With the release of the president’s FY 2012 budget today, what promises to be a proctracted struggle between the White House and House Republicans (with no telling how many side-struggles involving Senate Democrats and progressive Democrats) over the size and shape of the federal budget.
There’s already some understandable progressive angst over the way the president has positioned himself for this fight–proposing his own five-year freeze of nondefense discretionary spending, and offering specific cuts to programs that are by no means useless or counterproductive (e.g., low-income heating assistance). Why not just refuse to concede anything on the domestic spending front and start the battle on more neutral ground?
That strategy would be based on the assumption that both sides will eventually meet in the middle on budgetary issues, making the starting point extraordinarily important. I suspect the White House believes public opinion will matter a great deal in the resolution of the budget battle, and wants its initial offer to be credible, not just as far away from the GOP’s as is possible. Before dismissing his approach as excessively conciliatory, It should be kept in mind that Obama has refused to make any concessions on “entitlement reform,” despite the recommendations of his own deficit commission; this is the concession Republicans desperately want, because they are afraid to “go there” without bipartisan cover. This dynamic, along with the decision GOPers have made to focus not on the actual overall federal budget, but on the discretionary spending contained in the continuing resolution due to expire on March 4, is what has made it necessary for Republicans to propose specific and draconian cuts to popular programs. Thanks in part to Obama’s tactics, they’ve exposed themselves to the characterization of their position well explained by the title of a Jonathan Cohn post at TNR: “Good Bye Big Bird. Hello E. Coli.”
The more immediate problem for Obama is that he has proposed his own nondefense discretionary spending cuts in order to protect “investments”–some in infrastrucure programs, most in education–that requiring spending increases. He began making the economic case for these investments in his State of the Union Address. But he’s got a long way to go before convincing sizable majorities of the public that they are essential to the immediate task of creating jobs and reducing epidemic levels of income inequality.

Despite the acrimonious debate between conservatives about the depth of spending cuts, the latest Pew opinion data (poll conducted Feb 2-7) indicates that the public is skeptical about the need for cuts in social spending and strongly opposed to deep cuts, according to TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira’s latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages.

…When asked about a number of possible areas where the federal budget could be cut the public shied away from decreasing spending in area after area. Under 30 percent called for spending cuts in 16 of 18 areas with the least enthusiasm for cuts in veterans’ benefits (6 percent), education (11 percent), Medicare (12 percent), Social Security (12 percent), public schools (13 percent), and college financial aid (16 percent).

Nor do conservatives win much support when it comes to cutting state budgets:

…Just 18 percent support decreasing funding for K-12 schools, 21 percent support decreasing health care services, and 31 percent support decreasing funding for roads and public transportation. And support is still only split (47-47) on cutting the pension plans of public employees despite the relentless barrage of conservative attacks on public-sector workers.

Apparently conservatives don’t pay much attention to the views of American voters on spending cuts. As for hoping they will come around and listen to their constituents, there’s not much precedent for that. As Teixeira says, “I suppose we shouldn’t hold our breath.”

It’s a long way from our national day of despair in Tucson to Egypt’s day of jubilation in Cairo. But it’s a distance worth thinking about as we try to understand how a great democracy like the U.S. can produce such sick young men as Jared Louchner, while an inspiring, nonviolent movement lead by tens of thousands of courageous young people can emerge in a nation ruled by a brutal dictatorship like Mubarak’s regime in Egypt.
Nonviolent movements are not well understood by America’s right-wingers. It’s an article of faith among second amendment fundamentalists that guns are necessary to maintain “freedom.” I guess the young Egyptians didn’t get that particular memo.
Instead they poured into the streets of Cairo, armed only with courage, determination and cell phones (service soon cut off by Mubarak) and brought down a tryranical regime without firing a shot. Had the youth of Cairo been stocked up with firearms, their blood would be flowing in the streets and Mubarak would still be in power, more secure than ever.
Give the youth of Cairo due credit for leading Egypt’s nonviolent revolution. But note that their revolution gained decisive momentum when the workers went on strike.
One of the casualties of their revolution is the western stereotype of Arabs as a violence-prone people. The protestors in Tahrir Square remained nonviolent and refused to be intimidated, even while Mubarak sent in his goon squads, who have now melted away in silence and shame.
The paranoiacs who brought guns to political rallies in the U.S. last year were scary to many at the time. Now they too look more like pathetic, fearful relics of the past, not so unlike Mubarak’s goons with their camels and clubs.
Another casualty of the Egyptian revolution is the terrorist movement based in Muslim nations. No, I’m not saying it is over. They will still be a force. But their argument that terror is the most effective form of resistance to oppression has been irrevocably damaged in the eyes of millions of young people they hoped to recruit. The new generation of Arab youth now have a dazzling example of the power of nonviolence to challenge political oppression.
Meanwhile in the U.S., conservatives are groping awkwardly for a credible response to Egypt’s revolution and to President Obama’s eloquent statement (transcript here, video here) congratulating Egypt’s nonviolent movement. No doubt, the conservatives will fall back on the old fear-filled arguments (like TimPaw here and Newt here) and stereotypes. And there may yet be setbacks to come, as Egypt charts its path to democracy. But Democrats can be optimistic that the leader of our party gets it that a new era of freedom and democracy is awakening in the middle east, one deserving of our respect and support.

The pious claim of many Tea Party and other conservative movement activists and apologists is that they simply want to rein in runaway government spending and reduce disastrous levels of public debt. In practice, of course, they don’t care about debt if it’s created by corporate or high-end tax cuts, and they are often less interested in reducing government spending than in redirecting it to their favored constituencies.
A very good example of this phenomenon is coming to light in Florida, where newly elected governor Rick Scott, the famously controversial (that’s putting it nicely) health industry executive who bought himself the Republican nomination last year and then won a very close general election, has rolled out his budget proposals for the economically battered and nearly dysfunctional Sunshine State.
Yes, Scott is proposing $5 billion in state spending reductions (in absolute terms, not reductions from some sort of current-services budget). Many of these cuts seemed to be ideologically driven, such as the decimation of the state Department of Community Affairs, which runs growth-management programs hated by developers; and a (roughly) ten percent cut in K-12 education, part and parcel of the state GOP’s war with teachers and other state employees.
But the size of the cuts wouldn’t be nearly so high if Scott were not also insisting on major tax cuts, notably in corporate taxes (due to be phased out entirely in a few years) and in state-controlled property taxes that support public schools.
Moreoever, nestled in his budget proposal are spending increases that are designed to redistribute resources according to conservative ideological prescriptions. Most remarkable is his request for $800 million (over two years) for “economic development incentives,” which almost certainly means a gubernatorially-controlled slush fund to be used to bribe companies to relocate to Florida through tax abatements, free government services, and other subsidies. And even as he sought major cuts in public school funding (in a state already facing something of a school financing crisis), he managed to find room to propose $250 million in private-school vouchers.
Scott seems to be exulting in the radicalism of his budget, which he chose to announce not at the state capitol but at an actual, billed-as-such Tea Party rally at a Baptist Church (!). He may or may not get his way on the details with a Republican-controlled legislature, but he has certainly initiated class warfare, and a redistribution of public resources to those “job creators” at the top of the income and power pyramid, with a vengeance.
UPDATE: Steve Benen hit the publish button about the same time as I did on a similar piece on Scott’s budget, though he provided more detail about the cuts, while I really focused on the ideological meaning of the increases Scott sought. Steve also linked to an Atrios tweet that noted Scott’s resemblence to the Superman uber-villian Lex Luthor.

It’s not normally a great thing when the military assumes power anywhere, and many perils undoubtedly face those struggling for secular democracy in Egypt. But it’s impossible not to share the joy of those who brought down Hosni Mubarak’s regime with simple demands for freedom and justice, and their hopes the Egyptian military will now honor its commitment to hold genuinely free elections.
American observers have by and large not been distinguished by a great deal of foresight or imagination in reacting to the events in Egypt. But I do hope those (mostly conservatives) who have been shedding tears for Mubarak and flatly stating that a “stable” pro-American regime is by definition superior to whatever democracy might create feel a little shame today.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
When President Obama sends his latest budget proposal to Congress on Valentine’s Day, how will we know whether he is floating a serious proposal or just playing politics? I’ve written a guide to help TNR’s readers figure it out.
In its latest long-term budget and economic estimates, the CBO looks at our fiscal future in two different ways. Its “baseline” budget assumes that current law does not change. Under that scenario, the deficit declines to about 3 percent of GDP by mid-decade and remains there until the end of the ten-year budget window. Debt held by the public rises from $10.4 trillion to $18.3 trillion, net interest payments increase from $225 billion in 2011 to almost $800 billion in 2011, and debt held by the public reaches 77 percent, the highest level since the end of the Truman administration.
And that’s the good news–too good to be probable, in fact. It presupposes steady growth without a recession between now and 2021, a longer uninterrupted period of growth than we have ever experienced. Moreover, in following current law, as it is required to do in constructing its baseline, the CBO assumed that all the Bush tax cuts expire in 2012, that the alternative minimum tax would expand to hit many more households than ever before, and that sharp reductions in Medicare payment rates for doctors take effect at the end of 2011. For those assumptions to come true, Congress would have to make decisions that it has steadfastly rejected for many years, and Obama would have to abandon his pledge not to raise taxes for families with annual incomes below $250,000.
The CBO’s second projection uses more realistic assumptions. It forecasts that the deficit would average more than 6 percent of GDP over the next decade, and debt held by the public would skyrocket by $12 trillion to 97 percent of GDP, a level that few economists contemplate with equanimity. This prospect, not current law, defines our real baseline for the next decade. And it gets much worse in the decade after that. It has become a cliché to suggest that we are on an “unsustainable” course. It is also the truth.
This framework gives us a metric for evaluating the claims and counter-claims, proposals and counter-proposals, with which we are about to be deluged. It is expected, for example, that the president’s budget will propose a five-year freeze on non-security related discretionary spending, which senior officials estimate would reduce the deficit by about $400 billion over the next decade. As they say, that’s real money. But it’s only 6 percent of the total baseline deficit we’ll incur during that period, and only 3 percent of the deficit projected using more realistic assumptions.
Is the White House taking these projections seriously? As OMB director Jack Lew said last week in an op-ed titled “The Easy Cuts Are Behind Us,” because non-security discretionary spending amounts to little more than a tenth of the federal budget, “cutting solely in this area will never be enough to address our long-term fiscal challenges.” When the administration releases its FY2012 budget, we’ll be able to compare it to these numbers and see if Obama’s priorities tackle this basic truth.
The signs so far are not encouraging. Based on what Lew said and on other straws in the wind, it seems unlikely that Obama will offer concrete and significant proposals–to raise revenues (even in the context of fundamental tax reform), to make more than marginal cuts in security-related spending, or to begin the task of adjusting entitlement spending to reality. If so, he will have missed an opportunity to exert truly transformative leadership. And if he doesn’t lead, Congress won’t do it for him.
The conventional wisdom is that proposing such drastic cuts would be horrible politics because the American people are simply not prepared to entertain, let alone accept, the kind of measures needed to put the country on a sustainable course. There’s a lot of solid survey evidence to back up that belief. But as the president contemplates his options in the fiscal debate that begins next week, he might want to consider the findings of another survey released by Gallup on Wednesday. Only 27 percent of the people approve of his handling of the federal budget deficit, by far his lowest grade in any sector of public policy. Worse, only 19 percent of Independents approve. Obama may be hoping that these unaffiliated voters, 52 percent of whom supported him in 2008, don’t care very much about fiscal issues. Pretty soon, we’ll find out.

So for all the endless efforts by the managers of the CPAC conference to head off a visible revolt of social conservatives, looks like they were preparing for the wrong threat to unity. When Dick Cheney showed up to give Donald Rumsfeld an award, it was an irresistable provocation to the large number of Ron Paul Revolutionaries in the audience, some of whom walked out while others stayed to noisily heckle the two old warriors.
As Dave Weigel quickly pointed out, the CPAC folks blundered badly by scheduling the neocon nostalgia-fest immediately after Rand Paul’s speech, which naturally attracted every Paulite in greater Washington. All whipped up by Paul the Younger’s remarks, they naturally cut lose when two of their most formidable enemies took the stage. The name of Rumsfeld’s award–“Defender of the Constitution”–probably didn’t help.
Now that they are properly aroused, it will be interesting to see how many Paulites participate in Saturday’s presidential straw poll, which their zany leader won last year.

TDS Advisory Board Member Alan Abramowitz posits an optimistic 2012 scenario for President Obama in his current post at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Abramowitz, author of The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy, cooks up a regression analysis forecasting model using polling, electoral and economic data, and explains:

…The dependent variable in this analysis is the incumbent party’s share of the major party vote. The independent variables are the incumbent president’s net approval rating (approval-disapproval) in the Gallup Poll at midyear, the annual growth rate of real GDP in the second quarter of the election year, and a dummy variable distinguishing between first term incumbents and all other types of incumbent party candidates.
This simple forecasting model does an excellent job of predicting the outcomes of presidential elections, explaining just over 90 percent of the variance in the incumbent party’s share of the popular vote. The model has correctly predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1988 more than two months before Election Day. In 2008, the model correctly predicted a comfortable victory for Barack Obama over John McCain at a time when McCain had taken the lead over Obama in a number of national polls following the Republican National Convention.

And Abramowitz adds,

…Regardless of who wins the Republican nomination, even modest economic growth and a mediocre approval rating in 2012 would probably be enough to give Barack Obama a second term in the White House. For example, an annual growth rate of three percent in the second quarter (slightly below the most recent estimate for the fourth quarter of 2010) and a net approval rating of zero at midyear (slightly worse than Obama’s average rating over the past month) would result in a forecast of 53 percent of the national popular vote for the President which would almost certainly produce a decisive victory in the Electoral College.

Abramowitz cautions that, while the model has accurately predicted the winner of the last five presidential elections, the margin of victory has been smaller in four of the elections than the model predicted, possibly because of increasing polarization. He concludes, “If Barack Obama does win a second term in the White House, it will most likely be by a fairly narrow margin unless economic growth and the President’s approval rating both show dramatic improvement in the next 18 months.”

Democratic candidates and campaign workers gearing up for ’12 statewide races, particularly those facing wealthy Republican opponents, should take a couple of minutes to read the L.A. Times analysis of campaign spending and budgeting in the race for the California governorship. The article, by Seema Mehta and Maeve Reston, provides a highly instructive breakdown comparing not only expenditures, but the timing of outlays for the Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman campaigns, as indicated by recently-published financial disclosure reports .
Of course the caveat is that the California campaign was extraordinary in that Whitman set records for spending and she also had a tough primary campaign. In addition, “Brown entered the race with $100 million of name ID,” as Whitman campaign consultant Rob Stutzman put it. What is instructive, however, is how the Brown campaign marshalled its far more limited economic resources, and his strategy may provide a useful template for underfunded Democratic candidates nationwide. Here’s an excerpt:

Meg Whitman vastly outspent Jerry Brown on virtually every facet of the 2010 contest for governor. From focus groups and consultants to private planes and lavish fundraisers, Whitman campaigned like the billionaire she is, spending $177 million to Brown’s $36 million.

The article goes on to compare Brown’s and Whitman’s expenditures for travel, direct mail, signs, event staging, consultants and staff. But the most important revelation:

But in one key area — television advertising — the Democrat nearly kept pace with Whitman during the final sprint of the campaign, allowing him to make his case to voters before they cast ballots…”By holding our fire, we were competitive in the final month and almost equal in the final four weeks,” Brown’s campaign manager, Steve Glazer, said.
…As is customary in California campaigns, both candidates poured the bulk of their money into communicating with voters through television and radio advertisements. Whitman spent more than $120 million — two-thirds of her campaign treasury — producing and airing commercials. Brown spent for that purpose nearly three-quarters of the $40 million he raised. Between Sept. 1 and Election Day, Whitman spent $40 million buying airtime to Brown’s $29 million. But much of Brown’s spending occurred in the final month, allowing him to maximize his efforts precisely when voters were preparing to cast ballots.

So even in cutting-edge California, home of the digital vanguard, television still rules as the primary conveyance of political persuasion. The L.A. Times analysis does not take into account the quality of the candidates’ ads and Whitman’s image problems. But it does indicate that, investing heavily in air time during the final campaign weeks can offset an opponent’s overall economic advantage.

This item is cross-posted from Progressive Fix.
Tomorrow every wingnut’s attention will be on Washington, where the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) begins its annual meeting and vetting session for Republican presidential candidates. The three-day affair will end with a straw poll of attendees that becomes, for better or worse, a data point in the nominating process (last year’s straw poll was sort of ruined, according to most accounts, when Ron Paul’s college-aged supporters packed the room and won it for him). The significance of the event has probably been increased by the late-developing presidential field; this really does represent, as Michael Shear of the New York Times put it yesterday, the “starter’s pistol” for the 2012 cycle.
There’s always some maneuvering about who shows up and doesn’t show up, and who’s behind the scenes manipulating things, at CPAC meetings. But this year is kind of special in that there has been a sustained and ostensibly ideological effort to boycott the event from the right. It’s been organized by social conservatives who are unhappy that a gay conservative group–known as GOProud, which is distinct from the better-known Log Cabin Republicans in that it is more explicitly conservative on issues other than GLBT rights–has been allowed to become one of the meeting’s many sponsors.
More generally, elements of the Christian Right may be using this brouhaha to send a message that they will not accept subordination to those in the conservative movement who demand an exclusive focus on fiscal issues. Indeed, in addition to the GOProud’s inclusion, one of the grievances against CPAC among social conservatives is the very fact that Mitch Daniels has been given a featured speaking slot, presumably as a possible 2012 presidential candidate. Daniels has enraged the Cultural Right by calling for a “truce” in the culture wars, which from their point of view means a continuation of the GOP’s longstanding refusal to go beyond lip service on issues like abortion, gay rights and church-state separation.
There’s a secondary behind-the-scenes issue with CPAC that’s drawn less attention outside the fever swamps of right-wing internecine warfare: anger among Islamophobes at the inclusion of a group called Muslims for America, which noted neoconservative agitator Frank Gaffney has attacked as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. This brouhaha in turn reflects long-standing hostility among some conservatives to the efforts of anti-tax commissar Grover Norquist, long a fixture at CPAC meetings, to legitimize Muslim-American organizations and convince Republicans to pursue Muslim voters.
Finally, some conservatives have always had issues with CPAC due to concerns over the alleged financial irregularities of David Keene, long-time head of the American Conservative Union, the primary sponsor of the event. It’s often hard to untangle the personal from the ideological in these disputes, but they both definitely exist.
In any event, eight significant conservative organizations have joined the boycott of this year’s CPAC conference, the most prominent being the Heritage Foundation and the Family Research Council. But the boycott hasn’t had much of an effect on the would-be presidents invited to speak. According to Slate‘s Dave Weigel, no-shows by Sen. Jim DeMint and House Republican Study Committee chairman Jim Jordan may be partially attributable to sympathy for the boycott, and/or for the complaints of social conservatives that their agenda is being deep-sixed.
It’s also possible that the most notable no-shows, Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, are being influenced by it; it’s hard to say, though in an interview with Christian Right journalist David Brody, Palin seemed to be saying in her elliptical manner that she had no problem with GOProud’s inclusion in the conference. Palin has now found reason to skip four CPACs in a row, and some of her detractors say she simply does not want to speak without a hefty fee and an unchallenged spotlight.
Others have interpreted Huckabee’s and Palin’s decision to take a pass as indicating they really aren’t running for president in 2012. Influential Iowa Republican activist Craig Robinson took this tack in ranking the presidential candidates’ potential appeal in his state’s pivotal caucuses, refusing to list Huckabee and Palin as members of the potential field.
So background noise aside, what should astute observers look for at CPAC, particularly in the cattle-call series of “featured speeches” that begin with Michele Bachmann tomorrow and conclude with fiery Tea Party congressman Alan West of Florida on Saturday? Obviously the straw poll results–and the frantic efforts of the winner and the losers to spin them–will be of interest. The speeches may get tedious to non-conservatives; this is not a venue for truth-telling challenges to conservative shibboleths, and the smell of red meat will be overpowering. You can count on metronomic shout-outs to the power and the glory of the Tea Party Movement, and vast quantities of Obama-bashing.
Since no one can rival Michele Bachmann in appealing to the conservative id, I’d keep an eye on her speech, particularly since she’s playing with the idea of running for president (probably if Palin does not run), and could be formidable in Iowa. Similarly, a much longer long-shot for the presidency, John Bolton, could use his Saturday address to play off the news from Egypt and challenge both the administration and his fellow-conservatives to treat the disturbances in the Middle East as an Islamist threat to U.S. security.
But the most interesting speeches may be from presidential wannabes not known for their ability to get conservative crowds growling and roaring. Tim Pawlenty, for example, is putting together a credible Iowa campaign and seems to be every Republican’s second choice, but desperately needs to show he can fire up the troops. Mitt Romney (who won the CPAC straw poll at this point in the 2008 cycle) needs to recapture the mojo that made him the “true conservative” candidate four years ago, particularly now that he’s being generally depicted as representing what’s left of the moderate tradition in the GOP. Rick Santorum is a good bet to bring the grievances of the Christian Right into the open. Haley Barbour could really use a speech branding himself as something other than a former tobacco lobbyist who can raise large stacks of cash when he isn’t displaying an unfortunate nostalgia for the Old South.
It should be a good show, and an illustration of the hard-core Right’s emergence from the sidelines of Republican politics into the very center of power and attention.