Economy

Are Romney And Obama Competing For The Austerity Prize?

Brian Beutler | May 25, 2012, 6:41AM

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney

The American economy will sink back into recession if Congress fails to unwind a messy coil of austere fiscal policies that will trigger automatically at the beginning of the year.

Across the spectrum, experts are imploring political leaders not to be myopic and unyielding: delay the budget cuts until the economic recovery really takes hold, but be ready with a more considered course of deficit reduction when that moment arrives.

Yet Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and their surrogates on Capitol Hill, are locked in a fight over which candidate and which party will more quickly and effectively reduce the deficit -- the opposite of what economists say we need.

The Obama administration and campaign trumpet data and articles showing that Obama's supposed spending binge is a right-wing fabrication. Paul Ryan -- the GOP's official spokesman on fiscal issues -- boasted that a Republican victory in November will give his party a mandate to turn his controversial spending-slashing budget into law.

"If we make the case effectively and win this November, then we will have the moral authority to enact the kind of fundamental reforms America has not seen since Ronald Reagan's first year," Ryan said.

At the same time, the parties are at pains to paint their rivals as the true merchants of austerity.

"Ryan also argued with a straight face on [Meet The Press] that the Ryan-Romney plan would avert the very European-style austerity on which it's modeled!" Obama strategist David Axelrod tweeted recently.

Resolving the tension between these two seemingly incompatible arguments -- more fiscally responsible, less austere -- turns out to be more difficult than adding up numbers on a ledger. But it provides an instructive look at what the candidates and parties stand for this election cycle.

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Flat Tax

Rick Perry's Flat Tax Plan: Not A Flat Tax

Brian Beutler | October 26, 2011, 6:00AM

Rick Perry

The flat tax is such a popular idea in conservative circles that Texas Governor Rick Perry is trying to revive his presidential primary campaign by proposing one.

Except for the flat tax part.

It turns out Perry's plan isn't flat, doesn't eliminate the current tax code, as many conservative elites claim to want, and would likely blow a huge hole in the federal budget.

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Barack Obama

Obama, Van Hollen Back Bowles-Simpson As Counterpoint To Right-Wing GOP Budget

Brian Beutler | April 12, 2011, 11:50AM

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)

The Republican opening bid in the fiscal war of 2011 is to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid, and to lower tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.

The Democrats, by contrast, will enter the sweepstakes with ... the Simpson-Bowles recommendations?

For the uninitiated, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles co-chaired the White House's fiscal commission, and personally recommended a series of conservative leaning policy proposals for reducing deficits and debt over the long-term. They floated their proposals after the commission itself was unable to reach a consensus. Among their proposals were reducing top tax rates and simplifying the system by eliminating loopholes and giveaways in the code.

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Jobs

Boehner's Spending Cuts Would Kill 1 Million Jobs

Megan Carpentier | February 16, 2011, 9:25AM

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)

At a press conference yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told reporters that if some federal jobs were lost as a result of his proposed spending cuts, "so be it."

How many jobs are we talking about? According to federal budget expert Scott Lilly at the Center for American Progress, Boehner's proposed spending cuts could kill almost 1 million jobs.

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Melody Barnes

White House's Melody Barnes To Progressives: Don't Jump Off The Bridge!

Ryan J. Reilly | December 3, 2010, 9:03AM

You know that scene in "It's A Wonderful Life" where George Bailey is standing on the bridge ready to end it all? That's where White House Director of Domestic Policy Council Melody Barnes sees liberals now, as they await the GOP takeover of the House. In her metaphor, Barnes is a guardian angel of sorts, trying her best Thursday night to pull progressives back from the brink.

Speaking at the American Constitution Society's holiday party at the Center for American Progress last night, Barnes drew parallels between the famous Christmas-themed movie (one of her favorite films) and the situation liberals find themselves in post-election 2010.

Yeah, it's bad, Barnes acknowledged. But, she implored, think of how much worse it would have been if Democrats hadn't been in power at all.

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2010 elections

New DNC Ad Targets Karl Rove's Election Spending (VIDEO)

Christina Bellantoni | October 10, 2010, 9:24AM

The Democratic National Committee will go up on television with a new ad targeting Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie for their political activity during the midterm elections through groups which don't need to disclose their donors.

TPM obtained a copy of the ad, which hits the GOP on a point the Democrats have been hammering of late -- corporations getting involved in elections thanks to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

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Budget

Orszag Insists He's No Peacock

Christina Bellantoni | February 1, 2010, 5:18PM

CBO Director Peter Orszag

I asked Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag this afternoon about criticism from the left of President Obama's proposed spending freeze.

Specifically, I asked his reaction to Brian's report about the Center for American Progress suggesting that discretionary spending freezes were used by "deficit peacocks."

CAP's tax and budget expert Michael Linden suggested that those who "claim that we could get the budget back to sustainability if we only cut out earmarks, or say that the solution is to simply freeze discretionary spending, are just peddling fiscal snake oil."

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Budget

FLASHBACK: Last Week, Dems Called Spending Freeze 'Fiscal Snakeoil'

Brian Beutler | January 26, 2010, 1:02PM

President Barack Obama

Influential Democrats--including SEIU President Andy Stern, and Center for American Progress CEO John Podesta--are beginning to react to last night's big news that the White House will propose a temporary freeze on non-defense discretionary spending in its 2011 budget. By and large, so far, the reaction is: let's withhold final judgment until the entire proposal is on the table.

But just last week CAP tax and budget expert Michael Linden put things rather more starkly.

"We face a very large budget gap over the coming decade, and the scale of the problem is such that no one solution is going to solve it all," Linden wrote in a piece called How to Spot a Deficit Peacock.

"It is going to take a mix of increased revenues, spending reductions, and improved government efficiency to get our fiscal house in order. Those who claim that we could get the budget back to sustainability if we only cut out earmarks, or say that the solution is to simply freeze discretionary spending, are just peddling fiscal snake oil."

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Health Care

Podesta: Forget The House; Health Care's On The Senate

Brian Beutler | January 26, 2010, 11:13AM

President Barack Obama and Former Chief of Staff John D. Podesta

The man who chaired Barack Obama's transition to the presidency, and who runs the most influential Democratic think tank in Washington has a message for the Senate: The House won't pass your health care bill until you take action first--so it's on you.

"My own view...is that you have to insure that the Senate goes first," John Podesta told me after an event with leading union figures at the Center for American Progress this morning. "You have to have the fix before the package can pass the House. I just didn't see any way, if you will, that the House was going to bet" on the Senate acting later.

"It seems me that asking the House to take a flier on what the Senate can do--we've kind of watched that move all along the past year, it hasn't worked out that good. So it's incumbent upon the Senate to really go first," Podesta added.

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John Podesta

Podesta Pushes Plan B For Health Care

Laura Colarusso | January 26, 2010, 10:13AM

President Barack Obama and Former Chief of Staff John D. Podesta

John Podesta, the president and chief executive officer of the Center For American Progress (CAP), offered tacit support today for having the House pass the Senate's health care bill but only with guarantees that it could later be amended through a reconciliation bill.

Podesta described this as the "consensus" approach. He was speaking at a CAP event on jobs, health care and the state of the American worker.

TPMDC reported yesterday that (CAP), the most influential Democratic think tank in Washington, had been silent on where it stands as House Leadership tries to navigate a path ahead for health care reform. The political calculus had become even more difficult since Republican Scott Brown (R-MA) won the Massachusetts special election to fill the late Ted Kennedy's seat. Brown became the 41st Republican and vowed to help filibuster the legislation.

(Reporting by Brian Beutler)

Editor's Note: This post has been revised since it was originally published.

Center for American Progress

Where's CAP? Dems' Top Think Tank Silent On Health Care Logjam

Brian Beutler | January 25, 2010, 12:54PM

President Barack Obama and Former Chief of Staff John D. Podesta

The Center for American Progress is the most influential Democratic think tank in Washington. It's president, John Podesta, led the Obama administration's transition effort, and the organization--which provides legislators and politicos everything from policy analysis to messaging and strategy--is tightly linked with the White House and Democratic members of Congress. So it may come as a surprise, that with Democrats on the Hill struggling to find a way out of the health care mess, CAP itself isn't chiming in.

In the days since last week's special election in Massachusetts, which cost Dems their 60th, filibuster-breaking vote in the Senate, TPMDC has tried to answer a simple question: How does CAP, as an institution, think House and Senate Democrats should proceed. We still don't have an answer. Numerous calls to CAP officials over the last several days went unreturned.

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