberals are as generous as religious conservatives. Among the stingiest of the stingy are secular conservatives.

According to Google’s figures, if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do. But Mr. Brooks says that if measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes.

In any case, if conservative donations often end up building extravagant churches, liberal donations frequently sustain art museums, symphonies, schools and universities that cater to the well-off. (It’s great to support the arts and education, but they’re not the same as charity for the needy. And some research suggests that donations to education actually increase inequality because they go mostly to elite institutions attended by the wealthy.)

Conservatives also appear to be more generous than liberals in nonfinancial ways. People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often. If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Mr. Brooks said, the American blood supply would increase by 45 percent.

So, you’ve guessed it! This column is a transparent attempt this holiday season to shame liberals into being more charitable. Since I often scold Republicans for being callous in their policies toward the needy, it seems only fair to reproach Democrats for being cheap in their private donations. What I want for Christmas is a healthy competition between left and right to see who actually does more for the neediest.

Of course, given the economic pinch these days, charity isn’t on the top of anyone’s agenda. Yet the financial ability to contribute to charity, and the willingness to do so, are strikingly unrelated. Amazingly, the working poor, who have the least resources, somehow manage to be more generous as a percentage of income than the middle class.

So, even in tough times, there are ways to help. Come on liberals, redeem yourselves, and put your wallets where your hearts are."

"now we know their true motivations was to let millions of workers lose their jobs for raw partisan purposes. "

This is what mainly explains the GOP position on the Big 3 Bailout, although other party aspects no doubt enter in as well. From ProGrowthLiberal on EconoSpeak:

"Countdown discussed a memo entitled "Action Alert - Auto Bailout," which was sent to Senate Republicans Wednesday morning and states:

This is the democrats first opportunity to payoff organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it. This rush to judgment is the same thing that happened with the TARP. Members did not have an opportunity to read or digest the legislation and therefore could not understand the consequences of it. We should not rush to pass this because Detroit says the sky is falling.

But didn’t many of the same Senate Republicans who filibustered the auto bailout bill vote for TARP? Jonathan Chait notes a little irony in how these Senate Republicans played their hand:

if the White House follows through on its suggestion that it might use TARP funds to stave off bankruptcy, the GOP maneuver will have been a total disaster. Remember, the Republicans have leverage because they still have 49 Senate seats and the auto companies need their loans right away.And, indeed, Republicans have used their leverage to force wage concessions and not force the auto companies to start producing low-emissions vehicles. But if they've overplayed their hand to the point where the White House floats a loan until January, then the GOP's leverage will nearly collapse. When the new Senate and White House convene, the Democrats will cut a much better deal for themselves, with fewer or no wage cuts for workers and tougher environmental standards.

In other words, their ploy may have failed and now we know their true motivations was to let millions of workers lose their jobs for raw partisan purposes."

I don't see it as a principled move to correct some flaws in labor relations, which might be a good idea. This, as politics, is a very bad move.

"In truth, neither party is nor can be a pure expression of ideology in the American electoral system."

Patrick Deneen with an interesting post:

"In truth, neither party is nor can be a pure expression of ideology in the American electoral system. This is actually a good thing - it is a major contributor to the American resistance to ideology - but it can sometimes be ignored or wished away during election season, when ideology becomes more evident (exacerbated by our Primary system) and reified above all in symbolic politics. It has been made worse - much worse - by the contemporary emphasis on policy-making through the Courts (liberal bear a particular responsibility here), that institution through which ideology can be most coherently advanced. Conservatives have themselves in turn concentrated on achieving victories in the Courts, and to do so have increasingly adopted their own forms of ideological reasoning in order to get a hearing within a legal system that only recognizes a such reasoning. Many of our conservatives today speak like Kantians rather than like Burkeans or Chestertonians. Certainly there are ideological tendencies and major policy differences between the parties, but what this most recent election has made possible - and what I hope will occur - is the possibility of at least modestly disassociating conservative commitments from easy identification with the Republican party."

I agree with this. Political Parties are coalitions comprised of:

1) Policies
2) Interest Groups
3) Ideologies
4) Cultural views

There's no one to one correlation between these elements. A conservative could feel comfortable with some of these elements in the GOP, and not others. Also, I don't know enough about Chesterton, but Conservatives now are not Burkeans.

"Many have become lazy, or simply habituated, into thinking that they are the same, but enough evidence can be gathered from recent political history to suggest that conservative ends are alternatively pursued and betrayed by both Parties. Those who maintain a deeper philosophical and theological allegiance to certain conservative beliefs should be wary of this close identification with one party, and even the dangerous ideological belief that one's goals can be achieved through a political program. Frankly, the truth is that the conservative view is likely to be a permanent minority voice in modernity, and thus must maintain the capacity to be poised in opposition, and to work - where possible - with the dominant forces. This means developing the difficult capacity to be somewhat apart, yet avoid complete disengagement."

I would extend this to liberals, moderates, and libertarians. No group should see their allegiance to a political party as anything more than a convenient compromise in order to get certain policies actually implemented.

"Social conservatives should understand that in American politics - and all modern politics, really - they will never have a true "party." Particularly in modernity, a time shaped to repudiate many of the basic commitments of conservatives (indeed, a time that gave rise to the peculiar beast called "conservatism") there will always be a degree of political homelessness. Conservatives should aim to achieve some political ends, but understand that those aims will always be partially or imperfectly reflected in the commitments of all modern parties, and should seek, where possible, to reinforce or extend those commitments where they can be found. There is an odd willfulness on the part of many so-called conservatives to damn every action and word of Obama even as they excuse the actions of Bush. This reflects, in my mind, the sad reality that the Will to Power has deeply infiltrated itself within some thoughtful people who ought rightly to be the greatest opponents of that Nietzschean ambition. "

As I say, this should be extended to libertarians. I disagree about Nietzsche. The Will To Power is a way of being, in my opinion. Strictly speaking, it is not, in his view, an ambition, but an explanation.

As Johnson said:
Dr. Johnson now said, a certain eminent political friend of ours [Burke] was wrong, in his maxim of sticking to a certain set of men on all occasions. "I can see that a man may do right to stick to a party," said he; "that is to say, he is a Whig, or he is a Tory, and he thinks one of those parties upon the whole the best, and that to make it prevail, it must be generally supported, though, in particulars, it may be wrong. He takes its faggot of principles, in which there are fewer rotten sticks than in the other, though some rotten sticks to be sure; and they cannot be well separated. But, to blind one's self to one man, or one set of men (who may be right to-day and wrong to-morrow), without any general preference of system, I must disapprove."
Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

" I encourage my fellow libertarians, no matter who they supported, to join me in the following:"

Libertarians For Obama has decided to go into the loyal opposition:

"You might think that I'm thrilled that the candidate I've supported so strongly - with my money, my volunteer efforts and many hours of blogging - has now won. I am, of course, but I'm not reveling in my excitement. Not for a minute. I supported Obama because he was the best candidate in the race (the best in the last several races, really). But Obama isn't perfect, and I never thought that he was.

I encourage my fellow libertarians, no matter who they supported, to join me in the following:"

1) Support libertarian proposals ( Agree )
2) Disagree with him when he's wrong ( Agree )
3) Try to get him to be more libertarian ( Agree)
4) Disagree with him when he's wrong ( Agree )
5) Try to recruit other libertarians ( The purpose of this blog )
6) Try to recruit other libertarians ( The purpose of this blog )

"Watch the post-election fight for the soul of the Republican Party. If the libertarian faction takes over I'll eat my hat. No, the Republicans are descending into a Bible-thumping, war-mongering, xenophobic, populist party of the South. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, is now swollen with young, libertarian-minded suburban professionals who've been driven from the Republican Party by Bush, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin. In other words, the Democratic Party is now ripe for change in a libertarian direction."

I agree completely.

"So the next stop in my political journey is the Democratic Freedom Caucus, where I hope to work with like-minded libertarian Democrats to advance my ideals. Consider joining me."

Good luck! I'll link to this group.

I don't consider myself in the opposition. More like a trusted adviser.

GOP Loves Debt In Case You Didn't Know

David Boaz finds the Bush record a bit lacking:

"So it must be a great disappointment to Goldwater Republicans to discover this story that got almost no notice this week:

With no fanfare and little notice, the national debt has grown by more than $4 trillion during George W. Bush’s presidency.

It’s the biggest increase under any president in U.S history."

You've got to love the GOP. When they don't walk the walk, they really don't walk the walk.

Republican Convention Blues Part 1

I'm a Democrat, so it's not really possible for me to fairly judge the Republican convention. I used to be a fan of Sen. McCain, but he has morphed into a political form I find intolerable. He is not a Democrat, and he is not a libertarian. His sole policy seems to be patriotism, as defined by having a peculiarly belligerent and expensive military policy. Everything else he says seems to be a mere mouthing of platitudes he might or might not believe.

As for Palin, she is an astonishing pick. There's not enough evidence to determine what she would do as president, and will follow McCain's lead in what she now says, making it virtually impossible to know where she would lead the country.

The idea that she is a libertarian of any kind cannot be judged. She has never faced budgets or issues like the ones she will face in Washington. Does anybody know what she thinks about immigration?