With Democrats like Claire McCaskill, you don't need Republicans like Ryan. Earlier this year, she joined with Tennessee Republican Bob Corker to push a plan as bad as Ryan's, but more dangerous because she calls herself a Democrat. Really. David Dayen lays it out:
So what is McCaskill-Corker? It would mandate that spending, within ten years, go from 24.7% of GDP to 20.6% of GDP. Instead of looking at what society needs, and advancing programs designed to fulfill those needs, and then determining how to pay for them, then, this bill would artificially limit spending to an arbitrary number that is less than the 22% level of spending under Ronald Reagan. And instead of picking and choosing what programs to save under that cap, McCaskill-Corker forces OMB to make the decision of making “evenly distributed, simultaneous cuts throughout the federal budget.” This would include mandatory spending like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
Debt Limit Vote Could Yield Spending Caps
And it is gutless, pushing the decision to make massive cuts to a bureaucrat so the Senate and House can deny responsibility. Nothing so exemplifies all that is wrong with Washington than McCaskill-Corker.
Contrast that with President Obama's Plan of shared sacrifice or with the People's budget of the Progressive Caucus. The President is willing to take responsibility for tax increases, ending the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and difficult spending cuts. But he will not place any percentage of GDP limit on a budget.
From earlier this year:
The Atlantic:The Cynical Politics of Claire McCaskill's Deficit Plan, Feb. 2, 2011
Think about the size of these cuts. In 2021, the Congressional Budget Office projects U.S. spending will hit 24 percent of GDP without further spending cuts. Without tax increases (and probably even with tax increases) that figure isn't acceptable. So both the deficit commission's recommendations and Rep. Paul Ryan's Roadmap aim for something closer to 22 percent, and -- this is key! -- they offer concrete steps to get there. By setting their spending cap at 20.6 percent, McCaskill and Corker are asking Congress to shave off 3.4 percent of GDP without a plan. For perspective: 3.5% of GDP is the equivalent of all Medicare spending in 2011.
No doubt, this makes Sen. McCaskill the Democratic Party's new queen of fiscal responsibility, and some cable news shows programs will
hail her for her courage to break away from Sen. Harry Reid's No-Cut Caucus. Me, I'm torn. Deficit reform deserves our attention, but it deserves smarter attention. McCaskill's plan is political necessity masking as virtuous public policy ... and it's not even a terribly well-made mask.
David Dayen quotes James Homey of CBPP
The cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs would grow much larger in subsequent decades. For one thing, the 20.6 percent cap would phase in gradually and would not be fully in effect until 2023 and thereafter. For another, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid costs are projected to rise substantially in future decades due to the aging of the population and rising health care costs and, thus, would have to be cut by increasingly severe amounts to meet the Corker-McCaskill level.
Policymakers could avoid across-the-board cuts by making specific cuts in specific programs to meet the Corker-McCaskill cap before a sequester would occur. But to do so, they almost certainly would have to enact the kind of radical policies for Medicare and Medicaid that are included in House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s sweeping budget plan. Those policies include replacing traditional Medicare with a voucher for purchasing private insurance, converting Medicaid to a block grant, and eliminating most or all of health reform’s provisions that extend coverage to an estimated 34 million more Americans, including the Medicaid expansion and subsidies to make insurance affordable for working families. Indeed, even the cuts in the Ryan plan — which also includes very sharp reductions in non-security discretionary spending, one-third of which would be eliminated by 2021 — would not be quite deep enough in some years to meet the Corker-McCaskill cap. The Ryan plan produces total federal spending of 20 ¾ percent of GDP in 2030
Debt Limit Vote Could Yield Spending Caps
David calls it "the Ryan budget without the fingerprints." It is, and for a person who calls herself a Democrat to do that makes me want to retch.
My view of Claire is that she is quite cynical. And we know that as a multimillionaire, such a budget with no tax increases and Ryan-like cuts are good for her. She won't suffer those cuts; middle class and poor folks will. But giving her the benefit of the doubt, I'll just see this a cynical attempt to be re-elected in Missouri by playing tea party games.
But it harms President Obama. He talked of shared sacrifice while she just wants to take a scalpel to everything. Her budget has no room for revenue increases like cutting the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
Her plan undercuts President Obama. She legitimizes the Republcian extremist agenda that the President tore to shreds this week. It undercuts Democrarts, from centrist ones to progressives. It's a bad idea. A really, really bad idea. And ideas matter.
I live in Missouri. Claire McCaskill is doing so much damage to the Democratic Party that I am considering leaving the senate spot blank on my ballot in November 2012.
We have a centrist to conservative Dem. governor, Jay Nixon. But I can vote for him. He's no Claire McCaskill.
My contributions will go to the President, local races, and progressives around this nation. I cannot in good conscience give money to Claire McCaskill. I've not ruled out voting for her in November 2012, but it will be very hard.
Her plan with Corker undermines our President and Democrats more than any other turncoat Democrat, including Lieberscum.
There seems to be no primary opponents on the horizon, even after plane-gate. But the more she undermines President Obama and other Democrats, the more likely that spot on the ballot will be left blank by me.
Now her apologists will come and tell us she voted for healthcare, etc. She did. And they will say this is just cynical politics to fool the rubes back in Missouri. She knows this will not pass. Maybe so.
But this is a biggie. And that kind of cynicism undermines hope. That hurts us all.
In my view, McCaskill-Corker is more dangerous than Ryan.
Update I:
From Fish in Illinois in the comemnts, a link to Ezra Klein on this plan:
The second worst idea in Washington
Ezra is no radical lib. He's a mainstream Dem for the most part:
There’s talk that the McCaskill-Corker spending cap will be the cost of raising the debt ceiling. This would be, to put it simply, completely insane. Spending caps are bad policy, and the McCaskill-Corker spending cap — which holds spending to 21.5 percent of GDP, or three percentage points lower than it is right now — is a badly designed spending cap. But beyond all that, it’s laughable to posit it as a compromise: It’s arguably the most radically conservative reform that could be made to the federal budget. More extreme, by far, than Paul Ryan’s plan.
snip
It’s easy to understand why Republicans would embrace legislation making their favored solutions the only possible solutions. What’s less clear is why McCaskill, or even Joe Lieberman, would do the same. McCaskill and Lieberman, for instance, both voted for the health-care law and consider themselves broadly in favor of the continued existence of Medicare, Social Security and the United States military. It is impossible for all of those things to exist, for the baby boomers to retire and for health-care technology to continue advancing and for spending to fall to less than 22 percent of GDP.
snip
My hunch is that she’s facing a tough race in 2012 and signed onto this legislation under the theory that it (a) wouldn’t pass and (b) would make her sound fiscally responsible. But the legislation is terrifically irresponsible, could become a dangerous flashpoint as part of the debt ceiling debate and would destroy much that she holds dear if it somehow did pass. This isn’t the Worst Idea in Washington, but it’s close.