On The Delicate Art Of Negotiation

Last week Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker set out to eliminate collective bargaining for public sector unions to help close the budget deficit. Most of them, at any rate - the ever conservative firefighters and police officers unions got a pass.

Since the measure was ostensibly taken to alleviate fiscal problems, we can only assume that if public sector unions met enough of Walker 's demands to help ensure solvency, he would of course be happy to reach a compromise without massively changing the political status quo. Right

In Wisconsin , Democrats and unions have offered Gov. Scott Walker the benefit concessions he's asked for, but not the end to collective bargaining he's demanded. Thus far, he's said no -- and he's threatened to let a Friday deadline for restructuring the state's debt come and go, at a cost to Wisconsin of more than $160 million, if Democrats don't agree to return and allow the full passage of his proposed law. (Wonkbook, Klein/Matthews)

Curious. It almost seems as though the deficit was never the problem at all, but was just a convenient excuse to annihilate a disagreeable political constituency. What men build up . . .

On Social Security

I can't dig up the Mark Thoma link, but let me second his opinion. There is no Social Security problem in this country. There is a one-time demographic adjustment that normalizes in a few years. Tweak the benefits or make a minor adjustment to funding and it's solvent into the forseeable future.

And yet somehow this has become a reason to slash benefits for the single most effective anti-poverty measure in American history. Well done, everyone. Round of applause.

Graphs coming later.

Free Ain't Free

Yglesias says it best:

. . . Nugent should note something. He worries about [his niece] only in case [she] actually loses her job. If she voluntarily switches to another job, she’s fine. But that’s thanks to a regulation that allows people who maintain continuity of coverage to keep it notwithstanding adverse selection issues. And the only reason Nugent’s niece’s employer offers group health benefits at all is that large insurers receive massive tax subsidies to do so. The health insurance market mostly works for most people most of the time only because it already involves massive government intervention.

Let's put this in perspective: The yearly cost of the employer tax subsidy is $177 billion. It is the single largest expenditure in the tax code.

A free market? Hardly. No more than the Veterans Administration, funded and run directly by the federal government. No more than Medicare, which insures millions. Employer provided health care would not exist without enormous government spending, supported by a thicket of regulations that make sure that you, working in your job, can't be denied coverage.

If you get health care in this country, you do so because the goverment has invested billions to pay for it. Want to see someone free riding on the federal dime? Look in the mirror. Look at a group of people who, having benefited from government subsidies of staggering size, work desperately to deny that right to others.

So what would a free market in health care look like? As Yglesias notes, it's just like insuring a car. You call up an insurer. They ask how sick you are. If you're unlucky enough to have a chronic conditions, your premiums skyrocket. If you're sick enough, they'll simply deny your coverage. That's it. No recourse, no subsidy. It's a nihilistic world out there.

But of course, if your auto insurer charges too much, you can take a bus. It's not so easy not to get sick. But then, thank God for Uncle Sam.

On The Non-Useful Non-Defense Discretionary Spending Cuts

Better late than never: Our thoughts on last week:

Without making too big a fuss over the spending cuts released by the House today, a few quick points.

First, the cuts are brutal and deep, and they are disproportionately brutal and deep for the poorest among us. It costs relatively little to fund nutrition assistance to the needy, but it does enormous good.

But the cuts are hardest on some of the services we need the most. Education, Labor, and HHS: 7.3%. Transportation: 15%. Energy Development: 11.5%. It's a dystopian future the House imagines for us. Reduced investment in education and infrastructure, increased reliance on fossil fuels, kneecapped environmental protections, and an altogether heavier burden of poverty.

Secondly, let no one argue that they don't know the priorities of the Republican House. This is as much a manifesto as a budget authority. Even as they propose to take a hammer to social programs and regulatory authorities, they find room to increase defense spending by 3%. This is a fundamental debate on what the government should be involved in. The House's opinion? Not in helping the poor. Not in educating our children or building our highways. Not in regulating our banks.

Lastly, and most importantly, all of this highlights the uselessness of a non-defense discretionary spending cut. That type of spending is 15% of the federal budget - less, if you discount the Veterans Administration. And from that 15% comes almost everything we identify as government. The FBI. The Department of Education. Transportation grants. Nutrition assistance. Farm subsidies, if that's your thing. And if we cut every single one of these departments in entirety, we'll still be left with a government 85% as large as it is today.

15%? Christ. The DoD will make up that difference in a decade.

In return for that, we'll get a country that, with a degrading infrastructure and handicapped education system, is less able to meet the challenges of the next century. Something that is likely to make our budget problem worse, not better. It's a wonderful deal.

Maybe all of this would be understandable if taxes weren't near the lowest point they've been in history. But they are. Maybe if investors were demanding massive interest rates in return for purchasing government debt. They aren't. Maybe if the actions of the Fed were sparking widespread core inflation and crowding out business investment. But they haven't. This isn't an act of necessity. It's a choice. And it's a choice that speaks volumes of the eagerness and the ethics of the people who make it.

Swing For The Fences

So the House Republicans have sketched their plan to save $40 billion from the budget. It is as awesome as you would expect:

House Republicans sketched their vision for a smaller federal government Wednesday, proposing sharp spending cuts that would wipe out family planning programs, take 4,500 cops off the street and slice 10 percent from a food program that aids pregnant women and their babies. (emphasis added)

Family planning and neonatal nutrition? Because that's what's holding America back. Our dangerous undersupply of malnourished babies.

Can We Stop Referring To It As Record-Breaking These Days?

On an unrelated point, the SMB's very own Seattle Seahawks have crawled despairingly into the playoffs this year. With a stunning 7-9 record.

Now, we are not exactly American football fans, but only the most appalling heathen would fail to support his local sports teams. But what's really galling about the situation is that everyone appears proud of this. "Look at us, chaps," they cry, "We're record breakers!"

Of course you're bloody record breakers. You broke the record of no one ever being as appalling as you but still fluking their way into the playoffs. You are the statistical outlier of failing to improve in any way on the prior year's awful performances, but somehow managing to be rewarded for it by the odd law of fate.

I'm just sayin'.

Can I Mandate That Someone Makes Me A Stiff Drink?

The endless - and endlessly boring - court cases against the individual mandate continue.

We've stayed out of the recent debate (actually, we've stayed out of all recent debates, if our Blogger activity is anything to go by). The "will they, won't they" media vultures circling around SCOTUS are all very tiring - though not as exhausting as several hundred million uninformed plebs in this country suddenly deciding that they are qualified constitutional scholars.

But watching the proceedings has caused us to reflect on everything that has brought us to this point. Curiously, we aren't too worried about losing the fight over the individual mandate. Call us fickle, but after two long years spent defending a health care plan crafted by the Republicans, only to be called fascist murdering commie goat rapists, our enthusiasm has soured.

It is, we admit, a bit odd that no one on the right has kenned to the fact that defeating the individual mandate makes reforming employer health care impossible, on the margins rather increasing the chances for Medicare-for-all. And, one imagines they'll say, for jackbooted socialists to goose-step through the National Mall, if we consider the in-no-way-totally-unreasonable reaction this is likely to excite in Republicans.

Goose-stepping socialists? There we go mixing our metaphors.

But such is life. It's a thankless business. We've yet to get so much as a tip of the hat from Senate Republicans, who've had the enjoyable experience of watching the Democrats pass their health care bill while slandering them every step of the way. I have yet to find a single Republican willing to engage with me on this point. You really should try it sometime. Say, "Isn't this plan the one Bob Dole suggested in the early 90s, and indeed passed by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts?" and they'll wander off on a hazy tangent. I am ever amazed by the human capacity to simply ignore facts that are inconvenient to the argument they're trying to make.

You want to know what the last two years have been like? It's like paying for a fabulously expensive buffet with a friend and having this exchange:

US: Let's have Thai food.

Republicans: No. Thai food is too spicy for us.

Us: Ok. How about Indian?

Republicans: Indian food didn't work for Britain. We want peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches.

Us: Really? We just spent $50 to get in here. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches sounds like a pretty serious misallocation of resources. Can't we eat something better?

Republicans (crossly): No.

Us: For the love of . . . Please.

Republicans: NO!

Us (defeated): Fine. Have it your way. We'll have sandwiches.

Republicans: Sandwiches are socialist.

But of course, it's even worse than that. Because before you can eat your sandwich, you have to attend town hall meetings to defend your sandwich-eating plan while Republicans tell the press that grape jelly creates death panels for old people, and that sandwiches take longer to make in Canada, and of course it's not enough to want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, because first you have to convince a supermajority of your friends to drive down to the buffet so they can help you overturn a Republican filibuster of a procedural motion that would finally allow you to order it from the waiter.

American politics, people. So horrible you really couldn't make it up.