(Crossposted between Alas and TADA.)
From The Washington Independent:
Recognizing that Democrats would be reluctant to record “yes” votes for a budget that would augment the deficit, the House leadership opted to deem as passed a “budget enforcement resolution” instead, just before the July 4 recess. While the distinction between an enforcement resolution and a full budget is largely technical, there is one crucial difference: Under the enforcement resolution, Democrats can no longer use a parliamentary tactic known as budget reconciliation next year — a process Democrats had hoped might allow them to pass key pieces of legislation, such as a jobs bill, with 51 votes in the Senate, as opposed to the usual 60 needed to overcome a filibuster.
Under the arcane rules of the Senate, budget reconciliation can only be used if it was written into the budget rules passed the previous year. With no full budget, there can be no reconciliation. As a consequence, Democrats lose a valuable tool for passing budget-related items on a majority-rules vote.
Over at The Corner, conservative Daniel Foster is justifiably elated:
If in November the Republicans come very close to taking the House and cut into the Democrats’ majority in the Senate (I consider this the most likely outcome), they will nevertheless end up in de facto control of both bodies.
Without reconciliation, Senate Democrats won’t have any procedural check on the filibuster (save a “nuclear option”), ((I’d be thrilled if Senate Democrats began their next session by eliminating the filibuster entirely. But I’d be shocked if that actually happened.)) and grabbing the usual-suspect New England Republicans will no longer be enough to get to 60. On the other side of the Capitol, even if the Democrats hang-on to a bare majority, there is still going to be a non-trivial number of conservative House Democrats who side with the GOP on tough spending and social issues. (As Kevin Williamson just put it to me, “conservative Democrats rule the world.”)
This situation would be disastrous for Democrats, whose narrow majorities would give them all of the responsibility and none of the power.
He’s absolutely right. One of the more frustrating things about the current political situation is that Republicans have been having a huge impact on policy through their use of the filibuster — both as a means of influencing particular policy outcomes, and also as a way of generally obstructing government. But because our system gives one party the majority but not the power to govern, Republicans haven’t had to take any responsibility for their acts.
This situation will grow even worse next year. The slim hope of overcoming filibusters will be gone; gone also will be the chance to pass legislation through reconciliation.
In fact, it might be better if the Republicans win control of the House by a slim majority in the 2010 elections. It probably would have only a minor effect on what legislation is passed — and anything really horrifyingly right-wing would be unlikely to get past the Senate and past Obama’s veto — but it would at least put Republicans in a formal position of partial responsibility for our useless Congress.
The logic of the cowardly Democrats is frustrating in two ways. First of all, as Matthew Yglesias writes, it simply doesn’t make sense:
Shame on everyone involved for thinking that a single vote will be swung by this goofy procedural nonsense. The apparent belief of backbench House members that the American people understand or care about these procedural gimmicks is bizarre. It was bizarre during the “deem and pass” controversy of January and it’s bizarre today. ((Yglesias also correctly criticizes Obama’s role in this fiasco: “But the White House needs to take a share of the blame here. For a while now they’ve engaged in a fair amount of “austerity theater” as a political strategy without really considering the systematic consequences of that which include the fact that many House members who’d be happy to support the Obama agenda don’t want to position themselves to the left of the most high-profile and well-regarded progressive leader in the country. Consequently, austerity theater spreads to the House and we don’t have a budget. Which means that in the 112 Congress there will be no legislative agenda.”))
Secondly, the trade-off the Democrats are making — an at best marginal increase in their odds of re-election, in exchange for guaranteeing no significant legislative accomplishments in the 112th Congress — is a simply not worth it. In exchange for slightly better odds of continued employment for a handful of the most contemptible, overpaid mediocrities in the country, Democrats have given up on doing anything to help millions of far more deserving and needy unemployed Americans.
The needs of unemployed millions should outrank the needs of a few cowardly Democrats.
I can understand why Democrats in the House might see their re-elections as much more important than actually passing any worthwhile legislation next year. But they shouldn’t. The purpose of voting for Democrat Representatives is so that they will pass worthwhile legislation, and the House Democrats have given up on that purpose.
So why should we vote for them again?
I wonder if instituting term limits would help with this problem at all. If legislators knew that they only had X terms to establish their reputation (for future offices) and legacy, they might be more eager to actually get things done. Or they might just sit there and do nothing because they have no long term to think about. Or rush off cliffs in their hurry to put out something “historic”.
Oh, right. Like you voting R for either Senate or House could possibly make a difference. You’re going to have to move to a much swingier district for that to happen.
The D’s will never get rid of the filibuster. They might need it. And when they need it, they’ll be too spineless to use it. Kill it, says I.
As to footnote 2, DOES Obama have an agenda aside from Get Re-elected? I kinda feel like that’s the only agenda he’s had from day 1.
My experience with term limits is that it leaves lobbyists (who have all the experience) actually running the government.
For some reason, I’m too stupid to realize that Amp voted for Nader in 2000. From the basis of this stupid misconception, I have made an embarrassingly stupid argument.
My experience with term limits is that it leaves lobbyists (who have all the experience) actually running the government.
Logically, that sounds correct-or if not lobbyists at least unelected bureaucrats. Leider. But may I ask what your experience is? I’m not questioning your statement, I’m just wondering where it’s been tried and what the outcome has been.
Dianne,
State government in Oregon was subjected to term limits for a while. We wound up with a state house and a state senate populated almost entirely by people without political experience. As a result, the state legislature was effectively run by lobbyists for several years. It was not a good thing in my view.
No. Hell, no. I was going to add “He’s a Chicago Democrat”, but in all fairness such an attitude is shared by a lot of other politicians.
We were telling you that as soon as he declared for the office. Sigh ….
I’ve been telling you that ever since the topic of getting rid of the filibuster first came up.
As far as the “reconciliation” process goes – that was never intended to be used for anything else but budgets. It wasn’t intended to be used for passing a jobs bill or a healthcare bill or anything else. So I’m not sad to see it go.
The Democrats were one Senate win away from having the power to unilaterally govern, but they blew it big time. They have no one to blame but themselves.
Also, I’m not sure what you mean by “our system gives one party the majority”, since it’s clearly possible for a party to have a majority in one house and a minority in the other, never mind that you could have both houses in the hands of one party and the White House in the hands of the other. The system doesn’t automatically give one party the majority.
The bottom line is that between the Constitution and the Congress’ taking advantage of the Constitutional provision that they can write their own rules of procedure, we were not meant to be a pure “majority rules” government. The Democrats were so close – just one Senate vote. All they had to do was keep Ted Kennedy’s old seat. All they had to do was win a Senate seat in the bluest state in the Union. It should have been child’s play.
I would say that the purpose of voting for Representatives (and Senators) in general is so that they will pass worthwhile legislation. I wouldn’t limit it to any one party. I’d even include the Senate independents on that.
True. Both sides would have to compromise to get anything passed. Which, IIRC, has been the situation quite often in this country’s history. I’ve been wondering what would happen in that scenario. President Obama would veto any attempt to rescind the healthcare bill. No change in immigration law would pass, which will leave the field open to the States. If Arizona’s law passes muster with the Supreme Court, deadlock at the Federal level would suit me just fine. I do wonder what would happen.
Finally – the post uses the term “cowardly Democrats”. Are they being cowardly, or are they just counting the votes and realizing that they don’t actually have a majority to pass certain legislation when they try to get conservative Dems like my Rep (Daniel Lipinski, D-IL) to vote for their bills.
We have an interesting question here. You vote for Democrats because you want them to vote a certain way. But then that Democrat is looking through the other end of the telescope and has to consider not just what your desires are but what those of the other approximately 700,000 people in your district want. Do you think they should vote your way even if your way is not the wishes of the majority of your district? It’s the old Jacksonian vs. Jeffersonian theory of republican (small “R”, note) government. Should they vote based on polls of their constituents’ wishes, or should they vote according to what their best judgement is?
I’m starting to think that the latter concept is dead because in this day and age, with polling climbing to a new science, a great many politicians don’t HAVE considered judgement on anything but elections. They’re so used to flipping around on issues to fit the polls that they never form an independent judgement on the actual issues.
I guess I’m getting pretty cynical.
Actually, a lot of the legislation I’d like to see pass can get a majority in both House and Senate without huge difficulty. The problem is getting a supermajority in the Senate, not getting a majority.
Out of curiosity, Ron, what do you think should be done about extending unemployment benefits (which is the policy question that I discussed most in this post?). Is it your preference that unemployment benefits for long-term unemployed be cut off at this time?
Good heavens, just make them really filibuster instead of pretending to filibuster. link
I haven’t thought a whole lot about it, I confess. Somewhere between the original 24 or 26-week program that it started out as and the nearly two year program it is now it’s gone from an insurance program to a welfare program. I think it’s fair to ask where the money is going to come from for it, rather than simply blithely adding to the deficit.
The government cannot simply keep paying and paying unemployment for years. You’re de facto creating a huge new entitlement program. We don’t have the money for it. Unless you can find it somewhere. Every current allocation of existing funds has a constituiency (sp?) defending it.
You talk about cowardly legislators. Increasing the deficit panders to all the special interests at once. It doesn’t cost anyone right now. If you want to see some courageous legislators, let’s see them cut spending somewhere else to pay for this. That will require real courage and real cooperation among the legislators. It would also provide an opportunity for the President to show some real leadership, facing some people down and saying “We have to take money away from you to pay for this.” Otherwise it’s just “I want to hand out money without getting anyone but the Tea Party movement mad so I can get elected to a second term.”
I can understand why Democrats in the House might see their re-elections as much more important than actually passing any worthwhile legislation next year. But they shouldn�t.
But why do the Democrats see their re-elections in danger if they pass what you describe as worthwhile legislation? If’ it’s really worthwhile why is it so unpopular in a district won by the majority party. I’ve said what I think is the answer before. A large cohort of people voted Democratic because Barak Obama was young, well-spoken and black and wasn’t George Bush. They didn’t vote for him because of the Democratic party’s platform or principles of governance. As votes for things like the healthcare bill and cap and trade and unemployment extension come up, the electorate is making that very clear. You think these things are worthwhile. A lot of people disagree.
It is a Democratic talking point that the Republicans are looking to stymie the Democratic agenda purely out of spite and for political advantage. That may well be true, at least in some cases. But it’s not true of the people. The electorate threatens Democratic House and Senate members re-elections because they oppose these things; because they think they’re the wrong thing to do.
First of all, Ron, nearly every Republican in Congress seems to favor a huge cut in estate taxes — and they’re not proposing any way of offsetting that cost. Estate tax cuts last forever and increase the deficit far, far more than extending unemployment insurance. So I have trouble seeing “oh, no! Deficits!” as a good-faith argument.
An unemployment extension is actually a reasonable thing to deficit spend on. It’s temporary, it’s small to the point of near-insignificance next to our long-term deficit problem, and — unlike cutting Donald Trump Jr”s taxes — it has a good stimulative effect. (Unemployed people spend the money right away).
Furthermore, NOT extending unemployment insurance is cruel and unreasonable. There are not enough jobs out there. Period. Unemployment is around 9% — and that’s just the official number, real unemployment is higher.
It’s also unwise. By the end of this month, three million unemployed Americans will have lost their unemployment income. That’s three million people not shopping at local stores, not being able to afford to pay utilities and rent or mortgage, not being able to buy their kids schoolbooks in September, scrimping on meals. All of that means that the recession will last longer than it otherwise would.
In all past recessions, the Federal government has stepped in and extended unemployment insurance until unemployment levels shrank to a reasonable level, because keeping people alive is simply more important than preventing an insignificant, temporary increase in the deficit. Since you oppose doing that, what do you propose instead?
In the longer term, there are only two ways we can address unemployment. Either we refuse to do serious stimulus spending, in which case it’ll take a decade or longer for our employment numbers to recover, and in that case we really do need a massive expansion of the welfare state, because people won’t have any other options. Or we can do the amount of stimulus spending necessary to get unemployment down. You seem to favor the former — but to not want to make any provisions for the people doomed to a decade of joblessness. I don’t think this is cruelty on your part; I think it’s the sort of economic wistful thinking (“there IS a free lunch! There is! There is! We can spend less money AND create 500,000 jobs a month!”) that Conservatives mostly believe in nowadays.
Amp responded to this indirectly, but I think it is worth being explicit about this.
RonF,
If you mean by that statement that unemployment insurance has steadily increased in the duration of benefits, you are simply wrong. The duration of benefits is routinely increased during recessions and then dropped back to the 24 or 26-week length after the recession ends (the length was 26 weeks back in 2008, and the current extensions of unemployment benefits are explictly sunsetted). The currently proposed bill to extend jobless benefits has a fixed (and short) phase out date, so it will not create a permanent form of welfare for the unemployed, just ameliorate the current disaster.
If the republicans have a one vote majority, the Democrats will never threaten to fillibuster anything and we might aw well just give away all of our personal assets and national resources to the top 1%.
We need a real opposition party. I’d rather vote Green than vote republican.
By the end of this month, three million unemployed Americans will have lost their unemployment income. That’s three million people not shopping at local stores, not being able to afford to pay utilities and rent or mortgage, not being able to buy their kids schoolbooks in September, scrimping on meals. All of that means that the recession will last longer than it otherwise would.
It’s three million people losing their homes, living in tent cities, dying of easily preventable illness because they don’t have health insurance.
It’s not just the economic harm (though that is considerable), but more importantly, it’s the suffering.
In all past recessions, the Federal government has stepped in and extended unemployment insurance until unemployment levels shrank to a reasonable level, because keeping people alive is simply more important than preventing an insignificant, temporary increase in the deficit. Since you oppose doing that, what do you propose instead?
Why even bother asking RonF that question? He doesn’t propose anything other than letting people starve, because like most capitalists he doesn’t care about that.
I don’t think this is cruelty on your part I do. Cruelty is what drives this wishful “there is a free lunch” thinking.
Ron, the bill in question is the budget. Is passing the budget unpopular? In the sense that deficits are unpopular, yes. Do we have a choice? No, we really don’t. Whatever you think of the deficit, no one sane thinks that we can actually avoid passing a budget at all. Nor is a deficit-free budget a possibility this year; not in Republican Paul Ryan’s plan, not in anyone’s plan.
So what we’re talking about here is the Democrats using a chickenshit parliamentary procedure so that they can pretend not have voted for the budget bill, even though really they did.
However, because the Democrats have used this particular chickenshit parliamentary procedure, next year they won’t be able to pass anything Republicans don’t want passed, nothing at all, regardless of how popular it is.
I love this “Obama only won because he was black” stuff from Republicans. It’s as if you think it was a complete miracle that 42 white men ever managed to be elected president. Since after all, being black is such a huge advantage and being white is so terribly hard, from a running for president point of view.
Tell me, why didn’t Jessie Jackson win, under your theory? Or Carol Mosely Braun?
As for why Obama won, I’d say it’s because Republican governance destroyed the economy. Although I think Obama is a skilled campaigner, under the circumstances a stuffed moose head in a tutu could have beat John McCain or any other Republican.
By the way, polls show that Americans are about evenly split on the Affordable Care Act (40% for, 47% against, as of this writing). And a minority of the folks who dislike are people who dislike it from the left, and wanted it to be bigger and stronger. So it would be more accurate to describe public opinion as split than as strongly in one direction or the other.
In fact, many more Americans — 61%, in fact — oppose repealing the bill, than oppose the bill.
But in the end, what matters is the economy. The Democrats are fucking doomed in November, and the reason isn’t health care, or the deficit, or cap and trade; it’s that people are still getting poorer. And — as I’ve said before — that means that the Democrats deserve to lose.
I think the article you are quoting is wrong. No budget bill means no reconciliation instructions are possible, but reconciliation instructions apply to the current year, not the following year. The budget reconciliation instructions for health care reform were passed in 2009, to be used in 2009. The senate and house had to refrain from finishing the 2009 budget process until after they finished the health reform bill to retain the option of using reconciliation. So not passing a budget resolution now means there are no reconciliation instructions for this year, not next year.
Which is worse in some ways, since now is when we need a jobs bill and a state aid bill, but if a majority in the senate wasn’t going to be willing to incorporate reconciliation language into the budget bill (which, apparently, they weren’t), then it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. A proper budget bill without reconciliation instructions wouldn’t have been an improvement at all.
For next year, the big question is whether the Dems retain a majority and whether the Dem senate leadership sticks to its claimed support for filibuster reform, but they can also use reconciliation instructions for budget measures.
[Edited out, as I missed the fact I was just repeating one of Amp’s points in his most recent comment.]
Here is a report on unemployment insurance extensions, which includes a table of all the times that unemployment insurance has been extended and the date at which the extensions ended (at the end of the recovery, rather than the middle of the recovery).
Thanks, Charles. I think you’re right.
And in more corrections — this time correcting myself — it’s likely that there will be an extension of unemployment benefits passed this week, when Robert Byrd’s replacement takes office, likely providing the 60th vote.
I’m not a Republican in Congress, and I haven’t said a thing about cutting estate taxes vs. offsetting the costs.
It’s funny. I was just out this weekend on a Scout trip – we went canoeing – and got into a discussion about this. The person I was talking to told me that when he heard about the extension he thought it was a bad idea because he knows “plenty of people” who have stopped looking for work and who have refused jobs because of the unemployment benefits they receive. He said “There’s jobs out there for anyone who wants to work.” What’s funny about it that it wasn’t one of the suburban professionals that many of my kids have as parents. No, it was the guy driving the 15-person van that I and the members of my Troop were in. He proceeded to tell me that he was working 12 hours a day shuttling people and canoes back and forth in this very rural area, and during the off-season he went got a job driving a truck. This is not a guy making a lot of money. He’s just the kind of guy you would think would be in favor of extending benefits. He’s scrambling for work. But he thinks there’s jobs out there. It keeps the question in my mind of just how many people there are out there that we’re essentially paying not to work. Perhaps in the end it’s just a necessary evil.
I do confess that I was unaware that this kind of thing has a) been done in the past and b) been temporary. That casts a different light on it. What I have generally found is that there is no such thing as permanent as a temporary solution. But if this would not become an entitlement then I can more readily see it as reasonable.
I love that when I cite four factors as to why Obama got elected President it becomes morphed into “Obama only won because he was black.”
Well, given that both of those two are prominent Illinois residents I’ve had some exposure to both. Jesse Jackson to me is a more than one-dimensional person, but nationwide a good many people see him as a left-wing rabble rouser. A good many other people see him as a civil-rights hero, but not enough to get him elected President. When he ran the first time I was sitting out in the woods next to a campfire (family camping, not a Scouting event) drinking beer with a couple of black guys I’d met there. They asked me if I was going to vote for him. I told them “No.” They reacted by saying “Why, because he’s black, right?” I said, “No – because he has no experience. He’s never been a public official and has never run anything except his Rainbow Coalition (or whatever it was then).” I then named a couple of then-prominent black officials such as Andrew Young that I could see considering.
I voted for Carol Moseley-Braun (who I actually saw at my Diocese’s annual convention last year) for Senator. But I was disappointed in her as Senator. She really didn’t do that good of a job. She also got embroiled in a financial scandal – I’m a little fuzzy on the details right now but IIRC it involved her brother and some misuse of public funds. She couldn’t even get re-nominated for Senator. Her career as an elected official ended there. She just wasn’t Presidential material.
Hm. Can’t edit. I think that should be “re-elected” not “re-nominated”.
For every opening we have for a truck driver, RonF, we get over 30 applications. This was not happening 3 years ago. The same goes for every other job opening we have, whether that be a desk job, warehouse job or sales job. There simply is not a job out there for everybody who wants one or we wouldn’t be getting that many applications for, generally, lower paying jobs.
Ron, it’s true that you’re not a Republican in Congress. But did you oppose Bush’s tax cuts? Do you believe they should be extended? Do you oppose the Republican plans to cut the estate tax?
Regarding that you said “young well-spoken black notBush,” you’re right, I should have acknowledged that. But at the time Jessie Jackson ran for president he was also young, well-spoken, and not George Bush.** So my point remains; black, young, well-spoken, not Bush is not enough to win the election, or even the primary, on its own.
Regarding your secondhand, anecdotal implication that unemployment insurance just supports lazy people, economists estimate that for every five job-seekers in the US right now, there is one job opening. Until the number of job openings increase, it is mathematically impossible for 80% of the unemployed to find jobs, no matter how hard they work at it and how much they want it.
Let me put it another way, Ron: Unemployment has skyrocketed. Do you believe that Americans have suddenly, in the last two years, become much much lazier than before? What caused this sudden epidemic of laziness, in your opinion?
Aside from the word of some dude driving a boy scout van, do you have any evidence at all that unemployed people are the lazy freeloaders you paint them as?
I admit that I’m being overly harsh, since you did more-or-less agree that under the circumstances, extending unemployment benefits temporarily might be the thing to do. That is reasonable of you to say, and I appreciate it.
What I’d like is a policy in which unemployment insurance was extended automatically in response to high unemployment rates.
So instead of being a political football, the status quo would be that unemployment insurance is extended with high unemployment rates, and becomes less available once unemployment rates drop to a reasonable level.
Congress could still choose to cut them (or make them more generous), of course — but they’d have to actively vote to do that. This would protect unemployed Americans during times of horribly high unemployment from suffering due to political gridlock in Washington.
**Admittedly, the George Bush he wasn’t, isn’t the same George Bush that Obama wasn’t.
So, do you oppose the extension of the Bush tax cuts? You don’t actually say one way or the other.
There are jobs out there. There are also millions of unemployed people actively seeking work, and millions more who have given up looking for work right now, but will start looking for work once there start being more job openings.
Your van driver also has a job, and might or might not get unemployment benefits if he lost it (if he works for himself, or if he does part time work for multiple businesses, or if his work is sufficiently seasonal, he may well not qualify for unemployment). That there is a van driver out there who is in the 32 percent of the population who believes that unemployment benefits should not be extended is neither surprising, nor is it actually an argument. There are a lot of working class people who get their news from Fox or from the right wing talk radio shows (or from people who get their news from those sources), and it is unsurprising that they believe a lot of misinformation. We actually want people to be able to have the freedom to not have to take the absolute first job they can find. An engineer might be able to get a job bagging groceries, but we all benefit less if she does, rather than keeping at job hunting and trying to find a job that matches her skills. The less skilled person who would get that job bagging groceries also benefits a lot if the engineer decides not to take it. But if your van driver knew the engineer, he might think of her as one of those people who is not taking jobs because she has unemployment insurance.
Also, are you not aware of how ridiculous the “I met a taxi driver, and he spouted my opinions I agree with, so the common man agrees with me,” style of argument is? I realize you used a van driver rather than a taxi driver, since you aren’t in the David Brooks/ Tom Friedman income bracket, but it is the same silly argument.
Here’s another question to consider:
In order to extend unemployment benefits, tax money is required. Either spending is cut, taxes are increased now to pay for it, or we borrow it and then taxes are increased later to pay for it and the interest. Apparently door #1 is off the table here. So taxes have to be raised, or the cost of borrowing money now rises because private borrowers have to compete with the government for the available capital. What effect does that have on job generation? Surely we can all agree that it would be preferable to have people employed than on unemployment? At what point does the government start choking off employment by removing money out of the markets and giving it to people?
I’ll buy into the fact that the story I told is anecdotal rather than factual. I have no doubt that there are people turning down jobs that they could have taken, but I’m hoping that this is a small number of people. But this is not a unique story, and it informs the attitudes of a lot of people, who see that they are succeeding in scrambling for jobs and suspect that the reason other people don’t is because of a lack of initiative or a feeling of superiority rather than a lack of jobs. They’re not getting that from Fox News, they’re getting this from personal experience.
I disagree. I want people working right away. My son graduated with a degree in engineering from a very good engineering school. He came home to live. That was fine with us, but we made it clear that he was to get a job of any kind as soon as possible. He got a job at a local electronics store selling computer accessories for just about minimum wage. While he was definitely underemployed he was still being productive, working and paying taxes. But he didn’t stop looking for a professional level job. He finally found one, took it, and left the job selling computer accessories. I think that’s far better than having him sit around consuming tax money while he was looking for work.
There’s another alternative – she could take the job bagging groceries while still looking for the job that matches her skills. That’s what my son did. Why can’t she?
Let’s say I’m an employer and I have two resumes in hand. Their professional qualifications are equal. One has been collecting unemployment. The other has been working a blue-collar job while looking for professional work. I’d much rather hire the latter person than the former. They obviously have a better work ethic.
I’d much rather hire the latter person than the former.
Me too.
I confess a fondness for the anecdotal but compelling up-from-bootstrap narrative. I do recognize that the narrative becomes a much grittier and more difficult story when done as a parent, especially as a single parent. Kids need resources and attention and time and all of that chews away at the focus and drive needed for material success.
Maybe we should give employers of parents a whacking great tax break.
RonF,
Econ 101 theory that government borrowing increases the cost of non-government borrowing does not apply during a recession (econ 101 theory can’t describe why recessions happen or what happens during a recession, as an example, you say our massive deficits should be squeezing out lending, but the costs of non-government borrowing right now are very low). Furthermore, the cost of extending unemployment benefits is negligible compared to the economy as a whole. Your concerns about deficits might have been reasonably applied to the wars of the last decade (paid for with borrowing) or the Bush tax cuts (paid for with borrowing) but they are completely irrelevant in relation to extending unemployment benefits.
There are 5 people looking for work for every job opening right now. There is no problem filling all the job openings. The current situation is not a problem because people aren’t looking for work. The current situation is a problem because people aren’t hiring (at anywhere near the rate they need to get us back to anywhere near full employment).
There isn’t even an up by your own bootstraps anecdote. RonF told an anecdote about someone who has a job who thinks the unemployed are just lazy or they’d find a job. That isn’t the story of someone finding a job by grit and determination. It is just a story of someone who thinks that the unemployed are lazy.
There are millions of people in this country actively looking for work, and far too few jobs for them to find, and you two conservatives want to blather on about up by your own bootstraps stories. It is, frankly, disgusting.
So, RonF, do you support or oppose extending the Bush tax cuts?
Please answer that question before you write anything else expressing concern over the effects of deficit spending.
As a highly educated, recently unemployed person, let me tell you why I can’t take a job bagging groceries.
1) I have a lot more experience than your son did right out of college. I have a PhD, years of experience in my field, and years more of experience teaching in my field.
2) When I apply for the grocery-bagging job, the grocery assumes, rightly, that I’m going to split the second I find an opportunity that matches my skills. They don’t want to spend money training me just to have to turn around and train another person in a few months. So they don’t hire me.
3) The grocery also assumes that if I have more work experience and education than the Front End Manager, that manager is going to have a hard time managing me. They might be right, they might be wrong (I’d say it depends a lot on how that person manages – when I worked in a grocery while starting my private practice, my success as an employee depended greatly on the styles of the different store managers we had) but they’re going to assume it anyway. If the Front End Manager has any say in the hiring, s/he will pass me over because s/he will assume I’ll be a pain in the ass, show him/her up, and wind up taking his/her job. The Store Manager may well assume the same thing.
And so even though I have grocery experience (though not bagging!) I’m highly unlikely to get a job bagging groceries.
I just applied for a job with the county as a public health investigator (i.e. phoning people to say “a previous sexual partner of yours has tested positive for hepatitis. Would you be willing to come in and receive treatment, and give us a list of your contacts?”), a job that requires a high school diploma but that pays the same as my previous academic job. I strongly suspect I won’t get it because they’ll give it to someone with less education and less experience, rather than to me who wildly over-shoots the qualifications in every area.
It’s true that a highly qualified person is going to get turned down in some cases because they’re overqualified for a job. And yet my son, with an engineering degree, got a job that he was vastly overqualified for. And the guy next to him who sold my wife a laptop had an MBA in finance. Employers are hiring overqualified people. Maybe because they don’t need a whole lot of training compared to others. Maybe because in this economy they’re not going to quit as fast as they might in better times. Maybe because that way when they quit and the employer starts a new person that new person starts back at the bottom of the pay scales. But the reasons I propose are all speculation; the fact is that it’s happening.
For those of you who have asked; I’m not commenting on the Bush tax cuts because a) I couldn’t tell you what they were, and b) it looks to me like an attempt to change the subject. I certainly am in favor of tax cuts as a general philosophy; money is better off in the private hands that earned the money than in public ones. I’m not in the “taxes are eeeeeevil” camp, mind you. Government exists for good reason, there are legitimate public expenditures and they have to be paid for. Where we disagree is what the set “legitimate public expenditures” consists of.
Whatever they are, letting them expire is going to open up the debate of whether that’s a violation of President Obama’s pledge of “I won’t raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000.” Or was it $200,000? I can’t say because I don’t know if they in fact affect people in that income bracket. If they do, I’m sure he’ll try to parse it as something else, but I think any affected taxpayers won’t look at it in any such sophisticated fashion.
A statement that has absolutely zero relevance when we’re on the subject of cuts to estate taxes.
Ron, it seems like you’re playing dumb and hypothetical when a few seconds of googling would provide you with the information you need to answer the question, which certainly makes it look like you’re trying your damnedest to dodge the question.
Yes, I could look up the Reagan tax cuts and educate myself and then offer an opinion and debate it. But it’s not the point here and I”m not interested in doing so.
Bush, not Reagan. And yes, I think it’s quite clear that you’re not willing to engage with this conversation.