Just How Useless Is David Brooks?
Politico:http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79724.html
After beginning as an energetic participant on the Simpson-Bowles commission, he finished up as an energetic participant in the ideological stalemate that doomed its work to failure.
Some Democrats now maintain that the higher the stakes — and the closer Simpson-Bowles got to actually forging a bipartisan solution — the less flexible and more partisan Ryan became.
Now the saintly, do-good aura that surrounds Simpson-Bowles presents an awkward challenge for Mitt Romney and his running mate. Romney is pitching Ryan as a problem solver who wants to use his command of the budget to forge bipartisan deals to solve the nation’s fiscal crisis.
But in reality, Ryan, according to the recollection of some commission members and staffers, was a key part of the dynamic that undermined the commission and allowed the triumph of partisan and ideological loyalties over a budget deal.
Under its charter, the commission needed a supermajority of 14 members in order to give its formal endorsement to any recommendations. Ryan joined six other members — the dissenters came from both parties — in voting against the final proposal, with 11 members in favor.
Skeptics say this record — combined with Ryan’s emphatically ideological approach as chairman of the House Budget Committee — undermines Romney’s claim in an interview on this weekend’s “60 Minutes” broadcast that Ryan “is a man who’s dedicated the last 14 years working in Washington in ways that are not highly partisan or political but are instead focused on the right course for America.”
“There is not a flexibility in Paul Ryan,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who served on the commission with Ryan.“He saw the problem as spending, period, end of story. It wasn’t a matter of this is a revenue proposal that I could support.”
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) told CNBC that Ryan’s rigidity is “probably the thing that concerns me most about Paul.”
Another Democrat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, joked that Ryan was “willing to work across party lines on his ideas.”
Even former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who was also on the panel, said Ryan didn’t shift his positions to get a deal.
“He wants to get things done but he’s not going to give up his philosophical base to accomplish it,” he said. “But you don’t have to if you know what you’re doing and you’re effective.”
. . . After Republicans won control of the House that November — in no small part because of the “road map” Ryan authored in 2008 — he started taking harder positions, Stern said. Ryan would soon be taking control of the House Budget Committee.
The prospect of assuming a leadership position changed Ryan’s tone, Stern added.
“There was a marked change after the election,” Stern said. Ryan “went from sounding open and flexible, saying everything needs to be on the table, to giving an impression — at least on my part — that their leadership was more at stake and a vote for any revenue would jeopardize their standing.”
. . . And Republicans on the panel tell a different story — of intransigent Democrats unwilling to make concessions on health care that might have given Ryan and other GOP lawmakers cover to agree to other elements of a deal like new tax revenue.
“The fact that the commission didn’t address Medicare is the biggest flaw in the commission,” Coburn said.
That “flaw” almost surely cost the votes of Ryan and the other House Republicans, Coburn said.
Coburn rejected the suggestion that Ryan approached the commission’s work as an ideologue.
“He has the moral courage to talk about the real problems when other politicians are ducking them,” Coburn said.
Several GOP aides downplayed the idea that Ryan’s vote influenced the other House Republicans on the panel. Hensarling was seen as a likely “no” vote from the start and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Camp never warmed to the idea of trillions of dollars in new revenue.
S_B was regressive, despite cap gains, etc. taxed as ordinary income.
Krugman: “Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson are the quintessential Very Serious People; they are mentioned in worshipful tones no matter how bizarre their remarks. And they were key players in the great hijacking of US policy debate over the course of 2010 and 2011, in which unemployment dropped off the agenda and the deficit moved front and center. So, about 16 months have passed since both men predicted a US fiscal crisis within two years. Here’s how it’s going: the US just sold a bunch of long term debt for the lowest interest rate ever…. [P]redictions of am imminent fiscal crisis made no sense, and would have been considered irresponsible demagoguery if the people making the predictions weren’t so Serious.”
Paul Krugman:
Very Serious Scare Tactics: As part of a longer-term project, I’ve been looking into the why and how of the dominance of austerity rhetoric over most of the past two years. One aspect is the rapturous glee with which policymakers seized on the theory of expansionary austerity, without waiting to see how well it would stand up under scrutiny (and the answer was, not well at all).
Another aspect, however, is the willingness of Very Serious People to invoke apocalyptic visions based on nothing but their gut feelings — gut feelings that people with actual money on the line didn’t share. Here’s Erskine Bowles, on March 8, 2011, warning about an imminent debt crisis:
This problem is going to happen, like the former chairman of the Fed said or Moody’s said, this is a problem we’re going to have to face up to. It may be two years, you know, maybe a little less, maybe a little more, but if our bankers over there in Asia begin to believe that we’re not going to be solid on our debt, that we’re not going to be able to meet our obligations, just stop and think for a minute what happens if they just stop buying our debt.
What happens to interest rates and what happens to the U.S. economy? The markets will absolutely devastate us if we don’t step up to this problem. The problem is real, the solutions are painful and we have to act.
Alan Simpson then weighed in and declared that it would be less than two years — presumably based on his deep knowledge of markets and debt history, which he somehow acquired without anyone noticing.
Now, maybe Bowles and Simpson will be proved right, although I very much doubt it. But what I do know is that come March 2013, with interest rates still very low and no hint of a debt crisis, they will still be considered Very Serious. False warnings of doom only matter if they come from the wrong people, advocating the wrong things.
click right
HERE.
(not on the image itself).
The new image will open in a new window/tab.
Just click right
HERE!
To subscribe to TWSA! — for free, of course —
simply click the big “Subscribe” button I’m pointing to!
