为 Tea Party 的胜利而欢呼！

Whigs

虽然，这次削减政府开支，减少财政赤字的协议，远没有把日益恶化的美国财政危及从错误的轨迹上纠正回来。但是，Tea Party的强音已经改变了华盛顿惯常的思维习惯，为国运之扭转，迈出了积极的一小步。

可喜可嘉。下面，特引几篇社评，综述此次Tea Party 胜利的历史意义。

marquis

........看标题, 我还以为Tea party 赢了呢..

Whigs

A Tea Party Triumph
The debt deal is a rare bipartisan victory for the forces of smaller government.

If a good political compromise is one that has something for everyone to hate, then last night's bipartisan debt-ceiling deal is a triumph. The bargain is nonetheless better than what seemed achievable in recent days, especially given the revolt of some GOP conservatives that gave the White House and Democrats more political leverage.
***

The big picture is that the deal is a victory for the cause of smaller government, arguably the biggest since welfare reform in 1996. Most bipartisan budget deals trade tax increases that are immediate for spending cuts that turn out to be fictional. This one includes no immediate tax increases, despite President Obama's demand as recently as last Monday. The immediate spending cuts are real, if smaller than we'd prefer, and the longer-term cuts could be real if Republicans hold Congress and continue to enforce the deal's spending caps.

The framework (we haven't seen all the details) calls for an initial step of some $900 billion in domestic discretionary cuts over 10 years from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline puffed up by recent spending. If the cuts hold, this would go some way to erasing the fiscal damage from the Obama-Nancy Pelosi stimulus. This is no small achievement considering that Republicans control neither the Senate nor the White House, and it underscores how much the GOP victory in November has reshaped the U.S. fiscal debate.

No wonder liberals are howling. They have come to believe in the upward spending ratchet, under which all spending increases are permanent. Not any more.

The second phase of the deal is less clear cut, though it also could turn out to shrink Leviathan. Party leaders in both houses of Congress will each appoint three Members to a special committee that will recommend another round of deficit reduction of between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion, also over 10 years. Their mandate is broad, and we're told very little is off the table, but at least seven of the 12 Members would have to agree on a package to force an up-or-down vote in Congress.

If the committee can't agree on enough deficit reduction, then automatic spending cuts would ensue to make up the difference to reach the $1.2 trillion minimum deficit-reduction target. One key point is that the committee's failure to agree would not automatically "trigger" (in Beltway parlance) revenue increases, as the White House was insisting on as recently as this weekend. That would have guaranteed that Democrats would never agree to enough cuts, and Republicans were right to resist.

Instead the automatic cuts would be divided equally between defense and nondefense. So, for example, if the committee agrees to deficit reduction of only $600 billion, then another $300 billion would be cut automatically from defense and domestic accounts (excluding Medicare beneficiaries) to reach at least $1.2 trillion.

This trigger is intended to be an incentive for committee Members of both parties to agree on more cuts, but defense cuts of this magnitude would do far more harm to national security than they would to domestic accounts that have been fattened by stimulus. This is the worst part of the deal, and Mr. Obama's political goal will be to press Republicans to choose between tax increases and destructive defense cuts. The GOP will have to fight back and make the choice between domestic cuts and harm to our troops fighting multiple wars.

While the "trigger" includes no revenue increases, the committee itself could agree to raise taxes to meet the $1.2 trillion deficit reduction target. This means GOP leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have to be especially careful in their choice of appointees. No one from the Senate Gang of Six, who proposed tax increases, need apply. The GOP choices should start with Arizona Senator Jon Kyl and House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, adding four others who will follow their lead.

One reason to think tax increases are unlikely, however, is that the 12-Member committee will operate from CBO's baseline that assumes that the Bush tax rates expire in 2013. CBO assumes that taxes will rise by $3.5 trillion over the next decade, including huge increases for middle-class earners. Since any elimination of those tax increases would increase the deficit under CBO's math, the strong incentive for the Members will be to avoid the tax issue. This increases the political incentive for deficit reduction to come from spending cuts.

Mr. Obama's biggest gain in the deal is that he gets his highest priority of not having to repeat this debt-limit fight again before the 2012 election. The deal stipulates that the debt ceiling will rise automatically by $900 billion this year, and at least $1.2 trillion next year, unless two-thirds of Congress disapproves it. Congress will not do so.

Given how much the current debate has damaged the public perception of Mr. Obama's leadership, this will be a relief at the White House. This is part of the negotiating price that Mr. Boehner had to pay because of the back-bench revolt that showed he couldn't guarantee a debt-limit increase with only GOP votes. This gave Democrats more leverage.
***

The same supposedly conservative Republicans and their talk radio minders may denounce this deal as a sellout, but we'll be charitable and assume they've climbed so far out on the political ledge they don't know how to climb back without admitting they were wrong. They're right that this deal doesn't "solve" our fiscal crisis, but no such deal is possible as long as liberals run the Senate and White House.

The debt ceiling is a political hostage the GOP could never afford to shoot, and this deal is about the best Republicans could have hoped for given that the limit had to be raised. The Jim DeMint-Michele Bachmann-Sean Hannity alternative of refusing to raise the debt limit without a balanced-budget amendment and betting that Mr. Obama would get all the blame vanishes upon contact with any thought. Sooner or later the GOP had to give up the hostage.

The tea partiers pride themselves on adhering to the Constitution, which was intended to make political change difficult. Yet in this deal they've forced both parties to make the biggest spending cuts in 15 years, with more cuts likely next year. The U.S. is engaged in an epic debate over the size and scope of government that will play out over several years, and the most important battle comes in the election of 2012.

Tea partiers will do more for their cause by applauding this victory and working toward the next, rather than diminishing what they've accomplished because it didn't solve every fiscal problem in one impossible swoop.

Whigs

Liberal Debt Deal Revolt

Liberals are furious with President Obama for agreeing to the debt ceiling deal with Republicans.

By STEPHEN MOORE

Liberals are furious with President Obama for agreeing to the debt ceiling deal with Republicans. The deal would cut about $900 billion in spending over the next 10 years automatically, and as much $1.5 trillion more through a special committee's recommendations later in the year. The House and Senate are expected to vote on the plan today.

The Washington Post today quoted a senior Senate Democratic aide saying that "when you look at the emerging details, spending cuts and triggers with no revenue, the president got rolled." The Post also quoted Jared Bernstein, a former Obama administration economist and one of the architects of the $830 billion stimulus plan, as saying that the debt-ceiling plan is not balanced "by any stretch of the imagination."

CNN called the package "a real victory for the tea party," and that is what has left-wing groups irate. The AFL-CIO and other pro-spending groups had insisted that tax hikes on oil companies and wealthy individuals be part of any compromise. The final deal has no tax increases, though it would allow for new revenues through tax reform.

Liberal economists such as Cornell's Robert Frank had been arguing that the "spending problem is too little, not too much." He believes the debt package is a job killer because "cutting spending now would make the downturn worse." Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin labeled the budget pact "the final interment of John Maynard Keynes." That would be quite an accomplishment if he's right.

Liberal columnist Robert Kuttner said that President Obama lacks the "toughness" to stand up to Republicans. "There needs to be a left alternative" to the tea party movement, he wrote in response to the deal. "And the Democratic Party base needs to make it clear that Obama cannot take their support for granted, and that deals such as this one will lead activists to work to elect House and Senate progressives."

Some conservative and tea party Republicans may not be happy that they didn't get all they wanted. But to appreciate how much they did win, just observe the revolt on the left.

Whigs

Fine! Call My Bluff!
Obama maximizes his losses by going all in on a weak hand.

By JAMES TARANTO

Remember a few weeks ago when President Obama reportedly said to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor: "Eric, don't call my bluff"? Lots of commentators said that this was a "tell"--that by referring to "my bluff," Obama was admitting he was bluffing.

Actually, his play was even worse than that. A bluff is a pretense. The bluffer knows he has a weak hand but bets as if he has a strong one in order to induce his opponents to fold. Obama had a weak hand but thought he had a strong one. His next words to Cantor, according to Politico, were a vow to "take his case 'to the American people.' " He actually believed--for all we know, he still believes--all that World's Greatest Orator nonsense.

Thus he ended up maximizing his losses. Last weekend congressional leaders appeared to be on the verge of striking a deal, but Obama scuttled their efforts and commandeered the airwaves for a prime-time address. As we predicted, the American people were unmoved.

Obama had looked at his cards and seen that he was holding a 2, a 3, a 4 and a 5. He was sure he had an ace to complete the straight, but in reality he was looking in the mirror. By the time he realized how weak his hand was, there was no time left to improve it or to bluff. Faced with an imminent liquidity crisis--which would have been a political disaster for him as well as an economic one for the country--he was forced to agree to a deal more or less along Republican lines.

From the standpoint of a small-government conservative, the agreement is far from perfect, but it's probably the best possible outcome as long as a left-wing Democrat is in the White House and his party has a Senate majority. One measure of that is the rage it has provoked on the liberal left.

A New York Times editorial calls the deal "a nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists. . . . This episode demonstrates the effectiveness of extortion. Reasonable people are forced to give in to those willing to endanger the national interest." Haha, remember "civility"?

Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman is even huffier: "By demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, [the deal] will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status. . . . What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question."

Roars Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect: "The United States has been rendered ungovernable except on the extortionate terms of the far-right. For the first time in modern history, one of the two major parties is in the hands of a faction so extreme that it is willing to destroy the economy if it doesn't get its way. And the Tea Party Republicans have a perfect foil in President Barack Obama."

And, as Roll Call reports, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, the Kansas City, Mo., Democrat, "said early reports of the new deal appeared to be 'a sugar-coated Satan sandwich.' " Hey, it's better than peas!

It was left to the cynically detached Maureen Dowd, of all people, to say something with a grain of truth:

    Consider what the towel-snapping Tea Party crazies have already accomplished. They've changed the entire discussion. They've neutralized the White House. They've whipped their leadership into submission. They've taken taxes and revenues off the table. They've withered the stock and bond markets. They've made journalists speak to them as though they're John Calhoun and Alexander Hamilton.

    Obama and [Speaker] John Boehner have been completely outplayed by the "hobbits," as The Wall Street Journal and John McCain called them.

    What if this is all a cruel joke on us? What if the people who hate government are good at it and the people who love government are bad at it?

Dowd is right about the Tea Party's achievement. She is wrong (and thinking wishfully) to suggest that the Tea Partiers and Boehner have a fundamentally adversarial relationship. True, last Thursday they were at cross-purposes over tactics, and it was quite possible that the impasse would end up wrecking the GOP's negotiating position. That it did not is testimony to the effectiveness of Boehner's leadership.

But let's ponder Dowd's interesting speculation that "the people who hate government are good at it and the people who love government are bad at it." Surely this is not a timeless truth. It was not the case in the 1930s or the 1960s. Or even in the 1990s: Bill Clinton's early setbacks notwithstanding, he proved a much more effective political leader than Newt Gingrich.

Times have changed. In the 1930s, government was small. Expanding it massively in order to solve problems might or might not have been a good idea, but there's no denying it was innovative. Today government is sclerotic. Those who believe more government is the solution to America's problems are at best unthinking reactionaries. The Tea Partiers, having clearly identified this problem, are today's true progressives (to employ the term in its literal rather than ideological sense).

They are not, however, "good at government"--or, more precisely, at politics. Their purism cost the GOP as many as three Senate seats last year, and if a competent Democrat were in the White House, it probably would be helping him to re-election right now. The experience of 1995-96 is instructive here. Gingrich had the Tea Party's worst qualities: grandiosity and impatience. He was no match for a president who knew how to play the game.

Today's Republican House has two great strengths that Gingrich's lacked. One is the Tea Party's clarity of purpose. But the other is experienced leadership. Gingrich was highly effective in the minority--an Alinskyite community organizer, if you will, taking on entrenched power by exposing its weakness and corruption. Neither he nor any member of his caucus had ever served in the majority. Between them, Boehner and Cantor alone have 18 years in the majority.

Contrast that to Barack Obama. In addition to a left-liberal ideology that is decades out of date and a Gingrich-size ego, he came to the presidency with virtually no relevant experience. True, he has the "mainstream" media on his side, but that almost certainly hurts him more than it helps. Their flattering but false narratives--he was the "adult in the room," polls clearly showed the American people were on his side--likely encouraged him to mistake his weaknesses for strengths.

There is a danger now that Republicans will fall into the trap of overconfidence. Sarah Palin posted a Facebook note a week and a half ago declaring Obama a "lame duck president." But in the 15 months and five days before he can actually earn that designation, there will be other battles. It is not inconceivable that Obama will fight them more effectively, having learned some lessons from his failure in this one.

Speaking on the House floor Saturday, Politico reports, silly Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi invoked "Star Wars," declaring that Boehner "chose to go to the dark side." The Tea Partiers could do worse than to follow a bit of counsel from that classic movie: "Great, kid. Don't get cocky."

chickencoop

Tea party is still a joke until they can make find a president among themselves

Whigs

chickencoop 发表于 2011-8-1 18:23
Tea party is still a joke until they can make find a president among themselves

A little spark sets the prairie ablaze！

chickencoop

Whigs 发表于 2011-8-1 18:29
A little spark sets the prairie ablaze！

xiaochong

spending cut is good but with bad timing

Whigs

    STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY

    S. 365 – Budget Control Act of 2011

     The Administration strongly supports enactment of the Budget Control Act of 2011.  It is imperative that the United States not default on the Nation’s obligations, that the full faith and credit of the United States be preserved, and that the Nation’s fiscal house be put in order.  The bill would increase the debt ceiling to a level that will be sufficient for the Nation to meet its obligations through the beginning of 2013, while providing both a significant down payment on deficit reduction and a means to reduce the deficit further through a balanced approach that allows both for cutting spending and for addressing revenues by eliminating tax subsidies or through comprehensive tax reform.  If the bill were presented to the President, he would sign it.

ppteam

Tea party sucks, I mean palin?

ByStander

楼主肯定是相当有钱的人。自从茶党代表PAUL RYAN提出了他那著名的削减赤字方案以后，我一直以为只有两种人会支持茶党--数数不超过20的红脖儿或者是非常有钱的人。能认汉字的显然不是红脖。所以楼主必定是非常有钱的人。胡同真是藏龙卧虎啊，象楼主这么有钱的人居然也是胡同邻居

MtlJaysFan

Funny how the Democrats are trying hard to paint the Tea Party as 'extremes'

Whigs

回复 ByStander 的帖子

Tea Party Profile Emerges From Poll
Thursday, April 15, 2010
By Jim, posted in Politics



A New York Times/CBS News poll found that the 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.

The nationwide telephone poll was conducted April 5 through April 12 with 1,580 adults.  A  comprehensive profile of Tea Party Supporters emerges from the poll.

The following is a summary of the results:

•  Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public.

•  Most send their children to public schools.

•  They hold the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites.

•  They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.”

•  Their fierce animosity toward Washington, and the president in particular, is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country.

•  The overwhelming majority of supporters say Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves.

•  They are more likely to classify themselves as “angry.” Asked what they are angry about, Tea Party supporters offered three main concerns: the recent health care overhaul, government spending and a feeling that their opinions are not represented in Washington.

•  Despite their push for smaller government, they think that Social Security and Medicare are worth the cost to taxpayers.

•  Like most Americans, they think the most pressing problems facing the country today are the economy and jobs.

•  The largest number of respondents said that the movement’s goal should be reducing the size of government, more than cutting the budget deficit or lowering taxes.

•  A plurality do not think Sarah Palin is qualified to be president.

•  They do not want a third party and say they usually or almost always vote Republican.

Whigs

More on Tea Party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement

The Tea Party movement (TPM) is an American populist[1][2][3] political movement that is generally recognized as conservative and libertarian,[4][5] and has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009.[6][7][8] It endorses reduced government spending,[9][10] opposition to taxation in varying degrees,[10] reduction of the national debt and federal budget deficit,[9] and adherence to an originalist interpretation of the United States Constitution.[11]

The name "Tea Party" is a reference to the Boston Tea Party, a protest by colonists who objected to a British tax on tea in 1773 and demonstrated by dumping British tea taken from docked ships into the harbor.[12] Some commentators have referred to the Tea in "Tea Party" as the backronym "Taxed Enough Already".[13][14]

The Tea Party movement has caucuses in the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States.[15] The Tea Party movement has no central leadership but is composed of a loose affiliation of national and local groups that determine their own platforms and agendas. The Tea Party movement has been cited as an example of grassroots political activity, although it has also been cited as an example of astroturfing.[16]

The Tea Party's most noted national figures include Republican politicians such as Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Dick Armey, and Ron Paul, with Paul described as the "intellectual grandfather" of the movement.[17][18] Though the Tea Party movement is not, as of 2011, a national political party, polls show that most Tea Partiers consider themselves to be Republicans[19][20] and it has tended to endorse Republican candidates.[21] Commentators including Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport have suggested that the movement is not a new political group but simply a rebranding of traditional Republican candidates and policies.[19][22][23] An October 2010 Washington Post canvass of local Tea Party organizers found 87% saying "dissatisfaction with mainstream Republican Party leaders" was "an important factor in the support the group has received so far".[24]

MtlJaysFan

And refreshing to see some people stick to their principals, 'cut spending 7 no tax increases'

chickencoop

ppteam 发表于 2011-8-1 19:07
Tea party sucks, I mean palin?

As long as tea party supports people like Palin and Bachmann, it sucks?

Whigs

chickencoop 发表于 2011-8-1 19:40
As long as tea party supports people like Palin and Bachmann, it sucks?

Why the tongues of Tea Party are women? It puzzles me a lot...

In fact,  a typical Tea Party figure is more  or less like Senator Scott Brown

ppteam

回复 chickencoop 的帖子

yes.

ByStander

Whigs 发表于 2011-8-1 19:36
回复 ByStander 的帖子

Tea Party Profile Emerges From Poll

切，你这是RYAN的方案出来以前搞的吧？自从RYAN抛出他那著名的方案之后，55岁以下有脑子的就没有几个支持茶党了。至少我们公司里的几个原来号称是铁杆茶党的不再说自己支持了。因为他们突然发现，自己还没挣够退休以后的医药费呢