Has Lindsay Graham ever actually backed any policies at all? (Other than tax cuts for the wealthy.) From my perspective (interested in politics but not making a hobby out of it) he seems to exist solely for the purpose of being that kid on the playground who smirks and declares it Opposite Day whenever a consensus is reached to play dodgeball rather than tag thirty seconds before the bell rings to announce the end of recess.
Sorry about the late post - I am catching up. I wonder how successful the virtue signaling is or will ultimately be. I live in a small community of 75% or so Republicans and the likes of Lindsay Graham or anyone who voted for the infrastructure bill could not be elected dog catcher regardless of how they might try to spin it. My community until recently has been run by business oriented Republicans that have had some success fending off economic decline in a farming community that lost a major employer and numerous small service businesses. Lately, populist Republicans are challenging incumbent Republicans and are winning by similar margins that Trump had against Biden. They are fighting economic development proposals that should have positive multipliers - actually they seem to oppose anything that is not social warfare. Locals will continue to vote for whatever Republican candidate in State or National election, but soon there will be no old school Republicans on school boards, city council, county commission, Sheriff, ... I struggle grasping the meaning of this beyond the significant local impacts and for whom the virtue signaling is meant. I'm not sure the Fox news / populist crowds are receptive.
I think I'm missing your point here. The senators quoted here complain about "inflation" and "tax and spend". Your argument against inflation which I'm pretty on board for you relegated to a footnote. You then make an argument that their other reason for not supporting the large bill was because it was about people. Why did you ignore their stated complaint ("tax and spend") to instead counter an unstated complaint ("shouldn't invest in people")? You could have spent some time discussing how the tax portion wouldn't have been much of a negative multiplier.
Also, a lot of this multiplier conversation confuses me. If there really is such a 1.5 multiplier on projects like this, then why isn't the money spent "all of it". Or at least as much as we can without reducing the country to a combination of utter poverty and infrastructure. Is there some kind of pareto-efficient frontier of tax-and-spend?
There might be some other differences between the two. Is infrastructure spending easier to end than SNAP spending? That Moody's chart you linked specifically says that's the multiplier in recessions and early cycle expansions. I'd be curious to see what the multipliers are in other financial circumstances..
In footnote one, you say "Senate rules actually require the reconciliation bill to be budget-neutral over a ten-year span." Respectfully, is it possible this might be incorrect? I think you're referring to the Byrd Rule.
If so, the limitation is on increasing the deficit in periods *after* the ten-year budget window, codified at 2 USCC 644(b)(1)(A)(E): "a provision shall be considered to be extraneous if it increases, or would increase, net outlays, or if it decreases, or would decrease, revenues during a fiscal year after the fiscal years covered by such reconciliation bill or reconciliation resolution, and such increases or decreases are greater than outlay reductions or revenue increases resulting from other provisions in such title in such year."
This is why e.g. the Republican corporate tax bill (TCJA) has so many tax cuts expiring after ten years. But Congress can still use reconciliation to increase the deficit in years zero through ten.
Has Lindsay Graham ever actually backed any policies at all? (Other than tax cuts for the wealthy.) From my perspective (interested in politics but not making a hobby out of it) he seems to exist solely for the purpose of being that kid on the playground who smirks and declares it Opposite Day whenever a consensus is reached to play dodgeball rather than tag thirty seconds before the bell rings to announce the end of recess.
Sorry about the late post - I am catching up. I wonder how successful the virtue signaling is or will ultimately be. I live in a small community of 75% or so Republicans and the likes of Lindsay Graham or anyone who voted for the infrastructure bill could not be elected dog catcher regardless of how they might try to spin it. My community until recently has been run by business oriented Republicans that have had some success fending off economic decline in a farming community that lost a major employer and numerous small service businesses. Lately, populist Republicans are challenging incumbent Republicans and are winning by similar margins that Trump had against Biden. They are fighting economic development proposals that should have positive multipliers - actually they seem to oppose anything that is not social warfare. Locals will continue to vote for whatever Republican candidate in State or National election, but soon there will be no old school Republicans on school boards, city council, county commission, Sheriff, ... I struggle grasping the meaning of this beyond the significant local impacts and for whom the virtue signaling is meant. I'm not sure the Fox news / populist crowds are receptive.
I think I'm missing your point here. The senators quoted here complain about "inflation" and "tax and spend". Your argument against inflation which I'm pretty on board for you relegated to a footnote. You then make an argument that their other reason for not supporting the large bill was because it was about people. Why did you ignore their stated complaint ("tax and spend") to instead counter an unstated complaint ("shouldn't invest in people")? You could have spent some time discussing how the tax portion wouldn't have been much of a negative multiplier.
Also, a lot of this multiplier conversation confuses me. If there really is such a 1.5 multiplier on projects like this, then why isn't the money spent "all of it". Or at least as much as we can without reducing the country to a combination of utter poverty and infrastructure. Is there some kind of pareto-efficient frontier of tax-and-spend?
There might be some other differences between the two. Is infrastructure spending easier to end than SNAP spending? That Moody's chart you linked specifically says that's the multiplier in recessions and early cycle expansions. I'd be curious to see what the multipliers are in other financial circumstances..
In footnote one, you say "Senate rules actually require the reconciliation bill to be budget-neutral over a ten-year span." Respectfully, is it possible this might be incorrect? I think you're referring to the Byrd Rule.
If so, the limitation is on increasing the deficit in periods *after* the ten-year budget window, codified at 2 USCC 644(b)(1)(A)(E): "a provision shall be considered to be extraneous if it increases, or would increase, net outlays, or if it decreases, or would decrease, revenues during a fiscal year after the fiscal years covered by such reconciliation bill or reconciliation resolution, and such increases or decreases are greater than outlay reductions or revenue increases resulting from other provisions in such title in such year."
This is why e.g. the Republican corporate tax bill (TCJA) has so many tax cuts expiring after ten years. But Congress can still use reconciliation to increase the deficit in years zero through ten.