Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to the great Maura Tierney, 47. You know, I think I've seen almost nothing she's done other than, of course, NewsRadio. Except, that is, for something else I can highly recommend: Scotland, Pa. Great idea, great execution, especially for the first first hour or so -- and she's terrific throughout.

OK, the good stuff:

1. Katie from Feministing on Susan G. Komen. Excellent. For more on that and other things, by the way, I did the roundup over at Greg's place yesterday evening, so lots of links there.

2. Larry Bartels checks out how those lucky "very poor" are getting along. Someone better tell Mitt Romney that he doesn't quite have it right.

3. If you ask me, sane conservatives are nuts to embrace (or in any way tolerate Ann Coulter just because they happen to agree with her on Romneycare; sane conservative David Frum obviously disagrees.

4. Spencer Ackerman on Afghanistan, 2013, and Mitt Romney.

5. And I think Ezra Klein has much the better of the argument about budget deficits, Obama, and George W. Bush, but I think he's overly generous to Keith Hennessey.

GOP War On Budgeting Update

Via Brian Beutler, a wonderful quote from John McCain, showing exactly how Republicans think about budgeting:

Let’s not let a domestic issue such as tax increases interfere…with our nation’s security.

That, in a nutshell, captures exactly how Republicans deal with the budget, and it explains almost all of the structural deficit. I have no idea whether they really believe it or if it's just the way they talk for political reasons, but it's as if there's just no recognition at all that revenues and expenditures have anything to do with each other. Which in and of itself is tough enough to defend -- but from a group of politicians who claim that "the deficit" is important, it's, well, breathtaking.

As I've argued several times, the way to square the circle is to assume that what they mean by "the deficit" has nothing whatsoever to do with, you know, the difference between federal government revenues and spending, and that in fact those two totals have nothing to do with each other. Read through Beutler's story; he gets Jon Kyl to admit that the spending cuts they support to pay for a payroll tax cut are simply spending cuts they support, regardless. Which is really what every budget argument I've heard Republicans give in the last few years boils down to: they have plenty of spending they're for and plenty they're against, and taxes they're against and more-or-less taxes they're for, but they just reject the idea of trade-offs designed to bring revenues and expenditures together. Even for someone such as McCain who presumably really cares a lot about military spending, it's as if he's entirely unaware that taxes have anything at all to do with how much spending is available. 

Worst Excuse Ever For Opposing Buffett Rule

Is the Buffett Rule -- that rich folks should pay at least as much in taxes as the middle class -- a good idea? I'm sure there are reasonable arguments pro and con. But you won't find any good ones in Douglas Holtz-Eakin's Bloomberg column today; it's an advanced class in hackery (via Wonkbook).

I'll start right off with a brilliant piece of misdirection Holtz-Eakin puts at the center of his case against the Buffett rule: that comprehensive tax reform is better. This is, even if you accept every benefit that he claims for tax reform, about the worst excuse I've ever heard for opposing a tax change. Here's the thing: comprehensive tax reform is really, really hard to get done. Impossible? No; after all, we do have one case of it happening, although that was 25 years ago and most of it unraveled rather quickly, which is why it's supposedly needed again. That's because comprehensive tax reform eliminates lots and lots...and lots and lots and lots of particular benefits in favor of general benefits. And that's something that a Madisonian political system doesn't do very well (nor, for that matter, do other democratic systems, but the US is perhaps especially prone to that one). So "comprehensive tax reform would be better" is a dodge. You don't get that choice.

And at any rate, the Buffett rule is hardly something that would make future tax reform more difficult. The essence of bipartisan-style tax reform is to eliminate deductions and lower rates. The Buffett rule doesn't exactly do that (and it's not revenue neutral), but it is, essentially, anti-deduction, isn't it?

So what else does Holtz-Eakin have? Well, he claims the problem "doesn't exist" because the millionaires are already paying, on average, a 30% rate. That, of course, hardly shows that the fundamental unfairness (as Barack Obama argues, at any rate) of some millionaires paying low rates doesn't exist; it just means that not all millionaires do so. So nothing there.

He also notes that the Buffett rule would be, in effect, a new Alternative Minimum Tax, and that the AMT we have has been a constant source of trouble because it's not indexed for inflation. True! Solution: index the Buffett rule for inflation. That wasn't tough! And again, he throws the "comprehensive tax reform would be better" attack at a permanent AMT fix. Now, it's true that an AMT fix would be heavy lifting and would be a waste of energy if comprehensive tax reform was on the menu, but the AMT fix is heavy lifting only because it's a revenue loser (at least the way CBO scores these things). The Buffett Rule, on the other hand, is a revenue raiser, so it doesn't have that problem at all.

Which brings us to yet another specious argument: that the Buffett Rule wouldn't balance the budget. Holtz-Eakin complains that it would only bring in $35B a year, which is, he points out, under 3% of recent deficits. Of course, the answer here is: so what? Again, he's trying to frame the question as either-or (that is, either the Buffett Rule or comprehensive tax reform), but there's just no good reason to believe that tax reform is going to happen anytime soon, or that passing the Buffett Rule this year would delay it in any way. Beyond that, saying that something wouldn't eliminate the deficit is hardly a reason to oppose it.

And then, finally, Holtz-Eakin argues that cutting entitlement spending for rich people would be better than the Buffett Rule. Perhaps so: but it's hard to see why the one would rule out the other. We should cut spending isn't an argument against the fairness claim that Buffett, and Barack Obama, are making.

Again, I'm not arguing here for or against the Buffett Rule. But if that's the best the opponents have, I'm guessing the case really boils down to Rich People Want Money, and that's not much of a case at all.