Needlenose

There have been, at my last count, roughly 379 posts in the last few days in the progressive blogosphere proclaiming the incoherence of President Obama’s strategy in the current debt-ceiling negotiations.  (I blinked while typing this, so a few more may have appeared by now.)

Yesterday, though, both Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias made the case that pursuing apparent austerity during an economic slump isn’t as insane as it seems — and, in fact, isn’t really pursing austerity in the short term, as Klein notes:

A big deficit deal could include mild stimulative measures such as unemployment insurance and an extension of the payroll tax cut. That’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. A small deficit deal, or no deficit deal, won’t include any extensions of stimulus.

… [Meanwhile, on spending cuts,] if you strike a deal that lasts 10 years, you can backload the savings to protect the recovery over the next three or four years.

The Prez himself alluded to this strategy during one of his 80 press conferences this week, when he explained that any tax increases he was seeking in the debt-ceiling talks wouldn’t take effect until 2013.

And I can see why he might have chosen this angle.  Of all the disappointments and botched opportunities that have marked Obama’s presidency to date, I will submit that there’s only one that truly damaged Barack O. politically: the stimulus package in early 2009 wasn’t nearly big enough to get the economy moving forward.

Yes, the failure to include a public option or other strong progressive elements in the health care bill is a strong runner-up.  If you ask me, though (and it’s my post, so I’m going to pretend you did), if unemployment had been a few percentage points lower, the Republican-esque health care legislation wouldn’t have kept Democrats from maintaining their majorities in Congress — and conversely, even a more populist health care bill wouldn’t have kept a GOP tide from swamping the Dems with the jobless rate as high as it was/is.

So, surveying the political landscape after the 2010 electoral fiasco, it shouldn’t be surprising if Obama came away with one simple conclusion: He needed to pass more economic stimulus, and he somehow needed to get it past a GOP-controlled House of Representatives.  Which, in effect, has meant wrapping it in spending cuts the same way you’d slip an unappetizing pill into your dog’s Alpo.

This is what Obama did in the budget talks to avoid a government shutdown a few months ago (including accepting the ineffective stimulus of the Bush tax cuts for the rich in order to keep better measures in the deal), and it would make some sense if that was what he’s trying to do now.

Sure, it would would be better if B.O. laid down a progressive gauntlet and challenged GOP budget priorities head on, daring them to oppose aggressive job-creating measures without any deficit-cutting camouflage.  But then, we all know that frontal assaults aren’t exactly Obama’s thing.

So instead we get the reluctant(?) endorsement of conservative budget frames, and a passive-aggressive approach to boosting the economy that might have been borrowed from a character in the old Popeye cartoons: “I’ll gladly pay you in budget cuts Tuesday for some stimulus today.”

Call it the Wimpy Deal.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

As a new poll shows him trailing Megabucks Whitman, ex-governor Jerry Brown of California has decided it’s finally time to begin campaigning to get his old job back:

The political moment that eager California Democrats and some curious Republicans have been waiting for has arrived: Jerry Brown has begun a visible campaign for governor.

He appeared in public Thursday at a sparsely attended rally at Laney College in Oakland, followed by two events in Los Angeles later in the day. . . .

With a TV ad campaign expected to start soon and an accelerated schedule of in-person appearances commencing around the state, the Democrat is ramping up a campaign that many Democrats had been wondering about.

Brown made only a handful of non-fundraiser campaign appearances since the June primary and produced virtually no advertising.

Meanwhile, in almost-completely unrelated national news, President Obama spoke to reporters today and hinted at an election-season economic stimulus proposal — albeit not a very effective substantial one — after months of inaction while unemployed has stayed near 10 percent:

Obama spoke in the Rose Garden after the August jobs report came out better than expected, showing the private sector adding 67,000 new jobs last month and revising upward the numbers from June and July. But unemployment ticked upward to 9.6 percent as more people entered the job market, and the president said it wasn’t good enough. . . .

Administration officials say a big new stimulus bill like last year’s $814 billion measure is not in the offing – nervous lawmakers looking to November’s balloting would not be expected to approve an expensive new measure. But Obama said he’d be proposing a new set of ideas next week. He’s likely to detail them during a speech on the economy Wednesday in Cleveland, midway through an economy-focused week capped by a rare White House news conference.

Obama’s package could include a number of provisions that have languished in Congress for much of the year, including infrastructure bonds for municipalities and extensions for a series of tax breaks for businesses and individuals that expired at the end of 2009.

What do these coincidentally similar events mean?  Maybe that Andrew Card was right back in 2002.

Or, perhaps it’s just that when don’t have enough firepower to win the battle, you save your bullets as long as you can.

Some encouraging news via the Washington Post today:

President Obama is likely to endorse using a portion of the government’s $700 billion financial bailout for a new jobs creation program during a speech about the economy next week, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Friday morning.

“The president thinks we should and must do everything in our power to create an environment for job growth and job creation,” Gibbs said. When asked whether Obama will talk about the use of TARP funds on Tuesday, Gibbs said, “I think that’s likely.”

About $139 billion of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, remains unallocated and available to the administration. Banks have paid another $10 billion in interest and dividends to the Treasury and returned about $71 billion in aid, the Treasury reported in November. This week, Bank of America announced it would repay its $45 billion package.

As recently as this week, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has said he wants to dedicate much of the unspent TARP money to reduce the national debt. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) and other top Democrats have been crafting a jobs bill that would tap the bailout program. The size of the repayments from once shaky banks may make it possible to accomplish both goals.

. . . Gibbs said the president is likely to talk about multiple ideas for job creation, some of which would require congressional approval. The Tuesday speech at the Brookings Institution follows a day-long jobs summit Thursday and a trip to Allentown, Pennsylvania on Friday to highlight the plight of workers.

This weeklong focus on creating jobs is a refreshing sign that Obama and his top advisers did not, in fact, forget all of their political skills shortly after taking office.

Matt Yglesias adds that the President may be remembering a thing or two about basic messaging as well:

… once Obama’s Allentown event got into the Q&A section it got really good. What was interesting about it was that everything Obama said was so banal. It was elementary, back-to-basics, “I’m a Democrat” kind of stuff… He wasn’t even really all that feisty. But he got out and talked basic politics—who’s on your side, who’s fighting for change, and who’s responsible for protecting the status quo.

In other words, Obama is rediscovering the importance of the fundamental things that got him elected.

There’s a massive element of political calculation involved here, obviously — not just a president taking action to stop the downward drift of his poll numbers, but the Democrats in general needing to provide a positive political message going into 2010.

Even if the stimulative impact of whatever “jobs bill” gets passed is relatively small, much of the money from last spring’s economic-recovery package is still due to be spent this coming year.  Giving voters a fresh reminder that Democrats took action will be important for them in taking credit for whatever improvement occurs in the job market, regardless of the cause.

But at least this is the good kind of political calculation… the kind that comes from elected officials realizing they’re accountable for producing positive results for the people who put them in power.  Frankly, we could do with a bit more of it.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

It galls me to admit it, but the vile Repugs have got a point – the ‘stimulus’ bill is overladen with pork.  It’s just another bloated omnibus spending bill like the Repugs spewed out over the last 8 years, business as usual.  

I don’t buy the complete Foxublican spin, that pork items such fixing State Department computer systems or cleaning up the National Mall won’t create or preserve jobs – of course they will!

But the nation is looking for national stimulus, targeted at Joe Sixpack’s home town, not at the offices, home towns and garages of our overpaid politicos.

Likewise, while I am a firm believer in better healthcare, familiy planning services, and child care for our troops, these items have little or nothing to do with stimulus; our fat & lazy politicos should get off their asses and create and debate legislation specifically for these items.

The stimulus package must stick to core infrastructure investment and development, those things that the venal Repugs of yore were too corrupt and stupid to address, such as improving our transit systems (rail, road & bridge), investing in local, regional and national mass transit, assisting local governments in mixed-use, urban infill development, modernizing our archaic national ‘grid’ and making it distributed, renewable green-energy ready.

This type of spending would cover the U.S. and provide local and regional jobs from unskilled to professional type.  It would address the neglect of previous misAdministrations, mitigate future disasters (bridge collapses?   train derailments?), and start moving the economy to sustainable jobs (wind & solar energy, local business in mixed-use development).

And it would only be a start.

On the flip side, somebody should tell the vile Repugs to shut-the-fuck-up about more tax cuts.   We don’t need to repeal the AMT, we need to adjust the salary limits to account for decades of inflation.  We should rescind the Shrubyian tax cuts for the rich.  In fact, to my first point, all the tax shit should be stripped out of this bill, and the lazy-ass politicos should deal with these tax change issues in a separate bill.  While ramming the changes down the throats of Boner and his cronies.

Now is not the time for timid half-measures, or more groveling to Billo the Clown and Limp Boy.  Nor is it time for Congressional pork barrel politics.  If Obama doesn’t get in front of this cart, he’ll find himself being dragged behind it in 4 years, watching his squandered mandate transform into Shrubyian approval ratings.