“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President [Barack] Obama to be a one-term president,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced after the midterm elections.  Perhaps you were under the impression McConnell’s statement was just hyperbole; his vindictive sentiment, mere posturing for the benefit of the GOP’s reanimated right wing.  If so, this business with Republicans screwing around with the START treaty should put that thought right out of your mind.

From the moment the president signed the nuclear arms reduction pact with the Russians, Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), have “kept moving the goal posts…”

Max Bergmann briefly laid out the history of Kyl’s delay tactics within his Nov. 16 Wonk Room post.

…Last summer, Kyl was whining immensely that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) was rushing the process and that a committee vote should not happen until after the August recess. After the SFRC delayed, Kyl spoke to Reuters who paraphrased Kyl:

It could be difficult to satisfy his [Kyl's] demands before November and thus the vote on New START might need to take place during the lame duck session if the Senate wants to vote on the treaty this year…

The vote was delayed, and Kyl’s demands were met, but…

In September, after the SFRC did hold its vote, Kyl and Senate Republicans argued that having a vote before the election was impossible because it would politicize the process and that a vote should happen after the election…

Predictably, now that the election has passed, Kyl and Republicans say there isn’t enough time in the Senate calendar.

Of course, for Kyl and the Republicans, that was the plan all along, as it has been with every White House initiative since Obama took office.  Playing this game with foreign policy commitments, however, has broader implications than it has with domestic legislation.

The consequences are already presenting themselves.  Steve Benen, author of Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog, has been on this all week.  Regarding the risks Republicans are running, Benen wrote (11/17), “They expect this to hurt the foreign policy power of the United States, but they’re fine with that since there’s a Democratic president…” (emphasis added)

When it comes to Russia, inspection of the country’s long-range nuclear bases will remain suspended indefinitely; the country’s hard-liners will be emboldened; and Russia’s willingness to cooperate with U.S. on Iran or on Afghanistan will likely disappear.

But in the bigger picture, countries around the globe will see this as a reminder that negotiating with the United States is pointless, since the country is burdened with a Republican Party that puts partisan hatred above the country’s interests. It hurts American credibility in ways that are hard to even gauge.

Indeed, and as Matt Cooper noted in his Nov. 16 National Journal post, another bilateral agreement – a trade pact with South Korea – initially failed, in part, because “Seoul’s concern about ratification prospects in the Senate.”

Fortunately, there still a chance that Senate Democrats will force a vote on START before the next Congress.  If they do, it will be interesting to see whether or not the Republicans blink.  Only one elected Republican, Indiana Senator Dick Lugar, has called on his party to put national security before politics on this one, and numerous other non-elected officials from both sides have done the same.

I’d like to think Sen. Lugar isn’t the lone Republican voice of reason in the Senate.  Optimism, however, is difficult to muster when there are others, like Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), who seems to relish the opportunity to poke the Russians with a stick.

Take Action–> Urge Senators to Support Nuclear Arms Reduction

(This post was originally published on Care2.com’s Political Causes Blog, 20 November 2010)

Crossposted from Care2.com ~ Originally published 29 July 2010

President Barack Obama took to the Rose Garden July 19 to urge Congress to pass legislation extending unemployment benefits.  Obama had some harsh words for Republicans regarding their filibuster of the measure, and the minority’s curious advocacy for the failed economic policies of the Bush administration.

From Obama’s remarks (full transcript/video):

I have to say, after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, the same people who didn’t have any problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are now saying we shouldn’t offer relief to middle-class Americans like Jim or Leslie or Denise, who really need help.

Thankfully, the Senate cleared the Republican’s procedural bloc the following day, and jobless benefits will soon be restored for 2.5 million jobless Americans.

It’s a win for the Democrats and for the administration, but a temporary one, and if they’re smart, they will continue to feature the tone and content of Obama’s Rose Garden speech.  They should keep the spotlight on Republicans and what has emerged as their economic platform:  Extend the Bush tax cuts of 2001 & 2003 — an initiative which would deprive the government’s balance sheet of $678 billion over the next ten years — while simultaneously screaming about the perils of the budget deficit.

The hypocrisy is apparent; but, more importantly, when Republican lawmakers publicly defend these policies they put their insincerity on display along with their flippant disregard for the facts.  Read on for examples of both.

Falsehood #1 – Republican Politicians Are Worried About the Deficit

Keep in mind that the budget deficit ranks as a top concern for both Democrats and Republicans when either finds themselves in the minority.  However, the present field of GOP officeholders and hopefuls has brought an unprecedented level of disingenuousness to this time honored political tradition.

Matt Yglesias made it plain within his fourth installment of “Conservatives Don’t Care About The Deficit.”

…there are zero historical examples of conservatives mobilizing to make the deficit smaller. What is true is that most conservatives oppose increases in non-military spending when those increases are proposed by Democratic presidents. A minority of conservatives are more consistent opponents of increases in non-military spending. But the key element of conservative fiscal policy is that tax revenue as a percent of GDP should be made as low as possible. This isn’t a goal they pursue that stands in some kind of balance with concern about the deficit, it’s the only goal they pursue…

Barry Ritholtz offered some particularly stinging commentary regarding “these new deficit chickenhawks” within his July 13 post.  Ritholtz raises an important question:  would those preaching austerity to the Obama administration have said the same to Reagan?

The current president, who obviously has very different priorities than RR, is in many ways following his path: Huge deficits, tax cuts targeted to his electoral base, allowing policies of his predecessor to expire.

I find it terribly amusing that some conservatives have latched onto the deficit as their key issue, when they took the idea of deficit spending to great new heights! Whether you are looking at the economic policies of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, reining in the deficit was clearly of no concern. (Forget speechifying, I refer to actual policies).

Having already weighed in on conservatives’ misplaced reverence for Reaganomics, I won’t bother with it here.

Bush’s economic policies, however, were largely emulative of Reagan’s, and are doubly relevant.   First, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 have contributed greatly to America’s budgetary woes.  Second, “the new deficit chickenhawks” have flatly misrepresented the economic impact Bush tax cuts in order to rail against Obama, whose administration is tasked with cleaning up Bush’s mess.

Falsehood #2 – Bush Tax Cuts Increased Revenue, Paid For Themselves:

This particular falsehood is exhibited in various forms.  Perhaps the most vivid of these comes from Fox Business Channel; the Republican propaganda outfit’s “Largest Tax Hike Ever” countdown clock is representative of the GOP’s argument that the Bush tax cuts should be extended.  But this is generally in line with the rest of Fox’s “news” products:  Flashy, yet fictional.  More significant are the claims which have recently spewed from the politicians, themselves.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) articulated the argument June 11, claiming that unemployment benefits are a “necessary evil” which must be paid for by cutting spending or raising taxes.  When asked the following day how an extension of the Bush tax cuts should be paid for, Kyl responded, “My view, and I think most of the people in my party don’t believe that you should ever have to offset a tax cut …”

That this is a commonly held belief among Republicans was confirmed by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell during a July 13 press conference (via TPMDC, emphasis added):

“That’s been the majority Republican view for some time,” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told TPMDC this afternoon after the weekly GOP press conference. “That there’s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject.”

Not so, says economist and Times columnist Paul Krugman.  Justifiably dismayed by McConnell’s assertions, Krugman published a couple of relevant blog posts –  “Invincible Ignorance,” July 13 and “Carter, Reagan, Revenue,” July 15 — dispelling the ‘tax cuts increase revenue’ claim.

Following the Bush tax cuts, Krugman explains, there was a predictable drop in government revenue which regained its ascent as the economy grew.  After bottoming out, revenue never caught up to what had been the projections had the tax cuts not been enacted.

Krugman’s blog posts culminated in his Friday Times column, “Redo that Voodoo,” invoking the phrase coined by George H.W. Bush while campaigning against Reagan for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination:

Ronald Reagan said that his tax cuts would reduce deficits, then presided over a near-tripling of federal debt. When Bill Clinton raised taxes on top incomes, conservatives predicted economic disaster; what actually followed was an economic boom and a remarkable swing from budget deficit to surplus. Then the Bush tax cuts came along, helping turn that surplus into a persistent deficit, even before the [housing] crash.

But we’re talking about voodoo economics here, so perhaps it’s not surprising that belief in the magical powers of tax cuts is a zombie doctrine: no matter how many times you kill it with facts, it just keeps coming back. And despite repeated failure in practice, it is more than ever, the official view of the G.O.P.

Krugman stresses that our present economic predicament, while serious, is not yet a crisis, thanks, in part, to “the perception that the deficit is manageable has helped keep U.S. borrowing costs low.”  Should Republicans make significant electoral gains in 2010, and should they attempt to put their talking points into practice, Krugman warns, a fiscal crisis is exactly what we’ll have.

I’ve included a relevant clip from the Rachel Maddow Show below, but if you’re interested in reading more about the history of voodoo, supply side, trickle down, or whatever you want to call it, economics, here are a few solid links:

• Hale “Bonddad” Stewart, “The Stupidity and Hypocrisy of the Austerity Movement,” fivethirtyeight.com, 18 July 2010. - Stewart provides a brief history of both, the deficit and the austerity movement, and concludes, among other things, that the GOP’s deficit alarmism is purely political.
• Mike Kimmel, “Presidents, the Tax Burden, and Economic Growth,” presimetrics.com, 13 June 2010 – Kimmel provides a dispassionate, data driven analysis of how the tax policies of Democrats and Republicans have impacted economic growth.  Kimmel’s results may surprise you.
• Thom Hartmann, “Two Santa Clauses or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years,” CommonDreams.org, 26 January 2009 - When Paul Krugman mentioned, “flirting with crisis was arguably part of the [Republican] plan,” this is what he was talking about.  Hartmann traces the history of the supply-side, “starve the beast” Republican strategy to just after Barry Goldwater’s failed 1964 presidential run.  As I noted in a relevant post from last year:

“Two Santa Clause” theory, Hartmann explains, was constructed as a means to consolidate Republican power.  Briefly stated, its adherents reasoned that Republicans could cut taxes, increase spending, and increase government revenue in the process.  If successful, the only way Democrats could counter would be to argue for higher taxes, effectively ‘shooting a Santa Clause.’

Following Obama’s prime time address to the nation from the Oval Office, Jon Stewart offers us a reminder that energy independence has been a presidential priority for quite some time:

“Counting President Obama, he last eight presidents have gone on television and promised to move America towards an energy-independent future.”

Stewart’s hilarious, yet sad, commentary should serve as a reminder to us all:  Presidents can only lend rhetorical weight to the nation’s goals.  Without support from the electorate, they’re just words.

Crossposted at Care2.com ~ Originally published 6 March 2010

President Barack Obama outlined his administration’s proposal Wednesday, seeking to bring reform of the American health care system to a successful conclusion.  Considering  the recent spurious criticisms from reform opponents, it appears that, indeed, the arduous process of steering health care reform through Congress may well be nearing its end.

It’s really only become apparent in the last week or so.  Leading up to and during the White House bipartisan health care summit, Republican politicians have repeatedly acknowledged the need for reform, but that Democrats should scrap their health care bills and “start over.”

Meanwhile, the Democrats began to show some spine leading up to the summit, signaling their willingness to use the budget reconciliation process to pass reform, if necessary.  Consequently, Republicans’ concerns over the use of reconciliation became more prominent within their media talking points, and at the Blair House summit where the issue was frequently raised. Since the summit’s conclusion, however, GOP concerns over reconciliation have evolved into what appears to be panic.

Republicans are decrying the potential use of the parliamentary measure, attempting to gloss over the GOP’s historical record, having happily employed the measure when it suited them.

Further, in their attempts to rationalize their hypocrisy — insisting that the pending health care legislation is beyond the parameters of reconciliation — they have engaged in a campaign of historical revisionism.  Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT) wrote an op-ed, published Mar. 2 in the increasingly subjective Washington Post, is a prime example of how Republicans are falsely framing the historical use of reconciliation.

Regarding Hatch’s opinion piece, Steve Benen of The Washington Monthlywrites, “Hatch is simply and unambiguously wrong.  And the Post published his demonstrably false arguments anyway…” From Benen’s Political Animal blog, Mar. 2:

The whole pitch is absurd to the point of being insulting. Hatch has repeatedly supported up-or-down votes on legislation large and small. Indeed, he thought it was a great idea for delivering massive tax breaks for the rich — packages that cost far more than health care reform now — but whines incessantly when Dems consider the same procedure to pass a modest fix related to health care.

Hatch really ought to be embarrassed.

But Hatch, and those who mimic his intellectually dishonest argument, aren’t embarrassed, as Rachel Maddow deftly explains in this clip from her Mar. 2 MSNBC broadcast:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Adding emphasis to his lack of shame, Hatch tweeted his response to Maddow’s damning assessment.  Here’s his tweet by way of PoliticusUSA:

@maddow ran me down on her show last night over my views on health care reform. Wonderful badge of honor.

However, if you watched the above clip you’d know that Maddow’s assessment had nothing to do with his “views.”  Rather, as Maddow indicated in her response tweet, it was Hatch’s misstating of the facts which were at issue.

Sadly, no matter how plainly the GOP’s efforts to falsely frame reconciliation are laid out, they’ll continue beyond the bill’s passage.  And, as Maddow put it in the above clip, “It’s going to pass.”

What I’m struggling with is, how could Republicans expect anything different from the Democrats?  It seems to me that consistently obstructing Democratic efforts on health care — and everything else, for that matter, guaranteed that reconciliation would be used.

They’ve already telegraphed their intentions to use health reform’s passage as a campaign issue in the 2010 midterms, asserting that using reconciliation will cost the Democrats votes.  However, wouldn’t a failure by the Democrats to use any means at their disposal to conclude a year’s worth of work cost them more?

Frankly, the GOP needs to get over it.  I think is was Jon Stewart who put it best.  Following Obama’s 2008 election to the presidency, Stewart reminded the already whining congressional Repbulicans of what their electoral losses meant.  “You’re in the minority,” Stewart said.  “It’s supposed to taste like a s#!t sandwich.”

See Also:

• Igor Volsky, “Republicans ‘Agree On About 80% Of the Issues,’ But Want to ‘Start Over’ on Health Reform.“  ThinkProgress.org, 26 February 2010.
• Watch Rachel Maddow’s March 3 follow up segment regarding her tiff with Sen. Hatch at MSNBC‘s site.

Originally Published at Care2.com‘s Political Causes Blog, 4 September 2009:

I was sitting on a train, head buried in my laptop, minding my own business when an oddly dressed man burst in from the next car.  Nobody else seemed to take notice, which was peculiar because he appeared to be wearing an early nineteenth century costume as if he were some kind of museum tour guide.  The man looked about the train car, eventually focusing his gaze directly upon me!  He glanced down at my computer, then at me again.  He sat in the empty seat next to me and said, “My name is Francis Scott Key, are you a journalist?”

Of course my initial reaction was incredulous.  The absurdity of it:  Key, author of the poem that eventually became the “Star Spangled Banner,” National Anthem of the U.S., was long dead.  Unsure what to make of this character, I proceeded to lie, telling him that I was a journalist.  He could have asked me if I was an astronaut, and I would have done the same.

“I need to get something off my chest, and I’d like you to write it down,” he said.

“Certainly, Mr. Key. Pleased to make your acquaintance,” I told him, having decided to humor the guy.  I was bored, and I was stuck on a train for the next hour, at least.  He was dressed like a dandy and appeared to be harmless.

“I assume you know who I am, and that I died long ago,” he began.  I nodded, and he continued, “You should know that we watch the living.  We see everything.”

He proceeded to describe the present political drama in America with particular emphasis on the irrational fear of Barack Obama, “displayed in disparate, but decidedly loud segments of America’s politically motivated,” as he put it.  He spoke of his observances like someone describing “Reality TV” to a person who had no idea what a television was.

With an eyebrow raised, I inquired, “What do you mean, you see everything?”

He tacitly acknowledged my skepticism and said, “Just bear with me.  Yes, we watch you.  There is very little else for the dead to do. Get over it.”

Key explained that afterlife viewership had fallen off somewhat during George W. Bush’s first term, but had dropped precipitously following the 2004 presidential election.  “It got to be frustrating to watch, ” he said.  “Your nation had clearly, jumped the shark, electing Bush to a second term.”  He paused to inquire if he had used the entertainment industry phrase properly, and he was quite pleased with himself after I informed him that he had.

“We started watching again during the 2008 campaign,” he reassured me as if I were concerned about our ratings.  He didn’t have to tell me it was entertaining.  I saw it live!

He lowered his voice, “I happened to be in the company of Karl Marx, whose interest in the election was piqued following the primaries.  It was about the time people started throwing Marx’s name around when referring to Obama.  Honestly, I don’t understand it.  At least when McCarthy did it, he had an external entity in the Soviet Union, to which he could, and did, attribute potential domestic subversion.”

“Marx was irritated at first,” Key explained.  “Once Karl figured out that there was no real comparison between his predictive political philosophy and the proposed policies of Senator Obama, he just thought it was hilarious.”  Key confessed, he didn’t think much of it at the time, but when the irrational comparisons continued past Obama’s election he became frustrated.

He wrung his hands as he went on, “You were just starting to get interesting again.  You elected a clearly empathetic and erudite individual to the presidency.  You celebrated well, deservedly so, but a malevolent undercurrent of fear-inspired hate persisted, and persists, which brings me to why I’m here, talking to you.”

He was visibly agitated, but at that point I was totally into it.  “Go on,” I encouraged.

Key settled himself and continued, “I apologize for my candor, but the events of the present week provoked my action.  Seeing a wheelchair bound woman heckled as she attempted to describe her health care plight was despicable.  It was like a punch in the gut. Then I read about the Florida GOP chairman’s profound display of ignorance:  proclaiming that a motivational speech from Obama to the nation’s children was somehow akin to socialist indoctrination.  It’s preposterous!”

At this point, I informed him that he was preaching to the choir on this issue.  I made an effort to calm him, explaining, “though it’s not rational, many are genuinely scared and..”  Abruptly, he cut me off.

“But that’s just it,” he said.  “The needless, pointless fear, don’t you get it?  The man is the President of the United States, for heaven’s sake.  Out of cowardice, some have decided to overtly disrespect and slander your constitutionally elected leader.  It’s tantamount to heresy!  Further, it is insulting to those who voted for Obama; perhaps, it’s insulting to anyone who has ever voted, EVER!”

Key took a deep breath and went on, “It is because this behavior is fear-inspired that I have come back.  I’ve returned to take back my poem.  ‘The Home of the Brave,’ sadly, is no longer applicable to a country capable of such a display.”

I sat in a state of shock, mouth agape, as the train approached the station.

Again, Key composed himself and went on, “I’m not doing this on a whim.  Far from it.  For weeks, I’ve heard the word ‘tyranny’ bandied about by people who have absolutely no concept of what the word actually means.”

“And, don’t think for a moment that demanding this comes without a sense of deep personal loss.  Until recently, I had taken great pride that my poem was selected for your national anthem.  When president Hoover signed the congressional resolution in 1931, making my remembrance of the defense of Fort McHenry a symbol of national pride, I was so excited I nearly forgot that I was dead!”

“Further, my story is not unique,” Key continued.  “Take the first American president, George Washington, for example.  Though he’d be the first to tell you he’s somewhat confused and embarrassed by the phallic nature of his monument on the national mall, he remains humbled by how the nation he helped guide through its infancy remembers him.  Indeed, all of us whom history has chosen to smile upon following our deaths live on symbolically because living Americans honor us by remembering us and what we fought for.  The poisonous political climate of the present has led to the perversion of that honor.  It makes me feel dirty, to be honest.  By taking back my poem, I’m symbolically washing myself.”

The train came to a stop as he finished.  I followed him across the platform, begging him to reconsider.  I told him that going through with his plan could only exacerbate the issue, preventing any chance for Obama to turn it around.

“Give him a chance,” I said.  “With more time the displays of ignorance could subside.  Give us a chance to come to our senses, to awaken to the fact that there is nothing to be afraid of,” I pleaded.

With that, the man who portended to be Francis Scott Key, paused, turned to me, and smiled.

“Alright,” he said.  “If you haven’t given up, then neither will I.  You’ve got until the next presidential contest in 2012.”

I barely had time to outwardly display my relief when Key turned to leave.  As he parted, he issued a warning:

“Just know that if you haven’t sorted it out by then, I’ll return with others.  Indeed, tell Glenn Beck if he misquotes Teddy Roosevelt again, he’ll have a lot more to worry about than losing his sponsors.  The OP (Original Progressive, I’m guessing) is about ready to go ‘Rough Rider’ on his sociopathic backside.”

Following this bizarre encounter, I took some time to gather my notes and set to writing them down.  Was it actually Francis Scott Key, back from the grave to reclaim his legacy?  Probably not, but that’s beside the point.  The perpetrators of the Obama-as-tyrant meme, and those who repeat it out of fear, or otherwise, are spitting on the very institutions they claim to hold most dear.  Key, or not Key, his assessment was spot on in my opinion.  I’d rather not disappoint him by giving up.

To that end, I encourage you to sign the following petition:  Boycott Fox News Advertisers.  Though Fox is not the exclusive purveyor of the above described fear, they are the most visible; and, for reasons I cannot begin to explain, they are the most watched.