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George W. Bush was the first modern president to cut taxes during wartime. Now, the unpaid $2 trillion bill for the wars he fought - and chose to fight - is long overdue. While President Obama and the Republican leadership in Congress jockey to position their budget cutting plans, it's time for both parties - and all Americans - to pay the price we claim liberty demands. Here, then, is the Bipartisan War Tax Act of 2013.

2013, that is, because now isn't the time to raise income and other taxes. (Nor, for that matter, to reign in critical infrastructure spending and needed relief for the states.) While clearly gaining steam, the recovery from the Bush recession is still in its early stages. And, lamentably, President Obama and Congress just weeks ago inked a compromise two-year extension to the Bush tax cuts which will add another $800 billion in red ink to the U.S. national debt, much of it in new windfalls for the wealthiest Americans needing them least.

While there are countless scenarios for a war tax designed to pay off the costs of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, here are some suggested guidelines Bipartisan War Tax Act of 2013:

• Everyone pays. From the moment President Bush told us to go shopping and to "get down to Disney World" in the wake of the September 11 attacks, Americans haven't been asked to fight, pay for or otherwise sacrifice to defeat Al Qaeda. As FDR put it two days after Pearl Harbor, "We are now in this war. We are all in it-all the way. Every single man, woman, and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history." That must as true of our wars (and deficits) now as it was then.

• The rich pay more. This proud American tradition was met by the well-to-do of the Greatest Generation, who paid a top income tax rate of 94%. (Those stratospheric rates stayed in place until 1963, and remained as high as 77% throughout the sixties.)

• The war taxes are temporary. Just as the Bush tax cuts theoretically were supposed to sunset after a decade, so it should be for the War Tax Act. (Future deficit hawks can argue about their extension.)

• They must raise at least $3 trillion over ten years.

That price tag needs some elaboration. In September 2010, the Congressional Research Service put the total cost of the wars at $1.12 trillion, including $751 billion for Iraq and $336 billion for Afghanistan. For the 2012 fiscal year which begins on October 1, President Obama will ask for $117 billion more. (That war-fighting funding is over and above Secretary Gates' $553 billion Pentagon budget request for next year.) But in addition to the roughly $1.5 trillion tally for both conflicts through the theoretical 2014 American draw down date in Afghanistan, the U.S. faces staggering bills for veterans' health care and disability benefits. Last May, an analysis by the Center for American Progress estimated the total projected total cost of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans' health care and disability could reach between $422 billion to $717 billion. Reconstruction aid and other development assistance represent tens of billions more, as does the additional interest on the national debt. And none of the above counts the expanded funding for the new Department of Homeland Security.

But that two-plus trillion dollar tab doesn't account for the expansion of the United States military since the start of the "global war on terror." While ThinkProgress explained that the Pentagon's FY 2012 ask is "the largest request ever since World War II," McClatchy explained:

Such a boost would mark the 14th year in a row that Pentagon spending has increased, despite the waning U.S. presence in Iraq. In dollars, Pentagon spending has more than doubled in 10 years. Even adjusted for inflation, the Defense Department budget has risen 65% in the past decade.

Even with the proposed $78 billion in cuts and troop reductions advocated by Gates and Obama over the next five years, "the bottom-line figure would still go up during that time, with projected spending totaling $643 billion in 2015 and $735 billion in 2020."

Even with the reduction in staffing forecast for 2015, the Army and Marine Corps would be larger than they were when the Iraq and Afghanistan wars began.

Despite the grumbling of some Tea Party members, Congressional Republicans have made clear they want no cuts to defense as part of their $100 billion reduction in discretionary spending.

Which raises the question: why would perpetually tax-cutting Republicans agree to tax increases to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Because the Republicans believe the global terrorism poses as an existential threat to the United States. And we know this, because they repeatedly told us so.

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I had a good time in Vegas, so I didn't spend a huge amount of time at NN, but I did spend enough time to take in the mood, and it was schizophrenic. About half the people there are some combination of angry, disappointed and bitter with Democrats in general and Obama in particular.

This group sees him as not a heck of a lot better than George Bush, and in fact the Democrat who extended some of Bush's worst policies, especially in civil liberties. This includes a lot of feminists (angry at what they see as betrayals on abortion), many Hispanics angry at the continued harsh enforcement of immigration laws, gays who feel Obama has betrayed clear promises on gay rights, anti-war activists saddened by escalation in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and a mishmash of folks who think health care reform was a dog's breakfast and that the general way the economy and financial reform has been handled is a disgrace.

Then there are the folks who would characterize themselves, in general, as hard-nosed pragmatists and "realists". These range from the "Obama is the greatest liberal president since FDR" types, who think that the Obama is just wonderful and those progressives and liberals who don't agree are simply delusional to those who feel that a lot of what he's done has been watered down pap in general but that it's certainly better than nothing and that those who are disappointed are unrealistic idealists who simply don't understand the constraints Obama and Congressional Democrats are working under.

As regular readers know, I tend to the first camp, but I'm not going to go into why, I simply want to note that this divide is very real. It's occasioning a lot of anger on both sides. The first sees the second as tribalistic sellouts, willing to excuse horrible things they would never excuse in Republicans so long as they are committed by Democrats and lacking an understanding of just how bad Democratic policy has been. These are folks who tend to sneer at the "wins" as either illusory or so underwhelming as to be a parody of the "lesser evil" argument. (Reminding one inevitably of the T-shirts which say "Why Vote for the lesser evil. Cthulhu 2008.") To many of these folks the other side are, crudely put, sell-outs.

The second side is angry at what they see as fairy-tale thinking and deeply unrealistic. "Obama couldn't fix everything immediately, but he's better than the Republicans will be if they get back in power" is their mantra, ranging from "really, he's wonderful and you're insane for thinking otherwise" to "well, yes he sucks but he sucks less than what the Republicans will do when they get in power." Either way, they see the attacks from what they consider the "purists" as deeply damaging. Democrats may or may not be a ton better than Republicans, but either way, they are better, and there is a moral case to be made for sucking it up one more time and working hard to elect, as the old progressive battle cry runs, "better Democrats". This is a two-party state, with those parties having an unbreakable oligopoly on power. Dissing Democrats just helps the even worse party win, at which point they will do even worse things. So get over your problems, whether they are with economic policy or Obama's continued shredding of fundamental civil liberties like Habeas Corpus, jump back into the trenches with your bowie knife or bayonet and fight for Democrats, not against them because by constantly bad mouthing Dems all you do is make it more likely that Republicans will win, and if they win, well, that will be baaaaddddd. Very, very baaaaaddddd.

To put it crudely and unfairly to both sides, it's the sell-outs without principles against the purists without realism.

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Desperate to change their miserable present, Republicans are traveling back in time to rewrite the past. And so it is with President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Hoping to block President Obama's stimulus program designed to prevent the next Great Depression, right-wing authors, pundits, and politicians insisted FDR failed to cure the first one. Now, Glenn Beck tells us, Americans reacted to the death of the man who led America back from economic collapse to victory in World War II by claiming with relief, "I'm glad he's dead."

On his Friday show, Beck featured regular guest Burton Folsom Jr. to peddle his book proclaiming the New Deal a failure. (Citing the thoroughly debunked work of Amity Shlaes, GOP leaders like John McCain and Mitch McConnell in 2009 similarly called he New Deal a bust, while Ohio Rep. Steve Austria amazingly declared that FDR "put our country into a Great Depression") After Folsom praised the Republican Roaring Twenties for producing Scotch Tape and zippers, Beck summed up his feelings for Roosevelt:

BECK: Roosevelt...Am I wrong by saying there was a good portion of people that thought, "Holy cow, I'm glad he's dead. He was turning into a dictator."

FOLSOM: Well, there were a lot of people who thought that. As you pointed out, we immediately had a constitutional amendment to prevent any other president from serving longer than two terms...It had not worked well with four terms under Franklin Roosevelt.

Of course, Roosevelt's death on April 12, 1945 brought shock, disbelief and national mourning. And he was wildly popular. His approval rating, which reached 84% in 1942, never dipped below 48% (in 1938). His passing on the eve of victory in Europe stunned Americans, whose approval of him topped 70%.

And with good reason. He had been overwhelmingly elected in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944. (He never won less than 36 states and 432 electoral votes.) Even before the onset of World War II, FDR slashed unemployment by more than half and largely restored industrial production and GDP growth. (Only when Roosevelt wavered in the face of conservative pressure in 1937 did his New Deal temporarily falter.)

Among FDR's ardent backers were the Schecter brothers, whose 1935 Supreme Court challenge to his National Recovery Administration struck down much of his New Deal regulatory program. As David Leonhardt wrote in the New York Times review of Amity Shlaes' book:

Among Roosevelt's supporters, evidently, were a family of chicken butchers in Brooklyn named the Schechters. "Their major political concern in the 1930s was anti-Semitism," Shlaes's appendix quotes one of their descendants as saying. "They believed that if Roosevelt had not solved the problems of the Depression, the U.S. could have gone the way of Nazi Germany." The Schechters apparently voted for Roosevelt every time he ran.

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)

Presidential bashing of corporate crime, corruption and greed is as American as apple pie. While Republican Teddy Roosevelt decried "malefactors of great wealth," his distant Democratic cousin FDR announced, "I welcome their hatred." But now just days after insisting the federal government had no right to bar racial discrimination in public accommodations, Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul again reversed victim and villain in calling President Obama's criticism of BP, "un-American."

In the face of the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, Paul rushed to the defense of BP on Good Morning America. When George Stephanopolous asked, "But you don't want to get rid of the EPA?" Dr. Paul's diagnosis was that the Obama administration was persecuting the oil giant and the American free enterprise system. Accidents, he insisted, "happen":

"No, the thing is is that drilling right now and the problem we're having now is in international waters and I think there needs to be regulation of that and always has been regulation. What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, you know, "I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP." I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I've heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it's part of this sort of blame game society in the sense that it's always got to be someone's fault. Instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen. I mean, we had a mining accident that was very tragic and I've met a lot of these miners and their families. They're very brave people to do a dangerous job. But then we come in and it's always someone's fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen."

Away from Planet Paul, however, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, whose company is facing possible criminal charges over its Upper Big Branch disaster that killed 29 miners in West Virginia, testified before Congress Thursday. And while public rage against BP's negligence and duplicity mounted this week, its executives last week made very clear that they may not pay for the spill. As CBS reported, any compensation from BP beyond "legitimate claims" was a "question mark":

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Glenn Beck continued his eliminationist attacks on progressives yesterday with a novel and absurd comparison:

Beck: History will equate this as, as big as the New Deal or Pearl Harbor. And if you think that's overstating the importance, remember we are talking about one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

As he was talking, the screen behind him showed the bombs falling on ships at Pearl Harbor and smoke billowing up in their aftermath.

Of course, Beck has also compared HCR to the 9/11 attacks.

Yeah, providing health-care insurance for millions of uninsured Americans is just like horrific and violent attacks that leave thousands of Americans dead.

The point, of course, is that the "progressives" pushing health-care reform are the "enemy within" intent on destroying America.

The rest of the rant was dedicated to exploring this in detail. He dismissed the CBO report that the health-care reform bill would result in a $130 billion deficit reduction in its first ten years by sniffing: "Well, that's a party in my pants!" -- because, according to Beck, it's just a "transition" to making health care a right, "just like FDR" intended. This notion is now being promoted, he said, by Cass Sunstein, who he pronounced "the most evil man, the most dangerous man in America."

You see, it's not deficit reduction that matters -- it's the loss freeeeedom! that HCR represents. HCR, according to Beck, is "slavery" and "oppression":

Beck: I promise you America -- oppression is one promise our government will keep.

Because, of course, decent health care is just so oppressive. Not to mention that it's like bombing thousands of Americans to death.

Obviously, there's no one left among the brass at Fox capable of keeping some kind of rational perspective in their broadcasts at all.

Now this is exactly what we've been worried about: that Wall Street would successfully push Obama for an early end to economic stimulus (which also includes extended unemployment benefits, by the way), just as bankers and Republicans did with FDR in 1937 - tipping the country right back into recession. (Krugman's been sounding the alarm for a while.)

I predict Bernanke will withdraw anything that makes it look like they don't have faith in a spring recovery, hoping to use it as a placebo effect.

And as to the millions of us still looking for work, and whose unemployment checks are about to run out? Morgan Stanley responds that there's "never an easy time to do it." I hope Mr. Roach has a big yard, since we're all going to be camping in it:

Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Morgan Stanley Asia Ltd. Chairman Stephen Roach said U.S. policy makers should start to exit emergency stimulus measures now if the economic recovery is as strong as they say it is.

“There is never an easy time to do it,” Roach said on Bloomberg Television today. “The longer they wait, the greater the chance they sow the seeds for the next bubble. So I’m in favor of an early exit strategy.”

The Federal Reserve on Dec. 16 pledged to keep interest rates “exceptionally low” for an “extended period” even as officials said financial markets were healthy enough to allow most emergency lending programs to expire at the end of this month. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his fellow policy makers cut the benchmark rate almost to zero in December 2008.

“We’ve seen the most extraordinary monetary stimulus on the record in the 15, 16 months post-Lehman Brothers,” Roach said. “We’ll have to see the most extraordinary withdrawal of stimulus on record” and “if this recovery is as strong as Bernanke and markets think it is, the time to exit is now.”

Data since the Nov. 3-4 Fed meeting showed that “economic activity has continued to pick up and that the deterioration in the labor market is abating,” the Open Market Committee said in a Dec. 16 statement. “Financial market conditions have become more supportive of economic growth,” while the economy is “likely to remain weak for a time,” policy makers said.

The Bush years are certainly the gift that keeps on giving, aren't they? All those people who had jobs with what they thought was a secure future are all going to be scraping by on Social Security. Oh, and I just read that one of the largest long-term care insurers is about to collapse. Sure would be nice if FDR was around - maybe he could dream up some real solutions, like national health insurance...

The financial crisis has blown a hole in the rosy forecasts of pension funds that cover teachers, police officers and other government employees, casting into doubt as never before whether these public systems will be able to keep their promises to future generations of retirees.

The upheaval on Wall Street has deluged public pension systems with losses that government officials and consultants increasingly say are insurmountable unless pension managers fundamentally rethink how they pay out benefits or make money or both.

Within 15 years, public systems on average will have less than half the money they need to pay pension benefits, according to an analysis by Pricewaterhouse Coopers. Other analysts say funding levels could hit that low within a decade.

After losing about $1 trillion in the markets, state and local governments are facing a devil's choice: Either slash retirement benefits or pursue high-return investments that come with high risk.

The urgent need for outsize returns by these vast public pension funds, which must hit high investment targets year after year to keep pace with rising retirement costs, is in turn fueling a renewed appetite for risk on Wall Street.

Before the crisis, many public pension funds had experimented with risky trading techniques or committed more of their money to hedge funds and other nontraditional firms, which in turn invested some of it in complex mortgage securities. When these melted down, pension funds got burned.

Now, facing an even bigger funding gap, some systems are investing in the same securities, betting that a rebound in their value will generate huge returns.

"The amount that needs to be made up is enormous," said Peter Austin, executive director of BNY Mellon Pension Services. "Frankly, they are forced to continue their allocation in these high-return asset classes because that's their only hope."

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It was somewhat gratifying to see Chris Matthews' right-leaning panel on his Sunday show -- which was, as expected, eager to deny the role of racism in the ugly animus that's been directed at Barack Obama -- at least admit the truth:

David Brooks: What Rush and Glenn Beck are doing is race-baiting. 100 percent. That's race-baiting.

...

Kathleen Parker: What Rush Limbaugh and Beck did in those two clips is to empower racists.

But it was even more interesting to watch Brooks in particular somehow manage to stumble upon the core of the problem:

Matthews: Would the White House like the leaders of both parties to say, 'Cool it'?

Brooks: Well, I think they would. First, I think Father Coughlin was objecting to FDR, and he -- that's what we're seeing, Father Coughlin, that's what these guys are --

Matthews: And he was far right.

Brooks: He was far right. The White House understands, you've got 10 percent of the country over here on the wacky right, 10 percent on the wacky left, that's not what they can pay attention to. And they're not going to pay attention to it. They're sticking with the independents -- that's what the health care, why it's tending toward the center.

The one danger -- the main danger of all this, the Glenn and the Rush and all that -- they're not going to take over the country. But they are taking over the Republican Party.

And so if the Republican Party is sane, they will say no to these people. But every single elected leader in the Republican Party is afraid to take on Rush and Glenn Beck.

Brooks' percentages are off -- it's more like about 5 percent on the left and 30 percent on the right side, and this latter fact is actually what he identifies as the problem; the right has been so overwhelmed by its wingnutty elements that they have largely taken over the GOP at this juncture in time. And there's no prospect of the David Brookses ever getting it back -- in no small part because they refuse to acknowledge the magnitude of what they're up against.

But at least they recognize the problem. That's a start.

I always ask teabaggers when I run into them, how any federal deficit has hurt them personally? They can't respond to that. They have no answer except to cry "socialism."

Sure, it's much better to have a surplus like Clinton did, but these same deficit hawks were quite happy when the Bush tax cuts came down and the rich got richer and the economy collapsed. But I ask again: How has deficit spending hurt you?

Long term debt is nothing to sneeze at, but when we're talking about reforming health care for America, who really cares if it's $700 billion for 10 years or $1 trillion or $1.5 trillion? (By the way, I love the way the press never tells America what it would cost per year because then the figure doesn't sound so bad. They make it appear that the cost is $700 or 900 billion a year.)

Go ask a teabagger about costs and see what they say. What will it matter in the long run? We can figure out how to pay for it. Even FDR was hampered by these deficit hawks when he brought the country out of the Great Depression, and now these deficit hawks almost put us back into a Depression because they were so deficit crazy.

The deficit hawk is code for keeping the rich---rich. And then finding ways to keep their money pouring in.

Digby has a great post up today about costs:

The Peterson Foundation is ready with the news. They released a report (pdf) on the Kennedy Bill today...

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The fact is that if all these benefits were actually realized, the country would be far, far better off, both financially and otherwise. Nobody expects that spending will go down, merely that the growth in spending will be less. Therefore, if the government finds itself having to pay out all that money in health care benefits, this healthier, more prosperous nation can surely afford to levy the necessary taxes to pay for it, right?

I don't give a damn what this is going to cost in 2029. And nobody else should either because these projections are based on bullshit. Nobody can see that far into the future. If we can pay for it now, then we should do it now. And if it costs more down the line, then we will find a way to pay for it. This nonsensical obsession with deficits decades into the future is nothing more than a scam designed to keep the gravy train going for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else.

If these numbers are correct, then the fiscal scolds are going to have to argue that people today have to die so that wealthy people in 2029 don't have to pay higher taxes. It's that simple.

The president is also talking about having a deficit neutral bill, but he's being attacked for it by the usual suspects.

First, the bad news:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Employers cut a larger-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June, driving the unemployment rate up to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent, suggesting that the economy's road to recovery will be bumpy.

The Labor Department report, released Thursday, showed that even as the recession flashes signs of easing, companies likely will want to keep a lid on costs and be wary of hiring until they feel certain the economy is on a solid ground.

June's payroll reductions were deeper than the 363,000 that economists expected.

However, the rise in the unemployment rate from 9.4 percent in May wasn't as sharp as the expected 9.6 percent. Still, many economists predict the jobless rate will hit 10 percent this year, and keep rising into next year, before falling back.

All told, 14.7 million people were unemployed in June.

If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 16.5 percent in June, the highest on records dating to 1994.

Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost a net total of 6.5 million jobs.

As the downturn bites into sales and profits, companies have turned to layoffs and other cost-cutting measures to survive. Those include holding down workers' hours and freezing or cutting pay.

The average work week in June fell to 33 hours, the lowest on records dating to 1964.

The worse news: as some economists predicted, the stimulus package was too small to affect the "real" economy - you know, the one you and I live in? - in any significant way. Sounds like those who urged Obama to think large and visionary (a la FDR's Public Works Administration) really did have the right idea:

Reporting from Washington -- Even as the nation's economy begins clawing its way out of the worst recession in 60 years, there are growing signs that this recovery could come with an unsettling twist: The wheels of commerce may begin to turn again without any substantial boost in jobs.

Not only is the national unemployment rate, now 9.4%, likely to climb into double digits later this year, but it is also expected to remain there well into 2010, economists say. That would prolong the misery of the unemployed, squeeze retailers and other businesses, and add millions of dollars in government costs and lost productivity. It could even threaten the recovery itself.

Though it's common for the jobless rate to keep climbing for a time after economic output turns positive, the aftermath of the last two downturns, in 1990-91 and 2001, introduced the idea of a "jobless recovery." Even though the economy improved, many unemployed workers discovered that jobs as good as the ones they'd lost were almost impossible to find.

This time, many economists say, there are new factors that could make the problem worse. Many more layoffs in this recession have been permanent, not temporary.