The Stupendously Stupid Sixty, who signed a letter, along with a band of Fanatically Foolish Forty Republicans, to the Catfood Commission II--also known as the "SuperCommittee"--have essentially said, "we're on board with cutting Medicare, funding for basic research, veterans benefits--as long as we also raise some taxes". I'll come to why this is a group of Stupendously Stupid Sixty people in a sec.

But, first, drumroll for the Stupendously Stupid Sixty:



Robert E. Andrews (N.J.)

John Barrow (Ga.)

Timothy Bishop (N.Y.)

Dan Boren (Okla.)

Leonard Boswell (Iowa)

Dennis Cardoza (Calif.)

John Carney (Del.)

Kathy Castor (Fla.)

Ben Chandler (Ky.)

Emanuel Cleaver II (Mo.)

Gerry Connolly (Va.)

Jim Cooper (Tenn.)

Jim Costa (Calif.)

Henry Cuellar (Texas)

Danny K. Davis (Ill.)

Peter DeFazio (Ore.)

Diana DeGette (Colo.)

Norm Dicks (Wash.)

Chaka Fattah (Pa.)

John Garamendi (Calif.)

Brian Higgins (N.Y.)

Jim Himes (Conn.)

Steny Hoyer (Md.)

Dale Kildee (Mich.)

Ron Kind (Wis.)

Rick Larsen (Wash.)

John Larson (Conn.)

Daniel Lipinski (Ill.)

David Loebsack (Iowa)

Carolyn Maloney (N.Y.)

Jim Matheson (Utah)

Mike McIntyre (N.C.)

Gregory Meeks (N.Y.)

James Moran (Va.)

William Owens (N.Y.)

Bill Pascrell (N.J.)

Ed Perlmutter (Colo.)

Gary Peters (Mich.)

Collin Peterson (Minn.)

Chellie Pingree (Maine)

Jared Polis (Colo.)

David Price (N.C.)

Mike Quigley (Ill.)

Nick Rahall (W.Va.)

Mike Ross (Ark.)

Steven Rothman (N.J.)

Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.)

Adam Schiff (Calif.)

Kurt Schrader (Ore.)

Allyson Schwartz (Pa.)

Terri Sewell (Ala.)

Heath Shuler (N.C.)

Adam Smith (Wash.)

Mike Thompson (Calif.)

Niki Tsongas (Mass.)

Peter Visclosky (Ind.)

Tim Walz (Minn.)

Mel Watt (N.C.)

Peter Welch (Vt.)

John Yarmuth (Ky.)

From the official megaphone of the party of the Very Serious People--the Washington Post--comes this:



The letter they sent represents a rare cross-party effort for the rancorous House, and its organizers said they hoped it would help nudge the 12-member panel to reach a deal that would far exceed the committee’s $1.5 trillion mandate.

The list is pretty much dominated by Blue Dog Democrats--but, without calling out people by name, you can see people who call themselves "liberals" or even "progressives".

They have lost their minds--and they should certainly lose any dime or dollar anyone was thinking of contributing to their campaigns.

So, let's understand this:

The Stupendously Stupid Sixty are accepting the immoral idea of "shared sacrifice": that the people who have been screwed by the financial crisis, and 30 years of wage obliteration, should shoulder a burden they had no hand in creating.

The Stupendously Stupid Sixty, I assume, think that they have done something ingenious--luring a handful of Republicans to intimate, without even promising, that they would accept some tax hike.

The Stupendously Stupid Sixty, by doing so, are, at best, engaging in classic Obama negotiating tactics: start negotiating from your own 20-yard-line and work backwards to your end zone. For the non-football fans, think, "oh, please, please, here take my house, my children, my watch, my left leg, now, it's your turn: what will you give me?".

Translation: our tax rates are horrendously low for the very wealthy and, as the Citizens for Tax Justice shows us today, scores of corporations do not pay any taxes, and we waste tens of billions of dollars on corporate welfare. So, why would any DEMOCRAT be part of a discussion that does not start: "here are the serious tax increases we will support because that's patriotic and American, now, you demonstrate whether there is any need to cut a single dime from social programs?"

Most important, the Stupendously Stupid Sixty are playing this game when there is no debt or deficit "crisis". None. Zero.

I asked my friend and colleague Dean Baker, co-director of the Center on Economic and Policy Research, about this letter. Dean has been one of the few voices valiantly trying to stop this obsession about the phony crisis. He replied:

These people really do live in another universe. I know a staffer with one of the most progressive dems in the Senate who asked me if there would really be a disaster if the supercommittee doesn't reach an agreement. The problem is that they confuse the Washington Post with a real newspaper.

The fact that a staffer for a progressive Democrat can even wonder about this issue is very telling. For a very long time, Baker, yours truly and a few people have been trying to argue, using facts, that there is no debt or deficit "crisis". We have plenty of money--and there is no need to cut Medicare, not to mention even breathe the words "Social Security" which has ZERO to do with any federal budget challenge.

The best thing that could happen with the SuperCommittee is nothing. Paralysis. Failure. As I pointed out yesterday, if that happens, the Bush tax cuts will expire at the end of the year and that's the best short-term development everyone should root for.

The whole debate on the phony debt and deficit "crisis" is creepily similar to the run-up to the Iraq War. A president told us we were in mortal danger. A whole lot of Very Serious People--supported and egged on by the editorial boards of The New York Times and The Washington Post--wrote op-eds, appeared on TV and contributed money to flame the fans of the crisis. There was a massive bi-partisan rush--damn the facts--to embrace the "crisis", for political "viability" reasons (ask Hillary Clinton how that worked out for her). And anyone with a minority opinion was marginalized and dismissed as Not Serious.

And tens of thousands of people paid for that with their lives--and trillions of dollars were flushed down the sewer of an immoral war.

And here we are again. A manufactured "crisis", with all the ingredients of a rush to judgment.

You have to also wonder: why the silence from the "professional left"? Where is great Nation magazine in calling out these DEMOCRATS? Or, is just business as usual--silence when speaking up is needed? Which of course is why Occupy Wall Street has really captured the imagination of the people, while the professional left's organizations and media outlets just slept.

The Stupendously Stupid Sixty are just another cog in that machine. Shame on them.

Several people have made comments below on one point that I want to address. They argue that the letter--or the reporting of the letter--does not outline any specifics so why worry?

My argument, which obviously reasonable people can disagree about, is this: by engaging even in the discussion with the Catfood Commission that there needs to be "shared sacrifice" based on entitlement cuts and taxes, we are losing the debate, as i see it.

Because you then buy into the phone argument that there is a debt and deficit "crisis".

A Democratic Party I believe in--should i say A Wellstone Democratic Party--would fight the entire framing that there is a "crisis". But, we have a president who has led the way to take us down a very destructive path.



Ok, two additions. First, if you read the full letter--thanks to huttotex for the link--it shows how bad this. Any of the commenters who are trying to downplay this either are really not familiar with politics and/or have not been paying attention. The letter explicitly calls for "all options" being on the table when it comes to cuts and revenue. If you want to live in the fantasy world of arguing "oh, it's not specific" be my guest. I choose to live in the real world.

Second, the letter is in fact worse on a second count--it's buying into the "go big" stupidity of cutting $4 TRILLION, not $1.5 trillion. Again, if you want to live in a fantasy world, you can ignore what that means. I choose to live in the real world.

One other observation. If the best defense of the signers of the letter that people can give is it's posturing or just words, herein lies our problem: what we should have is a DEMOCRATIC PARTY and DEMOCRATIC leaders taking the floor of the House or Senate, or traveling the country, arguing that the entire debt and deficit "crisis" is phony. Except we have a president who appoints Catfood Commission Number 1 led by two corporate shills--Simpson and Bowles--and a massive bi-partisan clusterfuck about who is more serious than the other person about addressing a phony crisis.

The letter is just a symptom of a political system that is not capable of responding to the crisis facing the nation and the planet.