Screenshot from real life political computer game: "Take Back Illinois"

Well the Monday night deadline for CA politicians to agree on a budget came and went so Schwarzenegger was forced to send out 10,000 layoff notices to state employees.  The reason for the stall?  They were one vote short in the state senate.  California has a very unusual arrangement that requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of congress for a budget to be passed.  And after months and months of negotiations and concessions to republicans (the bill now consists of millions more in spending cuts than tax hikes) they were only able to entice 2 of the necessary 3 GOP senators to support the bill.

So when everyone woke up the next day and 10,000 more Californians were facing unemployment, did any of the senators who had voted against the bill, have second thoughts?  Did they acknowledge in anyway that thousands of CA families would now be suffering (and not to mention on the unemployment and/or welfare roles of the state) because of their posturing?  Nope.  In fact they gave a big raspberry to bi-partisanship and ousted the senate minority leader who helped negotiate the compromise bill.  The reason for these legislators’ ire?  The bill still contains tax hikes.  Literally, many of them will not vote for the legislation if it contains any tax hikes at all.

Unfortunately, CA is facing a 42 billion dollar deficit that absolutely cannot be fixed by spending cuts alone.  Governor Schwarzenegger recognizes this:

“If you think that you can do this budget without any increase in revenues then you have a big math problem because you can’t erase a $42 billion deficit without revenue increases,” Schwarzenegger said. “I hate taxes, but you when you are faced with that kind of reality, that’s what you have to do. We can only solve this problem with additional revenues and with spending cuts.”

We slashed 11 billion from the budget last year and the current budget has 15.2 billion in further spending reductions in the works.  I don’t think we can cut our way to solvency without unconscionably…canceling basic state services.  I respect the small government perspective, I really do, but now is not the time for extremism on this issue!  If the current budget is passed we will experience the largest reduction in the size of CA government in history as far as I’m aware.  Isn’t that enough?

Of course this isn’t only about tax hikes or spending cuts.  Being the holdout gives you great power and awesome negotiating rights.  You can ask for whatever you want while holding the collapse of the state as your ace in the hole.  And the negotiations began today.  Senators are coming forward and saying they’ll vote for the bill if certain conditions are met.  Sen. Abel Maldonado is one of them.  Does he want some substantive change to the bill?  Does he want lower taxes?  Does he have a new idea for streamlining state government? No, he wants two particular amendments added to the state constitution for him. One of which ironically punishes legislators for not meeting budget deadlines.  Now these amendments may or may not be a good idea but that’s not the point.  What’s upsetting is that Sen. Maldonado and others are using this bill as a lever.  They’re holding out on the budget as a legislative technique, a way to exercise disproportionate power.  He’s putting us at risk so he can try to force the legislature’s hand on an unrelated constitutional issue.  These are the political games I’m talking about.

Of course our state legislators are just mimicking their national counterparts.  After massive concessions were built into our federal stimulus bill (30-something% tax relief when anything over 20% is irresponsible in my book) stimulus opponents complained loudly of lack of input until that number was bumped up to 42% in the senate compromise.  This number was very close to the 46% that Rush Limbaugh proposed for America but it still wasn’t enough!  Republicans knew they could hold out indefinitely and concession after concession would have to be made to appease them, while they could accuse the other side of a lack of bi-partisanship.  When it was apparent that the bill would pass they complained even louder.  They could use even more inflammatory rhetoric now because their opposition had no real world consequences.  It just made them more popular with their conservative base.

Many governors are now in a similar position.  The national governors’ association came out strongly in favor of the stimulus bill but as soon as provisions were added to the bill allowing state legislatures to accept the stimulus funding even if the governor opposed it, governors all across the country started speaking against it.  Because they can now appeal to their conservative base, and come off like small government heros, all the while knowing that their state will receive the federal funds it needs regardless of what they say.

Obviously the Right doesn’t have a monopoly on these methods by any means.  I think to some degree its the natural tendency of the minority party to pull these kinds of stunts.  But I guess I had hoped that in these dire times we would pull together at least to some degree (as we did during september of 2001) and refrain from this kind of posturing.  Instead it feels like while Americans are losing their jobs,  legislators are busy playing a political game that uses our livelihood as the pieces and the media as the board.  And as long as tactics like this are alive and well in American politics, bi-partisanship will continue to be a pipe dream.

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One last stimulus post and then I promise I’ll take a break.  I have been utterly amazed at the creative reading skills of stimulus opponents over the last few weeks.  As they say a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth has finished putting its shoes on.  And the four outrageous claims discussed here have been passed around virtually unchallenged for a while now.

ACORN Nuttiness

The idea that there was money for ACORN in the stimulus was first invented by Fox news in the run up to the stimulus debate and its since been parroted by republican legislators including John Boehner and David Vitter.  In reality, of course, ACORN is not mentioned at all in the bill but what worries republicans is that 4.2 billion is set aside for local governments and (gasp) non-profit organizations to help them buy up foreclosed homes, fix them up, and sell them or rent them out.  So the logic goes 1.There is money in the bill for non-profits to buy up homes,   2. ACORN is a non-profit organization that does things vaguely housing related   3. The democrats are trying to sneak money to their buddies at ACORN!!!!!

Lest you think I’m exaggerating here is a quote from Louisiana Republican David Vitter on the subject: ”$4.2 billion dollars would be available to organizations like ACRON for so-called neighborhood revitalization. That’s just political payoff, quite frankly, not in spite of their voter registration fraud activity, really because of it, in my opinion, in terms of support from some of the liberals in Congress.”  … Wow.   That’s quite a conspiracy theory he’s put together there.  Never mind the fact that “ACORN Housing” is an entirely different organization than the ACORN that committed voter fraud, never mind that ACORN housing has never purchased a foreclosed home in its history and has no plans to do so, and never mind that…no liberal politicians benefitted in any way from the poorly conceived voter fraud committed by low-level ACORN employees.  Of course David Vitter and John Boehner know all that, but providing that kind of context would hurt their case.

Field Mouse Fiasco

This one originated with Rep Steve King of Iowa but was also picked up by the illustrious John Boehner, and has been featured on the Drudge report.  It all started with this memo from the house, brought to you via Politifact.com:

“Appropriations Republicans, concerned with this irresponsible process and possible abuse of taxpayer funds, have asked various federal agencies how they intend to spend the windfall of cash that Congress may approve in the ‘stimulus’ bill,” said a memo posted to the site. “One peek behind the bureaucratic curtain has yielded the following examples of hidden program information that isnot included in the language of the bill or report. These are programs which various federal agencies have privately indicated they will fund with ‘stimulus’ money.”

The memo lists a number of projects, including up to $37.5 million for “wetland restoration in the San Francisco Bay Area – including work to protect the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse.”

Basically, unable to find pork in the bill, House republicans decided to ask states and federal agencies what they were planning on using their money for.  On a list of possible projects put forward by CA was this wetland restoration project, a small portion of which focused on protecting this marshy rodent.  Of course with Ms Pelosi being the rep from San Francisco her name was quickly attached to this project as the originator of this trumped up “pork”.  An article yesterday in the Washington Times was headlined ”Pelosi’s mouse slated for $30M slice of cheese.”  and included the blatant falsehood that the stimulus bill, ”includes $30 million for wetlands restoration that the Obama administration intends to spend in the San Francisco Bay Area to protect, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.”

This is really a good example of how many of the “pork” rumors about the stimulus have been invented.  Once again, the creativity evident here is impressive.

Banning Prayer

And of course a great way to get Americans frothing at the mouth is to push the old “democrats are silencing religion” button.  This myth seems to be sole property of South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, perhaps because its so ill-conceived that no one else wants to be associated with it.  Basically the stimulus contains standard boilerplate prohibiting federal funds going to colleges from being used to refurbish “buildings used for religious worship”.  Sen DeMint has (willfully?) misinterpreted this to mean that students would be barred from praying in their dorm rooms.  Of course there’s oodles of Supreme Court precedent that says otherwise and phrases exactly like this one have been included in hundreds of spending bills gone by without the world crashing down.  I think that’s all that needs to be said about that one.

The Stimulus will Override Your Doctors and Kill Your Parents!

Of all the myths surrounding the stimulus bill this one is perhaps most widespread right now, and simultaneously most insane.  The stimulus smartly establishes a “Health Technology Czar” to oversee the much-needed and long-overdue national transition to electronic health records.  There was a bloomberg article posted a few days back (found here) in which the author used a combination of astonishingly poor reading skills and skillful alarmism to claim that the Health Tech Czar would be empowered to review the decisions of all doctors in America, overrule their diagnosis, and enforce efficiency.  I’m not kidding.  Conservative pundits immediately ran with the story, before checking to see if her claims were correct.

Ann Coulter said Health and Human Services “bureaucrats will soon be empowered to overrule your doctor” and “cut off treatments that merely prolong life.” She also claimed, “Doctors who don’t comply with the government’s treatment protocols will be fined.”  Lousiana Republican John Fleming went on Glenn Beck’s show and said the ”health technology czar” will “oversee what procedures doctors are doing and help decide at what point in life they will receive certain treatments and perhaps what treatments are acceptable and not acceptable for payment.”  Beck, disappointingly, didn’t challenge those claims but made this “outrage” the focus of the remainder of his show.  This culminated in an article in the Washington Times two days ago that ran a story about how the stimulus was leading us towards Nazi-Era Eugenics and it featured a large picture of Hitler.   The story has since been picked up by The Drudge Report, Lou Dobbs, Fox News Anchor Bill Hemmer, and Rush Limbaugh.  All this from one little poorly-researched article that nobody bothered to double check.

But the author’s one mistake was that she provided references to the page numbers in the stimulus that “supported” her claims.  While all those pundits were apparently too busy to glance over them, I found five minutes to look them up.  And I would invite you too as well.  I read the indicated pages with curiosity and found them to be very clear in saying nothing of the sort.  All of the Health Tech Czar’s powers related to enforcing adoption of electronic medical records and nothing more.  But I wasn’t the only one.  One of CNN’s medical correspondents had a similar experience:

When challenged the bloomberg author’s reaction was essentially that the wording of the bill may not actually say anything like that but it leaves that possibility open because it doesn’t specifically rule it out.  All the talk of the elderly and sick being euthanized is just extrapolation from the author’s apocalyptic fantasy.  Believe me, if anything like this was going to be happening, the AMA would be going nuts.  Nobody, democrat, republican, or canadian wants to see government dictating healthcare decisions.  Besides, that role is already filled by your friendly neighborhood insurance company.

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I thought these seven minutes were some of the most important of Obama’s speech and they can serve here as a springboard for discussing two important topics.  The first is the issue of partisanship.  I have been thoroughly impressed with Obama’s calm demeanor and mature perspective in regards to bipartisanship.  He has reached out across the aisle in an unprecedented way and he has been repeatedly slapped in the face by congressional republicans.  Yet he doesn’t turn on them, he doesn’t denounce them and give up, he talks about how his efforts are a long-term investment.  And he says he’s going to continue reaching across the aisle because its going to take a long-term investment to change the culture of washington.  That demonstrates humility and maturity that we have long expected of our neighbors and friends but which we, for some reason, have not expected of our politicians for a long time.  

He could easily use recent events to score political points against republicans, blaming the lack of bipartisanship on them, especially in light of all the political points they’ve been scoring on him lately.  But I like to think that he has more confidence in the American people.  He knows we can look at an issue rationally and won’t be deceived by strategist commentaries and media blowhards.  He trusts that we can judge a situation based on facts and long-term results and not on quotes and smears.  In short, he’s taking the high road, the same high road he stuck to during his campaign and that goes a long way in my book.

The second issue he talks about is pork.  I think its hilarious how conservative pundits have been able to redefine the word pork so that they can label this stimulus bill as such.  Or it would be hilarious if…it weren’t such a serious issue, if they weren’t playing political games with our country’s future.   I’ve read the bills (contrary to republican senators’ complaints they are a very quick read) and there is not a single earmark or pet project in the bunch.  Where are the celebrations for that unheard of achievement?  It is completely devoid of pork.  What it has is plenty of useful spending that will smartly inject needed cash into the economy, promote job growth, while pursuing projects that invest in our future.  But many conservatives consider all spending useless and have thus deemed these projects “pork”.  

Now I can see why they are upset about some of these programs, and it can certainly be argued that some of them, while still valuable, should be presented in later bills, but labeling these items “pork” when that word has previously been reserved for earmarks and pet projects is deceptive.  It’s hard to see it as anything but a deliberate effort to falsely characterize the stimulus package in the minds of the American people.  And frighteningly, that effort is succeeding.

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