Thanks for taking the hit on the Muzak for us, Chirsty!

Any chance of contacting the OMB and telling them you’d like to have that question answered? It might not get an answer, but by putting them on notice you might get to ask it sometime in the future.

“Elevator Music Kitsch”. Mmmmmm….my favorite.

Q: What’s the difference between Kenny G and an AK-47?
A: An AK-47 will eventually stop repeating itself.

These news ideas sound great but to implement them we will need a lot more IRS agents who will go after rich people. The GOP hopefully will then go Galt on us:)

Washington is not planning to address that problem this week, or any time soon. By doing nothing, we are shackling our future with unsustainable debt and taxes.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the rest of government will consume nearly 40% of the economy by the time my three young children reach my age (38). This will require more than doubling the average tax burden of the past 40 years just to keep the government afloat. Continuing down this path will eventually strangle our economy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/…..mmentaries

This bull gets in the WallStreet Journal and the Liberal Media still has not shown Michael Moore’s “Sicko” on National TV.
How can the Left hold a debate about Healthcare if our side can’t get airtime and their side is never called on their lies?

Dugg

Also Dugg.
And, as a special bonus prize/thank you for all you do, here’s a reminder to book that V-Day present. Okay?

What is your sense if any on the budget, Orszag, Volcker?

Ophelia pain.

OMB have any studies about how much we could save with a National Healthcare plan vs Obama’s or the Bluedog/GOP’s plans?
Can’t congressmen or Senators ask OMB to look into something like this and provide numbers official government numbers?
Feingold or Dennis Kucinich could ask OMB to look into can’t they?

Muzak Antidote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=related

Hey folks. Bad conference call muzak this morning, then had to run the FIL to the doctor where they had the same muzak playing the the waiting room.

Ayyyiieeeee.

btw — it’s pouring the rain down here this morning and my newly-planted lettuce is drinking it up outside. Glad I got it planted yesterday.

Ipod don’t leave home without it.

enough to drive one mad
Christy all.

On Sunday Steve Clemons over at Washington Note put up quite the piece about the G20 meeting
Bernard Schwartz, Laura Tyson, Martin Wolf, George Soros Mark Zandi and Others to Headline Major NAF Economic Policy Forum on London G-20 Meeting and What Will Replace US Consumer

http://www.thewashingtonnote.c….._soros_be/

Any ranges of numbers on how much Volcker’s plan might cut the deficit?

Believe me, I will not leave home without it for that particular office ever again. Ugh.

I don’t have a particular answer on that sadly, because I don’t think it got asked particularly. But, having just received the official transcript on the call from the WH, I would note this answer in full from Orszag on the gap itself and potential figure on recapture for starters:

“Okay, so first with regard to the tax gap. The tax gap announced is something like $300 billion a year. We had, in the budget, some proposals to start to reduce that, but there — I think there’s widespread concern, frankly, that perhaps even this $300 billion estimate is too low because of the complexity of some of the transactions that are involved, especially involving international transactions and transfer pricing and a whole variety of other topics. So I don’t want to give you a precise quantitative estimate. I do want to say $300 billion a year or more is a lot of money, and we are interested in being as aggressive as possible in trying to reduce that number. And that’s something that I know Chairman Baucus and Chairman Rangel are also very keen on reducing.”

Oh, and looking at the transcript, I realized that I forgot to note this particular exchange between an AP reporter and Orszag in more detail — I mention this briefly above but you really have to read the full answer to get the flavor on this one:

“Q Thanks, Peter. I was wondering if you could respond to one of the criticisms that some of the Republicans are putting forth — forward about your budget, which is that — you know, they’re comparing the situation that President Obama sees himself with the situation that Bill Clinton inherited. And they say, well, when Clinton came into office he made a bunch of tough choices, he raised taxes, and he used that to defray the deficit and build confidence in the markets; whereas Obama makes a bunch of tough choices but uses it to expand the role of government in things like energy and health care. Can you talk about that?

DIRECTOR ORSZAG: Sure. Let me first start with I think it’s easy to lob criticisms, but part of governing needs — or part of the policy process needs to involve putting forward alternatives. I haven’t seen on the Senate side an alternative budget and my understanding is there won’t be one. So it’s kind of — it seems off to be criticizing without putting forward an alternative.

The alternative that has been put forward by Representative Ryan in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago embodies $3 trillion in tax cuts, including for very high-income individuals and for corporations. It involves — and let’s look at this from a fiscal perspective — it involves setting up privatization under Social Security and having the federal government bear all the downside risk there. So if that system had been in place over the past few years, the federal government would have incurred massive amounts of liabilities to make individual accounts whole for the stock market declines that have occurred. And it involves an approach to health care in which you’re given a check for 80 percent of the cost of health care, which then declines over time, and told to go off and just sort of fend for yourself.

So in terms of an alternative vision, I think — at least it’s my impression, that that is the only thing that’s been out there. And I think the flaws in it are pretty clear. And with regards directly to your question, I’d also note that, you know, you had said that in 1993 Bill Clinton proposed tax increases. Well, people are saying we’re proposing tax increases now.

We are, in terms of health care, approaching this in a somewhat different way than was the case in the early 1990s. But I don’t think it’s accurate to say, just pursuant to what we were just discussing with regard to the deficit-neutral health reserve fund, it’s not accurate to say it’s a massive expansion of government. And in fact, as I noted, it — the health reform effort will be deficit-neutral.

And then the final point I would make is the point that the President made last night and has made on “60 Minutes” and before that, which is if you’ve asked corporate leaders over the past decade or two what the key to our long-term productivity is, they would — they have answered consistently: a more efficient health care system; a more efficient energy base and reduced dependence on foreign oil; and improved education, along with a — you know, raising national savings, which involves reducing the deficit.

So on our four key principles they’re very much in line with what even corporate leaders have been saying for a long time is the key to our future prosperity. And I think that’s precisely right. I’ve said this before. But I reject the notion that the key to future prosperity is the top marginal tax rate.”

And that’s something that I know Chairman Baucus and Chairman Rangel are also very keen on reducing.”

Keen enough to tell Obama choose between a Stimulus plan big enough to work or 4 more years of war?

Alas, I didn’t get to ask a follow-up on those particulars either. Next time, I will be quicker on the Q&A line button. I promise.

“Q Thanks, Peter. I was wondering if you could respond to one of the criticisms that some of the Republicans are putting forth — forward about your budget, which is that — you know, they’re comparing the situation that President Obama sees himself with the situation that Bill Clinton inherited. And they say, well, when Clinton came into office he made a bunch of tough choices, he raised taxes, and he used that to defray the deficit and build confidence in the markets; whereas Obama makes a bunch of tough choices but uses it to expand the role of government in things like energy and health care. Can you talk about that?

Did the GOP just come out in favor of raising taxes like Bill Clinton did? What ever happened to the party of Reagan? Bill Clinton is their guide to what Obama should be doing now?
I think I am suffering a Cognitive Dissonance.

I would kill to hear Bill’s reaction to his being the example the GOP wants Obama to follow. One quote from Bill
even a one liner in response and this story goes National Rush goes postal, Sarah cries, and Newt starts looking for a bridge.

Luckily the callers not asking the question had their line muted at that point. Because I broke out into the loudest guffaw. Never so glad to be on mute in my life.

To Orszag’s credit, you could definitely hear the ”WTF?!?” tone in his voice there. *g*

too funny you had to endure the same muzak twice christy!

fantastic photograph to illustrate the thread.

it’s not accurate to say it’s a massive expansion of government.

Don’t let the GOP define things as bad or good we define things we take the power. Government would not have to expand to take over parts of the free enterprise system if only government had regulated the free enterprise system.
Thanks to Bush thanks to the Republicans Neglect we have to step in or the system will collapse.
I hear lots of comments from the peanut gallery but no ideas, …do you got one?

I loooooooved that picture. It was the photographic illustration of “on hold” for me. Just a gorgeous, gorgeous shot, isn’t it?

I hope this post gets some front page exposure and I hope Bill replies to his new position as the example the Republicans think Obama should follow.
My head is swimming I think I feel unwell. Have the GOP’s lies their entire Zeitgeist gone full circle now?

Call it “Elevator Music from Hell.” (Especially when it’s old rock songs played as Mantovanni strings or Musak or such)

It seems a bit strange to be concentrating on capturing tax revenues when the country is in a depression. Of course, the most obvious way to accomplish this is to hire more people at the IRS. Since most Americans have their income already reported to the government in W-2s and such and the ability to tax cheat is small, it would be a lot more useful to send these new hires to audit the books of corporations and wealthy Americans. I would think too that opening up the books of hedge funds and private equity firms would be worthwhile too. Changes in how bonuses are taxed and executive compensation in general could use some looking at too. And although it does not seem very applicable right now treating capital gains as regular income would be good maybe someday.

Watch out for snails. They love leafy stuff…

On a related note, Waldo Jaquith dug up the NYT article about the passage of banking deregulation back in ‘99. As he says of the statements by the (pitifully few) opponents, “This is the sort of prescience that is generally only found in Onion articles.”

Thank You if you can get that question answered it would mean allot give me a heads up please if you post the answers. At what point does the budget debt gets so big we can’t wage war anymore? would be a nice follow up after all we know the banks and Geithner will ask for more money later this year.
Charity should begin at home. Thanks!

“This is the sort of prescience that is generally only found in Onion articles.”

Zing!

just in case no one has posted it

here is Senator Conrad’s opensecrets page:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pol…..=N00004613

his largest contributor is a healthcare concern; beating out AmGen by almost $20k

Should “$210 billion in current budget for enforcement and recapture” possibly read “$210 million”? The tax gap according to the pitifully uninformative material from whitehouse.gov is only $300 billion. This trips my order-of-magnitude error detector.

How can the Left hold a debate about Healthcare if our side can’t get airtime and their side is never called on their lies?

It’s not terribly complicated is it?

The current system is wasting tons of money and it’s not producing consistently great results. In particular, we aren’t providing care to everyone. And, we aren’t using the most modern technologies (computer stuff) to improve service at lower cost with fewer errors.

We need to save money, cover everybody and require better care (in part by utilizing computer technologies more).

This argument shouldn’t take more than 2 minutes on a t.v. show, but it’s too controversial I suppose.

Hey folks. Bad conference call muzak this morning, then had to run the FIL to the doctor where they had the same muzak playing the the waiting room.

Ayyyiieeeee.

Ayyyiieeeee indeed.

Some of my favorite ‘elevator music’ is the soft rock ballads of the 70s. I liked to hear Paul McCartney doing Blackbird (singing in the dead of night), Simon & Garfunkel’s Are You going to Scarborough Fair, anything by Crosby Still & Nash (and Young), anything by James Taylor.

But, I don’t hear it much these days. I had a bad telephone which kept playing some radio station while I tried to talk to people, but that one is in the trash.

“Q Thanks, Peter. I was wondering if you could respond to one of the criticisms that some of the Republicans are putting forth — forward about your budget, which is that — you know, they’re comparing the situation that President Obama sees himself with the situation that Bill Clinton inherited. And they say, well, when Clinton came into office he made a bunch of tough choices, he raised taxes, and he used that to defray the deficit and build confidence in the markets; whereas Obama makes a bunch of tough choices but uses it to expand the role of government in things like energy and health care. Can you talk about that?

Did the GOP just come out in favor of raising taxes like Bill Clinton did? What ever happened to the party of Reagan? Bill Clinton is their guide to what Obama should be doing now?
I think I am suffering a Cognitive Dissonance.

One thing to recall about that time period is that Clinton (or to be more precise, the Clintons) tried to work on the health care issue and were rebuffed. They knew the issues, but just didn’t have the political support they needed. Perhaps today we can really solve more problems.

Considering the environment at that time I think Clinton did very well with the economy. He might have done better by refraining from a few things, but I suppose it’s hard to believe that sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. Still, as Jerry Brown once said, to do nothing is still to make a choice.

It seems a bit strange to be concentrating on capturing tax revenues when the country is in a depression.

That’s just because you’re not used to having a president who actually plans for the future!

If it’s true that lowering some tax rates can stimulate the economy sufficient to bring in higher revenues, then it would be a kick to see such a plan go into effect in 2010 so that Obama could lower tax rates, bring in more revenue, pay down debt (or pay for programs) and make the economy go faster.

Now that’s what I’d call a win win win win win win proposition.