“The fundamental question for you is not how we got here, but where you want the country to go,” said Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, to the members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (or the supercommittee) today. “What role do you and your colleagues want the government to play in the economy?”
Judging by the debate in today’s congressional hearing, the supercommittee’s members disagree on the answer to Elmendorf's question.
The Republican members, led by co-chair Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, argued that major reforms to entitlement programs are needed to reduce the deficit. The Republicans said that, by keeping taxes low and reducing non-defense spending over the long term, economic growth could both yield increased revenues and limit government expenditures.
The Democratic co-chair, Senator Patty Murray of Washington, and her fellow Democrats mainly argued that spending in the last decade on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the current tax rates, caused deep deficits. The Democrats focused on the need to increase tax revenues and echoed President Barack Obama’s call for a “balanced approach” to deficit reduction that would not cut benefits to entitlement programs.
Both sides of the aisle attempted to coax answers out of Elmendorf that would confirm their beliefs, to no avail. Murray, for instance, asked Elmendorf to confirm that a balanced approach of reducing spending, reforming entitlements, and raising taxes was the proper way to reduce the deficit. “As a matter of arithmetic, there are a lot of different paths to reducing budget deficits, and it is not CBO’s role to make recommendations among those alternative paths,” he responded.
Elmendorf said the choice of policy solutions has to be decided by the lawmakers sitting in front of him. “The choices involve not just the effect on the economy,” he said. “They also involve choices about what you want the government to do, what sorts of activities it should be engaged in, what the role of the government should be relative to the private sector. The set of choices in making stimulative policy in addition to doing deficit reduction policy are far beyond our technical role.”
The CBO director continued laying out the stark choice. “If you want a role that has health care programs for older Americans like the ones we’ve had in the past and operate the rest of the government like the one we’ve had in the past, then more tax revenue is needed than under current tax rates,” Elmendorf said. “On the other hand, if one wants those tax rates, then one has to make very significant changes in spending programs for older Americans or other aspects of how the government works.”
Senate majority leader Harry Reid picked his three representatives to the twelve congressional member supercommittee yesterday, selecting Max Baucus, John Kerry, and Patty Murray. The first two choices make sense: Baucus is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president in 2004 and, as his website describes, "holds senior positions on the Finance, Commerce, and Small Business Committees."
Every time you think Harry Reid can't be even more crassly political and partisan, you're proven wrong. He's now appointed Patty Murray—chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC)—to be co-chair of the new deficit supercommittee.
Last night, Koch Industries posted the following letter addressed to Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Patty Murray on their website Kochfacts.com:
As the Pennsylvania Senate race tightens, so does the race in Washington. McClatchy reports:
With two weeks to go, the Washington state U.S. Senate race is a virtual dead heat, with Democratic Sen. Patty Murray holding a 1-point lead, 48-47 percent, over Republican challenger Dino Rossi among likely voters, according to a McClatchy-Marist poll released Tuesday.
Washington state senator Patty Murray wasn't shy about her support for Obamacare during a recent debate with Republican Dino Rossi. He tries to use Murray's words against her in a new ad:
1. Latest Sign of the Dempocalypse.CNN's generic ballot numbers are just rotten for Democrats. The GOP leads 52-45 among registered voters. Republicans even have a lead of 49-44 among "adults." Unfortunately, there are no cross-tabs breaking down support by party affiliation, but you can't produce numbers like this in a poll of registered voters without the Democrats getting crushed among Independent voters.
A Washington state Senate race poll conducted after Tuesday's primary shows that Republican nominee Dino Rossi has jumped out to a 7-point lead over incumbent Democrat Patty Murray. According to the SurveyUSA poll, Rossi leads Murray 52 percent to 47 percent. This is a significant change from three polls conducted in the past month, which showed Murray ahead by anywhere from 2 to 4 points.
But just as things are looking up for Rossi, his GOP primary opponent Clint Didier, a former pro-football player who had the backing of Sarah Palin, is refusing to endorse Rossi unless Rossi signs anti-tax, anti-spending, and pro-life pledges.
"If it's not me," Didier said on a radio program on May 28, "whoever it is, I'll get behind them. I'll work as hard for them as I did for me." But sometime since then Didier changed his mind. "I want to endorse Dino – I really do," Didier said at a press conference Friday, according to a transcript of prepared remarks. "I want to beat Patty Murray. I really want that." But Didier said he could only endorse Rossi upon three conditions.
In Washington state's open "jungle primary," the top two vote getters of either party advance to the general election. In the Senate primary, with 60 percent of precincts reporting, incumbent Democrat Patty Murray has 46 percent of the vote. This is pretty bad news for the Democrats. Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics explains why:
On Tuesday, Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman called for a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of the year. "I’m hesitant to see taxes go up in the middle of a recession," Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, told reporters at the Capitol. "I think we ought to wait til maybe six months, maybe at least til the end of the next fiscal year" to raise taxes.
Dino Rossi, the Washington real-estate developer and former state senator who lost the controversial 2004 governor's race to Christine Gregoire by 133 votes, announced today he wants to take on Patty Murray for a spot in the U.S. Senate.
Dino Rossi will in fact make a bid for Senate, several media outletsare reporting. Rossi has long been rumored to be considering a run and will reportedly make his intentions known publicly as soon as Wednesday.
The GOP still stands a good chance of picking up perhaps 7 or more Senate seats in November, but Democrats caught a break last week when Tommy Thompson decided not to challenge Russ Feingold in Wisconsin and George Pataki announced he wouldn't run against Kirsten Gillibrand in New York.
