We have people who want to be part of the inside Washington conversation who praise the budget's courage and integrity. Then we have people who believe in arithmetic who call it what it is: a piece of trash. By the way, Paul Ryan is a very nice guy.
Then again we have another so-called New York Times “centrist”
columnist, David Brooks, whose many fulminations have long ago turned me off. I gave up on him many years ago when he advocated what he called a “flat/fair
tax” which to me was, and is, an oxymoron. By definition, for the rich and the
poor to pay the same tax can never be fair, though I have since then come to
wonder whether our present system, isn’t even worse, with the lower earners
paying a higher % of their income than the rich.
In any case here is Brooks' “centrist” take on the Ryan plan. He admits:
The Ryan budget would cut too deeply into discretionary spending. This could lead to self-destructive cuts in scientific research, health care for poor kids and programs that boost social mobility. Moreover, the Ryan tax ideas are too regressive. They make tax cuts for the rich explicit while they hide any painful loophole closings that might hurt Republican donors.
But then having said that, he gets to what really upsets
him, and it isn’t the outrages of the Ryan plan. Instead he rips into the
President for criticizing its (The Ryan Plan’s) “real deficit-reducing
accomplishments” (My careful reading of the plan does not reveal any such
accomplishments unless you count the unspecified cuts in expenditures, and even
then there is not one iota of an increase in revenue) as “trickle-down, …
social Darwinists.” To be sure that is strong language, but that hardly makes
it inappropriate, for a document that devastates our social safety net and
severely cuts taxes for the rich. Mr. Brooks takes particular exception to the
term “Social Darwinist” describing it as, as “a 19th-century philosophy that
held, in part, that Aryans and Northern Europeans are racially superior to
brown and Mediterranean peoples.” That may be the way it was once used, but
Brooks should, and undoubtedly does know, that its meaning in 20th
century America is as The Atlantic describes it:
“a term in Richard Hofstadter's 1944 book ‘Social Darwinism in American Thought’ which correctly describes it as a ‘phase in the history of conservative thought’ where ‘nature would provide that the best competitors in a competitive situation would win, and that this process would lead to continuing improvement.”
As we can see Brooks’ attack on the President is ad homonym
and without foundation. But that is the way of the so-called middle.
But Mr. Brooks is such a symbol of this so-called middle (I
call it a phony middle) that I have to dwell a little longer on Brooks’
writing. As early as June 13, 2011 in an article headed “Pundit Under Protest” he writes, as is his wont, with such an evenness, without regard to facts, as to
make the article pathetic. Like any politician without principle, only worse,
he knows that his audience likes to hear that there is no difference between
the parties. He tries to oblige. He starts out by identifying the malaise that
has gripped the country. He writes:
The number of business start-ups per capita has been falling steadily for the past three decades. Workers’ share of national income has been declining since 1983. Male wages have been stagnant for about 40 years. The American working class — those without a college degree — is being decimated, economically and socially. [Emphasis added]
Mr. Brooks states a crucial fact,
without focusing on a crucial date: 1983. What happened in 1983? Well nothing
in particular, except that it was the second year of the Administration of
Ronald Reagan, when the country was set upon a dramatic new course, with the
mantra being from then on: “ Government is not the Solution – Government is the
Problem” and for the next 38 years, except for first two years of the Clinton
Administration, that was the guiding principle of our government. It does not
follow, that these polices were the cause of the condition that Brooks
describes, but one would think that a discussion of that possibility might have
been in order. But never mind that. Let’s see what else he says.
Here is what he says about the
Republican agenda:
The Republican growth agenda — tax cuts and nothing else — is stupefying boring, fiscally irresponsible and politically impossible… Republican politicians don’t design policies to meet specific needs, or even to help their own working-class voters. They use policies as signaling devices — as ways to reassure the base that they are 100 percent orthodox and rigidly loyal. Republicans have taken a pragmatic policy proposal from 1980 and sanctified it as their core purity test for 2012.
Well so far so good! But of course, being Brooks there is
always, “On the other hand.” So here is what he says about Democrats.
…they offer practically nothing. They acknowledge huge problems like wage stagnation and then offer... light rail! Solar panels!... They still have these grand spending ideas, but there is no longer any money to pay for them and there won’t be for decades. Democrats dream New Deal dreams, propose nothing and try to win elections by making sure nobody ever touches Medicare. (Emphasis added)
Boy, what an indictment. But is it
true? It may be true of some of the base, but it is not true of the Obama
Administration and it is not true of the Democratic Party’s program. It is a
contrived caricature. Let us take Medicare. The President proposed and
Congressional Democrats passed over almost unanimous Republican opposition $132 billion worth of cuts from Medicare Advantage over 10 years, for which Republicans have been denouncing them as having taking money out of
Medicare, if one can believes the hypocrisy. (I am not here going to discuss
the merits or lack thereof here – but cite it simply to belie Brooks.)
In addition, months before Brooks
falsely alleged that Democrats were unwilling to touch Medicare, in March of
2012 Obama offered as part of a deficit reduction deal with Speaker Boehner, just that, or as the New York Times reported:
The White House agreed to cut at least $250 billion from Medicare in the next 10 years and another $800 billion in the decade after that, in part by raising the eligibility age. The administration had endorsed another $110 billion or so in cuts to Medicaid and other health care programs, with $250 billion more in the second decade.
The offered deal included revenue enhancements, and fell
apart when Boehner could not sell that part to his Tea Party-dominated Republican
House caucus.
But how can Brooks, say, (with a straight face) “by making sure nobody ever touches Medicare.” The answer
can only be that Brooks is no more concerned with facts than the Republicans
who he is always defending, or at least falsely equating with a President and a
party that is actually trying to do something.
As for Brooks’ assertion that “…they offer practically
nothing,” “'Let's look at the record” in the immortal words of Al Smith: Mr. Brooks does not have to look at what has been proposed, just at what has
been achieved, which because of Republican obstructionism is much less than
what has been proposed. See the accomplishments as of November 25, 2009 here.
More has been accomplished since then, but of course upon
the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Democrats and the President lost
their 60-vote majority in the Senate. With a unanimous Republican determination
that nothing will pass with less than 60 votes – which means a vote of 59 in
favor, 41 against, or even 35 against, defeats a bill, not much more can be
accomplished, and with Republicans capturing the House, gridlock is the order
of the day. But here again the suggestion that both parties are at fault for
not being willing to compromise, belies the facts. Even tax cuts proposed by
the Administration, are blocked, even though the Republican mantra is that tax
cuts are always good, but I guess they mean only for the rich.
But Tom Friedman, writing in the New York Times, isn’t much
better. He thinks that the solution to all our problems is a third party. See
my discussion entitled "The Media And
Their Columnists."
We will never solve any problems if we constantly seek a
false equivalency between the parties, or seek magic from outside them. Let the
facts take us where they may, but let us not indulge in a false delusion in an
effort not to have to choose. That leaves as either not voting, or voting on
the basis of Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, or throwing our vote away on a third
party.
But before I close this subject I must examine one more
column by Brooks. It is dated April 16, 2012 and is entitled “The White House Argument.” I suggest the reader examine it before my next post. It is one of Brooks’ best
jobs yet at sophism. But like all his others, it does far better at obfuscation
than at clarification.
Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome
and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer
requests that he/she not be identified.
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