The GOP has staked its future on political quicksand
Why are congressional Republicans at such a disadvantage in negotiations about the fiscal cliff and debt ceiling? Is it just a failure of messaging? Is it a simple lack of backbone, as Rush Limbaugh, Jim DeMint and others argue?
Well, it doesn’t help the GOP cause that President Obama’s job-approval rating has jumped to 57 percent in the latest AP poll, the highest since the death of Osama bin Laden. (And isn’t it refreshing that the entire “Obama ain’t a real American/president” meme has simply evaporated since the election?) In that same poll, just 32 percent of Americans say they support extending the Bush tax cuts for all Americans, a policy that represents one of the cornerstones of current Republican policy.
I realize that poll interpretation has been a bit of a problem for Republicans recently, but even they must know that a policy backed by just 32 percent of the country is a poor piece of ground on which to stake your party’s future.
However, things get really dicey when you realize that preserving tax cuts for the rich is actually the more popular part of the GOP’s current political platform. The other part of their crusade — cutting spending in entitlements, most notably Medicare and Social Security — draws even less support from the American people, as a National Journal poll released this week demonstrates:
Just 22 percent of Americans say they support cutting Social Security. Only 3 percent say they support cutting it by a lot. Just 20 percent support cutting Medicare either some or a lot. And defense spending? While Republicans insist that we devote even more of our resources to the Pentagon, 64 percent of the American people say it should be reduced by some or by a lot.
Now, I’m just an interested observer, not a political professional. But to meeeeeee, it seems risky for a party to push the nation over the fiscal cliff, or in the case of the debt ceiling to push the nation into default, in an effort to force adoption of policies that are opposed by four out of five Americans. That just doesn’t seem like a formula for long-term success.
Ken Baer and Jeff Liebman, writing in a New York Times op-ed today, make an interesting and related point regarding Medicare and Social Security. They note that over the past 40 years, federal spending has averaged about 21 percent of GDP. They also note CBO projections that “if current policies continue, total federal spending will rise to 24 percent of gross domestic product in 2022.”
Why that projected growth in spending?
While “Republicans and Washington deficit hawks argue that this means spending is out of control,” Baer and Liebman write, in reality “the main reason expenditures are rising this decade is that spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is increasing by a whopping 3.7 percent of G.D.P. as the baby boomers age and retire.”
Every month, they point out, more than 200,000 baby boomers will be leaving the work force due to retirement (that’s also one reason the population-to-workforce ratio continues to drop). In the face of that very predictable retirement boom, insisting on dramatic cuts in Medicare and other programs simply is not realistic. Yes, we absolutely ought to seek every efficiency possible in those and other programs. But if slashing those programs just when they are most needed is your party’s main answer to our fiscal challenges, then you really have no answer at all.
Which is what the American people have been trying to tell the Republicans all along.
– Jay Bookman
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427 comments Add your comment
guy
December 7th, 2012
5:14 pm
The GOP may be in quicksand in liberals eyes but America will sink under liberal rule. Hitler promised change too. There is no fool like a liberal fool!
Kevin
December 7th, 2012
5:16 pm
I’m hoping and praying that we go over the cliff and everyone’s taxes go up. Maybe then people will start paying attention to the real cost of government.
I’ve saved up over the years. I’m fine. I’m tired of worrying about (and paying for) everyone else. The well is dry.
Enjoy it, suckers.
guy
December 7th, 2012
5:21 pm
Kevin is one smart person!
Doggone/GA
December 7th, 2012
5:22 pm
“I’m hoping and praying that we go over the cliff”
It takes a really special kind of citizen to hope and pray for something bad to happen to their country.
Elliot Garcia
December 7th, 2012
5:25 pm
Go ahead and tax the rich, but the spending has got to stop. Democrats couldn’t save a dollar to save their life…
Tom Middleton
December 7th, 2012
5:25 pm
Fred @ 4:40pm
Nice come back, Fred, which is more Southern Baptist than I’ve seen on this blog in a long, long time. But it’s not about me, sir, but about the Father (or Mother, if you wish), otherwise know as Jesus’ Jesus. So you don’t ever have to pray to me, sitting here in Bimingham, Alabama, in utter amazement while talking to you.
But we are bound by the same unlimited God, and when you decide to take your religion seriously and live it instead of just talking about it, I’ll be around. I’ve been through your inanities, Dude, and guess who it is who corrected me and set the record straight? A widow’s mite says you won’t even get this one right, not even if your spiritual life depends on it. And it does!
Doggone/GA
December 7th, 2012
5:26 pm
“Democrats couldn’t save a dollar to save their life”
And how many dollars have Republicans saved lately?
Elliot Garcia
December 7th, 2012
5:31 pm
We’re going to save a ton of money going over the cliff, so go for it!
Oscar
December 7th, 2012
5:38 pm
No one has a very good idea of where our tipping point for debt is, or the consequences
_______
That’s true. And the debt to worry about that gets countries in real trouble is the debt they owe to other countries.
Debt held by our own citizens is not going to bankrupt us.
It’s the debt held outside the country to worry about. Last I heard that was about 20 per cent of our total debt.
saywhat?
December 7th, 2012
5:38 pm
The more somebody is sure that they are righteous and on God’s path, and the better they think they can identify others who aren’t, the more likely they are to be mistaken.
As for the GOP, I say let it die.
Donovan
December 7th, 2012
5:41 pm
Thought I would just check in and see what the enemy was up to before cocktails and a big juicy steak. It seems that the usual liberal toads are still here at this time ravaging the opposition and discussing the advantages of looting the system under the Obama way.
I am very happy and comfortable knowing that if all goes as planned, we shall all hold hands jumping over the fiscal cliff together. By doing so, all you looters and all you super-smart elite bloggers will share the pain that we conservatives have endured at the tax table.
Since you guys have all the answers and the cute demeaning remarks, it’s time that you all share in the feast of pragmatic reality. Your last 4 years of irresponsible fiscal gluttony is now due for payment. Your maxed-out credit card now has to be paid.
Maybe Fred’s super-inflated wealth that “could have bought” a jet at the retirement age of 40 or JamVet’s elite knowledge of world understanding will help out your suffering when the fiscal cliff jump cripples your world of liberalism.
So let’s hold hands and see who survives this tax everyone event. Don’t hide behind your liberal B.S. doctrine of tax only the rich and leave the poor middle class alone crap. We’re all in this American Obama experiment together, looters. Put up or shut up.
How do you talk to a liberal? You can’t.
Doggone/GA
December 7th, 2012
5:45 pm
“How do you talk to a liberal? You can’t.”
Maybe you can’t, but I’ve never had any problem. Maybe you should try talking TO a liberal instead of AT liberals.
Reality Bites
December 7th, 2012
5:45 pm
The culprits are Congress and the Presidents over decades and how they have manipulated the system to spend the Social Security funds paid into the system and relying on a “pay as you go system.” We have rules for private benefit plans which our government ignored. The purpose of the private company rules is to ensure that funds exist whey they are need to pay for the benefit promises made. Our government made promises, collected taxes to pay for them, then spent the tax monies on other things and is now going broke with the prospect of needing that money and in a big way. In not too many years, the government will be broke and unable to “pay as you go” if it wants to pay for anything else. Sad affair. Pres Obama won an election by saying we are all ok, so let’s spend more. I will not touch your entitlements (ie, the fake promises the government made and we can in no way actually fully pay), the big bad Republicans are the ones who want to do it (they tried to do it in a less immediately harmful way by not effecting anyone 55 or over, but this was too much compared to not considering any changes in the la la land of being among the brainwashed). So here we sit with the brainwashed masses thinking all will be ok and the government being driven over the cliff and not this speed bump fiscal cliff but the big mountain of massive unimaginable debt cliff that this government is piling up while talking about cutting close to nothing in relative terms. Oh joy. Happy holidays!
Doggone/GA
December 7th, 2012
5:49 pm
“The purpose of the private company rules is to ensure that funds exist whey they are need to pay for the benefit promises made”
If that’s true…how come so many companies go bankrupt and land the government with paying cents on the dollar for the funds that DON’T exist?
MiltonMan
December 7th, 2012
6:08 pm
Reps in Georgia are doing well & getting stronger you lib jerks keep worshiping at the Obama alter.
Doggone/GA
December 7th, 2012
6:14 pm
“you lib jerks keep worshiping at the Obama alter.”
“Some days I wake up grumpy. Other days, I let him sleep.”
Looks like someone woke him up early. today.
saywhat?
December 7th, 2012
6:30 pm
Donovan- “How do you talk to a liberal? You can’t.”
———————————————–
Maybe YOU can’t. I like doggone also have had no problem doing so. To talk to liberal, start by saying something intelligent. (We’ll wait, and based on your idiotic screed, probably for a long, long, long, long time.)
saywhat?
December 7th, 2012
6:32 pm
http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2012/12/07/ppp-survey-42-of-ga-republicans-would-secede-nathan-deal-job-approval-at-37/
Looks like 42% of our Republican brethren here in Georgia are secessionist scum. How did that work out for you last time, losers?
The GOP can’t end soon enough.
Jay
December 7th, 2012
6:41 pm
Saywhat, I take it you realize you are doing what Donovan does?
Alligator loafers
December 7th, 2012
6:59 pm
Jay,
Please hold my hand and lets go over the cliff?
Where does food enter this conversation?
Maybe McCains’s 999 plan is better than the fair tax but everything put on the table so far does not work, but then again we don’t print our money.
Put a stop on debt cap and watch the fun in DC on both sides.
Will be better than wwc, and catching the gators in LA.
dabir dalton
December 7th, 2012
7:46 pm
“Because the needs of the one outweighed the needs of the many.” Cap. Kirk’s answer when Spock asked him why he and his other crew mates risked their lives and careers to save him.
Martin the Calvinist
December 8th, 2012
8:42 am
I have to say something here, raising the tax rates on those who make 200k/250k will only bring in about 84 billion, cbo figures. That is in no way going to solve the deficit or the national debt. Obama has absolutely no intention of doing anything to resolve that issue. His only concern is to put Democrats into power and keep them in power. How is he going to do that, Jay’s poll is evidence on now Democrats will remain in total power for 100 years or more…..
Martin the Calvinist
December 8th, 2012
8:50 am
Besides raising those rates will not do any harm on the mega rich who don’t have W2 based income anyway. Raising rates on those who make 200/250 will only bring harm and lower tne standard of living of those folks and those below them.
The only way you will ever get any revenue from those worth 100 million or more is to institute a sales tax(nationally) or to do a net worth tax on all assets someone worth 100 million or more and make the fine as steep as the tax rate if the individual hides in anyway his/her net wealth….
Martin the Calvinist
December 8th, 2012
8:53 am
We are screwed, we will never raise the revenue necessary to fund the type of gov’t liberals want. It is practically impossible….
Rabbit
December 8th, 2012
10:33 am
@Milton (a man who undoubtedly hails from one of the early government expansions of the 21st GA GOP)
Indeed, the GA is strong and may get stronger. But a simple look at the metrics of progress in GA since 2002 will suggest that while the party may be strong the state is not so much.
Rabbit
December 8th, 2012
10:33 am
21st century GA GOP
Elections Have Consequences
December 8th, 2012
3:26 pm
The issue shouldn’t be those who have worked for 30-40-50 years and are now looking to collect what they have paid towards. Under Obama, SSDI now numbers in excess of 5 MM, with an average of 99.1% who never reenter the workforce. This, coupled with the other baseline entitlement spending, including Medicaid, is what presents the challenge to long term budgetary efforts. It is out of control, and it’s being done for political gain, pure and simple, and everyone knows it
We currently have in excess of 85T in unfunded liabilities, besides a 16T debt. The argument that we can allow this trend to continue without cuts is laughable. One would assume those advocating no revision to spending trends can assume they will never plan on collecting from it.