It begins:

A number of the House GOP’s leading conservative members on Thursday will announce legislation that would cut $2.5 trillion over 10 years, which will be by far the most ambitious and far-reaching proposal by the new majority to cut federal government spending. [. . . The] “Spending Reduction Act” would eliminate such things as the U.S. Agency for International Development and its $1.39 billion annual budget, [. . .] the $1.5 billion annual subsidy for Amtrak, $2.5 billion in high speed rail grants [. . .] and it would cut in half to $7.5 billion the federal travel budget.

But the program eliminations and reductions would account for only $330 billion of the $2.5 trillion in cuts. The bulk of the cuts would come from returning non-defense discretionary spending – which is currently $670 billion out of a $3.8 trillion budget for the 2011 fiscal year – to the 2006 level of $496.7 billion, through 2021.

This is, of course, just a scare document, intended to move the conversation in the Norquist direction. When Boehner comes in with a lower spending cuts number, he'll be "the reasonable one." Boehner will "negotiate" with Demint. Who will Obama negotiate with? Oh BTW, extension of the Bush tax cuts cost more in revenue ($4 trillion) to the government than the amount of the draconian cuts the GOP will propose today ($3.3 trillion.) What is interesting about this proposal though is what it does not touch - defense spending, Social Security or Medicare. How about that?

Speaking for me only

I think this bit from Ezra Klein exemplifies Beltway Dems' fundamental misunderstanding of politics and goes far in explaining why even when Republicans lose elections, they gain ground in the policy debate:

For the first two years of his administration, Obama benefited from huge Democratic majorities that allowed him to get things done by locating the senator who would be the 60th vote in the Senate and aiming legislation right between the whites of his or her eyes.

"The 60th vote" generally has no idea where they stand on any particular piece of legislation. For the most part, they look to see where everyone else stands first and then pick ground between the two sides. More . ..

Kevin Drum writes:

An effective regime for foreclosure relief would have done wonders for economic recovery, but it would have hurt the interests of the financial sector, which fought furiously to kill it in early 2009. And they won. Not because they were right, but because they had the raw muscle to get their way and middle-class homeowners didn't. That was good for banks, not so good for the rest of us.

This is entirely too kind to President Obama and the corrupt and incompetent Tim Geithner. Indeed, in the link Drum provides, he quotes Atrios writing:

In a piece that provides broadstroke background on the legal issue surrounding the challenges to the health bill, Jonathan Cohn spends the lion's share oh his argument on the individual mandate.

Like Cohn, I find the arguments for the unconstitutionality of the mandate "unpersuasive," to say the least. But I wonder if this is a fight a progressive wants to have. Cohn asks:

The GOP has argued that because of the doc fix, the health bill costs more than Dems say. Krugman responded:

First of all, says the analysis, the true cost of reform includes the cost of the “doc fix.” What’s that? Well, in 1997 Congress enacted a formula to determine Medicare payments to physicians. [. . .] Instead of changing the formula, however, Congress has consistently enacted one-year fixes. And Republicans claim that the estimated cost of future fixes, $208 billion over the next 10 years, should be considered a cost of health care reform. But the same spending would still be necessary if we were to undo reform.

Today, Ezra Klein touts the idea that the fix of the donut hole in the Medicare prescription drug benefit was how 4 million people benefit from the health bill. But isn't this basically the other side of the coin Krugman is condemning? The fix of the donut hole was hardly the point of the bill (and certainly not what the GOP is objecting to) and could have been done without "reform," just as the "doc fix" is not really part of the health bill either. More . . .

Via AllahPundit, Sheila Jackson Lee makes a ridiculous statement on the GOP proposal to repeal the health bill:

The Fifth Amendment speaks specifically to denying someone their life and liberty without due process [. . .] That is what H.R. 2 does and I rise in opposition to it. And I rise in opposition because it is important that we preserve lives and we recognize that 40 million-plus are uninsured. [. . .] Can you tell me what’s more unconstitutional than taking away from the people of America their Fifth Amendment rights, their Fourteenth Amendment rights, and the right to equal protection under the law?

I can think of many things that are "more unconstitutional" than repeal of the health bill because repeal of the health bill would not be unconstitutional. Congressional debate is always ridiculous.

Speaking for me only

Joe Lieberman will announce tomorrow he won't seek re-election in 2012.

I doubt he'll be missed.

Krugman writes:

I don’t think [the wonk gap] this is unique to health care, or especially unusual. Monetary policy, fiscal policy, you name it, there’s a gap, although not quite as large as on health. [. . .] I’m surprised that Chait doesn’t refer to Upton Sinclair’s principle: it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. In fact, in general right-wing think tanks prefer people who genuinely can’t understand the issues — it makes them more reliable.

[. . .] Wouldn’t the right be better served by better wonks? No. For one thing, they’d be unreliable — they might start making sense at an inappropriate moment. And, crucially, the media generally can’t tell the difference.

(Emphasis supplied.) Is this really so hard to understand? Yet there is this pretend world of "wonk debates" which legitimizes for the clueless Media the very dishonesty Krugman describes. And then Ezra Klein thinks Dems are going to win the health bill debate this time around. There is more than one deficit being described here. Which reminds me of this 2006 post.

Speaking for me only

Jack Balkin:

[I]f total repeal is not on the table, the insurance industry's interest is in keeping the individual mandate and thus opposing any attempt to hold it unconstitutional.

It will therefore be interesting to see whether, as the litigation develops, members of the insurance industry begin to file amici supporting the constitutionality of the individual mandate. [. . .] The Tea Party may despise the individual mandate, but the health insurance industry does not. [. . .]

Actually, this one is easy. No brief from the insurance industry is needed. Just the right signals. The Supreme Court will know what to do. No appellate circuit will strike down the individual mandate. Cert. denied. GOP can tell the Tea Party, we need a more conservative "originalist" Court!! Wins all around for the GOP.

Speaking for me only

In a post discussing a dispute about Jeb Bush touting the "assimilibility" of Latinos (or Hispanics, if you prefer), Matt Yglesias writes:

At any rate, it’s perhaps worth mentioning that Ezra and I are both examples of English-speaking people of partially Latin American ancestry. It seems to me that one of the roots of the problem is precisely that the general public doesn’t recognize the Matt Yglesiases of the world in this way. Only highly un-assimilated Spanish-dominant people “present” to the bulk of the country as genuinely Hispanic [. . .]

(Emphasis supplied.) I chalk this up to poor phrasing by Yglesias, but this is not true. Indeed, I discussed with Yglesias the issue of the bigotry faced by Sonia Sotomayor, who is clearly English dominant, and he clearly recognized it went beyond who "presents" as Hispanic. Sometimes you get "presented." For Sotomayor, her complexion`more closely fit the stereotype. For many, Latino or Hispanic means "brown." Not just "Spanish." But sometimes just a name, like, say Yglesias, is enough.

Speaking for me only

Tweety writes about his passion for the Ronald Reagan/Tip O'Neill relationship:

A vigorous debate over the role of government is always at the heart of our democracy. Since the shootings in Arizona, however, many have said that our partisan ferocity is unhealthy. So it seems like a good time to reflect on Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill. It would serve us well to understand how these very different politicians managed to temper their philosophical divide with a public, and sometimes personal, cordiality.

A nice yarn, but how do Reagan/O'Neill stand up on the Beltway's MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE OF ALL TIME! - the budget deficit? Not very well. More . . .

USA TODAY:

Americans overwhelmingly want to see cooperation, not confrontation, between President Obama and congressional Republicans as a new legislative year begins, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds [. . .]

I love these poll questions. I also agree that Democrats and Republicans should get together and enact the exact policy I want. Here's the fun math part: