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As Ronald Reagan's budget chief almost thirty years ago, a frustrated David Stockman famously lamented that when it comes to spending discipline, "there are no real conservatives in Congress." Now, three decades after he concluded "the supply-siders have gone too far," Stockman called the Republican demand for another $700 billion tax cut windfall for the wealthy, "unconscionable." As well he should. With the new GOP majority's financial toxic brew of gargantuan tax giveaways and still unnamed spending cuts, the Free Lunch Party has returned.

In truth, it never really left. As Stockman experienced first-hand, the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan. The Gipper's M.C. Escher-like pledge to slash taxes, raise defense spending and balance the budget produced a torrent of red in that exceeded that of the previous 200 plus years of American history combined.

But conservative propagandists soon forgot Stockman's "magic asterisk" and Reagan's subsequent tax increases, neither of which could stop the record budget deficits he produced. After the Clinton balanced budget hiatus in the 1990's, George W. Bush doubled the national debt yet again. As explained in "The Bush Tax Cuts in Pictures," President Bush's Free Lunch dream predictably turned into a budgetary nightmare:

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities demolished the mythology promoted by President Bush ("You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase") and the usual suspects on the right. CBPP found that Bush tax cuts accounted for almost half of the mushrooming deficits during his tenure.

And as another recent CBPP analysis revealed, over the next 10 years, the Bush tax cuts if made permanent will contribute more to the U.S. budget deficit than the Obama stimulus, the TARP program, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and revenue lost to the recession put together.

(Worse still, the Bush tax cuts also coincided with an increase in poverty and a decline in Americans' average household income.)

And now, at a time of record budget deficits and record income inequality, Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell want to make the expiring Bush tax cuts permanent. The leading lights of the GOP still insist that draining $4 trillion from the U.S. Treasury over the next 10 years (including that $700 billion payday for the richest 2%) doesn't cost a cent.

For his part, this summer John Boehner wrongly claimed, "It's not the marginal tax rates ... that's not what led to the budget deficit." In July, Jon Kyl (R-AZ) the second ranking Senate Republican made the same point another way, telling Chris Wallace of Fox News, "You should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans." Aborted Obama Commerce nominee Judd Gregg (R-NH) soon chimed in, declaring "I tend to think that tax cuts should not have to be offset." For his part, Oklahoma's Tom Coburn argued his math will work in the future if you ignore the past, "Continuing the [Bush] tax cuts isn't a cost, if you added new taxes, new tax cuts, I would agree that's a cost." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained how tax cuts magically turn red ink black:

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So it comes down to this. Republicans believe they can turn bullshit into gold. Despite the inescapable conclusion of history, theory and empirical evidence to the contrary, Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl, John Boehner, Tom Coburn, John McCain, Kay Bailey Hutchison and other Republican alchemists continue to insist that cutting taxes increases government revenue and thereby reduces the deficit. Of course, even though the tax cut claim is laughably false, conservative ideology requires that it must true. Otherwise, the Republicans have just been giving money to rich people.

To be sure, the high priests of the Republican Party have been singing from same hymnal. House Minority Leader John Boehner reintroduced this immaculate deception last month, wrongly protesting that the Bush tax cuts did not contribute to the torrent of red ink swamping the Treasury:

"It's not the marginal tax rates ... that's not what led to the budget deficit. The revenue problem we have today is a result of what happened in the economic collapse some 18 months ago."

"We've seen over the last 30 years that lower marginal tax rates have led to a growing economy, more employment and more people paying taxes."

On Sunday, Jon Kyl (R-AZ) the second ranking Senate Republican made the same point another way, telling Chris Wallace of Fox News, "You should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans." Aborted Obama Commerce nominee Judd Gregg (R-NH) soon chimed in, declaring "I tend to think that tax cuts should not have to be offset." For his part, Oklahoma's Tom Coburn argued his math will work in the future if you ignore the past, "Continuing the [Bush] tax cuts isn't a cost, if you added new taxes, new tax cuts, I would agree that's a cost." And on Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained how tax cuts magically turn red ink black:

"There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject."

Which is sadly right. Arthur Laffer's supply-side snake oil has been Republican orthodoxy ever since Jude Wanniski sketched Laffer's curve on a cocktail napkin.

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[H/t Heather]

You know, you gotta figure that if every Republican and all the Villagers are in agreement that taking up immigration reform is a bad idea for Democrats, then -- reverse barometers being the valuable tools they are -- there's high likelihood that it's a good idea.

We'll find out soon enough, because Democrats are proceeding apace anyway -- and doing so in the face of the near-certainty of uniform opposition from the GOP:

One Democratic aide close to the issue noted that in the wake of Graham’s abandoning negotiations, Schumer is continuing to meet with a handful of Senate Republican lawmakers — Scott Brown (Mass.), George LeMieux (Fla.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Judd Gregg (N.H.) and Dick Lugar (Ind.) — and that the summary is part of a dual-track alternative for moving forward.

According to this aide, under the new alternative, if Republicans continue to reject bipartisan overtures, Reid, Schumer and Menendez would look to have a handful of other top Democrats co-sponsor the legislation, including Durbin and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the second ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security.

Menendez said his preference would be to have Republican support, but that it was more important to have a framework that can be publicly distributed so that Senators “can begin the debate and move the process forward.” Menendez said he was still optimistic that the chamber could pass a bill this year, even though no Republicans have indicated they might support a bill.

“If we put our effort to it, and we have presidential leadership and we have Republicans who truly want to see immigration reform versus just talk about it, I think it’s possible,” Menendez said.

Senate Democrats’ decision to move forward on their own drew applause from Hispanic lawmakers in the House, who have seized on Arizona’s tough new state immigration law to ramp up the pressure for the Senate to act on a comprehensive bill this year.

Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairwoman Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) described the proposal Senate Democrats floated Wednesday as a “responsible bill that basically reflects the principles that were discussed with Lindsey Graham.”

“It is the kind of bill that could be supported by any Republican who truly believes that the broken system should be fixed,” Velázquez said. “So it is time to stop playing politics with this issue and do the work the American people sent us to do here.”

We're hearing that a press conference announcing the bill is scheduled for 5:45 p.m. EDT in D.C. today. We'll keep it covered.

The NYT's Helene Cooper reports that President Obama is pointing out that passing a bill is going to be difficult in the current environment. No doubt that's true -- and one hopes he is merely observing a truism rather than backing off his earlier powerful remarks pushing for immigration reform. As we observed then:

The Arizona craziness is a good example of why we can't let comprehensive immigration reform wait.

We know that lots of Democrats, especially the Blue Dogs, want to put immigration reform on the back burner till after the 2010 election. After all, it's the kind of issue that defines them: Blue Dogs always pander to conservatives on key issues, because they think that wins them more votes in the end than standing up for core principles.

In this case, as we saw from the 2008 election results, it's also nonsensical:

It's also apparent, from these results and from polling, that the nativists' "deport them all" immigration policy is wildly unpopular -- and that, moreover, Americans in fact take a pragmatic view of immigration: They're not interested in shipping out illegal immigrants, they're interested in seeing them become legal citizens.

The evidence is that voters get behind progressives who talk straight common sense on immigration -- as opposed to the fearmongering and scapegoating inherent in the Arizona Republican approach, which inevitably leads to the institution of a police state and the destruction of families.

It's also looking like Harry Reid will be pushing immigration reform as well. And there are many more reasons than fearful Blue Dogs why it's a politically smart move, too. Just ask those 200,000 people who gathered in D.C. last month.

The first test cloture vote is taking place right now in the Senate. In true form, Ben Nelson has voted with his Republican friends and Wall Street benefactors to filibuster financial reform. He didn't even have to do it: The Republicans had already promised a united front to block it from proceeding to debate.

Ben Nelson's message to the rest of us? Wall Street doesn't need no stinkin' reform. At least, not any reform that might actually be, well...reform.

Other remarkable moments from the debate ahead of the vote include Judd Gregg (R-NH) bashing populist anger against Wall Street and Bernie Sanders answering that point for point. I'm trying to find the video on that, because both are moments worth watching.

Update #2: Reaction has been swift and harsh:

President Obama is "deeply disappointed" that Republicans voted as a block and Nancy Pelosi's blog has a whole string of reactions. The theme is the same: Blocking debate benefits no one but Wall Street.

Update #1: Q1 Campaign contributions to Nelson 2012

3/31/2010:

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Judd Gregg just had a meltdown on MSNBC that came out of nowhere. He's been attacking everything Obama, almost from the minute he turned down a Cabinet post offer from the White House, but his performance today was really weird. The conversation was about spending and, as usual, Gregg was acting like the incredible deficit freak that he is.

Melissa Francis is a CNBC talker who believes just like he does, and for some reason he mistook her for a dirty f*&king hippy and claimed she was setting him up as a man who wants to cut all spending on education. In fact, the only thing people like him and Ron Paul believe will work for America is to cut all government spending and federal programs and then just give tax cuts to the rich.

Then, Contessa Brewer brought up the fact that many economists think that when FDR became a deficit hawk so soon after expanding spending that he helped stop the country's economic growth. She asked him if he thought money from education should be cut, he went off and called them liars.

Gregg: First off, nobody is saying no money for schools, what an absurd statement to make. And what a dishonest statement to make. On its face you're being fundamentally dishonest when you make that type of statement.

Brewer: Senator, you're going to be asked to cut certain programs from government if you're on the Senate banking committee. Which programs -- just tell us -- would you cut?

--

Gregg: And then it gets misrepresented by people like yourself who say they are going to, if you do any of this stuff you're going to end up not funding education. I mean that statement alone is the most irresponsible statement I've heard from a reporter probably in a month.

Brewer: It wasn't a statement, it was a question.

Gregg deliberately misconstrued what they said, and the conversation went downhill from there. Gregg acted like a typical conservative bully around women, and if they were both men he would not have tried to call them liars. Meanwhile, Contessa ended the interview very professionally. He owes Brewer and Francis an apology for his behavior.

And Digby explains why the question about cutting education is based in reality.

I'll let Gregg's tantrum stand on it's own. But I would just point out that it's not absurd in the least to ask if Republicans would cut education. Indeed, it's absurd to suggest otherwise:

President Ronald Reagan promised during the 1980 presidential election to eliminate the Department of Education as a cabinet post,[1] but he was not able to do so with a Democratic House of Representatives. In the 1982 State of the Union Address, he pledged:

“

The budget plan I submit to you on Feb. 8 will realize major savings by dismantling the Department of Education.[2]

”

Throughout the 1980s, the abolition of the Department of Education was a part of the Republican Party platform, but the administration of President George H. W. Bush declined to implement this idea.

So, not only was Brewer right to ask whether Gregg planned to cut education as part of a deficit reduction plan, there has been a very longstanding belief among conservatives that they should not be funding education at all.

If there was anyone at fault for spreading misinformation and lies on television it's Gregg with his irresponsible deficit fearmongering and Hooverite prescriptions for the economy. God help us if he and his ilk actually get their way.

And you can't help but scratch your head when you think that a year ago, when everyone knew that the economy was in deep trouble and would need a lot of stimulus, the administration actually named this guy to be Commerce Secretary, a department which Gregg had voted to eliminate as well. That tells you a lot about their judgment at the time.

Digby wrote up the full transcript:

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Joe. My. God.: Pending senate health care vote fosters more wingnut calls for Civil War

Wall St. Cheat Sheet: Credit Suisse circumvents Iran sanctions to make money

Bay Area Houston: Speaking of giving somebody 'the bird'...

Dissident Voice: Among the most important corporate media censored news stories of the past decade, one must be that over one million people have died because of the United States military invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Runnin' Scared: War on Christmas not as warlike this year

Brad DeLong: Ten economic paragraphs worth reading

If you're the chairman of the RNC and the uber-deficit-hawk conservative-wingnut Judd Gregg calls you foolish then things aren't looking too good for ya. Michael Steele is the latest GOP party leader to try and be another leader of the angry teabagger movement. On a conference call with the odious Dick Armey, he said this:

In the latest example of RNC Chair Michael Steele attempting to tie his party to the Tea Party movement, Steele rhetorically out-tea-partied a movement leader, Dick Armey, on a conference call the two shared this morning.

"I'm tired of this congress thumbing their nose and flipping the bird at the people of this country," Steele said during one of his many rants that sounded like it could have come from the podium at at tea party rally. He wielded the angry vehemence and promises to get revenge commonplace among tea partiers during the health care debate to set the stage for the GOP next year. "I intend to have my foot on the throat of the Democrats on this issue [health care reform]," Steele said.

What good teabaggin' fun. Nora O'Donnell, guest-hosting on the Andrea Mitchell, asked Sen. Gregg if he agreed with Steele's language.

Nora: Would you agree with this?

Gregg: That's foolish language of which unfortunately people are getting a little frayed..

.

Gregg put his foot down on the RNC leader and called his remarks "foolish." That's not a very good endorsement for Mr. Steele, but he does have a habit of embarrassing himself.

Talking about feet, Steele continually puts his foot in his own mouth when it comes to his party, and is easily the most inept leader of a political party I've ever seen. When he backs a party favorite who's not a teabagging fool in 2010, the Tea Party movement will turn on him in a New York minute. Good luck with that, Michael.

Steve Benen with the story about the Republican plan to obstruct health-care reform:

We learned yesterday that Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) has distributed a three-page memo to his Republican colleagues, reminding them of various procedural tactics they can utilize to obstruct, delay, and undermine the debate on health care. Sam Stein called it "the equivalent of an obstruction manual -- a how-to for holding up health care reform."

This morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) seized on the document: "The good news is that Senate Republicans finally, at long last, have put a detailed plan down on paper. The bad news is that it's not, as we'd hoped, a plan to make health care insurance more affordable; it's not one to make health insurance companies more accountable; and it's certainly not a plan to reverse rapidly rising health care costs and draw down our deficit.

"The Republican plan we've waited weeks and months to see ... [is] not even about health care at all. The first and only plan Senate Republicans could be bothered to write up is an instructional manual on how to bring the Senate to a screeching halt. We knew that was happening anyway, but they had the audacity to put it in writing."

The Democrats are finally starting to take a look at changing procedural rules.

As Wanda Sykes might say, "I am so damned sick of these @#!*# Democratic snakes on this @#!*# plane!" Yes, once again, ConservaDems are holding a gun to the head of progress. This time, they want to blackmail Congress into overriding the Constitutionally-mandated power of the House over the nation's purse strings - and hand it over to them:

Seven members of the Senate Budget Committee threatened during a Tuesday hearing to withhold their support for critical legislation to raise the debt ceiling if the bill calling for the creation of a bipartisan fiscal reform commission were not attached. Six others had previously made such threats, bringing the total to 13 senators drawing a hard line on the committee legislation.

“You rarely do have the leverage to make a fundamental change,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who said he hasn’t ruled out offering the independent commission legislation as an amendment to the healthcare reform bill.

What is it about Kent Conrad that makes me want to slap him? Is it that perpetually robotic grin? Is it the fact that he's so reliably a corporate tool? Or maybe it's that somehow, I just know that Celine Dion is on his iPod.

The panel, which has been championed by Conrad and ranking member Judd Gregg (R-N.H), would be tasked with stemming the unsustainable rise in debt.

Among its chief responsibilities would be closing the gap between tax revenue coming in and the larger cost of paying for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. The Government Accountability Office recently reported the gap is on pace to reach an “unsustainable” $63 trillion in 2083.

The panel would also have the power to craft legislation that would change the tax code and set limits on government spending.

The legislation would then be subject to an up-or-down vote; it could not be amended.

Chris Bowers calls it a "national suicide pact":

Let's review the threat that these five Democrats are making:

* They will allow the United States to default on its debt, which will vastly increase the overall amount we have to pay on our debt

UNLESS

* Speaker Nancy Pelosi turns over Congressional power on Social Security and Medicare to an unelected commission that will almost certainly propose deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare entitlements. Keep in mind that if deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare pass under a Democratic trifecta, the party would be doomed at the ballot box for years to come.

This is completely insane, and there is no choice but to call this bluff.

Let's see these five Democratic Senators explain to the entire nation why they allowed the country to default on its debt. No matter how safe their seats appear to be, no Senator is going to win reelection after making the entire country default on its debt. Their rationale does not matter. Being blamed for making the country default on its debt - especially after all five of these Democrats voted in favor of the Wall Street bailout and are demanding that Social Security and Medicare be cut - will be the effective end of their political careers.

Go for it, guys. Form your national suicide pact. Tell the country that you are demanding deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare, or else you will personally cause the United States debt to double. Let's see how well that message plays on the air.

Everything you need to know about the descent of the conservative movement into a hypocritical caricature is illustrated by two of its proudest constituencies: Republican deficit hawks and so-called "born again virgins." Having already violated the moral strictures they claim to hold dearest, each now asks the American people to join them in pretending their sin never happened. But unlike a generation of Republican leaders who built a mountain of national debt for the United States, the secondary virgins only screwed themselves.

The Republicans' shameless cynicism was perfectly captured by Vice President Dick Cheney, who in 2002 proclaimed, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter."

Not, that is, if a Republican is in the White House. But when Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office and the $1.2 trillion deficit George W. Bush left for him there, the GOP quickly changed its tune. While the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan and doubled again under President Bush, House Minority Leader John Boehner in February decried the $787 billion emergency economic recovery spending as "one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment." By June, Boehner warned of the "crushing debt Washington Democrats are running up." And Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), Obama's aborted choice for Commerce Secretary, slapped the President last month, "we're basically on the path to a banana-republic-type of financial situation in this country." And, Gregg added:

"You can't keep throwing debt on top of debt."

Of course, throwing debt on top of debt is precisely what Gregg and his GOP allies have done for over a generation.

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