Good re-framing! You gotta keep 'em honest somehow!

What I find interesting is that the only two people I have seen referencing the $239 billion CBO score were Brooks and McConnell, both of whom used it to demagogue. Otherwise there seems to not be a peep, still less any understanding that this is less than a fifth of the figure AP was floating just a week ago ($1.5 trillion). On Tues July 14th CBO gave a partial score of HR3200 at $1.048 billion, and indeed $1 trillion seems to be the figure CNN et al are sitting on. On Friday in a more complete score CBO slashed $809 billion off that $1.048 trillion. You would think that would be a big enough number to headline, but no.

Now there are some valid reasons to challenge the importance of that particular number, on the other hand there are also arguments that the remaining $239 billion overstates the ultimate gap. But somehow we have not yet gotten to the starting point of discussion which at a minimum should be the statement on the CBO Director's Blog from Sat. AM.

But I am not even hearing chirping. Clearly the number is out there or else Brooks wouldn't know to cite it but otherwise it remains oddly invisible.

And the effective marginal tax rate for the wealthy will still be far lower than the marginal tax rate and reduction in benefits that most moderate income families face.

The above sentence is unclear to me. Can anybody simplify it?

Dean,

The article said "top earners" while you used "wealthy," it's possible that these are two different groups?

Won't those same small businesses reap the benefit of NOT paying for heath insurance for their workers? Won't they benefit from less bankruptcies due to health crises and the insured having coverage?

Strange, David wants us to look at the indirect effects of a Laffer curve inspired tax cut for the wealthy, but not for small businessmen? I wonder why?

So only 11 or 20% of the program is borrowed in the next 6 months then. Hence not a problem, Mr Brooks.

Borrowing is just defering taxes.

I doubt you can make a good case for:

effective marginal tax rate for the wealthy will still be far lower than the marginal tax rate .. that most moderate income families ...
because social security taxes do and will pay back benefits in the future.

Of course Brooks & the Republicans ignore the increasing costs for employer-provided insurance (we got a 40% premium increase this year in addition to higher physician co-pays, deductibles and pharmacy co-pays).

The American-based health care system will inevitably implode under the unsustainable burden of sustaining the insatiable greed of the entrenched interests of American health care: doctors, pharma, insurance.

The US will inevitably go single-payer.

Republicans and libertarians and guys like Brooks will learn to love single payer when they get cancer and lose their jobs.

Dean,

Re:
David Brooks Wanted Tax Increases to Pay for Stimulus
That is presumably the implication of his complaint that the Democrats paid for the stimulus package "with borrowed money."

Why can't you just make your points -- which, ironically, are supposed to be of a press watchdog/fact-check nature -- without grossly distorting and mischaracterizing the statements of others?

David Brooks actually wrote:
You would have thought that a stimulus package would be designed to fight unemployment and stimulate the economy during a recession. But Congressional Democrats used it as a pretext to pay for $787 billion worth of pet programs with borrowed money.

Obviously he is not, as you falsely claim, complaining that the stimulus was deficit-financed (something that would generally sound silly, which is why you put those words in his mouth), but rather that the "stimulus" was not designed primarily to provide stimulus and instead was wasted on "pet programs", and although any deficit-financed spending is stimulative to some degree whenever the spending actually occurs, obviously adding to our debt carries a cost (a trade-off), and his point is obviously that this cost (the additional debt) was incurred on our behalf for spending that would not provide much stimulus bang for the buck. Obviously you can dispute his premises if you wish, but it is quite lame for you to so blatantly mischaracterize what he said and then ridicule him for an assertion you falsely attribute to him.

Apparently you want your readers to think that David Brooks either opposed stimulus altogether, wanted it to be financed by tax increases (probably sarcasm on your part), or is just throwing out a partisan criticism of a policy he actually believes was wise (deficit-financed stimulus). Yet, as I've explained, none of the above is reflected by his remark.

As I've said many times before, if anyone wanted to create a blog for this purpose, Beat the Press provides enough regular material for a blog that could be called "Beat Beat the Press" to point out all the (ironic) distortions, misrepresentations and forms of misleading rhetoric on Beat the Press.

Family (or surname) loyalty is admirable, but it must not be allowed to wreck one's sarcasm detector. Regardless of what they are spent on, regardless of whether they stimulate or not, the bucks in question have to come either from Taxation Present or be IOU's against Taxation future.

Señorito D. Brooks is so slight a figure in economics that I won't waste anybody's time by posting my views on it
here. Masochists may apply at

http://tinyurl.com/kq42lg .

Happy days.

James wrote, The article said "top earners" while you used "wealthy," it's possible that these are two different groups?

Damn straight. Most discussions measure income to determine wealth, which is stupid---wealth is assets.

I am stunned by the vast gap in understanding between Dr. Baker and the ordinary reader and writer of letters to editors. The Republican disinformation machine has exhibited diabolical cleverness in manipulating great masses of people into believing their self-serving propaganda. Is there hope that Dean Baker's wisdom can filter down to voters and those who demand that their leaders in Congress change nothing, as a way of trying to keep the frightening world standing still (irrespective of the entropy that Aristotle noted in democratic societies)?