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Do you think Jeb knew what their shirts said when he posed for this picture?

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So how to explain this paradox?

As of November 1 more than 47 million Americans have lost some or all of their food stamp benefits. House Republicans are pushing for further cuts. If the sequester isn’t stopped everything else poor and working-class Americans depend on will be further squeezed.

We’re not talking about a small sliver of America here. Half of all children get food stamps at some point during their childhood. Half of all adults get them sometime between ages 18 and 65. Many employers – including the nation’s largest, Walmart – now pay so little that food stamps are necessary in order to keep food on the family table, and other forms of assistance are required to keep a roof overhead.

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By Neil Irwin, Published: October 31 at 9:30 amE-mail the writer

Source: Congressional Budget Office, Treasury Department

The federal government's 2013 fiscal year ended Sept. 30, though most of us were so busy focusing on the government shutdown that accompanied the new fiscal year that there wasn't much time to reflect on the year that had passed.

Now the Treasury and Office of Management and Budget is out with the final budget results. Surprise! The deficit fell quite a bit in 2013. The federal government took in $680 billion less revenue than it spent, or about 4.1 percent of gross domestic product. In 2012, those numbers were $1.087 trillion and 6.8 percent of GDP. That means the deficit fell a whopping 37 percent in one year.

This is the first sub-$1 trillion and sub-5 percent of GDP deficit since the 2008 fiscal year, which ended the very month that Lehman Brothers fell and a deep crisis set in.

What's behind it?

Most of all, there was more revenue. Government receipts totaled $2.774 trillion, up $325 billion from 2012, and rising to 16.7 percent of GDP from 15.2 percent. That reflects in part a stronger economy that increased income and payroll taxes. It also includes the expiration of a payroll tax holiday that increased tax receipts, and higher rates for upper-income Americans agreed to for this calendar year.

There was less spending, amid the drawdown of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, lower unemployment insurance benefits due to an improving economy, and the enactment government enacted budget cuts called for in the 2011 debt ceiling deal, including the sequestration automatic spending cuts that began in March. Overall outlays were $3.454 trillion, the treasury said, falling $84 billion compared with the 2012 fiscal year. That fall moves government outlays from 22 percent of GDP to 20.8 percent.

It remains true that there are longer-term challenges facing the U.S. government finances, particularly around rising health-care costs. But the reality is that much of the conversation around debt and deficits is missing this basic fact: Deficits are, for now, falling fast. If anything, too fast. Just Wednesday, the Federal Reserve concluded a policy meeting with a statement that asserted, as it has in the past, that "fiscal policy is restraining growth" and that its forecasts are "taking into account the extent of federal fiscal retrenchment over the past year." Independent economists outside the government have reached similar conclusions, and now worry that deficits will fall so fast as to undermine the recovery.

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I AM a genetic Republican.

Five generations of Tafts have served our nation as unwaveringly stalwart Republicans, from Alphonso Taft, who served as attorney general in the late 19th century, through William Howard Taft, who not only was the only person to be both president of the...

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Hundreds of thousands of federal workers were furloughed during the shutdown, but that was just one if the widespread effects of the first shutdown in nearly two decades.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The United States may have dodged an economic catastrophe by raising the debt ceiling and opening the government, but it didn't emerge from the political debacle unscathed.

The 16-day government shutdown took a $24 billion chunk out of the U.S. economy, according to an initial analysis from Standard & Poor's.

As a result, the rating agency projects that the U.S. economy will grow by an annual pace of around 2.4% in the fourth quarter -- as opposed to the roughly 3% growth rate predicted prior to the shutdown.

"Given the size of the economy, it's small. But because it's happening all at once, so quick, so fast, unplanned; it's going to hurt," said Beth Ann Bovino, U.S. chief economist at S&P. "We can absorb it, but it still hurts."

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Americans never learned the right lessons from the 1973 Arab oil embargo.  Now they’re living with the consequences:

http://fam.ag/1fDiAaA

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After two weeks of closed government and a debt-limit freakout, a deal is on the horizonand the GOP has little to show for the crisis caused by its demands.

MOLLY BALLOCT 16 2013, 11:17 AM ETJonathan Ernst/Reuters

With a deal to reopen the government apparently imminent Wednesday, it's worth taking stock of what it was all for—the two and a half weeks without a fully functioning federal government, the nonstop chaos on Capitol Hill, the tiptoeing to the brink of default.

For Republicans, it was basically for nothing.

The GOP will actually get less out of the final deal being brokered than the party would have gotten had House conservatives never staged their revolt on Obamacare. In fact, the drama is likely to end with Republicans ceding policy concessions to Democrats.

Let's review: Had the House passed the "clean" continuing resolution it was offered on September 30, the government would have remained open only until November 15, at the reduced funding levels determined by the "sequestration" cuts imposed by the 2011 debt-limit deal. Republicans still would have had the debt-ceiling deadline Thursday, plus another budget fight on the horizon a month later, as perceived points of leverage. (Democrats insist this leverage is illusory as the White House would refuse to negotiate, but to Republicans, that's what these deadlines are: valuable bargaining chips.)

Instead, the House is poised to pass a measure that funds the government through January 15 and lifts the debt ceiling until February 7—taking the heat off Congress for months and eliminating three pressure points (the September 30 funding expiration, the October 17 debt-ceiling target, and the hypothetical November 15 funding expiration) in one go. The proposed deal negotiated by Senate leaders also would force the two houses to convene a budget committee, something Democrats have been demanding since the Senate passed a budget in March—and conservative Republicans have repeatedly blocked, for fear that any compromise negotiated between the two houses would mean selling out their principles.

The "concession" extracted by the GOP in the deal, the sole change to the health-care law, is purely cosmetic: a reinstatement of the requirement that people seeking subsidies under the Affordable Care Act furnish proof that they qualify. That requirement was in the original law, but the administration delayed it when implementation hit snags in July.

Obamacare will not be repealed. Obamacare will not be defunded. Obamacare will not be delayed. The individual mandate will not be delayed. The medical-device tax will not be repealed. The health-insurance subsidies given to members of Congress and their staffs will not be taken away. 

Democrats will get the government funded at levels they (grudgingly) sought in the first place, for longer than they originally sought, and without the looming threat of default.

So what did Republicans get for shutting down the government for 17 days? Their poll numbers tanked. Their gubernatorial candidate in Virginia appears headed for defeat in next month's election. The business community isrethinking its support. Veterans and the elderly are pissed. And any leverage they ever had to push their goals of reducing the size of government and chipping away at health-care reform is gone.

All in all, it's been a worthwhile exercise for the GOP. 

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This crisis is about nothing other than the Republican Party its radicalization, its stunning lack of leadership and its disregard for the Constitution

The implication by the Republicans that raising the ceiling will enable the government to spend the nation into bankruptcy all the faster is utterly phony, a pseudo-crisis rooted in no real problem, a fraud manufactured and then stage-managed by the GOP to frighten the public and score political points. Indeed, it is the Republican radicals, and not the Democrats, who are threatening to throw the government into immediate bankruptcy unless they get their way over other issues, above all defunding (which means, basically, repealing) Obamacare.

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John McCain took to the Senate floor Tuesday saying they should all be embarrassed over the government shutdown, also slamming the false premise of Obamacare repeal pushed by the GOP.

“Somehow, to think that we are going to repeal Obamacare, which would have required 67 Republican votes, of course, was a false premise, and I think did the American people a great disservice by convincing them that somehow we could.” -John McCain

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — With the Republican-controlled House of Representatives engaged in a tense, government-shuttering budgetary standoff against a Democratic president and Senate, the Republican Party is now viewed favorably by 28% of Americans, down from 38% in September. This is the lowest favorable rating measured for either party since Gallup began asking this question in 1992.

Emphasis added.

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"In a way, this was a repeat of a shell game with retirement finance that had been going on at the federal level since the Reagan years. The supposed impending collapse of Social Security, which actually should be running a surplus of trillions of dollars, is now repeated as a simple truth. But Social Security wouldn't be "collapsing" at all had not three decades of presidents continually burgled the cash in the Social Security trust fund to pay for tax cuts, wars and God knows what else. Same with the alleged insolvencies of state pension programs. The money may not be there, but that's not because the program is unsustainable: It's because bankers and politicians stole the money." - Matt Taibbi

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The US Government Shut Down Because Everything Is Stupid 

At midnight last night, the federal government shut down because Congress couldn’t get its shit together. Explaining that to people from other countries, or Americans who don’t pay attention to the daily grinding and wailing from Washington, DC, is very difficult—when you talk about the shutdown, it’s hard to avoid sounding like a small child trying to communicate the rules of a game that you and your friends invented as you went along.Wait, you realize as you’re launching into an explanation of Ted Cruz’s filibuster, none of this really makes sense, does it?

To recap: Republicans hate Obamacare. Some of them—the hard-right, perpetually angry Tea Party types who are mostly in the House of Representatives—hate it so much that they’re refusing to pass a routine continuing resolution (CR) to fund the federal government’s normal operations unless Obamacare isn’t funded. Since Republicans control the House (and there are enough in the defund-Obamacare caucus for their opinions to really count—we’ll get to that), they can do this if they want. Yesterday, House Republicans continued to pass bills that dismantled parts of Obamacare even though they had no chance of passing the Senate or getting signed by president Obama.

Continue

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Published: February 3, 2013

With enormous struggle, the sluggish economy managed to create 2.2 million jobs last year. But beginning at the end of this month, at least half that amount — more than a million jobs — will start to disappear because of a mindless government austerity program that no one in Washington seems able to stop.

From the armed forces to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, every program except for most safety-net benefits is about to be cut by an arbitrary process known as the sequester, instigated by the 2011 Republican rampage against government. Over the next seven months alone, the cuts will reduce defense spending by $55 billion and nondefense discretionary spending by $27 billion.

The Bipartisan Policy Center, a respected independent group, said at least a million jobs will be lost this year and next because of the slowdown caused by withdrawing so much money from the economy. The Congressional Budget Office says up to 1.4 million jobs are at stake.

This isn’t fortune telling; the effect of the coming sequester was already evident in last week’s announcement that the economy actually contracted during the final quarter of 2012. Much of the decline was directly due to the 22 percent reduction in spending by the Pentagon and military contractors in anticipation of the sequester’s effects.

With the economy teetering on a knife edge, it is clear that this is the worst moment to initiate an indiscriminate budget cut. Government spending at this time can spell the difference between growth and shrinkage. But Republicans are willfully blind to this reality. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Republican, called it a“Keynesian pipe dream” last week, saying that only spending cuts will help the economy.

Congressional Republicans seem perfectly serene about allowing the sequester to take effect in a few weeks, so eager to prove they are budget cutters that they are willing to ignore the coming economic storm. “I think sequester’s going to happen,” said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma. “I think people want it to happen.”

But it was never supposed to happen. The sequester was designed to be so dire that both parties would want to find a better way to reach a budget deal. The incentive for Republicans was the huge cut to defense spending, but an ideologically rigid generation of deficit hawks has shouted down the defense hawks, leaving Democrats with no negotiating partner. Republicans have repeatedly voted to replace the defense cuts with more domestic cuts, but the overall impact on the economy would be the same.

Congress should be thinking about ways to accelerate the economy, instead of remaining preoccupied with a short-term deficit. Nonetheless, the coming job losses could be sharply reduced if half or more of the spending cuts were replaced by revenue increases, as President Obama and Congressional Democrats have demanded. That would lower the amount of spending pulled out of the economy to bring down the deficit, replacing the cuts with taxes from the rich or companies with high cash reserves that are less likely to spend it.

The money could be raised by eliminating tax loopholes for energy companies, hedge fund managers and other high-end recipients of federal largess, but Republicans won’t even consider the idea. “The tax issue is finished, over, completed,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said recently.

In other words, bring on the unemployment. The first jobs to go will be in the defense sector, but the losses will soon spread as contracts to states and cities are cut, education and police grants are cut, and payments to Medicare providers are cut. Even the aid just approved for victims of Hurricane Sandy will fall under the sequester’s ax. Americans are about to find out what happens when an entire political party demands deficit reduction at all costs, because those costs will be enormous.

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We could have fighting, killing over cigarettes if we made it a felony to sell a cigarette or smoke one. So we legalized it. If all you do is try to find a police or military solution to the problem, a lot of people die and it doesn’t solve the problem.

Bill Clinton joins other world leaders to declare the War on Drugs a failure. Read their comments here. (via think-progress)

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Free Congress from the Norquist Pledge (Professor Robert Thurman's Meme)

Professor Thurman thinks the Grover Norquist pledge is a “seditious oath, a treasonous oath,” and he wants to “start a meme” that stirs up the people of this country to give serious thought to what that means. To that end, he has recorded a video that is going viral, presumably because it so well articulates – in his calm, reasoned, but very persistent voice – what is so objectionable about our elected officials swearing an oath to this scruffy man named Norquist who is, ostensibly, holding hostage the GOP congress people he’s blackmailed into acquiescence.

Thurman’s main thesis is that a person cannot hold allegiance to two masters, particularly conflicting masters, and properly serve either. He makes the point by, first, reiterating the oath of office that all Senators and Congressman and women take:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

A noble, historical oath; one that comes, surely, with the expectation of loyalty and a willingness to do what comes with the job. Instead, Thurman points out:

“95% of the congressmen and Republican senators have sworn a written oath to someone called Grover Norquist and an organization called American For Tax Reform; that they will under no circumstances, and for no reason, raise taxes of any kind on anyone. And therefore they have taken an oath to an outside organization which is notsupported by the U.S. Constitution – which gives Congress the right to levy taxes, to do the work of the people through the government –but this is a non governmental organization, not elected by anybody and supported by big money people who are making money by not having to pay taxes.

“And these people have signed a sworn oath that contradicts their oath of office. And therefore, in fact, they do have mental reservations, and they do have purpose of evasion and they are not sincerely taking their oath of office. And if they persist in that, and if they are held to that by this outside person who is not a member of the government, then they are, in fact, breaking their oath of office and they are not serving what they swore to serve the American people.”

Most would find this a compelling enough argument against the Pledge, but also consider the mission statement of Americans for Tax Reform, who, like many conservatives, see their mission as “starving the beast,” in reference to the government. Norquist himself has stated:

“I’m not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Thurman takes issue with that verbiage, the implication of destroying the government. He suggests that people expressing fealty to Norquist are, in essence, agreeing to a kind of “anarchist” proposition; agreeing, by virtue of loyalty to Norquist, that the government is essentially useless and should be starved, destroyed. And that, he believes, is where the line is crossed:

It’s actually a kind of seditious oath, a treasonous oath. People who take that oath cannot actually serve in the government with good conscience, because their real role is to act as a mole to destroy the government; they are “starving the beast.”

As for the “beast” reference? Whether you translate that literally or figuratively, given the religious fundamentalism of many conservatives and most in the Tea Party, Thurman believes it’s not coincidental. He points out that, in the Bible’s Book of Revelations, the Beast refers to Satan, which would imply that Norquist and the uber-conservative movement equate the government with Satan. Again, take it literally or not; either way, as Thurman puts it, it’s “a very negative way of depicting the U.S. government.”

In the concluding section of his video, Thurman earnestly – and “lovingly,” as he puts it – makes the point that those who’ve been elected to office have an obligation to their constituents who elected them and to the government they serve; if they cannot compromise because they’ve signed a pledge to an outside party who has not been elected and is not a part of the government, then they are operating with a serious and actionable conflict of interest…and that is grounds for impeachment. They are “unfit for office.”

That is the meme he wants to convey, he wants it “spread around,” and by writing about it here, I’m doing just that. Because I believe his points are well taken and deserve thoughtful and serious consideration by any American who is confused by the greater conversation about the economy, and concerned by the segment of our elected officials who appear to be loyal to a master who is neither their constituency nor their government. I share Professor Thurman’s sense that this is unacceptable, and, as he says:

“…they must, as a single body, reject their oath to Grover Norquist, renounce that oath in order to retake their oath of office; sincerely, without mental reservation, and without purpose of evasion; which is what they must do to be reinstated in our good graces, the people of the United States, of whom they are the employee.”