The Man Who Wasn’t There

It's a bad thing to be a suspect with no alibi. It's a bit worse if you have two alibis that are, if not logically exclusive, at least surprisingly coincidental. The Supercommittee failed to reach an agreement on deficit reduction raising the famously awful prospect of an across the board sequester. Who is to blame?

Michael Gerson at the Washington Post likes President Obama for the crime.

Budget deals get done because presidents prod, plead, cajole, demand and threaten. A few phone calls and tepid public statements do not count. It is the executive, not the legislature, that gives the budget process energy and direction. The supercommittee failed primarily because President Obama gave a shrug.

Ruth Marcus, also at the WaPo, provides the President with an alibi for his absence.

For all the eleventh-hour, "where-was-Obama?" moaning, the bipartisan congressional directive to the White House as the supercommittee did its work was simple: Back off.

That's right. The message from both Republican and Democratic members of the group was that presidential involvement could only be counterproductive.

That's the best case that can be made for the President's aloofness from the Supercommittee: I would have been involved, but they disinvited me. Unfortunately for this line of defense, Carrie Budoff Brown and Glenn Thrush, writing in the Politico, provide a second alibi.

Obama — burned by the failed deficit-reduction talks with Republicans during the summer debt-ceiling fight — believes that being accused of disengagement is preferable to being lumped with the in-fighting lawmakers who fumbled a chance to reach an agreement by the Monday deadline…

Obama's defiance served as the coda to a remarkably disciplined campaign by the White House to keep him as removed as possible from what aides viewed as a doomed process, showing a degree of indifference to Beltway punditry that hasn't been on display since his days as a candidate, Democrats said.

So Obama studiously remained "as removed as possible" from the Supercommittee deliberations. It was doomed anyway, and he would just have been "lumped with in-fighting lawmakers". The political image was all that mattered to "the White House."

So which is it? Did Obama want to be involved and was rebuffed, or did he deliberately avoid involvement? The latter surely looks more like our man. It is precisely the President's job to "prod, plead, cajole, demand and threaten" those who don't want such treatment. When he fails to do that he is not doing his job, regardless of the excuse.

President Obama has consistently failed to provide leadership on the critical problem facing these United States: fiscal solvency. He created a National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform and then, with "remarkable discipline", ignored its report. He proposed a budget in February that utterly ignored the fiscal crisis. When challenged by the new Congress, he gave a speech acknowledging the need to reform our major entitlement programs. He did not provide details or any coherent proposal.

The European Union is collapsing in slow but steady motion. China is showing much the same symptoms. In the U.S., the fiscal rot is evident at every level from the Federal Treasury down to city hall. The President is utterly unconcerned with any of this. He is concerned only with his campaign. If Obama is reelected, we will surely get four more years of the same.

This may be the moment we will look back on, the moment that everything stopped getting better.

Comments

[Donald Pay]

Oh, please. Obama had put out his plans to reign in the deficit repeatedly, and had them repeatedly rejected by the Republicans. If they would have enacted Obama's suggestions there would be a shrinking deficit you could whine about.

People recall the eight years of fiscal insanity that Republicans led us down--violating pay-go to pass the Bush tax cuts, provide and unpaid for gift to the drug industry and start a misadventure in Iraq through lies. And let's not forget the whole financial meltdown started because of Republican failure to regulate the financial industry, and bubble-making policies in the libertarian Republican-led Federal Reserve.

[CB]

Ouch! Chris Matthews, the man who vowed three years ago to do everything in his power to help Obama succeed, is disillusioned by his commander-in-chief? That hurts! If Obama has lost Matthews, who else has he lost?

[A.I.]

We already had far more significant "stopped getting better" moments. January 20, 2001 comes to mind as well as that day's fruition on September 15, 2008.

Actually, not getting better is a massive understatement for those dates. It should be "got a whole lot worse". And I'll take the former over the latter any day.

[Bill Fleming]

KB's post here reminds me of the classic old joke about the sadist and the masochist.

The masochist (Repubs) say "Beat me, beat me!
The sadist (Obama) says "No."

A perfect dis-functional match, perhaps.

Watch for Obama to open a case of whup-ass just as soon as the GOP decides which one-trick-wonder they're going to back as a candidate. Worst case scenario for Obama is that they pick Jon Huntsman. But as George Bush senior used to say "Not gonna do it... wouldn't be prudent... at this juncture."

[Jon S.]

Donald,

You are right. If Pres. Obama's budgets had been adopted we'd be on the road from $1.3 trillion annual budget deficits to about $750 billion annual budget deficits. That's about $300 billion worse than the worst Bush era deficit. I agree that Bush was irresponsible with spending. But then is it responsible to double and triple Bush's deficits?

[Donald Pay]

Jon S.,

Federal spending under President Obama declined (in both real terms and adjusted for inflation) in his first year (2010) from that of President Bush's last year (2009). The deficit that year (and the increase in debt) was due to plummeting revenues as a result of the economic collapse that started under President Bush. Budgets, of course, can't be compared because Bush had lots of things off-budget.

[Jimi]

Mathews is insignificant! He will breathlessly run to the polls to pull the lever for Obama regardless!

The real issue is....what will the media try to use as the narrative to suggest Obama deserves to stay in office. If they attempt to focus on the Republican Candidate they will lose, because all reelctions are always a referendum on the incumbant. If they try to point out how the economics of Democrats is not as dangerous as the data suggests, they will lose, because Democrat economic policy is always tax more to spend more, and we don't have the money nor the economy for that stuff anymore. So they have a real task in front of them.

Obama could've won this election easily, if he were not so Ideological. All he had to do was talk hard "Left," and govern as a Conservative, because his idiot base doesn't know any better, but it seems he couldn't bring himself to do it. Instead he chose to talk "Center-Right" and govern hard "Left". He wanted his cake and eat it too, and now it is up to the media to try to save him by smearing the other side, which rarely works on this huge stage.

In the long run, Obama is really going regret his early actions in his Presidency. I chalk it up to inexperience! He should have made the economy the main focus first instead of worrying about ObamaCare which is not going to survive anyway. He should have made sure that the Stimulus was not waisted, by paying off all the crony capitalists, and paying off his political allies. That along with controlling all of his anti-business/capitalist rhetoric would have recovered the economy pretty quickly, and he could have gotten his second term pretty easily. Instead he ended up overreaching trying to accomplish an Idelogical agenda, and he was sniffed out pretty early, and scared everybody which ended up shutting down the economy. But that's what happends when you put somebody in office with no experience, they tend to show you how unexperienced they really are, and thank god he did, because he could have destroyed this country.....some think he already has, but we will see after he is gone how much damage they were actually able to accomplish.

[Jimi]

Donald lied again! Who exactly is shocked?

Let's use adjusted for inflation dollars, we don't want to embarrass Donald too much with actual numbers.

Total Federal Spending in Billions of adj. 2005 dollars:
2001--$2,072
2002--$2,199
2003--$2,304
2004--$2,375
2005--$2,472
2006--$2,572
2007--$2,567
2008--$2,738
2009--$3,207
2010--$3,112
2011--$3,194

Total Federal Deficit in Billions of adj. 2005 dollars:
2001--(-$142)
2002--$172
2003--$403
2004--$427
2005--$318
2006--$240
2007--$151
2008--$420
2009--$1,288
2010--$1,165
2011--$1,152

Total Federal Revenue in Billions of adj. 2005 dollars:
2001--$2,214
2002--$2,027
2003--$1,902
2004--$1,948
2005--$2,154
2006--$2,332
2007--$2,417
2008--$2,317
2009--$1,919
2010--$1,948
2011--$2,042

The 2009 spending is all Democrat, not Bush, as they like try to make people believe. The 2009 Spending Bill put forth by Bush was not passed by the Democrat controlled House and Senate, they rejected it and waited till Obama took power and then modified and added to it. The projected 2009 Bush budget would have resulted in a deficit lower than in 2008, but Democrats spent like drunked sailors. Also, take note that revenues increased after the Massive Bush Tax Cuts including GDP....My Lord....How is that possible?

[duggersd]

Spending 2008: 2,982,500,000,000. 2009: 3,517,700,000,000. 2010: 3,456,200,000,000. Estimated 2011: 3,818,800,000. In constant 2005 dollars; 2008: 2,702,300,000,000. 2009: 3,172,200,000,000. 2010: 3,066,700,000,000. 2011 estimated: 3,341,300,000,000. As a percentage of GNP, 20.7%, 25.0%, 23.8%, 25.3%, respectively. BTW, the 2009 budget should have been Bush's, but the Democrats in Congress refused to pass a budget as they figured the new President should be able to get his budget passed for the year instead, so that one belongs to the Democrats and Obama as well. Your figures rely upon the last Bush budget, but his last budget was 2008. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200

[Donald Pay]

Jimi, stop your lies, though perhaps you are just ignorant.

The federal fiscal year starts in October of the previous year. Thus, fiscal year 2009 began October 2008. Since spending levels are set then, the spending is attributed to the President in power at the time that fiscal year begins. In the case of FY 2009 that would be President Bush.

[Ken Blanchard]

I find it charming that Donald cannot see what even Chris Matthews (whose leg used to tingle when Obama spoke) can see. The President offers a plan and then doesn't call anyone on Capitol Hill, even Democrats, to try to build support for it. Maybe it was hopeless and maybe in Wisconsin that's a good excuse for not doing your job.

I find it charming that, three years into Obama's term, A.I. is still campaigning against Georg W.

I find it charming that Bill thinks the election is some kind of sports event, as if the world outside the stadium didn't exist.

Thanks to all for charming me.

T

[Jon S.]

Donald,

2009 is an anomaly because you have two massive pieces of supplemental monies: TARP and the stimulus bill. You cannot say that 2009 is all Bush because Obama's stimulus bill was a budget supplemental to FY 2009, thus $800 billion of that debt belongs to Obama. Also, Obama did support TARP, so even though that occured in the Bush administration, it's not like Obama would have done anything different. Again, you cannot dispute that Obama's plan is to have annual deficits 2 to 3 times the size of the worst Bush year deficit (again, taking out 2009 as a kind of bipartisan anomaly). As Ken Blanchard likes to say, that's not what happens if the plan goes wrong; that's the plan. If you think the deficits under Bush were bad, and I do, then you must be horrified by the Obama plan.

[Bill Fleming]

Happy Holidays, KB. I think the election — at least on the GOP primary side thus far — has been an amalgam of a three ring circus, an island survival sitcom, and a unicorn ranch documentary. Anything having to do with reality hasn't shown up yet (with the possible exception of Jon Huntsman, to whom no one will listen). But I suppose it will get real soon enough. Meanwhile, have another pice of pumpkin pie, broheem, and pass the Baileys, will ya?

[Ken Blanchard]

Happy holidays to you, Bill. Thanks for confirming my point yet again. The failure of the German bond auction last week--that was reality. Just because you aren't paying any attention doesn't mean it isn't real.

[Bill Fleming]

Oh, the real world's out there alright, KB. ...and then there is the GOP field of POTUS wannabes.

[Stan Gibilisco]

Well, at least the real POTUS knows where to lay the blame ...

http://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/2011/11/28/us-says-europe-has-resources-to-deal-with-crisis/

[Donald Pay]

The stimulus bill was a response to Bush's economic recession. TARP was Bush's policy, and was largely carried out by the Bush administration. The projections of deficits of two to three times Bush era deficits assumes the Bush tax cuts are extended and the Bush recession continues. It also does not include the cuts that will automatically go into effect if Congress does not act to stop them. Obama has said he will veto attempts by Congress to prevent the cuts from going into effect.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24sun4.html

[Dave]

20 years ago I had a motorcycle accident. Obama wasn't there, so I'm pretty sure it was his fault...

Seriously though, the "supercommittee" was a construct of Congress. Congress made the rules and set the goals... The responsibility rested with the "supercommittee," and had the President tried to influence their process, KB would be accusing Obama of meddling.

[Dave]

From the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-we-can-succeed-through-supercommittees-failure/2011/11/16/gIQA7hLXSN_story.html

"Here is a surefire way to cut $7.1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade. Do nothing."

"The prospect of $7.1 trillion in tax increases and some cuts that would begin taking effect in January 2013 (thanks to Jim Horney of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for walking me through the math) should hearten every deficit foe now prepared to mourn a failure by the supercommittee."

"Because the bulk of the $7.1 trillion comes from automatic revenue increases, the power in future negotiations would shift toward those seeking a balance between cuts and taxes. Doing nothing is not an option when it comes to job creation. Congress still needs to act. But on the deficit, inaction now could lead to wiser action later."

"Yes, this strategy works better if President Obama is reelected. Yet if Republicans take over the federal government in 2012, it should fall to them to enact the draconian cuts required to protect the wealthiest Americans from tax increases. No moderate or progressive should want to be complicit in this."

"A balanced deal would be nice but it’s now impossible — and not because of some vague congressional “dysfunction” the media like to talk about. Sane fiscal policies are blocked because one party refuses to accept the need to roll back the excesses of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. If Congress does nothing, those tax cuts go away. That’s why a “failure” by the supercommittee to endorse a deeply flawed deal is actually a victory for sensible deficit reduction."

[Dave]

Or slightly more blunt, from http://hillbillyreport.org/diary/3538/the-supercommittee-and-the-republican-way

"You see, to insure that Republicans would negotiate in good faith hundreds of billions of much needed defense cuts long opposed by Republicans were added in the automatic "trigger". Despite this fact Repubicans never approached this committee with any real willingness to sacrifice anything or ask any of the folks they truly work for to do so.
Now that their refusal has caused this "trigger" to kick in and automatically cut both domestic and defense spending for the simple fact that Republicans do not believe the wealthy and Corporations should asked to pay for that defense spending they are crying foul. They want to try and save face and appear to care about our "national defense" when honestly they just want to force someone else to pay for it. Now, they are trying to circumvent the defense cuts their own greed made happen and ask all of us to sacrifice for their interests once more.