Andrew C. McCarthy's Blog, page 47

Re: Taxing Questions -- Sperling's Right, Ryan's Wrong

After reading K-Lo’s post about Rep. Paul Ryan's response to White House adviser Gene Sperling, I took a look at the Bipartisan Agreement To Add $7 Trillion To The Deficit Act of 2011-- er, I mean the Budget Control (Ahem) Act of 2011 -- to try to figure out whether Ryan or Sperling is correct. The question is whether, as Sperling claims and Ryan disputes, the new law invites the constitutionally dubious Super Committee to request CBO estimates based on "alternative baselines" (i.e., baselines rooted in something other than existing law) for the purpose of certifying what both Ryan and the Obama administration persist in describing as the Super Committee's achievement of "deficit reduction" -- but what is actually the Super Committee's mandate to add at least $7 trillion to the deficit (it's a “reduction” only in the sense that President Obama would add about $10 trillion).

Mr. Sperling's got the better of the argument.

Like most claims by Republican leadership during the debt ceiling debate, Rep. Ryan's need to be parsed carefully. If a non-lawyer reads his response to Sperling (put out by House Speaker John Boehner's office), he would think that the new law explicitly directs the Super Committee to use CBO projections to estimate how its proposals "will affect the levels of ... budget authority, budget outlays, revenues, or tax expenditures under existing law." (Emphasis in Rep. Ryan’s response.) But – shock, shock! – that is not what the new law says.

In fact, the section of the new law that Ryan cites -- Section 405 -- does not even exist. That's an excusable error -- the sort of thing that's bound to happen when you don't post proposed legislation three days in advance of its being voted on, as the GOP pledged to do. But that's another story. 

Rep. Ryan appears to be referring instead to Section 401, entitled "Establishment of Joint Select Committee." In subsection 401(b)(3)(B)(i)(I), the Super Committee is directed to vote on "a report that contains a detailed statement of the findings, conclusions, and recommendations of the joint committee and the estimate of the Congressional Budget Office required by paragraph (5)(D)(ii)" (emphasis added). Ryan's response to Sperling cited subsection 405(b)(5)(D)(ii), so I am assuming that is the error -- i.e., Ryan meant to cite subsection 401(b)(5)(D)(ii).

When you scroll down to that subsection (page 59), you'll find that the phrase quoted in Ryan's response to Sperling does not appear -- not even close. Instead, the subsection states: "... (D) VOTING ... (ii) CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE ESTIMATES. -- The Congressional Budget Office shall provide estimates of the legislation ... in accordance with sections 308(a) and 201(f) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974[.]" 

I scratched my head and said to myself, "Self, Ryan's not the kind of guy who would make things up out of thin air, right?" So I went back and looked at his response to Sperling more carefully (i.e., wearing my lawyer hat rather than my normal person hat). And sure enough, Ryan writes, in lawyerly fashion, that the new law "explicitly instructs the Committee to use CBO projections and explicitly references current law requirements[.]" (My italics.) Ahh ... "references current law requirements" -- not "mandates current law requirements." Let's parse that. Sperling does not dispute that the new law "explicitly instructs the Committee to use CBO projections" -- and Section 401 clearly calls for that. What Sperling is saying is that the new law does not preclude the Super Committee from asking for CBO projections premised on "alternative baselines" not rooted in current law. Section 401 does not prove him wrong.

To be blunt, the new law does not say what Ryan claims it says. Ryan hints to readers that he is quoting from the new law, but he is really just arguing an interpretation of the new law based on an inference from yet another law -- namely, Section 308(a) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. He is saying that application of this 37-year-old statute mandates use of existing law in the statute enacted today.

So I looked up Section 308 of the Congressional Budget Act. It is there, finally, that you find the phrase excerpted in Rep. Ryan's response to Sperling. Under Section 308 of the 1974 law, certain committee reports on budget legislation are supposed to set forth a statement "containing a projection by the Congressional Budget Office of how such measure will affect the levels of such budget authority, budget outlays, revenues, or tax expenditures under existing law for such fiscal year (or fiscal years) and each of the four ensuing fiscal years, if timely submitted before such report is filed[.]"

But read carefully, Section 308 poses several problems for Rep Ryan. First, the statute does not appear to apply to the Super Committee at all. Section 308 expressly states that its requirements apply only to "a committee of either House" which is reporting "to its House." The Super Committee is not a committee of either House -- it is a joint committee of both Houses (the "Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction") -- and it is to make its report to both Houses. Indeed, the whole point of creating a Super Committee is that normal legislative laws and rules are not supposed to apply. As a matter of fact, under the new law, the committees of the two houses provide recommendations to the Super Committee, not the other way around. The objective of the new law is to enable the Super Committee's decisions to be fast-tracked -- unencumbered by any of those icky intrusions like statutes, rules, and political debate. 

Second, even if we assume for argument's sake that Section 308(a) does apply, by its own terms no CBO projection is required unless it is "timely submitted" to a committee before its report is filed. Under the new law, the Super Committee has to vote on its report by November 23, 2011. Yes, the report is supposed to have CBO estimates, but Section 308 would arguably permit proceeding without them if the Super Committee did not get the report to CBO sufficiently in advance for CBO to provide a timely response. That's admittedly unlikely -- the obvious intention of the new law is to have CBO projections. But one could easily see grist for a Democrat claim that CBO projections are not absolutely required. 

Third, and more to the point, there is nothing in Section 308 that bars the Super Committee from asking for, or the CBO from supplying, projections based on alternative baselines. I'm confident Ryan is right in saying that the Super Committee can insist on projections based on current law. But Sperling's claim that the Super Committee is authorized to ask for CBO projections based on alternative baselines is not precluded by the statutes Ryan cites. Moreover, even if Ryan were right on the law (and, again, I don't think he is), who is going to enforce his view? No court is going to get involved in this. If Democrats on the Committee insist on projections based on alternative baselines, CBO is going to comply -- and no one is going to stop CBO from doing so. 

Remember the Boehner plan of only a week ago? Remember how it was not premised on current law? It was based on [drumroll ...] an alternative baseline -- pursuant to an agreement between Boehner and the Democrats. And what happened? The CBO did not squawk and point to Section 308. It dutifully provided projections based on both current law and, as Boehner himself separately requested, the non-current law baseline he and Democrats had agreed to use.

This caused no small amount of embarrassment when Boehner's original claim to cut $1.2 trillion from the projected deficit (i.e., to add about $8.2 trillion to the current deficit) over ten years computed to only $850 billion in “cuts.” But for present purposes, the point is that there were no GOP press releases posted on the Speaker's website in which leading Republicans railed about the Speaker's failure to adhere to Section 308 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Evidently, Rep. Ryan didn't see a problem with any of this.

Now, however, it is the Obama administration that, quite predictably, wants to do what Speaker Boehner did. Ryan's protest rings hollow. Look, Republicans agreed to this Super Committee – a pig in a poke as to which we were not told who would be appointed before awesome powers were conferred on it. If Republicans wanted the Super Committee to be bound exclusively by CBO projections of current law, they could have insisted that this condition be written explicitly and unambiguously into the new law -- as explicitly and unambiguously as it is written in Rep. Ryan’s response to Mr. Sperling. They didn’t.

But hey, after all, as Charles Krauthammer says, Republicans only control one-half of one-third of the government. It's unreasonable to expect that they’d fight for things like a term in the we-have-to-pass-it-to-see-what's-in-it legislation that would foreclose the Left from orchestrating sneaky tax hikes. Haven't you heard? We were lucky to get what we got, for which 2.4 trillion thanks are owed to the unwavering leadership of Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell. This is a tremendous victory for the Tea Party! Sure, President Obama may have gotten his credit line extended past election day, but we’ve changed the conversation! 

Against the Boehner Plan

House Speaker John Boehner has a plan that he touts as slashing about $900 billion in government spending -- shy of his original claim, only two days earlier, that cuts would amount to $1.2 trillion. It’s nonsense, of course. In Washington, unlike the rest of the known universe, a “cut” is a reduction in the rate of increase. There are never real cuts. In reality, Speaker Boehner’s plan would add $9.1 trillion to the national debt. It is a “cut” only in the sense that the Obama Democrats have rigged matters so that, if nothing changes, autopilot would add $10 trillion.

You could call this a cruel joke on a country that is already well over $14 trillion in debt -- a country in which every newly born child opens his eyes as a debtor, well over $30,000 in the hole. But that would be premature, because I haven’t gotten to the punchline yet. The reason Speaker Boehner and the Republican establishment have suddenly stirred themselves to “cut” spending is their determination to keep the Ponzi scheme going. The “cuts” -- less than $100 billion of which are real (the rest are consigned to the illusory “out years,” meaning they’re the responsibility of some future Congress) -- are to be made in exchange for giving the government the authority to borrow another $2.5 trillion.

#ad#This will last only a few months because, at a rate of about $46,000 per second, the United States sinks $4 billion deeper in debt every day. But the $2.5 trillion stands to get President Obama through reelection without having much more attention called to his starring role in our dire straits.

To Thomas Sowell, the Boehner plan seems commendable because it would not only “spare the country a major economic disruption” but also “spare the Republicans from losing the 2012 elections by being blamed -- rightly or wrongly -- for the disruptions.”

Rightly or wrongly. In a nutshell, that tells us everything we need to know about the state of Obama’s opposition. Even our best minds assume that a principled stand taken for the right reasons is a loser. Standing in the midst of what is already a catastrophe, even our best minds are content to pretend that the “disruption” is something from which we can be spared.

Ask any rational person: “When a government is so addicted to reckless spending that it has run up a crushing $14.3 trillion debt that it has no plan to pay back -- when it is borrowing $180 million per hour because it has taken on more obligations than it could ever hope to satisfy -- would it be better to extend that government’s credit line another $2.5 trillion so it can continue heedlessly along, or to take every available opportunity to force it to alter course dramatically?” There is only one right answer to that question.

Yet, try to fashion a policy position around that right answer, and what do you find? None less than the Dr. Sowell, as fine a mind as there is, warning that we can’t do the right thing because we’ll be wrongly blamed for the consequences. None less than the eminent Charles Krauthammer spouting the lamest of GOP talking points: Because Republicans only control one-half of one-third of the government, it is constitutionally problematic for House conservatives to continue demanding deeper spending cuts, to refuse to allow the nation to be driven trillions deeper in debt, and to treat an existential threat to our country as an existential threat to our country.

The only sure thing here is that there will be consequences. With due respect to Dr. Sowell and the Republican establishment that breathlessly cites him, there is no chance of sparing the country. The major economic disruption is already happening, and it stands to get far worse. Millions are unemployed, millions more are on public assistance, at unsustainable levels. The government has sharply devalued the dollar, and is gearing up for a third round of “quantitative easing” (more money created out of thin air). Like private-fund managers, our sovereign creditors, including China, Japan, and Great Britain, are showing increasingly less interest in buying our debt, so Treasury “borrows” (prints) mostly from the Fed -- whose swelling $2.7 trillion balance sheet is reportedly leveraged 55-to-1. That’s twice what Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were leveraged when they failed. To entice real lenders, interest rates will have to be raised. That will add hundreds of billions to our debt service, wiping out the paltry “savings” the Boehner plan purports to achieve.

#page#The pass we are at is not an avoidable disruption. It is a disaster that has already begun to unfold, reversal of which cries out for bold action. The Boehner plan, or any other scheme that balks at forthrightly dealing with our financial straits, merely makes it more likely that our nation cannot survive as we have known it. In the shorter term, the Boehner plan ensures that, when serious steps are finally taken, the metastasizing debt disease will be trillions worse, if not terminal.

Equally wrongheaded as imagining that an existential threat can be allowed to fester untreated is the insistence on seeing the threat in political rather than substantive terms.

#ad#There is no doubt about why we are in a crushing economic disruption. Yes, the proximate cause is President Obama’s unprecedented spending spree -- his follow-through on the campaign promise to change America fundamentally. But today’s Republican establishment shoulders plenty of the blame. In the first six years of the George W. Bush administration -- when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, with Speaker Boehner then among the GOP’s House leaders -- the debt ceiling went from $5.95 trillion to $8.97 trillion. It had taken a decade (from 1987 to 1997) to increase the ceiling by the $3 trillion it took to get to $5.95 trillion. Republicans took only six years to do it again. Under President Bush, who has reportedly whipped GOP lawmakers to vote for the Boehner plan, the national debt rose by almost five trillion dollars, to $10.6 trillion -- i.e., it nearly doubled.

Bush’s profligacy pales by Obama standards. The current president is spending the nation into oblivion. He has taken less than three years to run up almost $4 trillion in debt.

The most transparent administration in history doesn’t write down the positions it argues in closed budget meetings with congressional leaders. Senate Democrats, moreover, have stopped submitting annual budgets, though federal law requires them. Transparently, this is done to avoid an embarrassing paper trail, documenting trillions in deficits, projected as far as the eye can see. But you can’t non–paper over a catastrophe. The government now spends so much more than it takes in that 40 cents of every expended federal dollar is borrowed.

This cannot continue. Every day it is not dealt with is a day that we punish future generations. “Deficit spending” is a euphemism. If we were honest, we’d call it “deferred confiscatory tax spending” -- we blithely party like there’s no tomorrow, and when tomorrow comes, our children and grandchildren get stuck with the unfathomable bill.

None of this is mysterious. It is easily verifiable. You don’t need a degree in economics to understand it. In fact, it is well understood: The country’s grasp of our dire straits is one reason spendthrift Republicans were ousted from power in 2006 and 2008, and it is the reason why President Obama led his party to a crushing electoral defeat just nine months ago -- one in which Democrats were swept from power in the House, now barely cling to control of the Senate, and were routed in state races across the country.

Americans did not suddenly fall in love with Republicans. They remain wary of the GOP, and -- as we’re seeing -- for good reason. The electoral revolt was strictly a center-right nation’s revulsion against governance by the hard Left. Republicans reaped the benefits because they were the only alternative, not because the public is convinced that they’ve learned anything from their stint in the wilderness.

The main lesson that should have been learned but hasn’t been is this: While every issue has political overtones and consequences, that does not make every issue political in its essence. The debt-ceiling controversy is not, as Republican leadership and its cheerleaders maintain, about politics. It is not a matter of, “If we don’t handle this correctly, if we push this too far, if Americans think we’re too extreme, President Obama will be reelected.” The debt ceiling is about the debt, not about how politicians can optimally position themselves to evade accountability for the inevitable consequences of the debt.

We’ve gotten lost in the weeds here. Speaker Boehner’s proposed cuts are, in the main, illusory. But making them marginally bigger or more real is beside the point. The issue here is whether anything can justify adding $2.5 trillion to the government’s credit card. The point of discussing cuts was to rationalize a debt-ceiling rise that would be no greater than the cuts. The premise of this dollar-for-dollar exchange notion is utterly flawed: If I am maxed out on my credit line, my agreement to reduce my spending by $1,000 dollars may justify not cutting up my credit card. It would not justify increasing my credit line by $1,000.

#page#Adding $1 trillion to this country’s debt ceiling, with another $1.5 trillion to follow in short order, would be recklessly irresponsible. Does that mean the debt ceiling shouldn’t be raised at all? I think so. I am open, though, to arguments that the Titanic can’t be turned around on a dime, that some schedule of modest monthly tweaks -- upward and downward -- may be justified while we roll up our sleeves and do the hard work of dramatically scaling back. One would have to be convinced that the hard work is actually underway, but I could see the sense in such a plan.

In any event, every equation has two sides. In the debt/spending equation, we are obsessed with the wrong one. The blunt truth is that, while some increase in the debt ceiling may be necessary, a $2.5 trillion increase would be inexcusable. And to grant a $2.5 trillion hike for no better reason than that this is what Obama needs to avoid having his suicide spending spree re-examined before Election Day would be truly insane.

#ad#The saddest thing about Thomas Sowell’s take on all this is not his suggestion that the political fallout of the debt controversy trumps the substance of the debt problem. It is his intimation that the truth can’t win. I doubt he would have much disagreement with the numbers I’ve laid out, or what they portend. What he seems to be saying, though, is that conservatives are either so incapable of making this case, or so overmatched by the left-wing media, that being right no longer matters. He seems to be saying that this argument cannot be won, even with the facts on our side.

I respectfully disagree. Our system is premised on the conviction that the right side can always win -- that the strength of its arguments can turn the political tide and force even committed ideologues like Barack Obama to yield. And I believe the system works. If it didn’t, Guantanamo Bay would now be closed, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would now be in the seventh month of his civilian trial, and the president would be toasting Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the advent of single-payer health care.

Perhaps more dismaying than Dr. Sowell’s conclusion that conservatives can’t win is Dr. Krauthammer’s contention that they should stop trying. The tiresome claim that you can’t govern from one-half of one-third of the government is half-baked, and the suggestion that there is something constitutionally untoward in the opposition of House Republicans is ridiculous.

The House Republican faction opposed to granting a gargantuan increase in the debt ceiling is not governing. Governing is what the government as a whole does after accommodating all the factions in a system of divided powers. As Mark Levin points out, when Senate Democrats blocked Bush judicial nominees, they were in control of no part of the government. The rules gave the minority rights, and they made maximum use of them. There was political risk in being portrayed as obstructionist, creating a vacancy crisis on the bench, and depriving the country of well-qualified nominees. But Senate leftists calculated that, from their standpoint, the substance of the problem -- having the bench increasingly dominated by conservative jurists who would stall the advance of their statist agenda -- outweighed whatever political risk there was in hanging tough. It was important enough to them, so they fought to the bitter end. For the most part, they won -- the vacancies they preserved are being filled by President Obama, creating life-tenured left-wing jurists who, for decades, will frustrate conservative efforts to roll back Obama’s advances.

There are two big differences between then and now. First, the Republicans actually control the House. Second, the debt problem they confront is not just by dimensions more significant than the ideology of judicial nominees; it is precisely the matter they were elected to address.

No, Republicans can’t govern from the House -- if President Obama decided to pull out of Afghanistan tomorrow, there’s not much House Republicans could do about it except cavil. But just as the Constitution makes the president supreme in foreign affairs, it makes the Congress preeminent when it comes to federal borrowing and spending -- and, in fact, reposes in the House of Representatives primary control over the raising of revenue. The Framers quite consciously structured things that way so that the spending of public dollars and incurring of public debt would be most closely overseen by the political officials most directly accountable to the people -- the members of the House, who have to face the voters every two years.

#page#The people, quite emphatically, want out-of-control spending dealt with. Their representatives have the power to effectuate that desire. The president can try to insist on borrowing and spending more, but the House gets to say no -- and, on this matter, it is the president who should yield. That is not a constitutional problem; it is the Constitution in action.

The Republican establishment and the commentariat that claims it is time for conservatives to yield should stop posturing that their stance is about anything other than politics. They are worried that the media will blame Republicans if the debt limit is not raised, if spending is suddenly slashed, and if various constituencies in the dependency state are cut off cold-turkey from their federal goodies. They fear that President Obama -- a class-A demagogue -- will ride the ensuing chaos to reelection.

#ad#Those are not unrealistic fears. But they are secondary, and far from inevitable. It is entirely possible that the public already believes that spending has to be addressed now, that the crisis demonstrates like nothing else can how shockingly bloated the federal behemoth has become, and that President Obama -- who is largely responsible for the mess -- has to rein in his unceasing demands for more. It is entirely possible that people who don’t already believe these things can be convinced of them because they are true. It is entirely possible that, because conservatives in the House are doing what they were sent to Washington to do, the debt-ceiling crisis will be resolved on terms far more favorable to the American people -- and future generations of the American people.

It may not work out that way, of course. But if it doesn’t, it will not be because of the politics. It will be because, lacking the will to confront what is killing us, we were already doomed.

—  Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

ALSO BREAKING: Muslim Soldier Pentagon Gave Conscientious Objector Status To Arrested Over Concerns He Was Plotting Second Fort Hood Attack

Fox News has the details here.

I wrote about the soldier, Pvt. Nasser Abdo, last month, after the Pentagon gave him conscientious objector status because, as a Muslim, he understood that fighting for the United States against Muslims was a violation of Islamic law.

BREAKING: Christie taken to hospital -- shortness of breath

Fox News just reported this. Details still coming in. Governor's office has released a statement in which Christie praises the treatment he's gotten (in Somerset), so we can hope this is just precautionary, not serious. I don't see a story on the Fox website yet -- saw it on TV.

UPDATE: Here is the Fox story.

Re: New Boehner Version

It's good that it's dawning on the Republican leadership that no one is buying "out year" cuts -- we know the only cuts that matter are the ones this Congress makes: it can't bind future Congresses and nothing it promises on spending cuts in future years means anything.

But the paltriness of the spending cuts is only one-half of the equation that makes the GOP plan so offensive. The other half, of course, is that the spending credit given to President Obama is not only astronomical ($1 trillion and, very soon, another $1.5 trillion) but he gets it all up front -- he is not expected to take it in small bits the way we are supposed to get spending cuts.

The reason this makes us recoil is that the spending cuts have been pitched to us as the rationale for agreeing to the debt ceiling increase. I have never bought this reasoning: If the problem is out of control spending, it is absurd to propose extending the spendthrift's credit card at all; rationalizing an unwarranted credit extension by dollar-for-dollar spending cuts is self-delusion. Since we were only recently running the government on a debt ceiling that was a lot lower than $14.3 trillion, I don't see why the best course isn't to tell the President he's got to figure out how to make it work within that ceiling -- something we now know he's been planning to do, despite all the fear-mongering about default.

But hey, I'm all about compromise. If we have to accept spending cuts in dribs and drabs, why can't Obama get his debt ceiling increase in dribs and drabs. Giving it to Obama in trillion-dollar tranches helps him since it minimizes the chance that he'll have to go through this debate again -- with America gawking at what he's spent -- before the election. But it doesn't help us.

Why can't we propose to increase the debt ceiling as real spending cuts happen? I understand that doing this on a dollar-for-dollar basis may be impractical. But even if we proposed to give him two or three dollars of raised debt ceiling for every dollar of real cuts as the real cuts actually occur, that would be a lot better than the proposals on the table. We'd be able to show we were not unwilling to raise the debt ceiling, but we'd be ensuring that it was raised no more than is necessary to give the government breathing room on pending obligations. It would also keep the focus on spending, and it would force Obama (who claims to be for deficit reduction but hasn't produced any actual plan) to tell us what he would cut -- if he wants the ceiling raises, he's got to come across with the cuts.

This would be a real compromise. We don't want to raise the ceiling at all. The principle of matching the ceiling rise to spending cuts has already been generally accepted. What I'm talking about would just insure that there is reality on both sides of the equation: real raises only upon real cuts.

A Wonk Question

About a week ago, my friend Marc Thiessen ably dismantled claims by the Senate "Gang of Six" that their proposal would cut taxes by $1.5 trillion. As Marc explained, their plan actually called for a $3 trillion tax hike.

The reason for the $4.5 trillion disparity? Congressional Budget Office scoring. The CBO always assumes the continued viability of federal law, regardless of federal policy. So, even though no one in Washington thinks the Bush tax cuts will actually be allowed to lapse (certainly not for all taxpayers, and probably not for "the rich"), CBO credits the government with an additional $3 trillion in tax revenue that will never materialize because the law says so. The alternative minimum tax (AMT) is always "patched" as a matter of policy to ensure that millions of taxpayers are not otherwise caught in its web; but because AMT is the law, the CBO assumes no patch and that these taxpayers will purportedly fork up close to $660 billion. There are also various popular tax credits and adjustments (e.g., the research and development credit) that are due by law to sunset at the end of the year, but "tax extender" legislation stops that from happening -- a policy the CBO ignores, assuming another illusory $750 billion for stuffing into Uncle Sam's coffers. 

Using the usual Washington budget shenanigans, the Gang of Six tried to con Americans into thinking that what everyone knows to be the fictional CBO numbers were real. Those numbers call for this imaginary $4.5 trillion in taxes, which the Gang purported to reduce by an imaginary $1.5 trillion (mainly by slashing fictitious AMT taxes and granting relief from taxes that would have been relieved anyway by tax extenders). The six senators thus patted themselves on the back for a $1.5 trillion "tax cut" ... even though their repeal of the Bush tax-cuts would actually increase taxes by $3 trillion over the next ten years.

I point all this out because, like the Gang of Six, Speaker Boehner is working off CBO numbers. I am assuming they are the same CBO numbers for the Speaker as for the Senators. So my question for our budget wonks is: Does the Boehner plan, like the Gang of Six plan, assume the repeal of the Bush tax cuts, the applicability of the AMT with no patches, and the elimination of popular tax credits?

If so, that would seem very odd. As I understand it, Speaker Boehner supports continuation of the Bush tax cuts, the AMT patch, and the tax extenders. Is he offering a plan basic parts of which he opposes? And let's pretend that the Boehner plan, as falsely advertised, actually did cut the deficit by $1.2 trillion (instead of $851 billion scored by the CBO, which, of course, found real cuts of only $1 billion next year and $16 billion in 2013 -- the only two years this Congress can actually control). Let's even suspend disbelief and assume that the blue-ribbon congressional commission the Speaker would punt to in Phase II actually finds another $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction without tax hikes that everyone agrees to. Even if all those things happened, would it be wrong to conclude that if, as expected, the Bush tax cuts are extended, the AMT is patched, and the other credits are continued, this would more than wipe out the purported $3 trillion in deficit reduction Speaker Boehner claims to achieve?

What Are the $1.2 Trillion in 'Real' Spending Cuts?

I'd love to believe the Boehner plan is not a joke, really I would. But I see that, right away, Obama gets a $1 trillion credit extension (our current $14.3 trillion credit line apparently not being enough) while the "real" cuts in spending -- which are trumpeted because they purportedly exceed the increase in the debt ceiling -- will supposedly take place over the course of a decade. You have to say "purportedly" and "supposedly" because whatever this Congress does cannot bind any future Congress. (Has this Congress seemed to you like they feel bound by anything Congress did on spending in 2001?) The only cuts that really matter are the ones made today. So, leaving aside several other misgivings about the Boehner proposal -- i.e., before we ever get to the other $1.5 trillion credit expansion President Obama would get next year, and the blue-ribbon committee half-staffed by Harry Reid that is going to solve all our spending problems -- I have just one question: Mr. Speaker, what are the cuts that will be made now in exchange for permitting the president to sink us another $1 trillion into the hole?

Apologize For What?

The federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed in 1995. At the time, I was in the middle of trying the Blind Sheikh and his underlings for waging a terrorist war in which they bombed the World Trade Center, plotted to bomb other New York City landmarks, and promised a never ending series of bombings. As coverage speculated that Islamists were behind the Oklahoma City attack, lawyers for our 11 defendants immediately sought to have the jury sequestered even though we were many months from the conclusion of trial.

The motion was denied. Judge Michael Mukasey reasoned that we didn't know what the ultimate outcome of the Oklahoma City investigation would be. For months, our  jurors had diligently followed the court's standard instructions not to allow themselves to be influenced by outside events and press reports. The potential for jury prejudice could be handled by questioning the jurors and instructing them to avoid and disregard news about Oklahoma City. As usual, the judge was right. But that didn't mean the defense lawyers had been wrong to make the motion.

It was only natural under the circumstances to suspect that Islamic terrorists might be involved. They had already carried out one bombing and were brazenly promising to hit more targets -- in particular, government buildings. It was entirely reasonable for the lawyers to surmise that Muslim terrorists might have been involved and, even if they weren't, that future reporting would include supposition about their involvement. The lawyers were not acting out of "Islamophobia." Like others in the public eye, they didn't have the luxury of keeping their thoughts to themselves. They had a professional responsibility to act on the basis of what was known and what it was rational to suspect. A phobia is an irrational fear, and -- as the thousands of jihadist atrocities in the ensuing 16 years confirm -- there was nothing irrational about the suspicions in question.

This memory moved to the front of my mind the last several days, as it always does when there are reports of another terrorist atrocity. That's why I began my first post about the Norway attacks on Friday by saying it was "important to be cautious in drawing conclusions when the attacks just happened and the facts are still coming in." And when I defended profiling in my second post (the media by then -- around 7pm -- having resorted in defense of Muslims to the very profiling they routinely condemn when it disadvantages Muslims), I noted that the appearance of a blond, Norwegian, non-Muslim suspect certainly did cut against the likelihood of this being an instance of Islamic terrorism. But I also discussed a number of facts that cut in the other direction: a jihadist organization had reportedly claimed responsibility; al Qaeda had tried to attack Oslo last year; al Qaeda is notorious for going after the same target repeatedly; al Qaeda had been looking for American and European recruits because it is easier for them to defeat surveillance in the U.S. and Europe; Mullah Krekar had appeared to threaten attacks against Norway if legal action were taken against him -- which it had been just days earlier; and (though I neglected to mention it) the two Norway attacks were nearly simultaneous, another al Qaeda hallmark.

The point was to emphasize that it's essential to let investigations play out, not to condemn anyone prematurely. There is nothing wrong with analysts engaging in reasonable speculation about what investigators must be thinking, or with the media's responsibly reporting such theories. But it's wise in the very early stages after an event to be mindful that we don't know what has happened, and that we should avoid prematurely convicting individuals or groups.

That's not enough, though, for James Fallows, the former Jimmy Carter speechwriter who now writes for the Atlantic. He tut-tuts that the Washington Post owes the world an apology because Jen Rubin's post right after the attack assumed that the Norway attacks were incidents of violent jihadism. (Fallows, naturally, has never apologized for sliming conservatives after Jared Loughner shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, among several others.) But Rubin has nothing to apologize for. Yes, she might have been clearer that we did not know exactly who was responsible. But she relied (as I did) on a post by FDD's Tom Joscelyn at the Weekly Standard which emphasized that we did not yet know who perpetrated the attack. Moreover, the facts she cited gave just cause for suspicion. And her essential point was correct: any act of terrorism demonstrates how ruinous these acts can be, and therefore we need to remain vigilant, not let our guard down. As Jen writes in a follow up post, all of us should bear in mind that early reports are often wrong -- we need to be cautious. That ought to be enough said.

Anders Behring Breivik, the deranged savage who committed mass-murder in Oslo last Friday, is a severe critic of Islam. His targets, though, were not Muslims. They were his fellow Norwegians and Norway's government. As Mark Steyn keenly observed this morning, it is patently absurd that Breivik's attitudes about Muslims have come to dominate coverage of a horrific episode that appears to have little or nothing to do with Muslims -- such that those actually killed become, as Mark puts it, "mere bit players in their own murder" while the legacy media shrieks about "Islamophobia." As Bruce Bawer pointed out in his trenchant post this weekend (at Pajamas), we are now looking at "a double tragedy for Norway. Not only has it lost almost one hundred people, including dozens of young people, in a senseless rampage of violence. But I fear that legitimate criticism of Islam, which remains a very real threat to freedom in Norway and the West, has become profoundly discredited, in the eyes of many Norwegians, by association with this murderous lunatic."

If we are to remain free and secure, that cannot be allowed to happen. And that starts with not apologizing for the entirely rational fear that future terrorist attacks will be fueled by Islamist ideology, just as thousands of past attacks have been. Prominent Muslims are forever making the most unfounded, most offensive pronouncements, and yet they never have to apologize. Right after 9/11, MPAC's Salam Marayati told a Los Angeles radio interviewer, "If we are going to look at suspects, we should look at groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the State of Israel on the suspect list." Before becoming a top Obama aide and envoy, Rashad Hussain excoriated the Bush Justice Department's prosecution of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami al-Arian as a "politically motivated" "travesty of justice" that fit a "common pattern ... of politically motivated prosecutions," by which the U.S. government exaggerates the "threat to American security" -- al-Arian later pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge. CAIR has made a career of rushing to the nearest microphone to discredit the investigation of Muslims who are later found guilty of terrorism. The list goes on and on; only the words "I'm sorry, I was wrong" are never uttered -- and never demanded.

We all have a duty to exercise caution if we are going to comment before the facts are fully known. We have no duty to apologize, however, for well founded suspicions and for recognizing the threat Islamism poses to life and to Western liberalism. Our obligation is to remain vigilant -- responsibly vigilant, but vigilant nonetheless. In addition to what's been said here, that message has been repeated by Michelle Malkin, Quin Hillyer, Glenn Reynolds, Aaron Goldstein, John Hinderaker, and Scott Johnson, and it is most welcome.

UBS: Add Another Week Or So To The Debt Deadline

The Wall Street Journal's "Washington Wire - Live Blog" on the debt controversy reported last night (see 915pm entry) that, according to UBS analysts, the real debt ceiling deadline (i.e., the point when the U.S. Treasury will no longer have sufficient funds to make all scheduled payments) is not August 2; they think it will hit sometime between August 8 and 10.

As a number of us have repeatedly said, breaching the debt ceiling would not trigger default -- as Democrats and the media constantly claim (with little resistance from Republicans, who are thus helping the Left win the crucial language battle that will dictate the public's understanding of what's happening). Default would only happen if Treasury failed to pay interest on debts and satisfy debts that reach maturity. Failing to make other scheduled payments (e.g., furloughing government employees, canceling programs, closing bureaus, etc.) would not constitute default; it would constitute cutting unnecessary spending.

UBS's chief of interest rate strategy, Chris Ahrens, also noted that there is a "rising probability" that U.S. debt will be downgraded from its AAA status. As I said over the weekend, that possibility looms regardless of whether there is a deal to extend the debt ceiling deadline, because it is an assessment of how serious the country is about getting spending under control. If a downgrade happens, the repercussions (see our Exchequer's July 19 post) would make it even more difficult to get spending under control. That's why it's much better to make the hard choices now, while the ceiling remains an astounding $14.3 trillion. Extending our credit so that debt is soon 120 percent of GDP and rocketing toward Greek Debt/GDP levels would be reckless. What's truly remarkable is that those for whom that is the solution are said to be the adults in the room.

CNN reporting Reid plan: $2.5Tr in deficit reductions with no revenue increases

Sounds like more smoke-and-mirrors  -- nothing on what would be cut, when, and what baseline would be used, etc. Just an offer to do some illusory $2.5 trillion in cuts at some point in exchange for a raise in the ceiling that gets Obama and Dems past the election. See Lisa Desjardins on Twitter for more.