Econ 101

The Tax Policy Center has a snapshot of the McCain and Obama tax policies, and it's right in line with other estimates, although their language is kind of loaded (1.5% is "significant" but 9.5% is not?)

The Obama plan would reduce taxes for low- and moderate-income families, but raise them significantly for high-bracket taxpayers. By 2012, middle-income taxpayers would see their after-tax income rise by about 5 percent, or nearly $2,200 annually. Those in the top 1 percent would face a $19,000, or 1.5 percent, reduction in after-tax income.

McCain would lift after-tax incomes an average of about 3 percent, or $1,400 annually, for middle-income taxpayers by 2012. But, in sharp contrast to Obama, he would cut taxes for those in the top 1% by more than $125,000, raising their after-tax income an average 9.5 percent [...]

In the July 23 update of its analysis, TPC added a preliminary estimate of the candidates’ health care proposals. Because the campaigns did not provide complete plans, TPC assumed certain details. We conclude that the McCain plan, which would replace the current exclusion for employer-paid premiums with a refundable income tax credit of up to $5000 for anyone
purchasing of health insurance and make other changes to the healthcare system, would increase the deficit by $1.3 trillion over 10 years and modestly trim the number of uninsured. The Obama plan, which would make relatively low-cost insurance available to everyone through non-group pools and subsidize premiums for low- and moderate-income households, would cost $1.6 trillion, but would also cover virtually all children and many currently uninsured adults.

When they say "modestly," they mean pretty much not at all (5% of the uninsured would get coverage).

Of course, almost nobody reads policy white papers. A few more of them read the morning newspaper, and Obama delivered a good summary of his position on Social Security in one, the New Hampshire Union-Leader:

IN THIS country, we have always believed that a lifetime of hard work and honest living should be rewarded with a secure and dignified retirement -- and Social Security is the cornerstone of that social compact. Last week, as we celebrated its anniversary, we reaffirmed our commitment to ensuring that Social Security is a safety net that today's seniors and future generations of Americans can count on [...]

We all know the system isn't perfect -- but it isn't broken. The underlying system is sound and the actual problem, a projected cash shortfall over the next 75 years, is relatively small and can be readily solved. For starters, that means strengthening the program over the long-term by returning to basic fiscal responsibility, so we're not borrowing billions from the Social Security Trust Fund.

But protecting Social Security also means opposing efforts to privatize Social Security, as I did when President Bush proposed risky private accounts a few years ago. Privatization is wrong. It tears at the very fabric of Social Security -- the idea of mutual responsibility -- by subjecting a secure retirement to the whims of the market. The Bush privatization plan that Sen. McCain now embraces would tell 39,000 New Hampshire residents that they're on their own, putting them at risk of falling into poverty and costing each of them more than $235,000 over their lifetimes. That's not what this country is about.

Very good, but not everybody reads the paper. There are media soundbites that kind of swim into the atmosphere that get tossed into the culture stew, like McCain's definition of "rich," (do check out the graph at that link) which Obama picked up on yesterday:

“Which I guess if you’re making $3 million a year, you're middle class,” said Obama, admitting that maybe McCain was joking. But that's reflected in his policies,” Obama continued, “where for people making more than $2.5 million, he's giving folks a $500,000 tax break. And so this is a fundamental difference in this election.”

Great. Whether people pick up on this or not will play out over the next few days. (Tying this to McCain's own fabulous life wouldn't hurt, either.

The basic problem here is that far too many Americans are not disposed to learning about policies, positions, and records of the candidates, and the traditional media is extremely hostile to providing that knowldege. The findings of this poll scare the crap out of me:

Middle-class Americans do know what policies they would like to see enacted. Despite media depictions of a sharp red and blue divide, the nation’s middle class displays broad consensus on a range of public policies aimed at easing their economic squeeze: they support a universal national health insurance plan, requiring employers to provide paid family and medical leave, making it easier for employees to join labor unions and allowing bankruptcy judges to change mortgage payments to keep homes out of foreclosure. A majority of middle-class adults – whether they are Democrats, Republicans, or independents and whether they are supporters of John McCain or Barack Obama for President – believe that these policies represent good ideas for the country. Regardless of party affiliation or presidential preference, these Fearful Families think largely alike.

Yet there is a profound disconnect between the nation’s legislators and their middle-class constituents. (emphasis mine) While two-thirds of respondents say they try to follow what Congress is doing to address their needs at least somewhat closely, most cannot name a single law passed by Congress over the last two years that has benefited their household. Asked about specific pieces of legislation, middle-class adults have a clear sense of what they support or oppose, but generally do not know how their congressional representatives voted on these issues.

Three out of four middle-class adults say they only receive communications from their member of Congress at election time – if they hear from them at all. Middle-class adults have an overwhelmingly negative perception of the job Congress is doing to represent the interests of Fearful Families like their own.

Frightening, to say the very least. But this can be overcome at the Presidential level with the kind of massive ground targeting campaign that the Obama campaign has initiated. That will ultimately be the story of this election, and I plan to begin telling it in the coming days.

Election Eve Musings

Well, tomorrow there IS going to be an election in Iowa, despite the fact that nobody really wants them to make the decision. The Democratic race hasn't been totally clean, with push-polling galore, but on the surface it looks less nasty, and I think we're going to see record turnout, and by "record" I mean 15%.

And the smart money is on Barack Obama winnning, especially now that Jo Biden and Bill Richardson appear to be steering their folks to choose Obama as a second choice. Now, people have their own minds, and so I'm dubious of whether or not these "deals" actually come to pass in all 1,700 or so caucus sites, but in a close race even some of that going Obama's way will help him. And there are other indicators.

With the most recent polls trending in favor of Obama, the pieces really seem to be falling into place for him now. There are those who argue that the pro-Obama polls are based on unrealistic turnout expectations, but I believe the record-smashing amount of resources campaigns have spent in Iowa will make those predictions more or less true. Further, there are very good reasons to believe that, because of the demographics of holiday travel, Obama is doing even better than polls suggest, not worse.

You know, Obama winning by explicitly running to the right of the leading candidates is a little depressing. But overall, it's not like nominating Lieberman. His economic proposals are in general sound, like requiring opt-outs for 401(k) plans, and across-the-board tax cuts rather than these targeted tax credits for this behavior or that. His open government proposals are laudable, and his foreign policy team is probably the best on paper (Samantha Power's presence alone - make her Secretary of State! - gets me excited about an Obama Presidency).

I simply think that Edwards is in a better place on the issues and also on where the country is at right now. He actually drove a lot of policies to the left throughout the campaign season, particularly on domestic issues. Far from being a divisive figure who would bring the US economy crashing down, he just seized the endorsements of 30 leading economists. On foreign policy, this interview with Michael Gordon, a longer version of his front-page NYT story today about Iraq training missions, shows that he's really not a lightweight and has a keen understanding of these matters.

Again let me go back to the bigger picture. The question from my perspective is that I have never believed that there was a military solution in Iraq, don't believe it today. I think the issue is how do you maximize the chances of achieving a political reconciliation between Sunni and Shia because I think that political reconciliation is the foundation for any long-term stability in Iraq. They have now, at this moment, had well over four and a half years to make some serious progress toward a political solution. They have not done it, and so what we have been doing has not worked. It clearly has not worked. And my view is that we need to shift the responsibility to them, make it clear that we are leaving. That is where the eight to ten brigades come from. Then, as aggressively as can reasonably be achieved, to continue a steady redeployment until all combat troops are out in roughly nine to ten months. Now I am not married to that specific timetable. If my military leadership came to me and said we need another month or some additional time, I would certainly take that into consideration what they are saying. But it is my job as commander in chief to set the policy parameters, which is exactly what I was doing.

(You owe it to yourself to read that whole thing.)

One thing that's interesting is how Hillary Clinton has become somewhat marginalized in this conversation. I think Chris Rock summed up a piece of conventional wisdom, something people might think too crass to hear, but it's definitely part of what people are thinking, I'd bet.

“I’ve been with my wife for 10 years now,” he said. “If she got onstage right now, y’all wouldn’t laugh at all.”

But back to Obama and Edwards. It wasn't that long ago that bloggers were calling them "Edwama." So on one level, there's no major difference. But they are opposites in how they see the political world.

Barack Obama and John Edwards are just now having at it, and each is touching distinct themes in the final appeals to Iowa voters. Obama seems more in the tradition of the early-20th-century progressives, middle-class reformers who sought to clean up politics to restore a functioning democracy. Edwards is more in the tradition of the early-20th-century populists, railing at the monied interests that really ran the country.

But Obama is a rather populist progressive, a onetime community organizer who understands the power of organized popular protest. And Edwards is a progressive populist, heir to Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, not William Jennings Bryan or Huey Long.

Time was when the Democratic presidential field would extend from the hawkish Henry Jackson to the dovish George McGovern, neither of whom could count on the other's Democratic supporters in a race against the Republican. These days, the differences dividing the Democrats are far narrower, and the Democrat who wins the party's nod will command nearly consensual Democratic support. The same cannot be said for the Republicans.

That's very true. Progressive populist versus populist progressive. I'm somewhat comfortable with those options. And I want to believe that progressives will have the ability to impact the process whether either of them (or even Clinton) eventually makes it into the White House.

The Terrible Politics of the Iraq Funding Debacle

More than anything, what upsets me about this out and out cave-in from the Democratic leadership on the Iraq bill is how poor they played it politically. If the leadership quickly realized that they didn't have the votes for withdrawal or to sustain a veto for any kind of timeline, and they reasoned that they couldn't be seen as denying the troops money - and they had their minds made up about both of these very early, by February - why not give in early and press the domestic agenda instead of getting everyone's hopes up, only to set a self-imposed deadline of Memorial Day and then cave, in the process derailing the other legislation that was critical to electoral success in 2006? Not only are the headlines tomorrow going to be awful, but they lost MORE, far more than they gained in fighting the President to this point. Consider this, via Steve Soto, who I think is one of the sharpest minds in the business when it comes to things like this:

Both Harry Reid and Steny Hoyer stated the obvious today: that the Democrats don't have a veto-proof majority in either house. Yeah, so? You knew this back in February, as did most everyone else. It was your job and everyone else in the Democratic leadership to fashion a strategy that made the GOP pay a price for rubber-stamping Bush's surge while still pushing your agenda. And you and your Beltway consultants failed. So stop your whining and get back to the drawing board [...]

Instead of shifting the burden onto the GOP leadership for finding the votes for a “no-strings” funding bill back in February, and moving ahead with the Democrats’ domestic agenda, Reid and Pelosi got sucked into a futile battle to change course without the numbers or messaging to force such a change. Now, they both will face a hostile Democratic base over the summer while the GOP leadership quietly works towards a face-saving break with Bush late this year. And all the Democrats have to show for it are declining poll numbers, just like Bush.

The worst part of this was imposing this Memorial Day deadline for no good reason. Bush played it the way he goes on about how the terrorists would play a timeline - he waited the Dems out and they panicked. They should have said "our work is done, sign our bill or round up a majority for your own bill" and forced the minority to whip up the votes to rubber-stamp Bush's war. Instead we did the work for them.

AND, if a deal is reached, it'll be the GOP in Congress who "stopped the war." After all, THEIR benchmarks are what made the final bill. THEIR timeline of September is the working assumption in Washington of when the dynamic will change. How could a self-respecting Democratic Party, politically speaking, give away the ability to end an unpopular war and break with an unpopular President?

The domestic agenda has been lying fallow for months while the leadership played a game of chicken that they knew they weren't about to push to win. And adding the minimum wage bill and those Katrina/farm relief programs to this package was doubly stupid. Most true antiwar progressives, like Feingold, aren't going to support a toothless Iraq bill. So now you've put them all in the outrageous position of having to vote against the minimum wage increase, a cruel little trick designed to keep those who don't want to see "Congressman X voted against the minimum wage" ads in their districts next November. And any benefit from FINALLY enacting one piece of the "100 Hour" agenda will be largely forgotten in the wake of the stories about how the Dems conceded and Bush won.

Here's Soto again:

So, four months of bruises leaves the Democrats with perhaps only a minimum wage increase to show for it. In the hopper and still to come is a trade bill written by K Street, a weakened ethics bill, a cave-in on Medicare Part D reform, and nothing yet on an expansion of the SCHIP or implementing fully the 9/11 Commission recommendations. Yes, they are investigating everything that they should, but they still haven’t started the court challenge over White House rejection of congressional subpoenas.

There was a window of time back in early February when the Democratic leadership had split the GOP caucus with the domestic agenda, and that moment has been lost, a casualty of the war funding debates and the Democratic leadership’s willingness to resume its love affair with corporate cash.

It's enough to make you sick. This Congress was elected solely to challenge Bush on Iraq. The other popular pieces of the domestic agenda were nice side benefits. Now the Congress has delivered neither, and their way forward looks completely muddled. (somebody want to tell me why we're debating a crappy IMMIGRATION bill that nobody likes in the Senate right now, when there's so much of the 100 Hour agenda still unpassed?)

Chris Bowers isn't wrong that we've come a long way in the progressive movement (7 years ago our VP candidate was Joe Lieberman) and that we still need to grow our majority of the majority. But all of that was well-known a while ago. It's the horrible politics of this action that irks me. There was a time when I thought Harry Reid was a decent gambler as a leader. He just folded a straight flush while Bush had aces high. He's failed, and so has Pelosi.