I’m visiting my parents and they had some hard-core tote-bagging friends over for dinner last nigh, so I had to sit through the Snooze Hour. Bobo (via Atrios) said a lot of strange stuff about the health care bill, including this which I don’t think is true:
One, the CBO came out with their results, their predictions of where the budget deficit will be without health care in 10 years from now. And we will have gone from 40 percent of GDP of public debt to 90 percent in 10 years. That’s just cataclysmic. And then, in the short term this week, we have three bond issuings where the government is issuing debt three days in a row, and it’s going badly.
People are nervous about U.S. government debt. In fact, corporate debt is less risk — seen as less risky this week than government debt.
He seems to be saying that the CBO estimated that health care reform would increase government debt by $7 trillion in 10 years. That is blatantly false, since in fact:
The bill will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years and reduce the deficit by $130 billion during that period.
On the topic of debt issuance, I have never heard of T-bills going at a higher interest rate than corporate debt. I have no idea what he is talking about. I assume that he just made this up.
But the strangest part was this:
She is not a great speaker — I mean a spokesperson, a communicator. I personally don’t think she’s great on policy. But she has the skills to know how to control this body, which is a fractious body, even when you have a majority. And, so, those skills are maybe in her blood from her father and her brother, but also skills that she really possesses. And there’s no denying she is a very effective legislator.
What an asshole.
Update. Brooks was not lying about the T-bills:
Bobo was right for once about the T-bills: this week, for at least a brief period, a couple of corporate bonds had lower yields than T-bills by a couple hundredths of a percentage point.
I still think that what he said was a stretch.
Update. I think I figured out what he was trying to say about GDP. It’s slimy and, honestly, worse than if he had just misquoted some future predictions. He’s saying that we’ve gone from 40% of GDP in 2000 to 90% of GDP now. Bringing that up in this context, in the discussion of a revenue-enhancing bill, is extremely deceptive.
Svensker
Bobo = asshole.
Sorry you had to watch, but the “tote-bagging” thing really cracks me up. Just perfect.
Ailuridae
He’s talking about a brief period of time where Berkshire Hathaway was issuing corporate debt at a lower rate than the government. Not sure if its still the case but it was on, like, Tuesday.
Tote-bagging friends? Is that a derisive slam on PBS viewers? If so, awesome. If not …
Comrade Jake
You do realize, right, that every time you read Brooks you sacrifice another couple of thousand brain cells on the alter of pundiocrity? Couple it with a few McArdle blog posts, and you’ll have taken a year off your brain’s useful life.
mistermix
Did your parents’ friends have stars in their eyes?
Michael D.
Doug: Link to Atrios goes to the PBS site.
kansi
Thank God for the males in her family! Is this the Testes Rule or something?
Doctor Gonzo
Bobo was right for once about the T-bills: this week, for at least a brief period, a couple of corporate bonds had lower yields than T-bills by a couple hundredths of a percentage point.
Tom Hilton
Not the deficit; the debt is supposed to go to 90% of GDP (according to the CBO). And not because of HCR, but because of the recession and all.
Edit: okay, on re-reading, it looks like Brooks is talking about debt. But then it’s hard to figure out exactly what he’s trying to say.
Toast
Now I have “Juke Box Hero” in my head.
Michael
OT, but did anybody else have the same reaction I did to Sarah Peron’s rather severe black leather jacket? She’s morphed from stridently dressed soccer mom to Sarah, She-Devil of the SS.
Wingnuts always like snazzy uniforms, and as they say, black is quite slimming.
Linda Featheringill
Good morning dougj.
Nice of you to join us. :)
Speaking of public debt, WaPo has an article that claims that the US is set to sell off citibank stock, with full payment of what we gave them plus 8 billion dollars in profits. That ought to help.
thalarctos
As a quasi-biologist, I am curious about just what mechanism Bobo thinks makes one inherit traits from a brother.
DougJ
@Ailuridae:
Yes.
zhak
Every time I see a Republican pundit express deep concern about government spending or the deficit or anything related thereto, I always have the same response: these people said nothing while Republicans trashed the place and turned a surplus into a massive deficit. To me, that means that their concerns are worth roughly the same as tactical warfare advice from George W Bush.
bkny
@kansi:
mafia.
Warren Terra
Alternate Brooks: isn’t it cute when a girl tries to legislate? And this one did OK, proving her dad and brother are just awesome.
Classily, he said that on her 70th birthday, I think.
kay
@thalarctos:
Pundits are really romantics. They have a whole integrated theory of Democratic pols and Party machines that’s about 40 years old. This “machine theory” applies only to Democrats. The fact that there are states and whole regions in this country that are absolutely owned and run by a “Republican machine” is completely ignored.
PeakVT
And we will have gone from 40 percent of GDP of public debt to 90 percent in 10 years. That’s just cataclysmic.
It would be if the USA had high tax rates. It’s also not true – gross federal debt has been higher than 40% for a while – as you can see from this handy-dandy (though slightly dated) chart.
Jason Bylinowski
Oh, right, tote-bagger, because…
::surreptitiously looks at THIS AMERICAN LIFE coffee mug::
Dammit, I knew I should have told them to keep it.
Michael
Whiteness. All positive traits are white as far as the BoBos of the world are concerned. Strapping Young Bucks and Cadillac Driving Welfare Moms are of course shiftless, a genetic defect.
This worldview is a cultural defect of English and Scots-Irish upbringing, and takes a great deal of personal perseverence to overcome. Once it is overcome, you can then be properly and appropriately embarrassed about the views of your extended family, and you can marvel over the power of advertising (both commercial and political) that is aimed at exploiting that cultural weakness.
scav
@thalarctos: Yeah, it’s a poser, isn’t it? Well, maybe if we start with the assumption that the XXs are really really really only empty vessels waiting to be filled by the manly goodstuffs and we assume an XY-XX gradient for attributes to flow over . . . still sounds incestuous.
Bill E Pilgrim
@thalarctos:
You don’t want to know. Suffice it to remember that Brooks has spent a lot of time as a wanna-be anthropologist writing about rednecks in the South.
Navigator
Every time David Brooks speaks, the forehead-shaped depression in the table in front of Mark Shields gets deeper.
ppcli
@zhak:
Absolutely. Also, since these are largely the people who persist in propagating the delusion that “tax cuts increase government revenue”, we should observe that this response should shut them up: “Well, we should relax about the deficit, since Obama cut lots of taxes. So the increased revenue will wipe the deficit out. Right?” (I haven’t had an opportunity to try this one out yet, but I have a hunch that it won’t work. It might produce some momentary confused stuttering, though, which is always entertaining.)
bob h
“In fact, corporate debt is less risk—seen as less risky this week than government debt.”
This is, of course, horseshit. Treasuries are still 4-5%, whereas corporates are 6-8%.
kid bitzer
so did you have any luck combatting the bullshit and disenchanting your parents’ friends?
is there any way to get the tote-bags to fall from their eyes?
kansi
@bkny:
Oh, that’s right. The Speaker is Italian.
And while she is engaged in NancySmash! where is Newt Gingrich? Off hunting giraffes?
SiubhanDuinne
@Michael #10: Even more than the black leather, the industrial-strength zippers just screamed “biker-chick dominatrix,” and not in a good way. It was funny to watch McCain’s face while Sarah was talking. He’d be all grim and un-smiling and then she’d say his name and his overall affect wouldn’t change at all but his mouth would stretch obligingly into a smile-like grimace, and then snap back into its usual dour visage. And what was with the jokes she told about McCain’s age? “He was around for the original Tea Party” — does she think an endorsement is the same as a roast? Pathetic and awful and embarrassing, all of it.
AhabTRuler
@Jason Bylinowski: That’s OK, I am brazenly eying my own Balloon Juice tote bag and coffee mug, so DougJ should be careful which tribal paraphernalia he stigmatizes.
babieca
Pelosi’s father was Tommy D’Alesandro Jr, a Democratic machine leader from Baltimore. He was Baltimore mayor and a progressive four term congressman during WWII. Her brother Tommy III was also a Baltimore mayor.
She grew up immersed in Democratic politics and no doubt learned the nitty gritty of getting things done from her father. That’s not a knock on her. I doubt she would be where she is today without that background and I’m damn glad we have a speaker that has the background to run the party and get things done.
AhabTRuler
If you contribute at the $150 rate…
RareSanity
Okay, it’s been awhile since I’ve felt like a noob, but, can somebody explain “tote-bagger”?
AhabTRuler
@RareSanity: See DougJ@13.
RareSanity
@AhabTRuler:
Okay, I get that part.
But, what is the connection with a tote bag?
kansi
@RareSanity:
Obviously, you must change the channel during their fund raising campaigns. You get a PBS tote bag for pledging a particular amount. He is assuming these folks are PBS “viewers like you” who got their tote bags with their membership pledges.
Violet
@RareSanity:
You get a tote bag if you donate at a high enough level.
AhabTRuler
@RareSanity: A tote bag is often offered as a “gift” for contributing. One of the “funnies” they like to deploy during pledge-drives on Nice Polite Republican radio is the “Nina Toten-bag,” playing on the name of Nina Totenberg.
Ash
Is Bobo married? Does he really think that the power to control a bunch of unruly old dudes is inherited from men? Say what now?
Maude
@SiubhanDuinne:
Palin is going with the teabaggers to bother Reid in Nevada.
This is going to put McCain into the bag, and he won’t be able to distance himself from them. Ha, ha.
If there is violence and Palin is arrested, won’t that jacket go well with hand cuffs?
Keithly
Ash @ 38: “Is Bobo married?” prompted me to think, “Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to!”
SIA
@28 SiubhanDuinne-
I watched it as long as I could. Sarah looked like she was really trying to grind salt in the wounds. And McCain appeared to be in physical or psychic pain. I could go the rest of my life without seeing those four people on a stage together, including the always intensely creepy Todd.
RareSanity
@kansi:
@Violet:
@AhabTRuler:
Ohhhh….now I get it.
We mainly watch PBS in the morning…I think living in Atlanta has caused me to develop a sub-conscience “ignore switch” when I feel a request for money coming.
As a matter of fact the couple of times I have donated, I think I specifically said not to send me anything…
Linda Featheringill
To Michael:
Yes, I am from that particular gene pool.
Actually, I was raised to be a racist and anti-everything-different. It took several years of judging every individual person as an individual to counteract that training. Unfortunately, when I am in pain and out in public, I am still anti-everything-different. So I may be stuck with that.
The good side of all this is that I met several very interesting people along the way. And yes, a few jerks too. Nice journey. I recommend it.
SRW1
@thalarctos:
Prions!
RareSanity
@SIA:
As awkward as Gramps McCain has become, I just don’t see why the people of Arizona would reelect him.
I mean, my Senators (GA) are batshit crazy, but at least they have not been embarrassed on national teevee multiple times by a Muslim, community organizer…
mercurino
felix salmon is very skeptical of reports suggesting Berkshire Hathaway’s bonds ever traded at lower yields than treasuries.
Krugman has also been knocking down the default-risk meme that’s been making the rounds this week.
kay
@babieca:
Conservatives use it to evoke smoke-filled rooms and “urban” deal-making. Not just conservatives. The whole media.
It bothers me because it ignores the GOP machine that is absolutely in place in conservative-leaning areas. It insists that only Democrats rely on a Party structure, while conservatives are free ‘n easy mavericks who vote for the “the best man for the job”. It’s complete and utter bullshit, and this myth has been in place so long that it’s become “truth”.
SIA
@45 RareSanity
“I mean, my Senators (GA) are batshit crazy, but at least they have not been embarrassed on national teevee multiple times by a Muslim, community organizer”
Heh.
I would not mind if JD beats McCain. It’s not like we’d be losing a moderate vote or anything, McCain has morphed into a lost and tormented coil of rage and hate. It shows in his face every time he speaks.
I share your batshit crazy senators, unfortunately. And I think we must also add to Saxby’s description “evil, useless, and vile”. John Lewis is my rep, so that helps make up for them. .
JasonF
Because when I think of the all-time great parliamentarians, my list goes: Sam Rayburn, the dude who was mayor of Baltimore in the 50s, Benjamin D’Israeli, Lyndon Johnson, the dude who was mayor of Baltimore in the late 60s, and Winston Churchill. Of course, what made these guys so great was their ability to control fractuous caucuses, their ability to further their party’s agendas, and the fact that each of them had a penis.
Llelldorin
@babieca:
Oh, no doubt. The problem is that her political skills and position have demonstrably exceeded those of her father and brother for some time now. It’s incredibly weird to take someone who is being compared to Rayburn or Clay and say “well, she gets it from her Dad, who was a mayor and served in congress for about a third as long as she has.”
Violet
Yesterday the guy subbing for Limbaugh was musing out loud about whether or not Arizonans should vote for McCain or Hayworth. He outlined the advantages of having McCain – “He can get on TV with one phone call!” – and talked about his seniority. Then he said that didn’t matter if McCain didn’t vote the way they wanted him to. (A later caller compared him to Specter.)
Then the sub went on to discuss Hayworth – wouldn’t have any seniority in the Senate and that wouldn’t be as good for Arizonans. But then he would gain it as he went on, and also would vote the right way.
Finally, he said he didn’t know how Hayworth would do in the general election and said, “I don’t want him to win the primary if he can’t in the state-wide election.”
It was a rather interesting and rational take on the whole situation. He was pretty honest about what he wanted, and that he didn’t want to have Hayworth win, only to hand the election to the Democrats. And he said he didn’t know anything about the race and asked Arizonans to phone in. At that point I got to my destination and wasn’t in the car to listen to the rest of the show.
Whoever this guy was made a fair amount of sense yesterday. He’ll never be asked to sub for Limbaugh if he keeps that stuff up.
KDP
Oooo, Pat Buchanan is ANGRY! He really doesn’t like health care reform. Why doesn’t Pat Buchanan want small children with asthma to have health care insurance?
mk3872
Bobo and his cohorts will continue to claim that HCR is going to bankript the country by ignoring the CBO’s deficit-reducing findings because they are all related to increasing revenue and lowering costs by adjusting payments, all of which conservatives will claim will never happen because Congress will chicken out.
You’ll hear this over & over again by the intellectual wing of the GOP that tries to argue HCR on its merits instead of calling it blatant socialism and then of civilization.
At least Bobo is not completely driven by a blinding fear of Obama and an insatiable desire to bring him down … That being said, he is clearly stating as fact what has yet to happen and what is NOT in the HCR bill …
ericblair
@mercurino: felix salmon is very skeptical of reports suggesting Berkshire Hathaway’s bonds ever traded at lower yields than treasuries.
Yup. To summarize, on Tuesday, one (1) count-em one Berkshire-Hathaway bond may have traded at a lower rate than the equivalent-maturity Treasury, but it’s hard to tell what exact Treasury trades were close enough at that point to compare. So, on this tiny little pile of fertilizer the vast castle of winger economic thought was constructed.
Keithly
ericblair @ 54
Bobo and other hackish economists are just getting their Blake on:
William Blake – Auguries of Innocence
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
It’s almost a Burkean tocsin, if you will.
Jules
Brooks and his old timey “she’s pretty good for a girl” shit makes me want to punch something.
And the fact that the 2 other dudes did not call him on it makes me even more stabby.
I watched the Sarah and John Show yesterday and the best part was Cindy who could hardly mask her disdain for Palin.
You could just see the thought bubble; “I can not believe we have to depend on this piece of trash to…stop looking at her ass John.”
babieca
@JasonF:
If you don’t think it was a real feat to hold together the democratic party in Maryland, and especially Baltimore, in the 1950s and advance its agenda you might want to go back and reread your civil rights history.
That was precisely the brief period when Democrats were still able to hold together the Roosevelt coalition in the face of white opposition to and panic about growing black political and economic power. Cities like Baltimore, Detroit, etc. that had boomed during the great migration and had strong a black middle class were especially volatile over the course of the 1950s.
I honestly can’t think of a time when there was a more fractuous caucus.
It’s true though that Tommy III was mostly just the dude who was mayor of Baltimore in the 60s.
Nora Carrington
You still on pain pills or something ?!?
you:
Bobo:
He’s conceding that if we’d done nothing, the economy would have fallen off an even steeper cliff than it just did.
TuiMel
@Jules:
The torment of Cindy was also my take-away from the few moments I watched of this Patheti-fest.
WereBear
Now it will run through my head every time I see them.@Jules:
patroclus
I think Nancy Pelosi did a fantastic job in getting HCR passed – it’s a transformational bill (albeit a middle-of-the-road one) and clearly ranks as one of the major pieces of legislation enacted by Congress this century.
By contrast, however, here is a partial list of some statutes with which Sam Rayburn was, shall we say, involved: the Federal Reserve Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, the Edge Act, the Espionage Act, the Esch-Cummins Act, the War Risk Insurance Act, the Trading with the Enemy Act, the WWI War Powers Act, the Newlands Act, the Adamson Act, the Grain Futures Act, the Immigration Act, the Underwood Tariff Act, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act, Prohibition, the repeal of Prohibition, the Truth-in-Securities Act, the Securities Exchange Act, the Federal Communications Act, the Emergency Railroad Holding Company Act, the Emergency Banking Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the FDIC Act, the Motor Carrier Act, the Flood Control Act, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, the Rural Electrification Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, the Civilian Conservation Corps Act, the National Youth Administration Act, the Works Progess Administration, the Public Works Administration, the Machine Gun Act, the Wagner Act, the Minimum Wage Act, the Social Security Act, the various Neutrality Acts and amendments thereto, the Maloney Act, the Investment Advisors Act, the Investment Company Act, the Holding Company Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, the Vinson Act, the Vinson-Elkins Act, the Smith Act, the Lend-Lease Act, the Selective Service Act, the WWII War Resolutions, the WWII War Powers Acts, the Southwestern Power Administration Act, the McCarran-Ferguson Act, the Fair Housing Act, the expansion of Social Security Act, the Federal Highway Act, the Water Transport Act, the Interstate Highway Act, the Bank Holding Company Act, the National Security Act, the Bretton Woods Agreements Act, the United Nations Act, the Atomic Energy Act, the Civil Rights Act (1957), the Civil Rights Act (1960), the National Aeronautic and Space Administration Act, the D.C. Voting Rights Constitutional Amendment, the Defense Education Act, the Peace Corps Authorization Act, and enlargement of the House Rules Committee. And I’m sure I left out a LOT.
Nancy did good. No one equals Rayburn. Not even close.
robertdsc
@zhak:
This. Full stop.
Citizen Alan
Rayburn was awesome, but he was also Speaker for seventeen years. Pelosi’s been on the job for a little over three years. I’d be curious to see how much Rayburn achieved over the most productive four years of his tenure.
tyrese
that some of here (such as DougJ) completely misunderstood what brooks was saying about her dad and brother indicates a little too much time typing stupid Balloon Juice cliches and too little time doing research.
Also This Too Good News for conservatives!
boy that stuff is funny.
jl
I have no idea what Brooks meant with that ‘in the blood’ stuff about Pelosi, other than I have a hunch it was the kind of trite bolerplate a retro doofus hack would pundit out to fill some time and seem like he was saying something.
Brooks is totally wrong about the risk of US government drficit/debt. Brooks knows as much about economics as people like ‘economic pundit’ Robert (no relation to the late Paul) Samuelson. That is to say, not done damn thing.
Read Brad DeLong, Paul Krugman, James Galbraith, Joseph Stiglitz, or Menzie Chinn at Econbrowser to get what I think is the true picture.
If you want an informed semi-dissent from the position that there is no problem at all with the debt over the short to medium term (say over next five to seven years or so) read James Hamilton at Econbrowser. I don’t agree with Hamilton, but at least he knows what he is talking about, and you will not clown yourself if you follow his view.
DougJ
@tyrese:
How did I misunderstand what he said about her brother and father?