Boehner’s awe-inspiring hypocrisy on the debt limit
By Matt Miller, Published: May 11
There’s politics-as-usual.
There’s even hypocrisy-as-usual.
But then — at rare moments — there is political behavior that can only be dubbed Super-Duper Hypocrisy So Brazen They Must Really Think We’re Idiots.
Yes, I know. We all remember Obama’s 2008 campaign speeches.
Sad to say that’s where the Republicans have taken us on the debt limit.
Clearly the responsible thing to do is give carte blanche to federal debt. After all, how do you deal with financial irresponsibility in your personal or professional life? Throw more money at it, of course. Got a kid with a gambling debt? Give him more money. Got a company that’s bleeding money in the marketing department? Give them more money. It’s the only reasonable thing to do.
In a perverse sense, I suppose, it’s a thrill to have such a sighting. The kind of frisson bird-watchers must experience when they spy a golden-crowned kinglet or a piping plover. The amazement one feels watching an Olympic diver execute a forward four-and-a-half-somersault with a degree of difficulty of 3.5. Or a graceful backhand winner hit by Roger Federer at a full run. Such moments inspire awe.
These “thrilling” moments couldn’t be any gayer if he tried. I can’t even mock these with quips about Lady Gaga.
So maybe I shouldn’t say Republicans have taken us to a new low when it comes to the debt limit. Maybe, when it comes to the political arts, it’s a new high.
Considering that you still haven’t actually explained what you’re talking about, the general thrust of this article is “Republicans are hypocrites; trust me.”
After all, when Bob Kerrey said of Bill Clinton, “He’s an unusually good liar — unusually good,” Kerrey meant it as a professional compliment.
To Matt Miller, giving a backhanded compliment to a talented liar shows a far greater comfort with lying than being the man that actually does the lying.
I’ll pause to allow you to do a doubletake on that one.
This convoluted logic passes for analysis on the Post’s editorial board. It’s still better than Gail Collins, I suppose.
The new GOP mantra is to define what the president must agree to in spending cuts to get the debt-limit increase “he has asked for.”
Wait, so the advocate for the party that reflexively demands that Republicans compromise is now upset that Republicans want to compromise?
You see the sly innuendo?
Not at all, but go on.
It’s apparently just the president who wants to add more debt. Republicans were just sitting there, minding their own business, and the guy just comes up and asks if he can borrow trillions more!
Actually, we call that the 2008 election.
“As you know,” John Boehner told the Economic Club of New York Monday night, “the president has asked Congress to increase the debt limit.”
Did he not?
“If Mr. Obama wants a big increase in the debt limit,”
He does.
the Wall Street Journal editorial page echoed Tuesday, “he’ll just have to engage on reforming the big entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and perhaps even Social Security.”
And he will.
Where to begin?
You’ve been yammering on about nothing for nine paragraphs, and now you ask that question?
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has just passed Paul Ryan’s fiscal plan, which would add between $5 trillion and $6 trillion to the national debt in the next decade.
Considering that it hasn’t come to a vote in the Senate—nor will it—and the President would veto it, the vote was almost purely symbolic. Miller, of course, knows this.
That’s more debt than has ever been incurred in any 10-year period in our history.
Which is completely meaningless for two reasons: First, you didn’t index it as a percentage. As we supply-siders know, a lower percentage of a higher number can provide a higher nominal value. Secondly, there is absolutely no relevance to comparing the debt projections to actual debt growth from 1937 to 1947? (For the record, on a percentage basis, yes this blows the Ryan plan’s debt growth out of the water.)
The House GOP budget does not touch Social Security.
Of course, every budget in history has an obligation to intellectual honesty to address the third rail of American politics.
Oh wait. That’s right. No budget does that. Bush’s attempts at Social Security reform during his second term are still being trotted out as evidence that Republicans hate old people when even the senile can see through the argument.
And though it may surprise some people, given all the shouting, the House budget — for which John Boehner voted — also does little on Medicare in the next 10 years.
Yes, but Medicare isn’t a major problem in the next 10 years. It’s the 50 after that where Medicare can cripple the economy and bring down the country’s finances.
According to Ryan, it increases spending on Medicare from $563 billion in 2011 to $953 billion in 2021, a boost of 69 percent.
Ryan’s controversial changes to the program wouldn’t begin until after 2021.
Again, this is for two very good reasons:
- Entitlements are obligations of the Federal government. Adjusting the short-term rules of entitlement programs without giving recipients the opportunity to adjust their finances is morally equivalent to a partial default.
- The big problems in Medicare don’t hit for another ten years.
(The House GOP does make real cuts to Medicaid, however, a program that funds health care mostly for poor people who don’t vote Republican.)
Ah, the “Republicans hate poor people” narrative. Right on cue.
How can a party that just passed a budget blueprint with historic new levels of debt and virtually no middle-class entitlement reform in the next decade try, with a straight face, to pin the blame for a debt-limit increase on the president?
1) It only passed in one house of Congress, and is therefore not law.
2) The Ryan budget is for the next fiscal year anyways, and wouldn’t be law until next year, even if it passed.
3) The Democrats plans are worse by a multitude of thousands, both in terms of fiscal responsibility and in terms of not turning the United States
4) Budgets aren’t the place to enact significant entitlement reform. That should be passed as stand-alone legislation after Republicans win back the White House and Senate in 2012. That Social Security is not addressed to anyone’s satisfaction in the Ryan budget is not an indictment of the Ryan budget, but an opportunity to strengthen the country’s finances outside of the budget’s framework in coming years.
5) The Ryan budget does enact significant entitlement reform outside of 10 years. We know that because Democrats were howling about it just a couple weeks ago.
6) The Ryan budget is not a “wish list” of Republican cuts; it is a thoughtful path towards fiscal responsibility that attempts to address reforms in a way that is politically plausible. Therefore, it is necessarily not as severe as would be necessary to address the issue immediately.
7) Democrats absolutely have to deal to continue the spending; Republicans have a mandate from their base to hold the line. Quite simply, the Democrats want the legislation passed more than Republicans do, and Republicans have leverage.
The only plausible answer is that they think it will “work” politically.
I literally just came up with about six other reasons.
That means they think the press is too docile and stenographic to expose the con.
We do think the press is docile and stenographic, but not towards Republicans. Arguing otherwise is just obnoxious. It’s like LeBron James arguing that referees are too loose with their interpretation of traveling for other players.
And that the public is too dumb or tuned out to care, even if the press does its duty.
True story, my original slogan during the 2008 campaign was: “Obama: Either He’s an Idiot, or He Thinks You Are.” That’s still my bumper sticker for 2012.
One of the saddest commentaries on the quality of our civic culture today is that political operatives know these are both fairly good assumptions.
Says the political operative.
This explains why Boehner can say things such as “with the exception of tax hikes . . . everything is on the table” and not be laughed out of town.
I fail to see anything even approaching a cogent point here. Let me take a stab in the dark and try to extrapolate:
Boehner claims to want to reduce the debt. Democrats, in their haste to criticize any spending cut, simultaneously complain that the cuts are draconian and severe, and complain that the cuts don’t do enough to make the budget instantaneously balanced. The resulting noise is because Democrats are shameless opportunists and because they’re too lazy to get their messaging straight. After the fact, their schizophrenic messaging means that Republicans are being hypocritical on the debt.
Then, to address the shortfall in revenue, the Democrats’ solution, naturally, is to build revenue. Nevermind that revenues as a percentage of GDP are tax-rate independent. Nevermind that high tax rates slow the economy. Increasing tax rates, to a Democrat, is the only responsible answer to the budget deficit.
Foiled at every turn by their own cognitive dissonance, they project a nonexistent inconsistency onto Boehner.
Even when he adds, “This is the moment to address these problems as adults.”
I know there are plenty of Democratic budget frauds afoot (the biggest being the president’s pretense that we can get our fiscal house in order by raising taxes only on folks with incomes above $250,000).
Honestly, even though this is a canard to further criticize Republicans, I should frame this. This type of honesty is…hey look, blue skies!
In fact, I had a whole Democratic health-care charade I was planning to discuss this very week.
That’s some damn shoddy writing, but I’m still kind of distracted by the birds chirping and all that.
Honest! But then John Boehner went to the Economic Club, the Wall Street Journal piled on and my blood boiled.
There’s no question that both parties are failing us.
Vote Democrat: We fail a lot, but at least we don’t kick puppies. Much.
But for connoisseurs of hypocrisy, the GOP’s debt-limit gambit deserves a primal scream all its own.
This joker still hasn’t provided any evidence of hypocrisy, let alone the vaunted “Super-Duper Hypocrisy So Brazen They Must Really Think We’re Idiots” variety he so tactfully (*eye roll*) articulated earlier.
Here are the facts:
-Republicans say that the President asked for an increase in the debt limit.
-The best budget plans the Republicans have offered still require an increase in the debt limit.
There’s no contradiction there. Democrats need spending more than Republicans. In fact, Republicans need spending cuts more than Democrats need spending increases. This shift in the political mood of the country has changed the Republicans’ political calculus. That’s why they’re willing to leverage the debt ceiling to gain political concessions. Beyond not being remotely hypocritical, it’s completely logical and almost certain to succeed, so long as the voting block holds firm.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. When the president sits down with senators of both parties this week in separate White House powwows on the debt, his position should be this: “Let’s just increase the debt limit by the amount of debt it would take to accommodate Paul Ryan’s budget in the next decade. We can fight about the details later. No spooking the markets over this insanity.”
And I said at the time that Republicans would have jumped on that immediately—given the stipulation that the debt ceiling would not be raised again for a decade.
But that’s not what Matt Miller wants. Like all liberals, this is a shell game for him. He’s going to cram 10 years of spending into 4 or 5, then claim that the deal 4 or 5 years ago—which no one can do anything about anymore—was a mistake, and we’ll be in the same boat down the line.
Hypocrisy is knowingly advocating a plan that kicks the can down the road while berating the seriousness of politicians who are actually addressing the problems.
Even a debauched democracy like the United States
Firstly, go fuck yourself, that’s my country you’re talking about.
Secondly, that phrase has absolutely no meaning other than to insult the country.
can aim for minimal standards of rationality in public debate. It’s the adult thing to do.
I suppose, but then what would you do for a living?
