"Whichever party wins will have within its grasp the power to break th back of the other’s political

[Pirate Smile]

Last edited Mon Oct 15, 2012, 12:42 AM - Edit history (1)

economic macro-strategy."

"Assuming Obama wins reelection, the moment the apple falls in Times Square, the Republican anti-tax crusade will be broken, and with it the pathology that has launched the deficit wars."

November 7th
Though their agendas are hidden, both Romney and Obama have plans to dramatically remake the size and character of American government. Very, very quickly.

By Jonathan Chait

-snip-
Let’s first imagine that, on January 20, Romney takes the oath of office. Of the many secret post-victory plans floating around in the inner circles of the campaigns, the least secret is Romney’s intention to implement Paul Ryan’s budget. The Ryan budget has come to be almost synonymous with the Republican Party agenda, and Romney has embraced it with only slight variations. It would repeal Obamacare, cut income-tax rates, turn Medicare for people under 55 years old into subsidized private insurance, increase defense spending, and cut domestic spending, with especially large cuts for Medicaid, food stamps, and other programs targeted to the very poor.
Few voters understand just how rapidly Romney could achieve this, rewriting the American social compact in one swift stroke. Ryan’s plan has never attracted Democratic support, but it is not designed for bipartisanship. Ryan deliberately built it to circumvent a Senate filibuster, stocking the plan with budget legislation that is allowed, under Senate “budget reconciliation” procedures, to pass with a simple majority. Republicans have been planning the mechanics of the vote for many months, and Republican insiders expect Romney to use reconciliation to pass the bill. Republicans would still need to control 50 votes in the Senate (Ryan, as vice-president, would cast the tiebreaking vote), but if Romney wins the presidency, he’ll likely precipitate a partywide tail wind that would extend to the GOP’s Senate slate.

-snip-
...Obama does have a plan to break the legislative impasse and settle the long-term struggle over the scope of government. It does not rest on the GOP’s coming to its senses and thinking of the national good. The plan is the very opposite of naïve. And he can put it into effect even more quickly than Romney could enact his own plan. Here is how it will happen. On the morning of November 7, a reelected President Obama will do … nothing. For the next 53 days, nothing. And then, on January 1, 2013, we will all awake to a different, substantially more liberal country. The Bush tax cuts will have disappeared, restoring Clinton-era tax rates and flooding government coffers with revenue to fund its current operations for years to come. The military will be facing dire budget cuts that shake the military-industrial complex to its core. It will be a real-world approximation of the old liberal bumper-sticker fantasy in which schools have all the money they require and the Pentagon needs to hold a bake sale. All this can come to pass because, while Obama has spent the last two years surrendering short-term policy concessions, he has been quietly hoarding a fortune in the equivalent of a political trust fund that comes due on the first of the year. At that point, he will reside in a political world he finds at most mildly uncomfortable and the Republicans consider a hellish dystopia. Then he’ll be ready to make a deal.

Leading up to the New Year, there will be a concerted effort to preempt this policy shift, by bringing the two parties together to consummate a version of the endlessly touted (but little-understood) Bowles-Simpson agreement that GOP House members rejected. This is already under way, and is being described in the press as a noble bipartisan effort to avoid something terrible. But it is more accurately understood to be a conservative attempt to avoid a massive shift in leverage in Obama’s favor. Some Democrats get this. (Charles Schumer is one of the few willing to take a hard-ass line against Bowles-Simpson). I also believe that, despite his silence on the matter, Obama gets it, too.

-snip-
The war has been waged with escalating bitterness for more than two decades. Bill Clinton set out to restore the possibility of effective and activist government by bringing the deficit down through a mix of spending restraint and a tax hike on the richest Americans. George W. Bush destroyed the Clinton project, and left behind a government bleeding red ink and starved of revenue. Obama completed the welfare state by finally establishing access to health insurance as a basic right of citizenship. In essence, the main domestic work of the past three presidents—Clinton, Bush, and Obama—is all on the ballot this November. Whichever party wins will have within its grasp the power to break the back of the other’s political-economic macro-strategy. Obama and Romney may like to say they can work their will through agreement and reconciliation with the other party. But the tools that will be at their disposal are too blunt even to ­acknowledge.

http://nymag.com/news/politics/elections-2012/obama-romney-economic-plans-2012-10/

[donco]

1. All the more

reason that the President has to come to the final debates awake this time.

[flamingdem]

3. He won already, there is too much at stake to let the pundits decide this

He won next Tuesday. There is no "draw" or "lose" possible when you're dealing with a sociopath liar like Romney who would destroy our country. Long view.

[freshwest]

13. +1

[freshwest]

2. This is a must win for us. Thanks for posting this, well expressed. Powerful.

[flamingdem]

5. I am so convince that this is it

We lose and we lose everything. The whole country loses everything. I will want to leave. There really is a LOT at stake! We must respect the Founding Fathers and get rid of traitorous Republicans for once and for all.

[freshwest]

8. Many people will be refugees if these people get in.

[flamingdem]

10. It costs money to leave however

so I'll have to find a job in some far away spot!

There I'll idle my time away for four years. Tahiti maybe? As long as they have an internet connection, but I want it to be slow so I can't hang out too much on DU!

[freshwest]

11. Good for you. Millions won't be able to leave. Will be refugees here.

And I wouldn't bother to return in four years as the place will be unrecognizable, in every sense.

[AllyCat]

14. That was my thought. Any possible move out of here would be permanent

This country will be a completely fascist oligarchy if these creeps win.

[freshwest]

18. Think areas of Mexico under the rule of cartels. Not the Zetas, the Koches, etc.

They'd love to play Disaster Capitalism or Shock Doctrine here. They'd have orgasms over the sight of us fighting each other. There is no law in the universe says it can't happen here.

I don't want to spread fear. But I can't ignore the fascism we've already seen in place, the looting of the commons, the collapse through years of attrition by Nordquist Starve the Beast followers in the GOP, weakening all the tools of government and common practice to remove our ability to keep things in balance.

Any revolution people may imagine will occur, will not restore or give anything to the left. The right is ready to fill any vacuum that occurs. This is why I get so furious at the apathetic folks who have bought the both parties are the same. They are not the same, and by disengaging, all the power has gone to the oligarchs.

We only have a working government to protect us from these radical, oppressive bigots if we will get involved. If not, like the people in third world countries, we will eventually be swept aside like garbage. Because that is what these people think of many of us.

We have to win this election. And then not sit back as many did when Obama was elected, as if the work can be done by one person. It can't. The oligarchs always have time and resources on their side and this won't end in 2012 or 2016. They are so powerful we must organize and make a permanent front to survive.

[flamingdem]

23. This is the reality but it's softened

That will end with Mitt. He has Mormonism behind him too. That allows him to lie for "the cause". Sounds pretty fascist to me. The odds are huge, no less that the dismantling of the Republican machine if we can win. Thus, they are desperate and using every dirty trick including the Libya situation.

[defacto7]

17. This is true!

Everything as we know it is at stake. The big one... SCOTUS.

[AndyTiedye]

4. Republicans Will Still Most Likely Control the House Either Way

If Obama wins, but the Republicans continue to control the House, we will have four more years of Teabaggers trying to force their agenda by holding everything else hostage.

If Romney win's we're ƒµ¢ke∂.

[flamingdem]

6. The only silver lining would be

not having to deal with the House Repuke bs! They'd be too busy having a party destroying the country and the safety nets. That's it though.

[theKed]

7. An excellent

thought-provoking, and insightful article. Though lengthy, well worth the read. I know I hadn't really put together all the pieces of the debt-ceiling/fiscal cliff and the Bush-era tax cuts in relation to past, present, and future administrations.

Recommended.

[Pirate Smile]

22. Yeah, it is really good.

[Kolesar]

9. President Obama would give up on a stimulus in 2013

Because the House is batshit crazy. It is amazing that our country could accommodate such a bizarre political party as the Republicans. They are totally dedicated to dysfunction.

Here is the future. Excellent article, btw:

The idea was to turn the Republican coalition against itself. As the clock ticked toward January, doctors, hospitals, and—most especially—defense contractors would be confronted with terrifyingly large reductions in their income stream. Voiding those cuts would require convincing Obama to sign a law undoing them, which he would not do unless the replacement plan met his definition of fairness, which meant including higher tax revenue from the rich. This has had precisely its intended effect. Executives and lobbyists have begun to beseech Republicans to accept a budget deal that includes higher revenue along with lower spending. Republican defense hawks like John McCain and Lindsey Graham have signed a letter calling for a “balanced bipartisan deficit reduction package,” which is Beltway code for a deal mixing taxes and spending.

[Waiting For Everyman]

12. Then by inference this says that beltway insiders believe that Obama will win.

The effort to reach a compromise is "already underway", right? So why would they bother doing that now if Rmoney's going to be elected?

[graham4anything]

16. +1

Mittman and Boy glove are losers.

All polling taking out the bad poll firms (and that count was up to 7 the last I looked on the thread about that), shows Obama has not lost ground in the electoral college

and even the worst of the worst debbie downer aggragates show him still in the lead
therefore it is just about next to mathematically impossible for a Mittman/Glove win.

and the Dems will have 52 to 56 senators and that will be a helleva lot.

The draconian teaparty is going to be heavily repudiated and the house will not obstruct, knowing they have to run in 2014 and when Obama wins (not if, when), their jobs are on the line and the people will have voted.

Obstructionism by the republicantealibertarianparty ends 11/6/2012 when Obama wins reelection, and the republicanlibertarianteasters will have ended their last stand...come 2016 and 2020, with full demographic change (and with immigration reform done in the next 2 years after victory and maybe amnesty/quick citizenship, the south is quickly going to turn blue.
In fact, it will mean all major electoral states will be blue and meaning 400 plus electoral votes each four years for the democrats. (Hope the dems aren't stupid enough to get rid of electoral college at this point.)

IMHO

[keopeli]

15. An informative and insightful article, for those who enjoy reading and knowledge (aka, not republics

[Cosmocat]

19. Bullshit

The republicans and their extremism are NOT going away.

They are meaner now than they were 4 years ago, were meaner then than 8 years ago, and they were pretty darn mean in the 90s.

They keep getting exponentially meaner, exponentially more united, and exponentially more extreme.

They win, and we flat our fucked.

They lose, and they will only work harder at it.

It will take COMMANDING national wins - A democratic president winning 45 states to 5, the senate being 65+ Ds, the House being a massive majority, to have any hope of putting these lunatics down, and that is not happening in our lifetime.

[Pirate Smile]

20. Kick

[Bucky]

21. Ridiculous. If Romney wins, I'll still be against tax cuts. If Obama wins, the nuts will keep nuttin