President Obama has broken enough campaign promises to the liberal left and wants to create GREEN JOBS not a bigger carbon footprint to answer to Al Gore and the enviromentalist for.The left wants science they can believe in like the Quixotic claptrap wind power with their pandering jackassery which masquerades as idealism. No they are perfectly happy to kill capitalism once and for all and move us back to the 14th century like most of the Middle East. Will we get a right balance between vision and practicality or a blind trust of the institution we trust least BIG GOVERNMENT? Experience tells me the later.

The bill is not perfect. It requires a significant portion of the revenue from ANWR to be used for new energy research, research that presumably would already be happening if it were likely to be profitable any time soon. But the bill is designed to be agreeable to both parties and congressional democrats will find that aspect of it heartwarming.

That's a good joke. Scott, you should replace the word "bipartisan" in your plan with "Republican." There is nothing here to attract Democrats. This article only adds evidence that the Republican notion of compromise is submission.

No, I am openly admitting that Democratic notions of how to promote "business and job growth" (for example, subsidies for energy from clean sources) and Republican notions of how to promote "business and job growth" (for example, tax breaks for oil companies and deregulation of oil drilling) differ. If you want to claim the label "bipartisan" for any plan, then it must include both ideas supported by a majority of Democrats and ideas supported by a majority of Republicans.

You know perfectly well that a majority of Democrats are not, under any circumstance, going to support drilling in ANWR, weakening environmental regulations and opening areas of the coastline for offshore drilling. Yet you present those things disingenuously as elements that would make the plan more attractive to Democrats.

So be honest. Call this plan what it is - a Republican plan, created by a right-wing think tank with no "bipartisan" credibility at all.

No, I am openly admitting that Democratic notions of how to promote "business and job growth" (for example, subsidies for energy from clean sources) and Republican notions of how to promote "business and job growth" (for example, tax breaks for oil companies and deregulation of oil drilling) differ. If you want to claim the label "bipartisan" for any plan, then it must include both ideas supported by a majority of Democrats and ideas supported by a majority of Republicans.

In your own parentheses above you yourself noted examples of things that would be supported by each individual party: "(for example, subsidies for energy from clean sources)" and "(for example.. deregulation of oil drilling)". Both are in the bill. You then say that if a plan is to be called bipartisan it must include ideas supported by each party. Have you fallen completely off your rocker? Are you even understanding what you write any more?

I should have put it more clearly. A genuinely "bipartisan" bill contains things that a majority of people in either party would support, and does not contain anything that would be radioactively unpopular to a majority of either party. You know how sensitive a topic ANWR has been for years.

To analogize, if Democrats brought forward a bill that contained a tax cut for small businesses, $100 billion for union activities across the nation, and $100 billion to fund abortions, would you call it bipartisan?

Perhaps your opinion is that this bill isn't either, but frankly I don't see that.

I think the onus is on the people proposing it to persuade people that they are working in good faith. Having it come from an organization that has never in my memory proposed anything bipartisan, and having it being publicized as something that the goddamn Democrats would do if they weren't so dumb, suggests a partisan rather than a bipartisan intent.

I'm not a fan of bipartisanship. To me, trying to be needlessly bipartisan creates a lot of problems in Washington. Of course, that means that I think Democrats give in way too much to Republican frames and agendas, when they could more passionately articulate their own side and get more of what they want.

Actually, and this will come as no surprise, I think that it would be OK to use federal funds to support training for doctors in a wide variety of medical procedures, including D&Cs. My wife had to have three D&Cs after her miscarriage to make sure everything was clear, and I damn well want doctors to know how to do them so that maybe three of 'em wouldn't be necessary.

Republicans believe in lightening the tax burden of ALL businesses.

Oil companies might not be the best example. Still, your point here does not seem automatically like a good thing to me. Part of why I am very suspicious of Republican ideas is that it seems to me that Republicans argue for lower taxes as a matter of knee-jerk principle, without considering at all whether the cuts in provision of public goods are justifiable in light of the benefits a tax cut would bring. I would respect Republicans a lot more if they said, "Yes, there is a level of taxation that is reasonable, and I would not support tax cuts that take us below that point", but I never, ever hear that. When times are good, it's "let's cut taxes", and when times are bad, it's also "let's cut taxes." There's precious little discussion of what the appropriate level of taxes on businesses or people should actually be, other than "lower than they are right now."

Tell out-of-work Alaskans that Americans who have never visited Alaska and never will won't permit drilling in an LAX-sized area of ANWR.

This must be the first time I've heard of that a Republican proposes giving unemployed people veto power over a policy issue...:-)

Seriously, though, why should they have the final say? If out-of-work Californians wanted to turn Yosemite into a quarry, would you let them? If out-of-work Montanans wanted to build a power plant in the middle of Yellowstone, could they ignore the rest of the nation and their rather more diffuse interest in preserving a national treasure?

I have serious fundamental issues with Obama for promoting his candidacy on the basis of "bipartisanship" when, as far as I can see, it was a purely opportunistic representation unfounded in any real intent.

Seriously, any politician who runs on "bipartisanship" is being dishonest. Insofar as Obama ran as a "bipartisan" guy, he would have been being dishonest. That's actually not what I heard him doing. He ran as a pragmatist interested in what works rather than in rigid ideological principle, but that's not quite the same thing.

Let's take as an example something that doesn't work, like the DARE program in schools. A "bipartisan" would see what Democratic politicians are saying about DARE (support) and what Republican politicians are saying about DARE (support), and decide to do the bipartisan thing (support). A "pragmatist" would see that DARE didn't work, and try to replace it with something that did work, even if Democrats and Republicans wanted to keep it around for symbolic reasons. In that sense, a pragmatist is better to have than a bipartisan. That's why Obama has come out in favor of charter schools, for example: because they work

I think the difference here, Robert, is that what I said about Republicans would also be what they would say about themselves. You've agreed that it's a "core principle" to demand constantly lower taxes, irrespective of how much it wrecks the budget.

On the other hand, what you say about Democrats is not something we would say about ourselves. Democrats do not want to tax infinitely until it wrecks the economy; they simply think that on the whole the overall tax level is lower than the ideal point.

That's the point I'm making. People can honestly disagree about the ideal point and where we are in relation to it. I don't think it's a perspective I can respect that the ideal point is zero.

Why would the ideal point be zero?

Have you seen the difference between a road maintained privately and a road maintained through taxation? Which of them is usually better maintained?

Why would we want a society where government spent nothing on infrastructure, nothing on education, nothing on defense, nothing on law enforcement?

Besides that, the republicans also advocate lower spending

Advocate, yes, when Democrats are in power. Practice, no, not really. Republicans talk a good game on this, but they really don't mean it. Last time Republicans had control of Congress, they launched a massively expensive off-budget war that blew the rest of the budget to hell. They're fine, just as Democrats are, with spending on things that matter to them. The difference between Democrats and Republicans is simply this. Democrats want to finance their spending mainly through taxation and Republicans want to finance it entirely through debt.

You only have to look at New York, New Jersey and California to see that higher taxes do not help their budgets. They have the highest deficits in the country.

The facts just don't support this point of view. You should look at percentage deficits, not absolute deficits, because if you look at absolute deficits then a state with revenues of $99bn and expenditures of $100bn looks worse than a state with revenues of $2bn and expenditures of $2.9bn, which I don't think makes sense. Clearly the latter is being more fiscally irresponsible with what it has.

So, I looked up which states have the highest budget deficits as a percentage of their state budgets, and the answer is, in order, Arizona (15.9%), Illinois (15.1%), California (13.6%), South Carolina (12.7%) and Alabama (12.7%). New York's is one of the lowest deficits in percentage terms, at 3%. Only California out of these states even breaks into the top ten of the Tax Foundation's top ten high-tax states. Stop parroting lines you receive, and check whether what you're saying actually fits the facts.

Not only does it not wreck a budget, it usually increases revenue.

I know that Republicans love the idea of the Laffer curve (this is the concept you're talking about), but again, it doesn't fit the facts. We've just had the perfect experiment to see whether this would work, with the Bush tax cuts, and guess what? Revenue, in real terms, fell. This is Greg Mankiw, the chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers:

Some observers have suggested that tax cuts can generate so much economic growth that they may more than pay for themselves. Most economists are doubtful about either such extreme. The consensus view is that tax cuts indeed influence national income, but not to the extent that they are fully self-financing.

The difference is, we favor voting them out when they do stupid crap like that.

That's simply not true, Scott. There's no difference. Neither conservatives nor liberals have followed any kind of consistent policy to get people like Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi (who has been the sole sponsor of more earmarks than any other senator) or Senator Hillary Clinton (who has brought into her district the highest dollar amount of earmarks) out of office. Voting is mostly along party lines, not along spending lines. A Republican could produce a slew of spending proposals more filled with pork than the char siu buns at my local dim sum restaurant, and he would still get support from the leadership and from Republican voters. Same goes for Democrats. Don't pretend your party has any virtue whatsoever that a reasonable person can trust on the subject of spending.

The first Bush was voted out not because of spending, but because he proposed raising taxes after promising not to. Enough frustrated zero-tax Republicans defected to Perot to allow Clinton into office. A better and more recent example is the second Bush, whom Republicans happily re-elected in 2004 despite his having a party with the federal budget because he was Strong On Terror (TM) and would Keep Us Safe (TM).

Alex, I have never, nor would I ever, advocated an abolition of income tax (at least unless it was replaced by a universal consumption tax). I would appreciate it if you would refrain from creating a straw-man in order to win an imaginary argument.

I also wonder if you personally know anyone who died, or lost their husband or father on 9/11. I do. There has not been another attack within the domestic US since that day and that's not a joke.

Santino, I asked you to distinguish between things you believe would be right and things you believe would be bipartisan.

Tax cuts for everyone and all businesses - A Republican idea not supported by the majority of Democrats, or indeed by a majority of Americans. A poll from May 2008 suggests that 62% of Americans support taxing the wealthy more. The poll does not define either "more" or "wealthy", but it does disprove the notion that this would be bipartisan to do. http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp ?PID=910

Stop this idiocy of the bailout

82% of Democrats support the stimulus package as signed by Congress - http://thehill.com/mark-mellman/lessons-of-stimulus-polling-2009-03-03.html. For a proposal to be bipartisan, it must command the support of a majority of Democrats as well as a majority of Republicans.

Allow those within 7 years of retirement to still draw Social Security benefits, raise the minimum age for early draw to 70 and make 78 the age maximum disbursement. For those outside of 7-10 years our give them the option of taking a government sponsored 401 with a government match of 50 cents for every dollar or taking social security in its current for but they would only recieve 50% of the benefit. For those 10 years out again give them the option of taking social security but only getting 25% of the benefit or taking the 401K. We are not in the business of subsidizing retirement so lets get out of it and allow people to determine their own future.

There has been no polling on your specific plan, but there is a recent poll on whether it should be allowed for workers to invest part of their Social Security money in stocks or bonds. 62% of Americans opposed it. There is no partisan breakdown that I can see, but with those kinds of numbers, it cannot be the case that a majority in both parties would support your plan. http://www.pollingreport.com/social.htm

Medicare/Medicade - No Change

It appears that 76% of people support the changes in the stimulus package that provide aid to states to discharge their Medicaid expenses - http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/cgi-bin/hsrun.exe/Roperweb/HPOLL/StateId/DIJQzu0ybdmBKsdLb658BGT214sty-44y6/HAHTpage/Summary_Link ?qstn_id=1725798

It appears that 79% of people support the idea that uninsured people should be allowed to buy into Medicare - http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/cgi-bin/hsrun.exe/Roperweb/HPOLL/StateId/DIJQfu0ybqABKssZb65nKNi214stw-UF61/HAHTpage/Summary_Link ?qstn_id=1720697

This does not indicate bipartisan support for no changes to Medicaid or Medicare.

The Military - Cut some of the unnecessary spending such as the F-22, New Aircarft Carriers, the NLOS cannon system, these are cold war relics that are no longer needed, why spend $35 Million on a fighter when a $50 Thousand drone can do the same job. Do not however touch salaries, VA benefits, or recruiting benefits, this can only serve to gut the military to a clinton era state of readiness.

The evidence is ambiguous on this. Polls don't generally ask about the specific "relics" you talk about. This is the best recent evidence I can find. http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/11/public_opinion_on_defense_spending.php

Overall, these polls suggest that an actual bipartisan proposal, one that commanded the support of a majority of Democratic voters and of Republican voters, would look something like this.

Rose,

I enjoy discussing with you. You have a lot of intelligent things to say.

You are right to contend that I can't both claim that al-Qaeda attacks responded to the war in Iraq, and contend that the war in Iraq was unrelated to the broader effort to prevent terrorist attacks from al-Qaeda.

My animus here, if I analyze it, derives from two sources.

One, less importantly, is that I feel that the United Kingdom did not benefit from participating as a loyal ally of the United States, first in a fairly justifiable war in Afghanistan against the people responsible for 9/11 and their state sponsors, and then in an unprovoked war of aggression against a dictatorial state that played no part in the 9/11 attacks. By allying itself once again with America, Britain exposed itself by its actions to terrorist attacks from Muslims already inflamed against what bin Laden calls "the Zionist-crusader alliance." I feel that a wiser foreign policy on the part of Bush would have stoked that hatred less intensely, and perhaps that attacks such as those of July 2005 in Britain would have been less likely to happen. I therefore dislike Bush and his partisans defending his record on the basis of there having been no attacks in the United States since September 11, 2001. Britain came to his aid. Rightly or wrongly, Britain gave him cover, politically and militarily, for what he wanted to do. Britain suffered in doing so, damaging its international standing, its economy, its military, and its security from terrorist attack, and got nothing that it wanted from the deal (an American-brokered peace deal in the Holy Land and an American commitment to sign international global warming treaties).

Two, I witnessed with horror the stampede into war in 2002-2003. A servile media refused to question the administration's changing rationales for war. The administration pushed the line that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were linked, which was a lie, and which they knew was a lie. They pushed the line that if we did not invade, Saddam Hussein and would conspire with terrorists to unleash weapons of mass destruction on the US, a notion for which there was not a scrap of evidence. Indeed, there was no reliable evidence that Hussein had any weapons of mass destruction at all, and it was not necessary to go to war to find that out. Most Congressional Democrats fell for the war line, not because they necessarily believed it but because they were afraid of seeming soft on terror and suffering at the polls. Those who could see that the American public was being fed a line, myself included, were sidelined and denounced as traitors.

The dubious constitutionality of the war rests on the use by Bush of the 2001 Authorization of Military Force (which authorized him to fight against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks) to argue that he did not need congressional authorization for a new and different war. By any reasonable reckoning, he did. He used that authorization (which was itself passed in a panic) to justify more or less every constitutional abuse of his presidency. That was why he had to find a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11: without it, the constitutional basis of going to war without further congressional authorization was very shaky.

Not that I think the Democrats would have had the courage to oppose a new authorization. They wouldn't. But Bush was so adamant about expanding executive authority that he refused to ask Congress for a new authorization anyway.

You know all this, Rose. You were there. I haven't forgotten.

On habeas corpus, I, as a non-lawyer, see no real difference between non-citizens being accorded in practice the same habeas rights before 9/11 as citizens, and non-citizens having that right. A suspension of habeas for anyone who is at any time under American government control is incredibly dangerous to the rule of law in this country. The Constitution outlines only extremely restricted cases where habeas can be suspended (rebellion or invasion).

I am sorry to say that the Bush administration didn't care a whit for your technicalities or for habeas itself. They did what they wanted to do, whether or not it was legal, and thought up (secret) justifications for it afterward. They knew that most of the people in Guantanamo were not guilty of any actual act of terrorism or of conspiracy to commit it. What they did know was that if the detainees came to any sort of trial, where the actual evidence on which they were being held was held up for review, then it would embarrass the administration politically and undermine support for their foreign policy, as well as for their claims of executive authority. It was a shameless political tactic that embodied utter contempt for the law, and I get angry again just writing about it. It cast doubt over many normal people's minds as to whether I and the millions of other non-citizens quietly working and raising families here have any rights at all.

It is insulting to me (for example) to be accused of wanting "zero taxes", and it belittles my intelligence - and you advanced a reductio ad absurdium argument because it's easier than justifying the massive amounts of indiscriminate spending happening in the budget.

I'm well aware that there is massive amounts of poorly directed spending in the federal budget. I was using a reductio ad absurdum argument because there are genuinely people on the right who make absurd arguments - for example, on this thread, that "cutting taxes has never, ever, ever wrecked a budget." Arguments like that make conservatives look like fools, and they deserve to be called out on the implications of what they're saying. That doesn't mean that you, personally, do, so please don't take personal offense.

The kind of wholesale reappraisal of the role of government that you advocate is not in itself a bad thing, but it is not going to occur under the current governmental setup. It can only occur in the context of a revolution, or (just possibly) a new constitutional convention. If it did not occur when the Republicans held all three branches of government, then the Republicans are not going to help you toward this goal. It is similar to your counterparts on the left who talk about how government would work better if political contributions larger than $100 were banned. Not a bad idea either, necessarily, but not going to happen.

So we are reduced, frustratingly, to working a little more around the edges, and in that spirit I'll ask a different question. What, in your opinion, are valid things for the federal and state governments to spend tax money on? If you answer that, then we can work outward from that towards a notion of what you think an appropriate percentage of GDP would be, by excluding uses that you consider invalid.

Hi Rose,

I do not think that international assent is required for US military action. What I do think is that it is not reasonable for us to cite the violation of UN resolutions as a major reason to go to war, because it is up to the UN to determine the appropriate remedy when its resolutions are violated - just as it is up to US courts to determine the appropriate remedy when US laws are violated. The UN did not agree that war was appropriate, so the US should not cite UN resolutions as a reason to go to war.

Actually, Britain loves to go it alone militarily, and has little regard for the armed forces of France, Germany and the other European powers. The Falklands War in 1982 is an excellent example of this.

The other reasons you cite in the Congressional resolution are deeply shaky.

- Yes, Hussein brutally repressed his own people (apart from, after the 1991 war, the Kurds living in the no-fly zone, who were essentially self-governing). But in that he was no different from twenty other dictators across the world, and under international law, brutal internal repression does not provide a justification for war.

- Hussein had attempted to assassinate the previous President Bush - and in the middle of 2002, Bush authorized CIA and Special Forces units to enter Iraq and use "all possible tools" to overthrow the regime, including the authority to kill Saddam Hussein "in self-defense". Tit for tat!

- The total number of US fighters shot down by Saddam Hussein over the no-fly zone was zero at the outbreak of the war.

- As for the "failure to cooperate with weapons inspectors", that is a crock. The UN weapons inspections team went in, and reported out that they were satisfied that there were no WMD (and it seems now that they were right). The US was not happy with that result. They felt that Hussein could not be in compliance unless he actually produced the WMD, not imagining that he really had none to produce. Eventually, on the eve of war, the US issued an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein and his family to leave the country within 48 hours and for the Iraqi military to stand down in the face of coalition forces. The "failure to cooperate" was nothing more than an artifact of incorrect US government beliefs about the status of Hussein's arsenal.

Look at the ultimatum if you don't believe me:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2859269.stm

Tell me that Bush was not resting the core of his case on Saddam Hussein having WMDs that posed a threat, and that he was not interpreting the failure to find WMDs as a refusal to cooperate on Saddam Hussein's part. Does this justification look at all solid to you now?