Mark Schmitt

1-800-GET-A-CLUE

I read this astonishing article from the Salt Lake Tribune twice, and only on a second reading did I realize the essential absurdity of it.

This is the article, which you may have seen already, about 1,000 highly trained search-and-rescure firefighters who left their homes to volunteer in the Gulf, and found themselves instead sitting in hotel in Atlanta for two days being trained to be "community relations workers" for FEMA, a job which would consist exclusively of handing out fliers with the phone number 1-800-621-FEMA.

Fortunately, 150 of them were suddenly rushed onto planes to get to New Orleans, where they were pressed into service as a backdrop for a Bush photo op.

"There are all of these guys with all of this training and we're sending them out to hand out a phone number," an Oregon firefighter said. "They [the hurricane victims] are screaming for help and this day [of FEMA training] was a waste."

It's all too much to believe -- the wasted days, the misuse of skilled volunteers, the photo-op. But then I realized the most ridiculous thing of all:  NOBODY IN NEW ORLEANS HAS A WORKING TELEPHONE YET!

I'm sure those brochures will be very helpful, though, once everything's back to normal.

Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter

For almost as long as I can remember, the presidency of Jimmy Carter has been the emblem of managerial incompetence in the White House. Republicans ran on this mantra for decades after the Carter presidency had ended. I vaguely remember one Republican presidential candidate -- it was probably Bob Dole, from the sound of it -- who just had a substanceless little chant in his speeches of "Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter Democrats." He didn't need to say more.

And of course Democrats equally accept the spin that Carter, for all his personal grace and intelligence and moral commitment, was a disastrously incompetent executive. The conventional wisdom that he is a better ex- than president is of course just another way of saying that he's better when he has no actual responsibilities. When was the last time a Democrat defended Carter's presidency?

But what's actually the case against Carter? Journeying through my drug-addled memory banks, back to my mid-teens, I remember two helicopters crashing in the desert in Iran, in an overambitious effort to rescue the hostages. I recall that he couldn't get inflation under control -- but then neither could his Republican predecessors, and it was Carter who appointed Paul Volcker to the Fed, and Volcker who finally applied the medicine. (And it's interesting to note that most analyses of economic well-being, hourly wages, household income, manufacturing, etc., use 1979 as a benchmark, because the Carter era was the high point before a long period of decline in those measures.) There was some weird business about micromanaging the White House tennis court schedule. And there was the "malaise" speech, except that he didn't really use the word malaise, but apparently failed to show the requisite Reaganesque optimism. There was also some mismanagement of the relationship with the Congressional barons of the time, a couple of small-town scandals, and some in-fighting in the cabinet.

So that's the case against Carter, on competence. How does that stack up against: The loss of a major American city and tens of thousands of lives due to failure to prepare? A war of choice based on false intelligence that's rapidly turning into a quagmire? A fiscal surplus turned into a deficit in the $300-$400 billion range? Making a wreck of Medicare? A botched attempt to eliminate Social Security? Allowing some of your top aides to deliberately reveal the identity of a CIA agent for political purposes?

I look forward to the day, and it will come, when the mere chant, "George Bush Republicans" will convey everything that needs to be said about this wretched era.

Still Feeling No Pain

(cross-posted at tpmcafe.com. Usually there are more comments there.)

From today's Congress Daily:

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina is making GOP leaders think twice about moving ahead with a $34.7 billion [reconciliation] package of entitlement spending cuts outlined by the FY06 budget resolution, according to congressional aides and lobbyists. Democrats are hammering Republicans over he prospect of cuts in social programs while hundreds of thousands remain homeless....

More likely to proceed as planned is a $70 billion tax-cut reconciliation package -- due Sept. 23 -- as GOP leaders aim to salvage some of their campaign promises despite Katrina's wreckage.

In other words, the Republican game of separating tax cuts from their consequences in spending cuts will go on unabated.

But for those who need a quick refresher in congressional budget arcana (and that is, everyone), reconciliation is a special procedure used to bring taxes and spending in line with a budget plan. Strict time limits and limits on amendments apply to a reconciliation bill, so it cannot be filibustered, debate is tightly constrained and many amendments are not allowed. (For example, on any other bill, a senator could force a vote on an amendment to raise the minimum wage; not on reconcilation.) It is the only opportunity for the raw exercise of power by a party in narrow control of both houses and the White House. But reconcliation packages used to be infrequent, usually one once every three or four years. And until this year, they have always consisted of a single package of spending and tax changes. Never before this year have the spending and tax portions of a budget reconciliation been presented as two separate reconciliation packages. Doing so allows tax cuts to be treated in isolation from the spending cuts that they will make necessary, now or in the future.

In July, in The American Prospect, I predicted that the separation would allow Republicans to claim cheap credit for voting against Medicaid cuts, while still voting against the tax cuts that make those cuts necessary. And I predicted that the spending cuts might even disappear. I argued that the lesson Bush would take from the failure on Social Security was never, ever again to let connect the cuts or pain of the policies to their benefits. Keep it separate, always -- it's what worked for four years, and they only dropped the ball with Social Security.

And, of course Democrats and public interest lobbyists fall for it every time, saluting the defeat or shelving of Medicaid cuts as if something important had been accomplished, and the Washington Post editorial pages hands out medals for courage to the Republicans who speak up for Medicaid. But nothing has been accomplished. Another $70 billion in tax cuts is another $70 billion in Medicaid cuts and FEMA cuts and education cuts, period. Unless we have a massive increase in revenues, from 17% or so of gross domestic product to significantly above the postwar peak of 21.4% of GDP, we're going to face serious Medicaid and Medicare cuts anyway, because of demographics and health inflation. (Or, totally revamp the health system.) More tax cuts make those inevitable cuts even deeper and more painful.

And while we're on the budget issues, Stan Collender of the National Journal, in a subscriber-only column, predicts, "Hurricane Katrina will end up increasing the federal budget deficit by about $100 billion in fiscal 2006." He's basing that on assumptions of another $30-$40 billion in emergency assistance, the beginning of the rebuilding, aid that will be demanded by industries affected by the disaster, increased energy costs to the federal government, the cost of replacing oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and possible tax forgiveness to those directly affected. Collender knows what he's talking about, so this is probably as good an estimate as you can get right now. So that's $70 billion more in tax cuts in the face of a deficit that will substantially exceed $400 billion. Absolutely shameful.

The Will 2 Believe

Kevin Drum expressed some amazement today at the fact that the ABC News poll puts Bush's approval for handling of Katrina at 46%, vs. 47% disapproval. As Kevin says, "Even if you're a more forgiving sort than I am, what exactly has he done that deserves approval?"

True. But there's a factor here that I think is always neglected in these polls: There's always a thin line between what we believe and what we wish to be true, or need to believe to be true. Unless you've given up completely on the Bush presidency, you naturally want to think the president and the government are doing the best job they can do with the disaster, because to believe otherwise is kind of terrifying. After Sept. 11, Bush's ratings went sky-high not so much because he did anything particularly distinctive in response, but simply because you have no choice but to trust the president under such circumstances. Similarly, especially if your own family is affected by the war in Iraq, you have to believe that the president is making the right choices and started the war on the best intelligence and on honestly held beliefs. It's simply a fact of human nature that people have an easier time believing the thing that makes them feel a little more comfortable and secure in their previous assumptions and their trust.

Jon Stewart put it well in his interview with Christopher Hitchens, when Hitchens obnoxiously asked if Stewart was really saying that he was "on the President's side," responding, "No, I need to believe that the president is on my side."

And that's a fact about public opinion that I believe Bush and Rove understand better than anyone. Whether they learned it only after Sept. 11, or knew it all along (the interview with fired Bush ghostwriter Mickey Herskowitz that came out right before the election suggests that Bush had an early instinct that what he calls "political capital" could be created not just by persuasion, but by creating extreme situations -- notably war -- in which people essentially have no choice but to defer their trust to the president), they know it now.

And this is part of the story of the Bush presidency: at each point they have created situations in which to believe the worst about the president requires a difficult and unsettling surrender of your own assumptions and sense of security. It's easy and comfortable to believe that the president gets blowjobs from interns, and even to get comfortably outraged about it. But it's much more difficult to accept that he would lead us into war on false pretenses, or countenance the betrayal of a covert agent for political gain, or treat the federal disaster management agency as a "turkey farm" for cronies of cronies who washed out at their previous trivial jobs, or ignore warnings of a terrorist threat, or...

That's also part of the disconnect or polarization in American politics. Those of us who at some point crossed over the river -- we've come to grips with the fact that our lives and our assumptions are in some degree of peril because of the president, in a way that we never felt about Nixon, Reagan or Bush I -- will believe anything, and have trouble understanding those who haven't crossed over, who still want to believe where it's possible to believe.

It's why it's extremely important not to fall into the trap of "let's not be political at a time of crisis." This is a moment where the unthinkable finally becomes real for a lot of people. Because it is real.

(crossposted at tpmcafe.com)