Tag Archives: budget

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This Time, It’s A Boneheaded Democrat Making Up Numbers In San Jose

Image © 2012 Leo Soderman - Creative Commons Non-Commercial

Yes, Democrats Can Be Idiots Too - Image © Leo Soderman - Creative Commons Non-Commercial

My conservative friends claim I only look at one side of the fence when finding stories. It’s just not true. It’s just that Republicans and conservatives have a tendency to act holier-than-thou, so their gaffes and missteps are that much more egregious.

But when someone on the left is an idiot – or worse, a flat-out liar – I have no problem calling them out. Like this guy, San Jose, CA mayor Chuck Reed. And yes, he’s a Democrat.

Reed used a made up number to trump up a “problem” with the city’s pensions. Claiming that the cost was $650 million, he proposed legislation for cuts to the city’s pensions. But the number is over estimated by more than $200 million.

So where’d he get the number? The director of retirement services made it up off the top of his head, and told Reed not to use it. Apparently, that advice wasn’t heeded.

via San Jose Mayor Uses Made-Up Budget Number to Assault City Pensions | Crooks and Liars.

Affected San Jose workers and citizens have already given up pay and benefits that will save the city more than $340 million over the next four years. They have already proposed a solution that would save the city nearly half a billion dollars more. Reed and the city council are ignoring the proposed solution and Reed has refused to back down from his support for the $650 million lie. Instead they are focused on a ballot initiative that the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees say is unconstitutional. Reed and the council can withdraw the initiative at their March 6 meeting.

The workers and citizens, including police officers and firefighters have already proposed solutions, and yet Reed sticks to his bogus number.

Yes, sometimes Democrats are just as ridiculous as the GOP. Boneheadedness knows no political boundaries.

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Lawmakers Work 30 Min., Get Paid For The Day

From ABC News 10:

SACRAMENTO, CA – Lawmakers met for less than an hour on Friday so they could avoid losing their per diem.

Members of the legislature receive $141.86 a day for daily expenses. But if they go three days without meeting, they lose that stipend.

So on Friday, which is usually a work day, the state senate met for less than 30 minutes and the assembly for a little over an hour.

Yup. They showed up, spent less than an hour bloviating on Martin Luther King Jr., and collected a full day’s pay. Don’t misunderstand me, there is plenty of praise and honor to be given to Dr. King. But that’s not why these guys showed up.

Schools in CA, because of cutbacks, often turn three-day weekends into four-day weekends because they have to use a furlough day. So, at least the teachers get a long weekend out of being forced to take a day off. But up in Sacramento, they make sure they get paid for the day off by coming in for a whole half hour.

This is a prime example of why “we the people” don’t trust politicians. Their excuse is that they need the extra income to keep up two households. All the while, they make $95k a year.

This isn’t a left/right thing. They’re all in it. Meanwhile, non-political folks struggle to pay bills and feed their kids. Shame on all of them.

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The Super-Dooper-Uber Committee Is Looking For Ways Out

Remember a few months ago when we described that the debt ceiling deal wasn’t as bad as it looked? And how the “super-committee” was headed toward an impasse? We are now one week away from their deadline, and they’re looking for ways out of the deal.

To give you an idea why they’re looking for a way out, just  look at the recent proposals from Republicans. They actually offer revenue increases. Of course, they want these backed by tax cuts that essentially offset the majority of those revenue increases, nullifying the effect on the deficit. And since they have all been adamant about not increasing taxes, they’ve run into a a sticky problem. The deficit reduction required cannot be achieved without some increase in revenues, i.e., taxes. Which, as we had previously predicted, means they’re at an impasse.

The folks over at the Atlantic Wire have summarized what is now going on, an attempt to change the rules of the game so they don’t have to do the work they were assigned:

They can’t strike a deal so they want to pull a fast one. With only one week left, members of the bipartisan Super Committee are resorting to accounting gimmicks and legislative sleights of hand to magically produce $1.2 trillion in deficit savings without significant tax increases or spending cuts. The book-cooking has even awoken infrequent tweeter Donald Rumsfeld, imploring the committee this morning to “End the budget gimmicks. Congress and candidates should tell us what they will cut now, not in a decade.”

Some of these tricks include:

  • Counting Iraq war savings – You may remember that when the President’s budget used the expected savings from the Iraq war, Republicans railed against it saying it was not real savings, as those dollars were already being pulled. Now, those same Republicans want to use that savings in the count of Supercommittee debt reduction.
  • Change the baseline – The Congressional Budget Office creates a “baseline”, by which future budget proposals are scored. Currently, that means that savings must come after the Bush-era tax cuts expire. Now, the Supercommittee wants to work as if the tax cuts will not expire, then using the expiration of those cuts as savings. In other words, no real changes, just an accounting trick to make it look good. This is akin to a retailer telling you you’re saving 30% on that coat – after they jacked the price up 40%.
  • Passing the buck – Another proposal has them handing the task of changing the tax revenues to another set of Congressional committees, essentially passing the buck. They wouldn’t make any cuts now, just say that those future committees will do so. Sure they will.
  • Banking on the future – Another interesting accounting trick is that they want to count projected growth in the economy as make an assumption about how much more revenue that will generate. You know, kind of how you like to pretend what you’ll do if you win the lottery. “We think the economy will grow X%, so if we make no cuts, the added revenue will make up the difference!”
  • Just pretend it never happened – The last trick is to simply repeal the Supercommittee entirely. That’s right, pretend it never happened – the JR Ewing tactic. Of course, this would be almost as disastrous for the Republicans. They cut the debt ceiling deal with the promise they would reduce the deficit. By disbanding the Supercommittee, they give up the ability to claim they are truly deficit hawks, and the debt ceiling cannot be reversed. So the debt ceiling would stand, and Republicans would not have made a single motion toward reducing the deficit.
But anyone watching this whole kabuki play for the last few months could easily have seen this was coming. Republicans don’t want to increase revenues, but they can’t deny the simple fact that revenues must increase to bring the deficit in line. So, they can either choose to increase revenues – and incur the wrath of the Tea Party, they can hold the line on revenues and watch as defense spending is cut wholesale – and lose the defense hawks. Or, they can try to change the rules and wriggle out of their duty, and hope no one notices.
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Miss the 10/4/11 Show? Watch It On Replay!

This week, we talk about the economy and how it can change, and just what those “little people” are doing occupying a park in NYC.

Watch live streaming video from editedforclarity at livestream.com
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There’s Lots Of Money To Fix Schools – As Long As It’s Not Here

Eric Cantor (R-VA) is big on holding up funds, especially when it comes to disaster relief. And he has said he will not support the President’s job bill, which include $30B to improve public schools – even though the package already describes how it will be paid for. Nosirree… Mr. Cantor has no desire to spend money and increase the deficit. At least, not in this country.

Apparently, however, Mr. Cantor is all for deficit spending to rebuild schools and infrastructure elsewhere. His voting record clearly shows it. He has voted for over $120B to rebuild schools and infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s four times the amount proposed for schools here in the US.

Currently, there is an estimated $270B to $500B in backlogged maintenance and repair outstanding for schools in the US. So the $30B in the jobs bill isn’t even a dent. But it would get things started. And it is estimated that for every $1B spent to do the work, 10,000 jobs would be created. That means 300,000 new jobs from just the school improvement portion of the bill.

Keep in mind, that work wouldn’t come close to achieving all the repairs necessary. Also, you need to remember that the whole package is paid for through spending reduction and tax reform.

But Cantor won’t vote for it. He voted to rebuild schools and infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan, but won’t vote to do it here at home.

Every day, it becomes clearer: The Republicans don’t care about the country. They care about themselves and their benefactors far more. So much so that they’re willing to fatten up the deficit to rebuild overseas, but won’t touch it at home even if it’s paid for.

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Cantor Rails Against Federal Disaster Aid – Unless He REALLY Needs It

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) likes to rail against federal funding for just about anything. This includes funding disaster aid. He pushed the envelope earlier in 2011 when he insisted that federal disaster assistance for the citizens of Joplin, MO should be paid for with spending cuts elsewhere. Joplin is the town that was virtually leveled by a F5 hurricane in May.

Most recently, he said the same concept should apply to relief for last week’s Hurricane Irene, and that any funds spent on disaster relief  need to be offset by spending cuts. But that wasn’t his stance in 2004 when Richmond, VA was hit by Hurricane Gaston. From The Hill:

In the summer of 2004, after Tropical Storm Gaston slammed into Richmond, Cantor was on the front lines of efforts to secure millions of dollars in federal assistance to clean the wreckage and repair damaged infrastructure. Although the funding was not offset, Cantor cheered its arrival.

“The magnitude of the damage suffered by the Richmond area is beyond what the Commonwealth can handle,” Cantor said in a news release at the time, “and that is why I asked the president to make federal funds available for the citizens affected by Gaston.”

Back then, Cantor didn’t ask for offsetting cuts. In fact, at the time, Republicans weren’t particularly concerned about the deficit, funding two wars, a prescription drug benefit and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans without any offsetting cuts. And disaster relief. Cantor also did not protest funding relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina.

Suddenly, however, deficits have become a hot button topic, and Cantor wants to appear to be the cheerleader for spending cuts. He’s in safe territory and he knows it. He can make these statements all day, long knowing he will never have to vote on it as no one else is going to say that the federal government shouldn’t provide disaster relief. And when they do provide it, he gets to rail some more about “out-of-control government spending”.

The hypocrisy is about par for the course. When his district needs it, he wants it there ASAP. When it’s someone else’s problem – not so much.

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The GOP’s Topsy Turvy World

It must be hard to be part of the Republican party, or to support the right. It requires mental gymnastics worthy of a gold medal. The more strident they become on an issue, the more convoluted their reasoning has to become to be able to support that reasoning. This weekend provided some glorious examples of that kind of exercise.

Tax Cuts Are Awesome. Except When They’re Not

Over the weekend, the AP ran a story about the upcoming expiration of payroll tax cuts. Payroll taxes are what everyone who receives an income must pay on payroll incomes up to $106,000 per year. Payroll income above that is not taxed. It translates to about $1,000 per year. Not huge, but significant.

Republicans are all about putting more money in the pockets of taxpayers, right? Not so fast. From the AP article:

Many of the same Republicans who fought hammer-and-tong to keep the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts from expiring on schedule are now saying a different “temporary” tax cut should end as planned. By their own definition, that amounts to a tax increase.

The tax break extension they oppose is sought by President Barack Obama. Unlike proposed changes in the income tax, this policy helps the 46 percent of all Americans who owe no federal income taxes but who pay a “payroll tax” on practically every dime they earn.

There are other differences as well, and Republicans say their stand is consistent with their goal of long-term tax policies that will spur employment and lend greater certainty to the economy.

“It’s always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn,” says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, “but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again.” The Texas lawmaker is on the House GOP leadership team.

So, now it’s a difference between “temporary” and “permanent” tax cuts. As a side note, Hensarling is one of the people appointed to the “super-committee” on deficit reduction. Remember when we said that would turn into an impasse?

But surely, the expiration of the tax break is considered a tax increase by the Republicans, right? They all signed Grover Norquist’s pledge not to increase taxes – ever. Greg Sargent asked that very question:

So according to Hensarling, it would be a “net positive” to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn — which is what a temporary extension of the payroll tax cut would do. Yet Republicans seem to oppose the temporary extension anyway, on the grounds that permanent tax cuts are necessary and better policy.

Which prompted a question from Chuck Schumer spokesman Brian Fallon: “Surely @GroverNorquist wld say that letting President’s payroll tax cut lapse is a violation of ATR pledge, right?”

It’s a fair question. Virtually every Republican in Congress has signed Norquist’s and Americans for Tax Reform’s pledge not to raise taxes. What’s more, even Norquist himself has referred to the refusal to extend temporary tax cuts as a tax hike — and a violation of the pledge. Recall that back when there was some controversy over whether Norquist had let slip that not extending the Bush tax cuts would not violate his pledge, Norquist clarified that failure to extend them absolutely would violate it.:

Any failure to extend or make permanent the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, in whole or in part, would clearly increase taxes on the American people.

In other words, in the eyes of the fearsome Norquist and his Almighty Pledge, even a failure to extend tax cuts temporarily amounts to a tax increase.

As of this writing, Greg hadn’t received a response.

So, to recap, the expiration of tax extensions are bad, and an increase in taxes. Unless they were temporary extensions, like the payroll tax break extension, or the Bush-era tax cuts, which were temporary. Because those were bad right? In the topsy-turvy, black-is-white world of the current GOP, it’s hard to tell.

Of course, there is one definite difference between the two. The payroll tax extension doesn’t help the rich, because it’s only on payroll tax, and only affects the first $106,000 in income. Since the rich pay no payroll tax on income above $106,000 per year, and because the majority of their income is not in payroll anyway, they stand to gain very little from this extension. The rest of Americans get some help. The Bush-era tax cuts do the opposite – they only marginally help the average American, but deliver big to those on the hihh end of the scale. Money talks.

Republicans have couched this in “deficit reduction” rhetoric. The payroll tax break extension would cost about $120B per year. That’s bad for the deficit, say the Republicans. Meanwhile, the Bush-era tax cuts cost about $400B per year – but that doesn’t affect the deficit.

Where Are The Jobs?

During the 2010 midterms, Republicans railed against the President and Democrats because of the unemployment numbers. They ran on the promise that they would make job creation their prime focus. To date, they have not presented a single jobs bill in Congress, and continue to rail against the Democrats and the President, despite the Republicans control of the House.

Democrats have decided to make jobs a “super-priority” by proposing legislation to add job creation to the tasks of the “super-committee” (from Ezra Klein at WaPo):

Democratic Rep. John Larson of Connecticut plans to push the supercommittee that was appointed as part of the deficit-reduction deal to come up with a plan to create jobs. My colleague Greg Sargent hasthe scoop:

Larson and other senior Dems are also gravitating towards several new proposals to get the current super-committee to adopt job creation as a core mission, along with deficit reduction. This basic idea already has broad support among Congressional Dems.

Larson and Dems plan to introduce several proposals next week along these lines to amend the current law creating the super-committee — and they will ask Congress to pick from among them. One proposal would simply amend the super-committee’s current mission to include job creation. The second would ask each of the four Congressional leaders to appoint one more person to the committee, bringing its membership to 16 — and create a sub-committee on job creation that would produce a jobs proposal as part of the final deficit reduction package.

Here’s the interesting part: Both those proposals would require that the “trigger” also kick in if the committee fails to agree on a jobs proposal as part of the overall deficit deal. And both would set a clear goal: The proposal has to represent a credible effort to bring unemployment down to 5.5 percent by 2014. If the committee can’t pass such a proposal, the “trigger,” which contains defense and non-defense cuts to discourage the committee from failing, gets pulled.

Can a proposal like this gain steam on the Hill? Larson says the measure will “call [Republicans’] bluff” on job creation. If Republicans don’t endorse the plan, Sargent writes, they “will be saying No to the very idea that Congress should make active proposals to reduce unemployment to a targeted rate a core mission.”

That’s not exactly how Congressional Republicans will see it or spin it. I ran Larson’s proposal by House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) office on Friday afternoon, and it was immediately shot down. The response: Deficit reduction will spur job creation and, therefore, the supercommittee does not need to take on an additional mission.

So, once again, we have Republicans using job creation as a wedge, complaining that nothing is being done. Right up until something is proposed, something with teeth. And the response from the right? Nope, not gonna do it. Their stated objection is that it might be “some sort of new window-dressing for the same tired old, discredited Washington stimulus spending proposals”, according to Boehner spokesperson Michael Steel. But the commission is there to reduce deficits – and must do so to avoid the triggers. So it’s a specious argument.

But in the upside-down, inside-out world of the GOP, assigning responsibility for the job creation legislation is bad, complaining about no job legislation is good.

Moammar Ghad…Qadaf…Gadaf…Oh, Bother.

Republicans have been all over the place when it comes to Libya. Some say we shouldn’t have been there without an end game. A great many said we the President was embarrassing the US by not taking the lead role in the UN efforts to protect the Libyan people. As with just about everything since President Obama took office, Republicans have been against him, no matter what.

This weekend, rebel forces took control of Tripoli, capturing the Libyan leader’s sons and putting him on the run. Libyan people are holding up signs thanking the UN and President Obama. Another dictator has been deposed. The Republican response? The President didn’t do enough.

Once again, this is an issue of the Republicans not being able to give credit where credit is due. The President presided over the killing of Osama Bin Laden, but Republicans refused to give him credit. Now, the President once again has maneuvered the tricky waters of international cooperation to a successful conclusion, and they refuse to give him the credit.

Why? Because in their world, it is weakness to actually understand how the world works. To them, strength comes from going it alone, from being the “Lone Ranger”, regardless of what it does to your standing in the world. Cooperating, actually working from within a coalition as opposed to strong-arming to get your way is seen as weak and ineffective.

How Do You Stand On Your Head That Long?

They can’t. Even as they dig in and try to reinforce their base, the conflicts in their arguments become more clear. The best way to handle them is not to handle them. Act as if their viewpoint doesn’t exist – because it doesn’t. They have one goal – to take control – and their viewpoints and talking points will change to accommodate that goal. They want their opposition to chase them, rather than simply stand their ground. The only real solution is to allow them to continue changing, then expose those changes every step of the way. Reasonable folks, with a sound and rational mind, will see the flip-flopping, the contradictions and the folly on their own. And that is the last thing the GOP wants.

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#EFCpolfacts TX Under Rick Perry Has The Fourth Highest Poverty Rate Among States

Governor Rick Perry announced his candidacy for President on August 13th, 2010. At that time, the state of Texas was ranked 4th out of 50 states for having the highest level of poverty. The only states with higher poverty levels were Mississippi, Arizona and New Mexico. The District of Columbia also had a higher rate of poverty.

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#EFCpolfacts Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) Used Billions Of $ In Fed Stimulus To Balance TX Budget, Claimed It Was Bad For Country

Texas governor Rick Perry (R) has publicly decried the use of federal stimulus funds, claiming that they were bad for the economy and bad for the country. This belief did not stop him from using them to balance the Texas state budget. From The Statesman:

But let’s not forget that Texas used $14 billion of that Washington stimulus money in its 2009 and 2010 budgets. There was a lot of talk from Perry and others when the stimulus first came around about using those dollars for one-time-only expenses, such as road construction, but it has been used for much more.

Lawmakers used some of the stimulus money to balance the budget so that they could leave the state’s rainy day fund untapped without making big spending cuts.

Wayne Pulver of the Legislative Budget Board told a House subcommittee this week that as much as $8 billion went toward recurring services in Medicaid and education. Problem is, the disappearance of those dollars will make the budget more difficult to balance next year. After the election.

The Houston Chronicle reported this week that federal stimulus spending has created or saved 47,700 Texas jobs as of July, with each job costing taxpayers more than $96,000. Independent experts told the paper that the stimulus dollars and Texas’ business-friendly climate combined to stabilize the state’s economy.

So, while claiming that the stimulus would kill jobs and was bad for the economy, Perry used stimulus funds to balance his own state budget, saving thousands of jobs.

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#EFCpolfacts: Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) Asked For And Received Billions In Fed Stimulus $, While Railing Against It

Despite railing against the spending in Washington, decrying the Federal stimulus package and bailouts of the auto industry, Michelle Bachmann has made sure her district has receive their share of those very same funds. Huffington Post requested records through the Freedom Of Information Act from three federal agencies and found the following (from HuffPo):

On May 20, 2009, Bachmann wrote Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, asking him to look into an application for aid that the city of Big Lake, Minn., had made to “develop and finance the Big Lake Rail Park,” which she described as “an ambitious commercial and industrial complex which will enhance economic development and job opportunities in this rural Minnesota community.” …

On May 22, 2009, she wrote Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood asking for support for the St. Cloud, Minn., Metropolitan Transit Commission’s application for federal funds to “replace twenty-three 35-foot transit buses with compressed natural gas (CNG) powered buses.”

On June 4, 2009, she wrote LaHood again seeking grant funding to extend the Northstar Corridor commuter service from Big Lake to St. Cloud.

On June 19, 2009, she made an “urgent” request to LaHood to reverse a decision by the Federal Highway Administration that undermined a project in Waite Park, Minn. The project, she noted, had already received $2.578 million in federal funding through the stimulus package and was “only awaiting the final determination” from the FHWA.

On July 2, 2009, she wrote LaHood again, pleading for money for road improvements in Waite Park. She added that she was “pleased to learn” that Minnesota’s Department of Transportation was not going to “pull the nearly $2.8 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding set aside for the project.”

On Sept. 15, 2009, Bachmann wrote six separate letters to LaHood asking for help funding six projects (the Northstar line among them) through the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant program. The Center for Public Integrity and MinnPost haspreviously reported on those letters.

On Oct. 5, 2009, she wrote Vilsack again, praising him for putting money into the nation’s beleaguered pork industry and encouraging him to help “stabilize prices through direct government purchasing.”

Five days later, she was chastising the concept of government spending in public, saying that the president’s efforts to stem the fallout of the recession amounted to a charade. “We hear about fantasy football games. This is fantasy economics,” Bachmann said.

…

Even more problematic, however, could be Bachmann’s attempts to get money and assistance from the EPA, an agency that she once said should be “renamed the job-killing organization of America.”

In February 2007, well before Obama was in office, Bachmann co-signed a letter to the EPA urging its officials to help fund technical assistance programs and rural water initiatives “in small communities across Minnesota.” The authors of the letter, which included nearly the entire Minnesota congressional delegation at the time, noted that FY 2006 funding for the National Rural Water Association had been set at $11 million.

“We need to continue these efforts in 2007,” they wrote.

In other communications with the EPA, Bachmann was far colder to agency policy, criticizing spring 2009 federal management standards for coal combustion byproducts and 2008 National Ambient Air Quality standards. But in other instances, Bachmann turned to the EPA for constituent-related problems. In a Feb. 2, 2010, letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, she asked the agency to support a $270,806 grant application (filed with the EPA’s Clean Diesel Grant Program) that would help a St. Cloud bus company replace two older motor coach vehicles.

So, while talking about how bad spending is, or how the the EPA is a “job-killing agency”, she has nonetheless made significant efforts to get money from those programs and agencies into her district.