If loophole closures are benefit cuts, are benefit cuts tax hikes?

Eduardo Porter suggests that raising new tax revenue by cutting loopholes opens up a semantic loophole:

Though the offer to raise money by closing loopholes has a bipartisan pedigree — based on a plan proposed last year by the Democrat Erskine Bowles and the Republican Alan Simpson, the chairmen of President Obama’s deficit commission — it relies on rhetorical sleight of hand. If tax breaks are equivalent to government spending, eliminating them is equivalent to spending cuts. Mr. Boehner’s offer to do away with tax breaks in exchange for cutting entitlements raises no new revenue. It amounts to cutting spending twice.

Porter goes on to point out that a) Democrats have opened many "loopholes" for the poor and middle class because it's often the only form of social spending that Republicans will allow, but b) on balance, tax deductions disproportionately benefit the wealthy. His main point: we should consider each break on its merits, not make a shibboleth out of closing out as many as possible.

I would add a couple of wrinkles. First, Republicans are conflicted about whether to regard tax breaks for the nonwealthy as spending or tax cuts.  On the one hand, they've not only acceded to Democrat-initiated lower-income tax breaks, but sweetened their own wealthy-tilted tax cut goodies by cutting taxes and expanding loopholes for the nonwealthy as well.  On the other hand, they've come to regret the low-end largess, as all that bitching about the 47%, the lucky duckies who pay no income taxes, demonstrates.

Second, if Republicans are pulling the wool over by treating loophole closures as tax hikes, they've got themselves fooled as well.  When such tax "increases" were being bruited in the debt ceiling negotiations of 2011, Tom Coburn and others struggling to wriggle out of Grover Norquist's embrace experimented with casting  loophole closures (e.g., the ethanol subsidy) as "spending cuts."  It didn't fly; Norquist screamed that any phased out tax break would have to be offset by another tax break, and the GOP fell in line.

In which Henry Aaron talks himself into supporting a raised Medicare eligibility age

Henry Aaron of Brookings, one of the nation's top healthcare economists, has a rather odd perspective on the current brewing battle over so-called "entitlement reform." On the one hand, he focuses his concern on the older elderly, with their ever-dwindling purchasing power, which leaves him less hostile to raising the Medicare eligibility age than other left-of-center economists who acknowledge a need to trim benefits. He is more distressed by proposals to trim cost-of-living increases, e.g. the so-called chained CPU, which seem to strike most observers as a milder, more gradual mode of trimming benefits. Indeed, in the fullness of time, when the ACA is fully up and running and providing affordable care to the uninsured, Aaron favors raising the Medicare eligibility age to expand the ratio of working to retired adults.

On another front, Aaron at once provides historical and comparative data to demonstrate that U.S. senior health and pension benefits are unduly skimpy, and effectively concedes that given our political culture, we need to plan how best to make them skimpier still. He suggests that only by agreeing to benefit cuts can Democrats forestall more radical proposals to shred the safety net, e.g. via private accounts for social security or voucherization of Medicare. At the same time, he argues for benefits that increase with age, with offsets for lower-income younger elderly for whom raised retirement ages are a burden, and for a variety of formulas to shift costs onto the wealthier elderly (his Medicare reforms look something like those proposed by Senators Lieberman and Coburn: providing catastrophic insurance but ending Medigap as we know it, and making the wealthy elderly pay a much higher percentage of the actuarial value of their coverage).

I find it odd that Aaron argues, in effect, for preemptive concessions -- proposing policy choices he regards as less than optimal as a means of forestalling more radical, Paul Ryanesque attacks on safety net programs: 

Terrorist news disorientation syndrome

Tell me again, Doctor -- what year did you say this was? 

The failed attack has produced a flurry of other proposals to tighten security procedures, including calls by members of Congress to more closely scrutinize passengers who buy tickets with cash, as Mr. Shahzad did.

 And while we're at it...what country?

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Senator Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, proposed stripping terrorism suspects of American citizenship...

  Or rather, what planet?

and Mayor Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg asked Congress to block the sale of firearms and explosives to those on terrorist watch lists.

Tell me again, slowly. In 2010, airlines still are not scrutinizing passengers who tickets for long international flights with cash. U.S. senators do not know that a suspect in the United States is innocent until proven guilty. And people on terrorist watch lists can buy automatic weapons without first proving that they ought not be on the list.

Okay, so Gail Collins already nailed down two out of three. I'm slow.

"Enemy Belligerent" lawmakers: McCain and Lieberman

The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010, a legislative monstrosity produced by John McCain and Joe Lieberman, goes further than any Bush-era legislation in abrogating the core principle of Anglo-American justice: that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty. While the bill is deplorable in every detail -- it denies terrorist suspects their Miranda rights and codifies indefinite detention without trial -- one particular provision effectively ends the presumption of innocence for all of us. That provision codifies the President's right to define any criteria he chooses to deliver any individual into the legal Twilight Zone defined by the bill.

The bill authorizes the President to establish an "interagency team" to make a "preliminary determination of the status" of an individual "suspected of engaging in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners through an act of terrorism, or by other means in violation of the laws of war, or of purposely and materially supporting such hostilities."  That team will determine whether the suspect shall be accorded a preliminary designation as a "high value detainee" (a.k.a. "unprivileged enemy belligerent" -- the bill makes no coherent distinction between these terms).  A final status determination is to be made by the Attorney General and Secretary of Defense; the President can only weigh in if these two disagree.  Incredibly, the entire procedure from capture to final status determination is to be completed within 48 hours. 

The provision that removes all discretionary limits to this secret determination of status is in the Criteria for Designation of Individuals as High-Value Detainees. That section creates an initial impression that such "determinations" are subject to the rule of law by laying out specific criteria, beginning with "(A) The potential threat the individual poses for an attack on civilians..." (B) the potential threat the individual poses to United States military personnel..." etc. But the final criterion (E) zooms to infinity: it is simply "Such other matters as the President considers appropriate. " 

1995 Redux: Call the Republicans' shut-down-the-Senate bluff

It's a given by now that Republicans will do all they can to obstruct any deal between House and Senate Democrats entailing the House passing the Senate health care bill and amending it through the reconciliation process. Jeff Davis, Greg Sargent and Karen Tumulty have explained in numbing detail how Senate Republicans can stall reconciliation fixes. Sargent:

The GOP Senate leadership has privately settled on a strategy to derail health reform if Dems try to pass the Senate bill with a fix through reconciliation, aides say: Unleash an endless stream of amendments designed to stall for time and to force Dems to take untenable votes.

The aide described the planned GOP strategy as a “free for all of amendments,” vowing Dems would face “a mountain of amendments so politically toxic they'll make the first health debate look like a post office naming.”

Notwithstanding the difficulties, what remains striking is the difference in political will between the two parties. Republicans, as ever, will act as a body to do whatever it takes to get what they want -- the death of comprehensive health care reform, a Waterloo for Obama, an electoral debacle for the Democrats to dwarf 1994. 

Attention, filibuster-busters: remember 2002-2006?

"I just look at this institution as really the last bastion of protecting the rights of the minority, and we should be very careful before we try and make any changes."

         - Senator John Warner (R-VA), April 19, 2005

Warner was one of a majority of 55 Republican senators when he made the statement above. He was also a member of the so-called Gang of 14 who forged a compromise over Democrats' hold on some of Bush's judicial nominees, averting a Republican move to end the filibuster specifically for judicial nominees (perhaps because they still remembered that during Clinton's presidency, they blocked far more judicial nominees than the Democrats did under Bush).

McMea Culpa coming? Was Joe Klein right, but early?

On September 10, Joe Klein, denouncing McCain for "one of the sleaziest ads I've ever seen in presidential politics," predicted that McCain would gin up an Act of Contrition some time after November 4. Last Friday, after McCain finally willed himself to check hysterically hostile supporters, I wondered

Which way will McCain swing at last? Will the mea culpa that Joe Klein predicted come before election day rather than after? Will he embrace the press in a warm bear hug, shower Obama with personal praise, and slam him for proposing a trillion dollars in new spending and premature withdrawal from Iraq, as he has every right to do? Or will he pitch himself down the path of all-out character assassination?

Now, William Kristol suggests that the worm is indeed about to turn -- that there will be one last sudden lurch toward reviving Mr. Straight Talk/Mr. Clean:

What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads — they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.

And let McCain go back to what he’s been good at in the past — running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate. Palin should follow suit. The two of them are attractive and competent politicians. They’re happy warriors and good campaigners. Set them free.

This from the very sage, mind you, who was egging Palin on a week ago to "take the gloves off" and go after the Wright connection -- and who's for all practical purposes claimed credit for elevating that petty thug to the national stage (McCain's epitaph: relied on Kristol balls?). That he can now blithely suggest that Palin can morph into an "open and accessible...happy warrior" slides right past irony into farce.

Why not go all the way -- and dump Palin for Lieberman? If you're going to make a mad dash for the road not taken, you'd better drop your heaviest baggage.