Annoyance With Republicans

No surprise, but a lot of things the Republicans have done lately have annoyed me. Here are a few:

Steve Benen has a A timeline of events listing various things affecting the deficit since 1980. It's clear the Democrats have been more deficit conscious and yet the Republicans continually present themselves as the financially responsible party, and do so successfully!

Matthew Yglesias explains GOP Now Blocking Recess Appointments. The House is going to have short sessions throughout their August recess, which procedurally will keep the Senate in session, which means Obama can't make recess appointments. "I find that my mood around this fluctuates. Mondays and Wednesdays I’m frustrated by lefties who seem to see the unprecedented Republican obstruction the President is dealing with as part of an 11-dimensional chess game through which Obama “really” wants his progressive initiatives to be frustrated at every term. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I think this is the most damning critique of all. In the face of an opposition that’s been relentlessly innovative, the White House has been staggeringly uncreative. Rather than a game of tit-for-tat, the Republicans seem to be inside the administration’s decision loop, heading off their retaliatory options before the President has even exercised them."

The 11 dimensional chess line is a reference to several James Fallows posts, here's one of the latest, Obama as Chess Master: 'Think of Him as Bobby Fischer'.

But wouldn't it be nice if Obama could appoint people to fill the two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board? " One of those seats is vacant because Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) thought an economist with a Nobel Prize wasn’t qualified for the job. The nominee in question withdrew, and Obama hasn’t named anyone else. The second open slot nobody’s ever been nominated for."

Here are three isolated examples of simple mistruths.

Kevin Drum wrote How To Lie With Figures. His congressman John Bayard Taylor Campbell III (R-CA) sent a letter called a Taxpayer's Statement (a good idea) which under revenues included a line "Miscellaneous Receipts" that showed an 86.22% increase from 2009-2010 up to $95,873,000,000. The footnote explains it as "This includes taxes from a variety of places including gaming activity fees, Dept. of Interior fees, Puerto Rico, and other sources." which sounds nasty. Drum looked into it, "The vast bulk of that number, about $75 billion, is profit from the Federal Reserve's investments that have been returned to the Treasury. But even if you read the footnote you wouldn't know that. It just looks like the gummint is sucking up ever more of your money."

Drum also wrote When is a Regulation Not a Regulation?. "I don't remember now where I first saw this, but apparently the conservative community is in an uproar over proposed new rules that would classify farm equipment as commercial vehicles, thus requiring farmers to get commercial drivers licenses, keep detailed logs, submit to periodic drug testing, etc. etc. It would be expensive and annoying and farmers don't like it. Just another example of the overbearing Obama administration regulating us to death."

"So here's what seems to have happened. The FMCSA has long had rules that defined most grain haulage as interstate commerce and designated farmers hauling shared crops as commercial operators. This was never a big deal because they had never enforced those rules and neither had anyone else. But then Illinois decided to start enforcing the letter of the law and Illinois farmers were unhappy. So now FMCSA is asking whether these regulations ever made sense in the first place...But it looks like the outrage over this is yet another example of Obama Derangement Syndrome in action. Far from trying to implement a barrage of regulations on our nation's farmers, FMCSA is apparently trying to stop state officials from implementing a barrage of regulations on our nation's farmers."

Finally, here's Ezra Klein on Why do half of all Americans pay no federal income taxes? which I've heard going around lately. It's usually treated by the right as a negative, which I don't really understand because they want low taxes right? But I guess the issue is that it's the poor that don't pay taxes. And of course big companies like GE.

"A new report (pdf) from the Tax Policy Center breaks it down. In 2011, about 46 percent of households won’t pay income taxes. For about half of them, the standard provisions of the income tax wiped out their liability...For the other half, various tax expenditures wipe out their liabilities. Elderly tax benefits are the biggest player here. They get an extra standard deduction, an exemption for some Social Security benefits, and more. Then come various tax credits for children -- for instance, the Child Tax Credit in the Bush tax cuts -- and the working poor. And then come a lot of smaller credits that you can read about in the paper. "



"Many politicians complain about the number households that don’t pay income taxes. But they complain about them in very general terms. " The then quotes Sen John Cornyn (R-TX) doing so. "Would he repeal the Bush tax cuts? That would bring households benefiting from the expanded Child Tax Credit and the lower marginal rates back into the system. Would he propose that seniors get a smaller standard deduction, or pay taxes on their full Social Security benefit? Would he lower the standard deduction for non-seniors? Would he say that these programs should be conducted through direct spending rather than the tax code, and so the Earned Income Tax Credit will simply send low-income beneficiaries a check rather than first wiping out their tax liability? His statement mentioned tax reform, but it didn’t get into any of these details."