The Commentariat -- July 26

The President speaks about the "debate" in Washington over the national deficit & raising the debt ceiling:

     ... Here's the transcript.

... The topic for today's Off Times Square: We're Screwed! ...

... CW: I guess I have to be responsible & give you a chance to watch Speaker Boehner's response. I couldn't stand to watch it myself, but a friend wrote and said she thought he looked drunk. In fairness, I think Boehner always looks drunk. ...

     ... Steve Stromberg of the Washington Post: "Making the case for his plan on Monday night, Boehner laced his speech with distortions of the president’s position. He mocked Obama’s position as 'we spend more, and you pay more,' accusing the president of asking for 'a blank check.' Neither of which actually describe the $4 trillion debt-reduction plan Obama favors." ...

... Republican Class Warfare. Robert Greenstein, President of the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities: "House Speaker John Boehner’s new budget proposal would require deep cuts in the years immediately ahead in Social Security and Medicare benefits for current retirees, the repeal of health reform’s coverage expansions, or wholesale evisceration of basic assistance programs for vulnerable Americans. The plan is, thus, tantamount to a form of 'class warfare.' If enacted, it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history." Includes a rundown of what's in the Boehner bill. CW: or why I don't give John Boehner much respect. ...

Reader Peter T. urges me to link to this column by Andrew Sullivan that is a few days old but still true. I'm not much of a fan of Sullivan's, but he's correct here:

The Republican refusal to countenance any way to raise revenues to tackle the massive debt incurred largely on their watch and from a recession which started under Obama's predecessor makes one thing clear. They are not a political party in government; they are a radical faction that refuses to participate meaningfully in the give and take the Founders firmly believed should be at the center of American government. They are not conservatives in this sense. They are anarchists.... Boehner and McConnell have one goal and it is has nothing to do with the economy. It is destroying this president and this presidency.

... New York Times Editors: "House Republicans have lost sight of the country’s welfare.... It’s hard not to conclude now that dysfunction is the Republicans’ goal — even if the cost is unthinkable." President Obama has embraced Harry Reid's plan, which gives Republicans everything they said they wanted. Reid's plan "is, in fact, an awful plan, which cuts spending far too deeply at a time when the government should be summoning all its resources to solve the real economic problem of unemployment. It asks for absolutely no sacrifice from those who have prospered immensely as economic inequality has grown." ...

... Ezra Klein has a synopsis of Reid's "awful plan." ...

Image via the National Journal.... David Beard of the National Journal: "When President Obama told Americans to contact their representatives to show support for his debt-ceiling plan, the response was so strong it knocked out several websites for leading GOP House members. National Journal checks at 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. of websites for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., showed a "Server is too busy" response on an otherwise blank screen. Boehner’s separate representative site was down, also, though the district and House Majority Leader sites of Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., were working." ...

... To find out how to contact your congressmember or senator, this site is helpful. Enter your Zip code if you're not sure who your representative is. Click on the rep's name, & the site sends you to a page that provides e-mail & phone info (each rep has constructed her/his own contact page, so they vary as to ease of contact). ...

... Barack Hoover Obama. John Judis of The New Republic: "... in drawing this line with the Republicans, and, in framing the choice the country needs to make, Obama embraced the same Republican economic assumptions about debts and deficits that got Herbert Hoover in trouble after the 1929 stock market crash." ...

... "A False Sense of Security." Jim Tankersley of the National Journal: don't kid yourselves, Congressmen. The effects of a default on the economy will be twofold: the markets will tank & the federal government's inability to pay more than about 60 percent of its bills will mean "Hundreds of thousands of Americans are likely to lose their jobs, and even if Washington gets its act together quickly, the analyst firm Macroeconomic Advisers said last week, the fallout will linger through 2012." ...

... The Ever-so-Plausible Congressmen-Are-Stupid-&-Hateful Theory. Jonathan Bernstein, writing in the Washington Post, argues that a fight over the deficit was inevitable -- if not now, later -- because "Americans elected to Congress a whole bunch of people who are either trying to impose fringe policy views despite apparently having no understanding whatsoever of their consequences — or are so driven by opposition to the president that their highest priority is opposing him, regardless of those consequences." ...

... Republican Bruce Bartlett in the New York Times: "it has become a Republican talking point that the Bush tax cuts did not, in fact, reduce revenue at all — something the Bush administration itself never asserted." In fact, during the 2000 campaign, Bush said the purpose of cuts he proposed was to reduce the surplus: "In this regard, at least, the Bush-era tax cuts were highly successful." ...

... CW: Besides his obvious desire to topple Speaker Boehner & take the top job himself, Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has another personal interest in the deficit reduction standoff. Alec MacGillis of the Washington Post: "Among the White House’s top demands for new revenue are changes in the tax code affecting hedge funds, private equity firms and real estate partnerships.... For the past four years, Cantor has taken the lead in the House on fighting the same changes. He also has been one of the top recipients of contributions from those industries — last year, his two fundraising committees took in nearly $2 million from securities and investment firms and real estate companies, more than double the figure for Boehner (R-Ohio)."

... A Few More Days to Dither? Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "... the Treasury Department is standing by its estimate that the government will need to borrow more money after Aug. 2 to pay for all its obligations. But several new reports — from UBS, Barclays and Wells Fargo ... have said that daily tax receipts have been higher than anticipated and that the Treasury has quite a bit of cash on hand. As of Friday, according to the Treasury, the government had $85 billion in cash."

Chart of the Day. Hope Yen of the AP: "The wealth gaps between whites and minorities have grown to their widest levels in a quarter-century. The recession and uneven recovery have erased decades of minority gains, leaving whites on average with 20 times the net worth of blacks and 18 times that of Hispanics, according to an analysis of new Census data."

The Unemployed Need Not Apply. Catherine Rampell of the New York Times: "A recent review of job vacancy postings on popular sites like Monster.com, CareerBuilder and Craigslist revealed hundreds that said employers would consider (or at least 'strongly prefer') only people currently employed or just recently laid off." The practice is so rampant that New Jersey recently passed a law making it illegal. BUT, "Legal experts say that the practice probably does not violate discrimination laws because unemployment is not a protected status, like age or race. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently held a hearing, though, on whether discriminating against the jobless might be illegal because it disproportionately hurts older people and blacks."

Russell Jacoby, in a New York Times op-ed: "Most threats and violence tend to emerge from within a society, not from outside it.... We prefer, however, to imagine threats as emanating from aliens and foreigners." The operative principle may be what "Freud dubbed 'the narcissism of minor differences.' Small variations frequently elicit more rage than large ones because they imperil identity.

Adm. Mike Mullen, outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, writes a New York Times op-ed about the need to improve the relationship between the U.S. and Chinese military.

Having nothing to do with anything -- The Boyfriend from Hell. A rape victim is set up by her alleged rapist, a former boyfriend, and New York police buy the set-up, charging her with multiple crimes staged by the boyfriend and his friends.

Right Wing World ...

... Where Limbaugh Rules. Alicia Cohn of The Hill: "Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) outlined the GOP's debt-ceiling plan to conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh on Monday before showing it to his conference." ...

... AND Erick Erickson of Red State Thinks He's Pope: he declares he will not grant "absolution" to any Republican who doesn't stand firm & vote only for a deficit reduction bill that incorporates the duck, dodge & dismantle plan.

News Ledes

New York Times: "A preview of the expected showdown over whether to admit a Palestinian state as a full member of the United Nations when world leaders gather here in September played out in the Security Council on Tuesday."

New York Times: "House Republican leaders Tuesday made increasingly frenzied pleas to their members to approve a plan [by Speaker John Boehner] to temporarily raise the nation’s debt ceiling, but passage seemed in growing doubt. The White House reiterated that it strongly opposed the bill and that President Obama’s advisers would recommend a veto should it somehow pass the House and Senate." ...

     ... This story has been updated & has a new lede: "House Republican leaders were forced on Tuesday night to delay a vote scheduled on their plan to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, as conservative lawmakers expressed skepticism and Congressional budget officials said the plan did not deliver the promised savings."

New York Times: "The New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, acting just days after the state began allowing gay couples to wed, filed a legal brief on Tuesday challenging the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Mr. Schneiderman asserted that the law, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, violates the right to equal protection under the law for gay and lesbian couples."

New York Times: "Representative David Wu, a Democrat from Oregon, said Tuesday that he will resign from Congress after allegations that he had had a sexual encounter with a young woman. Mr. Wu, a seven-term member of Congress, said in a statement that he intended to fight what he called 'very serious allegations.' But he said that he would resign as soon as the debt ceiling fight in Washington was over."

Washington Post: "President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner escalated their battle over the national debt on Monday, pressing their arguments in a pair of prime-time television addresses as Congress remained at a loss over how to keep the United States from defaulting next week for the first time. The challenge facing any plan for reducing the debt was underscored when a new Republican proposal to raise the ceiling on federal borrowing was met Monday with misgivings by some conservatives and skepticism by many GOP freshmen. That called into question whether Boehner (R-Ohio) could even get his own caucus to back his approach."

The Hill: "The House early Monday afternoon approved a rule for a bill funding the Department of Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other agencies, over bitter opposition from Democrats who argued that the bill would turn back decades of work to protect the environment. The rule for the bill, H.R. 2584, was passed in a partly-line vote of 205-131."

AP: "Norway's justice minister told reporters Tuesday that employees from his department are still missing after a bombing at government headquarters in Oslo and a shooting spree on a nearby island that killed at least 76. Police plan to start publicly naming the dead for the first time Tuesday."