“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Josh Barrow: Will Obama Ruin the Economy to Ruin the Republicans?
With both the 14th Amendment and platinum coin options to defuse a debt-limit crisis (apparently) off the table, only two possible outcomes are left: a debt- ceiling increase or the government’s missing required payments and economic chaos ensuing (pdf). This is exactly the choice President Barack Obama laid out in his news conference this morning.
Politico reported today that top Republican staff members believe “more than half” their conference is prepared to push the government into default on some payments rather than cave on their demands for further spending cuts. [..]
By creating an object lesson of how unfit the Republican Party has become to govern, Obama can ensure himself a political “win.” But with a new recession sparked by a government payments crisis, the country would lose — and Obama, whose second-term plans would be hampered by the need to manage yet another recovery, would lose, too.
New York Times Editorial: Don’t Skimp on Sandy Aid
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey made an impassioned pitch on Monday to his fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives to vote on Tuesday for almost $50 billion in Hurricane Sandy disaster relief. “New Jersey does not expect anything more than what was done for Louisiana and Alabama and Mississippi in Katrina, and what was done in Joplin, Mo., what was done in the floods in Iowa. We don’t expect anything more than that, but we will not accept anything less,” Mr. Christie said. [..]
Northeast Republicans were told on Monday that there might be as many as 15 amendments to reach the House floor, which would mean at least 15 chances to cut the financing or make the package unacceptable to the Senate. For Republicans refusing to help Sandy victims, it is worth remembering that disasters are not confined to one region of the country. Those who vote against aid now may well find their constituents desperate for assistance sometime soon.
As Treasury Secretary, would Lew take a harder line with banking abuses?
The more information we learn about the mortgage settlement that was announced Monday-official documents are yet to be made public-the more of a smarmy backroom deal it turns out to be.
The deal lets ten major banks and other “loan servicers” off the hook for a corrupted and illegal process of millions of foreclosures, with a paltry one-time settlement of $8.5 billion. The economic damage inflicted on homeowners, and by extension on the economy, was many times that.
The deal was hatched by the weakest of the federal bank regulatory agencies, the Comptroller of the Currency, and signed off on by the Federal Reserve. [..]
The relevance to Jack Lew? The comptroller of the currency is part of the Treasury and reports to him, assuming that Lew is confirmed.
Dean Baker: The 3 Percent Cut to Social Security: aka the Chained CPI
According to inside Washington gossip, Congress and the president are going to do exactly what voters elected them to do; they are going to cut Social Security by 3 percent. You don’t remember anyone running on that platform? Yeah, well, they probably forgot to mention it.
Of course some people may have heard Vice President Joe Biden when he told an audience in Virginia that there would be no cuts to Social Security if President Obama got reelected. Biden said: “I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security. I flat guarantee you.”
But that’s the way things work in Washington. You can’t expect the politicians who run for office to share their policy agenda with voters. After all, we might not like it. That’s why they say things like they will fight for the middle class and make the rich pay their fair share. These ideas have lots of appeal among voters. Cutting Social Security doesn’t.
Robert Reich: Obama’s Debt Ceiling Gamble Depends on the GOP Being Sane
A week before his inaugural, President Obama says he won’t negotiate with Republicans over raising the debt limit.
At an unexpected news conference on Monday he said he won’t trade cuts in government spending in exchange for raising the borrowing limit.
“If the goal is to make sure that we are being responsible about our debt and our deficit – if that’s the conversation we’re having, I’m happy to have that conversation,” Obama said. “What I will not do is to have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people.”
Well and good. But what, exactly, is the President’s strategy when the debt ceiling has to be raised, if the GOP hasn’t relented?
He’s ruled out an end-run around the GOP. [..]
But Obama’s strategy depends on there being enough sane voices left in the GOP to influence others. That’s far from clear.
Mike Lux: Complicated Politics: Democrats and the Grand Bargain
It is a well-known fact that President Obama wants a “grand bargain” with the Republicans, a deal that would reduce future deficits both by raising tax revenues and cutting spending, including on the so-called “entitlement programs.” He has offered this idea up repeatedly to Speaker Boehner and other Republican leaders in the 2011 debt ceiling talks and in the 2012 fiscal cliff debate, and media reports suggest that he is discussing the idea again with Republicans in the lead-up to the next perils of a budget crisis that is only a few weeks off.
Democrats in the progressive wing of the party (of which, full disclosure, I am a card carrying member) think the idea of cutting Social Security, Medicare and/or Medicaid benefits is terrible public policy because senior citizens who can least afford it will be badly hurt, and we have been working hard to convince the president to back away from this offer. This may be difficult to do, though, as the president has some strong (wrong, in my judgment, but compelling to the president’s political and legislative team) political reasons for wanting to do this grand bargain. But the politics of this deal are very different for the rest of the party, and it may well be that progressives can win over a lot more of those Democrats than conventional wisdom currently expects.
Wendell Potter: Insurers Telling Only Part of the Story in Attempt to Gut Important Consumer Protections
As Ronald Reagan once famously said, “There you go again.”
The culprits in this case are health insurance companies that want to change ObamaCare so they can keep selling highly profitable junk insurance to young people and keep charging older folks so much in premiums they have little money left over for anything else.
What’s happening now is a repeat of the tactics insurers employed during the final weeks of the health care reform debate. Back then, they papered Washington with a flawed “study” warning that premiums would soar if lawmakers ignored their recommendations. And now insurers are once again disseminating a new study with similar predictions. This time they’re trying to convince us that coverage for all young adults will become unaffordable next year if Congress doesn’t gut an important consumer protection in the reform law.
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