GOP SIW

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.

Martin Pengelly at The Guardian:

A swing-state Republican senator denied threatening social security and Medicare, after Democrats accused him of putting them “on the chopping block”.

Ron Johnson, who entered Congress on the Tea Party wave of 2010, is up for re-election in Wisconsin. As they attempt to keep hold of the Senate, Democrats think they have a chance of winning the seat.

In an interview with The Regular Joe Show podcast, Johnson said social security and Medicare, crucial support programs for millions of older and disabled Americans and their dependents, should no longer be considered mandatory spending.

“If you qualify for the entitlement, you just get it no matter what the cost,” Johnson said. “And our problem in this country is that more than 70% of our federal budget, of our federal spending, is all mandatory spending. It’s on automatic pilot … you just don’t do proper oversight. You don’t get in there and fix the programs going bankrupt.”

He added: “What we ought to be doing is we ought to turn everything into discretionary spending so it’s all evaluated so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be going bankrupt. As long as things are on automatic pilot, we just continue to pile up debt.”

Democrats pounced. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader, referred to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan when he said: “They’re saying the quiet part out loud. Maga Republicans want to put social security and Medicare on the chopping block.”

A Johnson spokesperson said Schumer was “lying”.

...

Democrats see Republican threats to so-called “entitlements” – programs paid for by taxes and relied upon by vulnerable people – as a potent electoral issue. Polls show strong bipartisan support.

From Joe Biden to leaders in Congress, Democrats have seized on a plan published by Rick Scott of Florida, the chair of the Republican Senate campaign committee.

Scott proposed that all Americans should pay some income tax and that all federal laws should expire after five years if Congress does not renew them.

The senator insisted he was “not going to raise anybody’s taxes” – despite saying more people should pay tax. He also said Congress “needs to start being honest with the American public and tell them exactly what we’re going to do to make sure they continue to get their Medicare and their social security”.

Insurrection Update

Our new book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection. 

Blatant racism from @RonJohnsonWI here. He says he wasn’t worried on 1/6 because the majority-white insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol “love this country,” but says if they were Black Lives Matter protestors he would’ve been concerned for his safety. #WISen pic.twitter.com/V3gm4cLw8v

— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) March 12, 2021

Seb Walker at VICE:

One of the most senior Cabinet officials in the Trump administration, Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, has told VICE on Showtime that he believes the speech made by former President Donald Trump on the morning of January 6 was responsible for causing the mob to violently attack the Capitol later that day.

Trump installed Miller after firing his predecessor Mark Esper in the days after the election. Speaking exclusively to VICE on Showtime, Miller said, “Would anybody have marched on the Capitol, and tried to overrun the Capitol, without the president’s speech? I think it’s pretty much definitive that wouldn’t have happened.”

Meat Loaf and Beans

AP reports:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says President Donald Trump made him order meatloaf when they dined together at the White House this week.

Christie and his wife, Mary Pat, joined Trump at the White House on Tuesday.

The Republican governor said while guest hosting a New York sports talk radio show Thursday that Trump pointed out the menu and told people to get whatever they want. Then he said he and Christie were going to have the meatloaf.

‘‘This is what it’s like to be with Trump,’’ Christie said. ‘‘He says, ‘There’s the menu, you guys order whatever you want.’ And then he says, ‘Chris, you and I are going to have the meatloaf.’’’

There is a similar story about LBJ, who also liked to humiliate people.   In a 1995 issue of The Washington Post, Diana McLellan reviewed  the memoirs of Pierre Salinger, who served as press secretary under Kennedy and (briefly) under Johnson:

Sadly, he omits everybody's favorite LBJ-Pierre Salinger tale. According to this grand and ancient legend, Johnson shouted down the table to him at a small luncheon, "Pierre, you haven't eaten your beans." "Mr. President, I happen not to care for this variety of beans." "Pierre, eat your beans!" Eventually, reluctantly, the tale went, Salinger ate all his beans -- and that was the day he quit. Does the story's absence mean that it's purely apocryphal? A pity, if so. But you'd think that a one-time gossip's apprentice would give it an airing if just to deny it.

Inheriting a Mess

Trump just said: "I inherited a mess. At home and abroad. A mess.... no matter where you look, a disaster... we'll take care of it. I just wanted to let you know- a mess."

• And at home, we were facing a financial crisis that just about every credible economist said had the potential to plunge us into another great depression, an economic crisis that was producing stagnant wages, falling incomes, and a shaken middle class, and a deficit crisis that was saddling our children with a mountain of debt. That's what we inherited when we came in. -- Barack Obama, September 29, 2010.
• "We inherited a recession. The first three quarters of my Presidency were negative growth. That means it's a recession." -- George W. Bush, August 24, 2002
• "Now they want to hold us accountable for all the messes that we inherited from them. At least we can hold them accountable for the decisions they've taken in the last 21 months." -- Bill Clinton, November 7, 1994
• "Who can remember any other time in this country when we faced double-digit inflation, a trillion-dollar debt, 21 1/2-percent interest rates, and the highest peacetime tax burden in our history, all at the same time? Yet, that's exactly the situation that we inherited 20 months ago." -- Ronald Reagan, October 6, 1982
• "I said 2 years ago that we would remove fraud, waste, and corruption from the Government, and we are doing it-not overnight; it took a long time to create the mess that we inherited and we can't eliminate it in 1 year." -- Jimmy Carter, September 27, 1978
• "Why have they [prices] gone up? Very simply: because the previous administration, over a period of years, had spent far more than the tax system would produce with full employment. And when you do that, when you have runaway spending in Washington, you have runaway prices at home. And I say, let's get the big spenders out of Washington and get the savers into Washington." -- Richard Nixon, October 19, 1970 
• The times demand that all of us solve problems which at times appear to some of us to be unsolvable, problems that we inherited, problems that are thrust upon us by years of injustice and years of neglect. -- Lyndon Johnson, June 10, 1968

Obama Approval

Talking Points Memo offers a perceptive observation about state-by-state approval data:

A look at key swing states suggests that the current political situation has really become a lot like last year -- from one state to another, Obama's approval ratings are pretty close to election results from 2008. Using those election results as a benchmark, it's as clear a sign as any that the honeymoon is truly over -- we're right back to 2008 campaign mode, in terms of average voter opinion.

In all these states, and in the country overall, Obama had a very strong honeymoon period, but that really does seem to have worn off. There may be one difference, though, and it's a crucial one: Obama's own supporters aren't as revved up as they were back then, while the opposition has become very energetic. And that can make all the difference in 2010.

Brendan Nyhan cautions that passage of health care legislation would not necessarily raise Obama's numbers. He looks at analogous bills under previous presidents -- LBJ's Medicare bill, Reagan's budget and tax bills, Clinton's deficit reduction bill, and Bush 43's tax cut -- and finds no bump in approval ratings.

Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

In his address to Congress, President Obama asserted that "most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse."

For decades, however, presidents have been waging war on waste and declaring progress.

• Dwight Eisenhower: "The strong expansion of the economy, coupled with a constant care for efficiency in Government operations and an alert guard against controllable waste and duplication, has brought us to a prospective balance between income and expenditure.
• John F. Kennedy: "The notable progress made by the Department of Defense in reducing costs and eliminating waste is typical of the government-wide effort to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our operations."
• Lyndon Johnson: "We are cutting waste where we find it. We are cutting inefficiency where we can prove it. We are cutting out the nonessentials so we can better support what is essential."
• Richard Nixon: "Our search for waste has led us into every nook and cranny of the bureaucracy. "
• Gerald Ford: "I am shaking up and shaking out inefficiency and waste wherever I find it."
• Jimmy Carter: "One of my major commitments has been to restore public faith in our Federal government by cutting out waste and inefficiency. In the past four years, we have made dramatic advances toward this goal, many of them previously considered impossible to achieve."
• Ronald Reagan: "[W]e launched an all-out campaign against fraud, waste and abuse at the Federal level."
• George H.W. Bush: "And I sent Congress my first line-item rescissions, cutting $3.6 billion in unneeded wasteful spending These rescissions will serve notice to Congress that the days of wasteful spending are over."
• Bill Clinton: "Medicare fraud and waste are more than an abuse of the system; they’re an abuse of the taxpayer. By overbilling, charging for phony procedures, and selling substandard supplies, Medicare cheats cost taxpayers hundreds of millions a year. That’s why we’ve assigned more Federal prosecutors and FBI agents than ever to fight this kind of fraud, and why we’ve invested in new tools to investigate and prosecute these crimes. All told, our efforts have prevented the wasteful spending of an estimated $50 billion, and aggressive enforcement has recovered nearly $1.6 billion for the Medicare Trust Fund."
• George W. Bush: "Fought health care fraud and waste by cutting wasteful spending out of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The Medicare bill that the President signed will cut wasteful spending and save seniors and taxpayers an estimated $20 billion over the next decade."