Visual source: Newseum
The New York Times looks at the upcoming debate over the renewal of the federal gas tax:
Unless Congress extends it, the 18.4 cents-a-gallon federal gas tax will expire on Sept. 30. Allowing that to happen would be tremendously destructive. It would bankrupt the already stressed Highway Trust Fund, with devastating effects on the country’s highways, bridges, mass transit systems and the economy as a whole. [...]
The loudest voices for ending the gas tax are coming from the right. Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, said his group would ask legislators to consider ending the gas tax “cold turkey or phasing it out as soon as possible.” But this is not exclusively a conservative phenomenon. There is something about the words “gas taxes” that drives otherwise sensible people to say silly things. In the 2008 campaign, when gas was around $3.60 a gallon, both Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain suggested a “gas tax holiday.” Barack Obama derided the idea then as a gimmick that would do little for consumers and nothing to end America’s dependence on foreign oil.
Before Congress starts running with another very bad idea, President Obama should press to extend the tax now. And he should start explaining why — for the sake of the economy, the environment and a functioning transportation system — this tax will need to rise.
Max Richtman argues for restructuring the debt debate:
Let's be very clear: The American people want fiscal sanity returned to Washington. But they also know cutting more than $1 trillion from programs serving millions of Americans while protecting tax cuts we can't afford is not fiscal responsibility. America is not facing an "entitlement crisis." We're facing an unemployment crisis, a health care crisis, a housing crisis, and a budget crisis built after a decade of flawed borrow-and-spend policies followed by economic collapse.
Even though President Obama acknowledges Social Security is not a driver of the debt, he has allowed the program to be used as a bargaining chip in debt negotiations. We urge the president to focus his debt solutions on the true drivers of our debt and avoid the political temptation to trade away average Americans' benefits for tax reforms crafted to benefit corporations and the wealthy.
Steven Rattner runs down the extreme policy positions of the GOP field:
IN the middle of all the debt default drama and stock market turbulence, the leading Republican presidential candidates have begun to fill in the shadowy outlines of their positions on major economic issues.
And what a picture it is, a philosophy oriented around shrinking the role of the federal government in every imaginable way, by slashing spending, cutting taxes and halting or rescinding regulations. Their mantra is repeal and retrenchment, devoid of new initiatives or a positive agenda.
Some of these views are to the right even of the Tea Party; they amount to the most radically conservative positions of any set of candidates at least since Barry M. Goldwater in 1964.
Alex Roarty explains Perry's problems, from the right:
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has taken the Republican presidential field by storm since declaring his candidacy on Saturday, winning widespread praise for his outspoken conservative positions. But Perry has served 26 years since first winning election, as a Democrat, to the Texas state House in 1984. That means he carries a record – a long record – containing a few conservative blemishes that his leading rivals in the GOP field can seize upon.
Indeed, in an interview with a Des Moines radio station on Monday, Perry was deluged with questions from informed Republican voters about potential conservative heresies on his record – from his enthusiastic backing of an unsuccessful superhighway proposal that critics claimed was a land grab, to his support for Al Gore in the 1988 Democratic presidential primary.
Steve Kornacki analyzes the Wall Street Journal's lack of a love affair with any of the GOP candidates, including frontrunner Michelle Bachmann:
The GOP establishment is happy to have a charismatic ideologue like Bachmann firing up the masses, but they don't want her coming too close to their presidential nomination. And while there's still little chance that she'll be the nominee, now that Bachmann has won the straw poll, establishment organs like the Journal are less willing to take chances. If her prospects don't decline in the weeks and months ahead -- or if they even improve -- look for the establishment to turn up the heat even more, with arguments like the ones the Journal is now making.
Margaret Carlson tears apart the Iowa Straw Poll:
After this past weekend, perhaps Republicans will finally end the disastrous Iowa Straw Poll. In five tries, the circus in Ames has picked a future president once, which is about the same success rate you’d get by picking names from a hat. [...]
You wonder why Republicans allow this mix of carnival and county fair to have such an outsize impact. With country guitars twanging, ice cream melting, Randy Travis singing and food everywhere, the straw poll is primarily a commercial enterprise designed to fill the coffers of the Iowa Republican Party. Its standards of bribery would make a traffic cop in Lagos blush. Just about every vote is bought and paid for. If a Republican attends the straw poll without being treated to the $30 ticket, being driven to the event and stuffing himself to the gills on free food, he’s a chump.
Jonathan Berstein on the lackluster GOP field:
There’s no one else out there on the horizon who has been doing the sorts of things one has to do to run for the Republican nomination for president. Anyone else — Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, whoever — would be starting from scratch, very late in the game.
The other thing I’d say to Republicans disappointed in the current choices (as Ross Douthat says he is today) is this: What you’re upset with isn’t the candidate — it’s the party. It’s inconceivable that anyone could get the Republican nomination while using anything but solid Tea Party rhetoric on pretty much every issue. They’re all going to claim that taxes should never, ever, ever be raised no matter what, that half of what the government does is evil or unconstitutional or whatever, that the scientific consensus on climate is some sort of crazed conspiracy, and so on down the line. I’ve been saying for some time now that the odds are against Republicans actually nominating a candidate who believes crazy things — but the odds of them nominating someone who says crazy things has gone up.
The Washington Post demands that presidential candidates go beyond bland talking points and actually release their budget plans:
Here’s what we’re not looking for: pablum about eliminating unnecessary spending without identifying where. Gauzy rhetoric about making hard choices without making them. Meaningless promises about eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. Broad assertions about where to find the money — “Medicare savings,” “tax reform” — without specifics. Arbitrary spending caps without accompanying details about how those limits are to be met. If you believe, for example, that federal spending should be kept to a specific share of the economy — 18 percent? 20 percent? — show the plausible path to getting there.
The supercommittee is supposed to report by Nov. 23. We think it would be useful for the presidential candidates, and the president himself, to weigh in before this deadline, say, by Oct. 23.