But the reality is that any large scale mandate is out of the question at this point. It would end up being opposed by Republicans out of the spirit of turning Obama into a one term president by making him look legislatively impotent and it would work. Any large enough piece of legislation would have something in that could be labeled as unforgivably objectionable and Republicans would harp on it or they would just lie (death panels! – Politifact’s lie of the year).

Most people are tired of broad rhetoric and want a specific plan of action.

What Obama has done is exactly what he should be doing. Despite what my crush over at ABC (Amy Walter) thinks, this was Clintonian triangulation at its finest. Obama is trying to make it as difficult as possible for the GOP to claim ideological differences to bills as possible. This way, when the Republicans attempt to prevent a entirely agreeable bill (e.g., The Puppies Are Cute 2012 bill) from passing Mitch McConnell will have a hard time claiming that it is socialism or otherwise ideologically objectionable. More than anything, Obama needs to show leadership, action and progress… this comes from congress passing bills. One deal can lead to a second and a third.

So yes, he is starting this new legislative “age” with what should be relatively easy stuff.

The proposals that he has suggested are unquestionably bi-partisan and have genuine support from both sides. In fact, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (a Republican who was on the super committee) said, “Like most of the other speeches, I find myself agreeing with about 80 percent of what he says, but disagreeing with about 80 percent of what he does.” While I’m not sure about the second half of that quote, the first half, at the very least, demonstrates agreement on the broad strokes. Most notable are Obama’s long standing proposals concerning tax reform.

Klein points out in Mitch Daniel’s response he actually flat out agreed with Obama’s proposal to cut tax exemptions from the wealthy. You might be wondering how that does not count as class warfare…I don’t know either. Nonetheless, this is a great first step towards equity in the tax code and such a move would bring in an estimated non-trivial amount of 30 billion dollars a year; that’s to say nothing of what might be gained by closing loopholes for major corporations. In fact, a study concluded that if the government was able to make evasion (/avoidance) impossible top tax rates could be raised over to nearly 83% without impacting the economy. That’s probably not completely accurate (nor possible), but it suggests that the impact Obama’s “Buffett tax” on the economy is not nearly as horrible as many Republicans are suggesting.

But therein lies the slippery slope that the rich and republicans fear. What follows is the real line of thinking that prompts the banal “class warfare” and “soaking the rich” arguments: If we can practically draw the line at 30%, why not 83%? How can government possibly justify TAKING more private property when it is so disagreeably utilized today?

I addressed many these ideas in “Seven Compelling Reasons to Tax the Rich” because they are legitimate and really important questions about personal property and the social contract America wants to have with its most powerful individuals. Indeed, it is dangerous for the government to begin to think that it knows the proper amount of money for people to be earning. The government should not take a tax increase on anyone (even the rich) lightly. We should also recognize that many of the individuals whose income is above 1m do not find themselves in that income group every year. But at the very least, no matter how you earn it, those taking in astonishing sums of money should be paying at least what those taking in significantly less should be paying. We can safely draw the line there. For all 235,413 of you.

“The one thing I’d say is, the argument that its all about the growth of government, the numbers that came out on friday showed that the private sector is growing almost 5% per year. It’s a huge boom. The thing that is dragging down the economy is that the government is shrinking so rapidly that it is pulling down the overall growth rate to 2.8%”

To which Laura Ingraham, duchess of conservative radio, responded “What?! What?! Wait a second…Is this a science fiction show?”

Clearly, she did not agree with the statement Goolsbee was making, George Will’s head shaking and “i know better” smiling suggested he was equally at odds withe the statement. Understandable, the idea that when the government shrinks “the economy” is negatively impacted is jarringly contrary to her Republican populism. Just moments before she was saying how Romney had to stop admitting that the economy was getting better.

But, what Goolsbee was saying is completely accurate. In fact, the report he is referencing said that positive growth in a number of areas “were partly offset by negative contributions from federal government spending and state and local government spending.” This has been widely reported. Even if you don’t ideologically agree with Krugman’s lamentations over austerity, what Goolsbee said was entirely accurate. The implications of that observation are a different argument.

The central problem here is the insurmountable difficulty everyone has in reporting about economics. The practices of journalism and economics are fundamentally opposed to one another. Economics thrives over nuance and detailed debate, whereas journalism relishes breaking issues down to their core and finding the simplest summation possible. GDP, for instance, is often cited as a way of gauging the economic health of a country. (Even worse indicators that is used are the NYSE’s market indicies.) This is accurate, but no one thinks that GDP is the last word on an economy’s health or its long term prospects. You could respect Ingrham’s outburst if it was concerning that, but I suspect it wasn’t. In the long run, austerity will help our government and our economy. We just have to engage in austerity in a measured and gradual way that will not send our economy into a recession.

Romney’s devilishly low tax rate is going to be a big deal throughout this election. Today, Newt Gingrich, while addressing a question on Romney’s immigration platform, shot off this zinger:

“You have to live in a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and making $20 million for no work, to have some fantasy this far from reality,” Gingrich said.

Fantasy, isn’t it? Newt Gingrich has decided to attack Mitt Romney on the concept of receiving income in the form of interest payments and capital gains. The last time I checked, I don’t even think Democrats are against that. This critique goes way past tax code fairness.

As I’ve mentioned previously, the Romney tax returns are really the final straw — the cherry-on-top — that makes any semblance of Romney’s “electability” suddenly vanish into thin air. No longer can Mitt Romney even pretend to be able to relate to “average” Americans, much less the 49 million Americans who now live below the poverty line. The Republicans have done themselves into a corner.

“I think president Obama wants to make us a European style welfare state, where instead of being a merit society, we’re an entitlement society, where government’s role is to take from some and give to others.”

Essentially, Romney is trying to make the case to Republican voters that Obama’s radical ideology enables him to create economic policies that help one group of Americans at the expense of another. Although he might not explicitly be saying it, he’s claiming that the idea of having an economic policy that tilts the odds in one groups favor is reprehensibly wrong. “Merit” he say’s is what differentiates him against Obama’s un-American idea of “entitlement.”

So it should come as a major surprise at how one-sided and preferential Romney’s own economic plan is when it comes to helping the rich at the expense of everybody else. The Tax Policy Center is out with a new report that  analyzes Mitt Romney’s economic plan that he released last fall. Greg Sargent of the Washington Post breaks down the results:

Individuals in the top 0.1 percent, or those making over $2.8 million, would get an income tax cut of nearly half a million dollars.

Individuals in the top one percent, or those making over $629,000, would get a cut of over $80,000.

Meanwhile, people in the other percentiles would see a tax reduction, but a far smaller one. Those in the 95-99 percentiles would see a tax cut of around $7,500. Those in the 90-95 percentiles would see a tax cut of around $2,500. And those in the 80-90 percentiles would see a cut of around $1,100.

Broken down by quintile, those in the fourth highest would see a tax cut of roughly $6,900; those in the third highest would see a cut of around $500; and those in the bottom two would see a slight increase.

Let me reiterate that: under Romney’s economic vision for the nation, anybody who makes over $2.8 million per year, the top 0.1 percent, will get half a million dollars in tax cuts while everybody else pretty much get’s treated like suckers by a government that exclusively favors the ultra-ultra-ultra-ultra rich. I decided to chart these numbers for kicks:

Chart Source: Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center Microsimulation Model (version 0411-2).

It goes without saying that Romney’s economic plan is insanely favorable to people in Mitt Romney’s income bracket. But the next time that he wants to claim that Barack Obama wants to create an “entitlement society,” he only needs to look at this chart to remind himself that he wants to too.

U.S. prosecutors are preparing what would be the first criminal charges against BP Plc (BP/) staff after the worst U.S. oil spill last year, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.

Prosecutors are focusing on whether some BP employees, including several Houston-based engineers and at least one supervisor, provided false information to regulators about the risks linked to the drilling of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, the Journal said. Department of Justice officials said in September that they looking to whether BP failed to properly report changes in key pressure measurement during the drilling process.

This is definitely a step in the right direction. Now if only BP’s corporate personhood could be charged with manslaughter and sent away to jail…

Big companies like General Electric, Philips and Osram Sylvania spent big bucks preparing for the standards, and the industry is fuming over the GOP bid to undercut them.

After spending four years and millions of dollars prepping for the new rules, businesses say pulling the plug now could cost them. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association has waged a lobbying campaign for more than a year to persuade the GOP to abandon the effort.

Manufacturers are worried that the rider will undermine companies’ investments and “allow potential bad actors to sell inefficient light bulbs in the United States without any fear of federal enforcement,” said Kyle Pitsor, the trade group’s vice president of government relations.

Yes, you read that correctly: An industry group whose membership includes one of the largest multinational conglomerates in the world, General Electric, has had to lobby Republicans in congress to keep government regulations in place. But apparently, their lobbying efforts that represent over 95 percent of the Lighting Industry have now proved to be a failure in the face of a few fringe House Republicans like Michele Bachmann who craftily slipped the language into the bill. The Republicans just couldn’t stomach the narrative that regulations can be beneficial.

Of course, the irony of all of this is that it was President George W. Bush who originally signed the bipartisan-supported bill in 2007 that killed would have killed the Incandescent bulb. At the time, Michele Bachmann responded by introducing the “Light Bulb Freedom Of Choice Act” to the chuckles of President Bush and the rest of the Republican establishment. It seems like she now gets the last laugh.

#10 Chris Christie Mic Checked

#9 Michele Bachmann Mic Checked

#8 Representatives of the Gas Industry Mic Checked

#7 Karl Rove Mic Checked

#6 Barack Obama Mic Checked

#5 Scott Walker Mic Checked

#4 Eric Cantor Mic Checked

#3 Newt Gingrich Mic Checked

#2 John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo Mic Checked

#1 NYC Panel for Education Policy Mic Checked

BONUS #1:  Robert Doyle, Mayor of Melbourne Mic Checked

BONUS #2:  Wal Mart Mic Checked

We wanted to talk to business owners who would be affected. So, NPR requested help from numerous Republican congressional offices, including House and Senate leadership. They were unable to produce a single millionaire job creator for us to interview.

So we went to the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax. Again, three days after putting in a request, none of them was able to find someone for us to talk to. A group called the Tax Relief Coalition said the problem was finding someone willing to talk about their personal taxes on national radio.

So next we put a query on Facebook. And several business owners who said they would be affected by the “millionaires surtax” responded.

“It’s not in the top 20 things that we think about when we’re making a business hire,” said Ian Yankwitt, who owns Tortoise Investment Management.

What should be amazing is that NPR was able to find actual millionaire ‘job creators’ to speak with on Facebook, not the fact that the GOP’s justification for voting against a tax extension for over 160 American workers hinges on the interests of a non-existent group of small business ‘job creators’ who supposedly wouldn’t be able to hire new employees if the legislation passed.

Mitt Romney, for instance, has written extensively in his book, No Apology, of the need to privatize Social Security into “individual retirement accounts.” Newt Gingrich, too, has proposed a plan to phase out Social Security and create “private retirement accounts.”

With all that said, it comes as a big surprise that in attempting to prevent President Obama and the Democrats from passing an extension of the Payroll Tax Cut with a tax on millionaires, the Republicans have stepped up as the guardians of Social Security:

House Speaker John A. Boehner said Wednesday that Republicans will put forward a measure that would renew the payroll tax cut when it expires, but also would require spending cuts that would be used to restore the lost funding to Social Security.

“We have a trust fund that we all know is going broke,” Boehner said. “.?.?.So if, in fact, you’re going to take money out of the Social Security trust fund, in our view, it has to be replaced.”

Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mi.) said he is eager to see what GOP leaders are “cooking up. “Do I want to put money into people’s pockets? Absolutely,” he said. “Am I concerned about the long-term impact this has on the social security trust fund? Absolutely.”

Republican leaders say they want to find a compromise with Democrats that would keep the payroll tax rate at 4.2 percent next year, rather than allowing it to revert to 6.2 percent — but they reject a Democratic plan to charge a surtax on people who make more than $1 million a year to pay for the tax cut.

So now we’re supposed to believe that Republicans really do like Social Security and that they are looking out for the long-term security of entitlement programs?

“You should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely congress has the authority and it would be right, if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending. And that’s what republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.“

Jon Kyl (11/27/2011):

In an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” the Arizona Republican argued that continuing a cut in the employee share of the payroll tax would undermine the Social Security system.

[...]

“The problem here is payroll doesn’t go into general revenue, it supports Social Security, and you can’t keep extending the payroll tax holiday and have a secure Social Security,” he said.

This really gets at the heart of present day GOP obstructionism. They will tout some idiotic ideological truism such as “you should never have to offset the cost” of lowering taxes, but then just as fast, they will argue the complete opposite when their own interests have nothing to gain. In the first case, it was the Bush Tax Cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthy. In the second case, it’s the extension of Obama’s Payroll Tax Cut for the working class.

Besides this hypocritical rhetoric, it should also be noted (1) that the idea that tax cuts don’t have to be offset is straight up bullshit – in fact, almost 2.5 trillion dollars of our national debt was incurred by failing to offset the Bush Tax Cuts; and (2) the second Kyl statement is factually incorrect, since the the payroll tax cut extension is funded by a surtax on people who make more than 1 million dollars per year.

Update: A previous version of this post stated the Bush tax cuts cost 1.5 trillion dollars.