Surprising?!?!?!?
Tyler Cowen linked to this (from the WaPo):
What’s really surprising, however, is that Democrats did not take this opportunity to up the ante on the Republicans by proposing to phase out corporate welfare in all of its forms, including Ex-Im. In the unlikely event that Republicans had accepted the challenge, it could have freed up tens of billions of dollars every year that could be used to reduce the deficit, cut taxes, invest in infrastructure or restore cuts to vital domestic programs. And if Republicans had declined the offer, that would have exposed their effort to kill the bank as the cynical and hypocritical ploy it appears to be.
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9. September 2014 at 12:02
That suggests, that D’s do not suck on the teat of corporate money nearly as hard as the R’s.
Does anyone really believe that?
9. September 2014 at 13:37
The Democratic teat is bit greener.
9. September 2014 at 14:54
The Rs & the Ds play the “good cop” “bad cop” routine better than any police department could ever dream of. What makes the strategy so perfect is they swap roles depending on the issue and the lazy and/or partisan voter falls for it every time.
10. September 2014 at 07:53
Ex-Im requires reauthorization; going after most other things requires actually repealing things, and thus agreement of House, Senate, and President. It is a small thing, but an easier thing.
Of course, the Democratic Party may threaten to shutdown the government over it, so maybe that is not a big difference.
10. September 2014 at 07:55
I get and agree with the sarcastic point of this post.
But the deeper problem with that wapo comment is the whole idea of republicans and democrats as being two collegiate debaters who ‘up the ante’ on one another and score points by exposing inconsistencies on the other side. Good grief! And most ‘serious’ journalism takes this kind of tone regularly when discussing politics.
10. September 2014 at 09:36
>But for many of the Republican critics, the campaign against the Ex-Im Bank is meant to give the appearance of opposing corporate welfare and crony capitalism without offending the crony capitalists and corporate welfare queens who keep them in office
This is the most amazing thing in that article for sheer quantity of doublethink. the author admits that the import export bank is basically a complete useless appendage, criticizes those who oppose it as not really against crony capitalism, and cites their opposition to this instrument of crony capitalism as evidence? I have no words.
10. September 2014 at 10:07
Tyler is not a lazy voter…he works for the NYT. It is his job to help perpetuate and the false left-right paradigm. That is why he is omg “surprised” that one of the two parties is not acting in a way that is consistent with their PR statement principals.
if Tyler were to consistently work to tear down the left-right dialectic that is used to distract the public from the real corruption and problems with our government…then he would be sacked.
10. September 2014 at 17:36
Gabe, That quote was something Tyler linked to. It’s not (necessarily) his view. His focus was on other parts of the article.
Everyone, Lots of good points.
10. September 2014 at 18:26
No more surprising than that Republicans do not propose an increase in the EIRC as an alternative to the minimum wage increase.