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Noted for March 26, 2013: Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas on the Remarkable Party Loyalty of Senate Democrats, etc.

  • Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas: Wonkbook: What we learned from the Senate Democrats’ budget: "If there was a surprise in the Senate Democrats’ budget, it’s that Harry Reid and Patty Murray got so many of their colleagues to sign onto a framework, however vague, that sits to the left of the deal President Obama is currently offering the Republicans. A key thread of the past few years is that the White House has believed Senate Democrats have little spine on taxes. In fact, quite a bit of the White House’s negotiating strategy has been driven by the worry that in a crisis situation, Senate Democrats would take a deal with very little revenue, undercutting the White House’s leverage. This was also part of why Republicans were so eager to see Senate Democrats produce a budget… [they thought] the deep fissures in the party were being papered over by Reid’s refusal to actually release a budget. If Senate Democrats had to release a budget, the uneasy consensus would crack…. On Friday, however, Senate Democrats stood up and voted for almost a trillion dollars more in tax hikes — and that’s on top of the tax hikes in the fiscal cliff deal. That’s about $375 billion more in tax increases than even Obama has been asking for lately. Republicans always said Senate Democrats needed to show the American people where they stand on the budget, and now, they have. To the GOP’s disappointment, it’s to the left of Obama, and far from them."

  • Joe Gandelman: The GOP’s [and the Press's] Bachmann Problem: "[T]he New York Time’s Charles Blow who, in a superb column about Republican over the top, demonizing and hateful rhetoric — this time turned on OTHER Republicans — notes this about the Queen of Inaccurate Political Charges, Rep Michele Bachmann: 'Last year The Washington Post quoted Jim Drinkard, who oversees fact-checking at The Associated Press, as saying, “We had to have a self-imposed Michele Bachmann quota in some of those debates.” It’s sad when you are so fact-challenged that you burn out the fact-checkers. People like Bachmann represent everything that is wrong with the Republican Party… hyperbolic, reactionary, ill-informed and ill-intentioned… synonymous with the Republican brand…. When all the dust settles… Republicans will still be left with the problem of what to do with people like Bachmann. And as long as the party has Bachmanns, it has a problem.' It’s not just a matter of having Bachmann. It’s enabling her, not calling her out on obvious political statements (ahem) at variance with the facts. And not repudiating her."

Justin Lahart: Mortgage Securitizers Didn’t Know Housing Was Going Bust | Eurointelligence | Justin Lahart: Mortgage Securitizers Didn’t Know Housing Was Going Bust | Yes, Noam Chomsky is a hack. Why do you ask? | Jeff Weintraub: The Chomsky problem | Jeff Weintraub: Mark Kleiman grapples with the Chomsky Problem | Mark Kleiman: Greenwald on Chomsky | Brad DeLong (October 23, 1998): My Allergic Reaction to Noam Chomsky | Brad DeLong (June 17, 2002): My Very, Very Allergic Reaction to Noam Chomsky: Khmer Rouge, Faurisson, Milosevic | Courtney Weaver: Russians prepare to quit Cyprus |

  • Harold Pollack: Twitter / haroldpollack:: "Ponder this graph before getting too indignant about rise in child SSI. TANF's flat recession caseload bigger problem" Screenshot 3 25 13 8 49 AM

  • Aaron Carroll: Best in the world, my a#@ – ctd.: "Sometimes I lack the words. From the NYT: 'Two nights a year, Tennessee holds a health care lottery of sorts, giving the medically desperate a chance to get help.' Yes, a lottery. That’s how the truly needy can hope to get care in the richest country in the world. More details: 'State residents who have high medical bills but would not normally qualify for Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, can call a state phone line and request an application. But the window is tight — the line shuts down after 2,500 calls, typically within an hour — and the demand is so high that it is difficult to get through…. 'It’s like the Oklahoma land rush for an hour', said Russell Overby, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society in Nashville. 'We encourage people to use multiple phones and to dial and dial and dial'. The phone line opened at 6 p.m. on Thursday for the first time in six months. At 5:58, Ida Gordon of Nashville picked up her cordless phone and started dialing. Ms. Gordon, 63, had qualified for TennCare until her grandson, who had been in her custody, graduated from high school last spring. Now she is uninsured, with crippling arthritis and a few recent trips to the emergency room haunting her."

  • David Wessel: 10 Takeaways From Speech by Fed’s Dudley: 1. "The 'fundamentals underpinning the U.S. economy are improving'…. 2. So why isn’t the economy growing faster? Blame Washington [i.e., contractionary fiscal policy]…. 3. Inflation is not a worry…. 4. The Fed should scale back its $85-billion-a-month in bond purchases as unemployment comes down…. 5. The Fed doesn’t know enough yet to reveal what will prompt it to turn down the bond-buying dial…. 6. The Fed’s bond-buying, or quantitative easing, is working even better than he hoped…. 7. The risks of QE aren’t as big as Fed critics say…. 8. The Fed may lose money on its bond portfolio and — for a time — have no profits to turn over to the Treasury. So what?… 9. The Fed plans, at some point, to raise the interest rate it pays on the reserves banks have parked at the Fed. This will be controversial…. 10. The Fed is hoping to avoid a repeat of 1994 when it lifted short-term interest rates and, inadvertently, triggered a bond market rout."

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On March 25, 2013:

March 25, 2013 at 21:04 in #weblogging | | Comments (3)

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