The Commentariat -- April 13

Artwork by Victor Juhasz for Rolling Stone.** "The Real Housewives of Wall Street." Matt Taibbi of Rollng Stone on the Secret, Unofficial Budget in which Ben Bernanke & people you never heard of lend billions of your money at next to zero interest to firms that don't need it, that don't deserve it (shoddy hedge funds! Muammar Gaddafi!) & that may lend it back to the government at three percent, and if you're really lucky, to you at some usurious rate. Taibbi zeroes in on a $220 million risk-free Fed loan to two socialite ladies who had almost no business experience, a tax-free Caymen Islands vanity firm & prominent bankster husbands. Thanks to reader Karen S. for the link. And, as always, thanks to Sen. Bernie Sanders for making this info. semi-accessible (Bernanke is holding back all the info he can). CW: you might find reading in this format easier, but you'll have to click thru the pages.

The Official Budget

Here are the details of the FY 2011 budget cuts from the House Appropriations Committee in a fairly annoying Scribd format. Ezra Klein put them into handy, if fuzzy, graph form, that compares the cuts to FY 2010's budget (blue) & Obama's proposed budget (green):

... Lisa Mascaro of the Los Angeles Times: "The previously undisclosed reductions stunned advocates for community health centers, foreign aid and climate change research. Among the cuts is a $500-million reduction in funding for the federal health and nutrition program for women, infants and children, known as WIC. Democrats staved off even bigger cuts, but the final package carried a decidedly Republican policy stamp." ...

... BUT. Andrew Taylor of the AP: "... the picture already emerging is of legislation financed with a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially 'score' as savings to pay for spending elsewhere, but that often have little to no actual impact on the deficit. As a result of the legerdemain, Obama was able to reverse many of the cuts passed by House Republicans in February when the chamber passed a bill slashing this year's budget by more than $60 billion." ...

... AND Tim Fernholz of the National Journal: "... the final cuts in the deal are advertised as $38.5 billion less than was appropriated in 2010, but after removing rescissions, cuts to reserve funds, and reductions in mandatory spending programs, discretionary spending will be reduced only by $14.7 billion." CW: That is, the White House gave Republicans bragging rights but not so much in the way of cuts, or as Fernholz put it, the administration showed "a willingness to concede on rhetoric to find gains on substance." ...

... AND Derek Thompson of The Atlantic has a handy rundown of "real" cuts & "phantom" cuts negotiated in the budget deal. He does caution that these figures are debatable; that is, some of "phantom" cuts may represent real money that could have been spent elsewhere. ...

Glenn Greenwald tells liberal pundits to get real & quit lamenting President Obama's "ineptitude"; Obama is a shrewd negotiator who is getting exactly what he wants.

... Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post gives President Obama & Speaker Boehner passes for exaggerating the magnitude of the budget cuts, but he gives the media two Pinocchios for letting them get away with the "biggest cuts in history" boast.

... Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: during budget negotiations, "... a handful of relatively small-bore line items affecting particular industries attracted some of the most aggressive lobbying behind the scenes, as business interests, health care providers and others fought to hold on to, or kill, proposals that affected their bottom line." One of the most inexplicable victims of that lobbying effort -- Sen. Ron Wyden's Healthy Americans Act -- which allowed some workers to opt for healthcare insurance exchanges & which had nothing to do with budgetary concerns. ...

... Alexander Bolton of The Hill: Wyden says he may vote against the budget bill. ...

... Michael O'Brien & Jordan Fabian of The Hill: "Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that he's considering a filibuster of the budget agreement to fund the government for the remainder of this fiscal year."

The budget is a moral document. -- Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska):

Andrew Leonard of Salon: Republicans, fighting Medicare since 1964. Here's some Democratic pushback -- that worked (anybody remember President Goldwater?):

Paul Krugman suggests a VA-style public option for Medicare. He admits it won't happen because "... what would terrify the right, of course, is the likelihood that genuine socialized medicine would actually" be popular. ...

... The Progressive Change Campaign Committee asks you to "Sign the petition [to] President Obama:

If you cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits for me, my parents, my grandparents, or families like mine, don't ask for a penny of my money or an hour of my time in 2012. I'm going to focus on electing bold progressive candidates -- not Democrats who help Republicans make harmful cuts to key programs.

... If the President begins the discussion by saying we must increase taxes on the American people – as his budget does - my response will be clear: tax increases are unacceptable and are a nonstarter. We don’t have deficits because Americans are taxed too little, we have deficits because Washington spends too much. And, at a time when the American people face skyrocketing prices at the pump, energy tax hikes are a particularly bad idea. -- John Boehner ...

     ... CW: parse what Boehner says. This is not a read-my-lips statement. It depends on where Obama "begins" the conversation, he says. Just last week Boehner said he would "have the conversation" about tax hikes. And his spokesman said the statement above "doesn't preclude discussion."

Mark Ambinder of the National Journal, who has his White House sources, lays out what President Obama will say today: "Obama’s political strategy ... is to force the belligerents to deal on his terms.... Obama will set the limits now, and spend the next six months pushing hard to make sure Republicans can’t cross them. He will not accept Ryan’s proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher system, nor will he endorse the breakup of Medicaid into block grants for the states. He will not accept a deficit-reduction plan that draws all of its force from government-transfer programs aimed at poor and middle-class Americans. He will not accept a plan that doesn’t ask the rich to pay more, both by raising marginal income tax rates back to pre-2003 levels for some and by lifting the cap on wages subject to the Social Security tax."

David Leonhardt of the New York Times: if Congress does nothing, the deficit will shrink -- a lot. CW: Ezra Klein made this same point the other day. The secret to the do-nothing remedy: the Bush tax cuts expire.

CW: I don't do polls, but ...

     ... SOME are too good to ignore. CNN: "Donald Trump is now tied with Mike Huckabee for first place when Republicans are asked who they support for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, according to a new national poll." ...

     ... AND there's this from Public Policy Polling, a Democratic pollster with a good rep for reliability: "PPP's newest national poll finds that after a little more than 3 months in charge House Republicans have fallen so far out of favor with the American public that it's entirely possible Democrats could take control of the House back next year." ...

     ... AND Another New Poll Just Like the Old Polls. Susan Page of USA Today: Americans "Overwhelmingly oppose making major changes to Medicare. By 2-to-1, they support minor changes or none at all to control costs, rather than major changes or a complete overhaul. Even a third of Republicans say the government should not try to control the costs of Medicare." They "Favor imposing higher taxes on families with household incomes of $250,000 and above, as Obama has endorsed: 59% support the idea, 37% oppose it."

Mitt Romney finally takes a stand on something "controversial." Kasie Hunt of Politico: "Mitt Romney forcefully said Tuesday night that he believes President Barack Obama was born in America and that 'the citizenship test has been passed.'"

Right Wing World *

Al Franken stole the Minnesota Senate election, and other nonsense from Michele Bachmann. ...

... Like this: Something else that we can do to reinforce our pro-marriage, pro-life, pro-family agenda is to limit the subject-matter jurisdiction of the courts.... We have it within our authority to decide what judges can rule on and what they can’t. -- Michelle Bachmann

Your Tax Dollars Devoted to Amateur Lit Crit. Rand Paul, still on his light-bulb kick (he opposes energy-efficient bulbs -- and toilets!) provides a Congressional Committee with a synopsis & exegesis of Ayn Rand's novel Anthem. He mispronounces "Ayn," but why quibble? Besides, the mispronunciation could be a subtle part of his pushback against the Rand Paul Birther Cabal who assert Sen. Randy is named after Ayn Rand:

* Where facts never intrude.

Local News

Another "Threaten Lazy Bureaucrats Day." Wisconsin Politics: "Gov. Scott Walker says he may have to again consider laying off state employees if his collective bargaining law remains tied up in the courts for much more than the next week or two."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Barry Bonds, the former outfielder who hit more career home runs than anyone else in baseball history, was convicted Wednesday of a single count of obstruction of justice, but a federal jury here could not reach a verdict on the question of whether Bonds had lied about never knowingly using steroids during his career."

Al Jazeera: "The international contact group on Libya has agreed to set up a temporary 'trust fund' to help channel assets to the opposition Transitional National Council in Benghazi.... The group united to call on Libya's longterm leader Muammar Gaddafi to step down.... The financial mechanism being set up will allow international donations to be made directly available to Gaddafi's opponents -- possibly from frozen assets of the Gaddafi administration."

Politico: "House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has had conversations with top Wall Street executives, asking how close Congress could push to the debt limit deadline without sending interests rates soaring and causing stock prices to go lower, people familiar with the matter said. Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said Tuesday night that he was not aware of any such conversations."

President Obama spoke about fiscal policy earlier this aternoon. Wall Street Journal: "In a midday speech in Washington, Mr. Obama will propose a plan that includes cuts to entitlement programs such as Medicare, limits on military spending and an overhaul of the tax system designed to bring in more revenue. To pre-empt criticism from lawmakers, Mr. Obama is hosting congressional leaders at the White House on Wednesday morning to preview his goals." AP story here. ...

     ... Update: here's the Washington Post's story on the President's speech. New York Times story here. See video clips in left column.

Washington Post: "Egypt’s top prosecutor has ordered former President Hosni Mubarak and his sons detained for 15 days for questioning about the origins of their family’s wealth, Egypt’s state-run television station reported Wednesday. The news comes a day after the former president was hospitalized in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, just as prosecutors had moved to interrogate him and his sons regarding allegations of corruption."

Wall Street Journal: "Sens. John Kerry and John McCain proposed legislation Tuesday to create a 'privacy bill of rights' to protect people from the increasingly invasive commercial data-collection industry. The bill, labeled the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011, would impose new rules on companies that gather personal data, including offering people access to data about them, or the ability to block the information from being used or distributed."

AP: "Former Sen. Rick Santorum on Wednesday announced a fundraising committee that allows him to take the first steps toward a presidential campaign."