It's not about the money

Typically, when someone says that the obvious response is, "then it must be about the money."

In this case, it's really true. It's not about the money, it's about the GOP's hostility to women's health.

The pro-life Susan B. Anthony List and Rep. Jim Jordan, head of the Republican Study Committee, just held a conference call in which Jordan said the fight is all about abortion. “The country's broke. The vast majority of Americans, whether they're pro-life or not, don't want their tax dollars being spent to take the life of unborn children,” Jordan said. When asked about how no federal funds go to paying for abortions – Planned Parenthood carefully segregates the funds – Jordan scoffed: “Come on. Money is fungible, and for them to make that claim – it's just common sense that money is fungible. We think that tax payers understand this and they don't want their money to be used in this manner.”

Speaker Boehner said this morning that “almost all of the policy issues have been dealt with and there is no agreement on the spending limit.” But Jordan's remarks would seem to contradict this claim. The Republican Study Committee represents 175 of the most conservative Republicans – a giant bloc without whom Boehner cannot pass anything.

Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, told reporters this afternoon that after House and Senate negotiators came to an agreement on $38 billion in cuts, Boehner brought up this rider. “[At] midnight last night it was down to one issue: Title X. They made a proposal to us and we said, 'That's unacceptable,'” Durbin said. “And then they spent the rest of the night -- instead of saying, ‘Ok, can we re-approach that' – saying, ‘Ok, let's reopen the conversation on the numbers.' You know that is maddening. At some point this has to come to a close.”

Durbin said the Senate is digging in its heels at $38 billion. The fact that Boehner asked for more money would hint that abortion isn't really the sticking point, but Democratic aides say the issue isn't money. “If it were a matter for a couple more billion in cuts in exchange for them dropping Title X, don't you think we would've done that by now?” an aide said.

For those dear readers wondering how heinous Title X must be that Republicans would risk shutting down the federal government to get its stain removed from federal statutes, well...

The Title X Family Planning program ["Population Research and Voluntary Family Planning Programs" (Public Law 91-572)], was enacted in 1970 as Title X of the Public Health Service Act. Title X is the only federal grant program dedicated solely to providing individuals with comprehensive family planning and related preventive health services. The Title X program is designed to provide access to contraceptive services, supplies and information to all who want and need them. By law, priority is given to persons from low-income families.

The GOP is the party of the sick and twisted. And misogyny. Don't forget that.

The view from the depression

Joe Nocera provides a fascinating glimpse of the Great Depression from someone in its midst.

It provides useful insight on our current situation and the battle over deficit spending.

Mr. Roth’s diaries have no narrative. But they are compelling reading nonetheless, because they force readers to reflect on both the similarities and the differences between then and now. What particularly struck me was watching Mr. Roth, in his diaries, grope from day to day, and year to year, searching for an answer that wouldn’t be clear until long afterward. He’s like the proverbial blind man who feels an elephant’s trunk and thinks elephants look like a rope. Not unlike the way we are today, as we grope our way through our own financial crisis.

Mr. Roth’s inflation fears are one good example. A rock-ribbed Republican, he can’t understand why Roosevelt’s New Deal programs — and the spending they require — don’t bring with them the kind of scary inflation that had occurred in Germany after World War I. He keeps waiting for it, predicting it, ever fearful that it will make an awful economic situation even worse. He is baffled that inflation remained subdued. He can’t get outside of his mental framework and see — as we can today — that Roosevelt’s programs are the only things keeping the economy alive.

But an even more wrenching example of his groping in the dark is his desperate wish for the Depression to end. His diaries are filled with tentative predictions, usually based on experts’ opinions, that the worst is over. Yet every time he thinks that, he turns out to be wrong. He begins studying the charts of previous Depressions to see how long they lasted. “I have done considerable reading about the depressions of 1837 and 1873 and I am struck by the similarity to the present crisis,” he writes in early 1933. “If history repeats itself then we still have 2 or 3 years of bad times ahead.”

At various points in the early 1930s, the stock market spikes — and he starts to think it’s a good time to buy stocks. Indeed, he writes, many experts are advising people to get into the market, and some of his wealthier friends do so. But six months later, the experts invariably turn out to be wrong, and his friends wind up losing their money. During the Depression, optimism was ruinous.

And yet — and this is something we tend to forget — between 1935 and 1937, business began to boom again, and a sense of growing prosperity took hold in the country. In Youngstown, the steel and rubber factories were operating at near capacity, just as they had in the 1920s. On Christmas Eve in 1936, Mr. Roth wrote: “Just came back thru the stores on my lunch hour. People are spending like drunken sailors.”

A week later, he added, “It seems to me that the time has come where we can formally and officially announce that the depression of 1929 has ended.”

This, of course, turned out to be completely wrong. That September, the market crashed, and the Depression took hold once again. Today, most economists believe that the downturn was caused by Roosevelt, who turned off the spigot too soon, trying to balance the budget instead of continuing to pump money into the economy. Not understanding the reason for the downturn, Mr. Roth was deeply discouraged by the reappearance of the Depression. “It is terrible to contemplate that we are in the 9th year of depression and still cannot see clearly ahead,” he wrote in March 1939.

A few months later, he wrote: “As I re-read some of the predictions made by outstanding economists in past few years, I must laugh. They were all wrong. None of them foresaw the 1937-1939 collapse and many predicted inflation before this.” Mr. Roth comes to the conclusion that relying on experts is a waste of time.

Nocera places the following quote at the start of his column this morning:

“Dow at 10,000 as Crisis Ebbs”

— Wall Street Journal headline on Thursday

It's beginning to feel a lot like 1937.

About the deficit

If you're so inclined, three interesting views on the real U.S. budget deficit.

Tapped.

Floyd Norris.

Paul Krugman.

And finally, Ezra wonders why all these Republicans supported the hugely costly Medicare drug bill and oppose deficit neutral health care reform.

All worth a read, again, if you're even mildly inclined to the wonkish.