I guess the story most worthy of comment today is the debt ceiling. The House has passed a bill raising that debt ceiling that also reduces spending to 2022 levels and caps spending growth at 1% per year, repealing some renewable energy tax incentives and stiffening work requirements for antipoverty programs. The bill isn’t expected to pass the Senate.

As you might expect there are differences of opinion about the bill. By and large Democrats want a “no strings attached” increase of the debt limit. The editors of the Washington Post largely concur:

In an ideal world, House Republicans would do their duty and lift the debt limit without exacting a ransom. This is about paying the money that Congress — in a largely bipartisan fashion — already committed to spend. This is also about reassuring a fragile world that the U.S. government can still do something as basic as pay its bills. A potential debt-limit catastrophe is lining up to hit just as the U.S. economy flatlines. The latest report on gross domestic product on Thursday showed a slowing economy in which businesses have already cut back sharply on spending in the face of high uncertainty. On top of that, China and Russia are making a push to get other nations to sign on to alternatives to the U.S. dollar. A U.S. default would enhance their cause.

It’s true that President Biden and Congress need to discuss spending. The nation is on a fiscally unsustainable course. Social Security and Medicare costs are rapidly escalating, along with interest expenses as the debt grows. But holding the debt limit hostage to impose blunt spending cuts would only backfire. A default — or even a near-default — would lead to higher borrowing costs. That’s exactly what happened in the 2011 debt-limit standoff.

It would be best if Republicans agreed to raise the debt limit and Mr. Biden and Congress launched a separate, parallel process to negotiate how to stabilize the budget. Mr. McCarthy likes to tout that his bill would save nearly $5 trillion over the next decade. But here’s the catch: House Republicans do not specify where $3 trillion of those cuts in discretionary spending would come from. It’s far easier to talk about general budget cuts than to spell out how much less funding they want for roads, schools and the military.

Mr. Biden’s insistence that House Republicans pass a clean debt-limit increase without any strings attached is the morally and economically correct course of action. But reality has to sink in. It would be wise for Mr. Biden to start talking seriously with Mr. McCarthy. Budget talks can remain on a separate path, but they need to commence.

while the editors of the Wall Street Journal are more sympathetic with the House Republicans:

Mr. Biden doesn’t seem to have figured out that the House vote changes the balance of negotiating power. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer needs at least nine GOP votes to pass any debt limit increase, and that means he needs help from GOP leader Mitch McConnell. With the House vote in his back pocket, Mr. McConnell isn’t going to provide those votes for free, even if he had the power to do so on his own.

What part of divided government and bicameral legislature doesn’t the President understand? Perhaps he’s still under the illusion that he can refuse to negotiate and cause Republicans to panic as the debt deadline looms. No doubt the press corps will try to give him cover.

But Wall Street will grow increasingly anxious, and even some Democrats have noticed that Nancy Pelosi is now a backbencher. “While I do not agree with everything proposed,” Sen. Joe Manchin said of the House plan, “it remains the only bill moving through Congress that would prevent default and that cannot be ignored.”

Mr. Biden’s refusal even to meet is weird given his long record as a politician willing to talk to the opposition. In 2012 as Vice President, he negotiated a deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” after President Obama’s haughty approach stalled. Mr. Biden reminisces occasionally about his younger years in the Senate, sparring with segregationists like Mississippi Democrat James Eastland. “We’d debate like hell on the floor of the Senate,” Mr. Biden said last year, “and go and have lunch together.”

Yet Mr. Biden won’t meet with Mr. McCarthy to hash out a debt deal? Ms. Jean-Pierre said Thursday that Mr. McCarthy’s plan is “an extreme MAGA wish list,” and Republicans are “saying to the Senate, they’re saying to the President, that we have to go with this agenda in its full form.”

No, they’re simply saying that the House has passed a bill to lift the debt limit, and Mr. McCarthy would like to negotiate a final deal with Mr. Biden that can get through both chambers and signed into law. If Mr. Biden won’t work with Republicans in the House and Senate on a compromise, then he’ll be responsible for the financial calamity he’s been warning about.

I think we need to take a lot of what the editors are saying with a substantial helping of salt. The Congress that committed to the spending (“This is about paying the money that Congress — in a largely bipartisan fashion — already committed to spend”) was a different Congress and Congresses’ ability to bind future Congresses is limited.

I also found the WaPo editors’ “in a perfect world” trope amusing. My version of perfection is obviously different from theirs. My version would include provisions like requiring the Congress to raise revenue when they increased spending beyond some percentage, e.g. the rate at which aggregate supply is growing.

However, the base purpose of the Congress is legislating negotiated deals. That’s what should happen here, too. I don’t know whether the House’s demands are a “MAGA wish list” or not. I’m open to suggestions one way or the other on that although I suspect that’s how the White House would characterize anything that passed a House with a Republican majority.

Like the editors of the Washington Post I think the White House should be open to negotiations with the Congress. If it takes “holding the debt ceiling hostage” to accomplish that, so be it.

Today closing arguments in the trial of the “ComEd Four” began. The “ComEd Four” are four ComEd executives presently on trial for conspiring to bribe former and long-time Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan to get favorable treatment for the utility from the state. Steve Daniels opens his report at Crain’s Chicago Business:

Liars on the witness stand attempting to run away from their roles in a criminal conspiracy. Or, four defendants who are “collateral damage” in a prosecutorial obsession to put Mike Madigan in jail.

Closing arguments in the “ComEd Four” trial Monday presented starkly different interpretations of six weeks’ worth of evidence from nearly 50 witnesses, dozens of wiretapped recordings and hundreds of emails that jurors will begin to sift through, likely late Tuesday.

What follows is a lengthy exposition of the closing arguments of the defense and prosecution.

I have no idea of what the jury’s verdict or the outcome of the trial will be. I wish I were able to find some good and unbiased commentary but I have found that extremely difficult.

I have speculated that, if they are found guilty, we may see the largest civil suit in the history of the United States.

Now the case has gone to the jury.

Let’s consider some potential outcomes (or lack thereof) in Ukraine:

1. Ukraine wins outright between now and November 5, 2024 (ED)
2. Ukraine loses outright between now and ED
3. The war continues to drag on past ED

Here are my questions:

1. Which is best politically for Joe Biden?
2. Which is worst politically for Joe Biden?
3. Which is best for the United States?

I don’t think there’s any question that Ukraine winning outright sooner rather than later is better for Ukraine while Ukraine losing outright sooner rather than later is best for Russia.

Would many people doubt that Ukraine winning outright before ED would be the best political outcome for Joe Biden?

Would Ukraine losing outright before ED be better or worse for Joe Biden politically than the war continuing to drag on?

I think that what’s in the best interest of the United States depends on what you think those interests are. If you think the U. S. interest in the war in Ukraine is degrading Russia, wouldn’t the war continuing to drag on be most in the U. S. interest?

In his announcement that he was running for re-election, President Biden said he was running “for the soul of America”:

President Joe Biden made it official Tuesday morning: The 80-year incumbent is running for reelection, setting up what could be a rematch of the ugly and tumultuous 2020 campaign against Republican Donald Trump.

In a three-minute video posted to his social media accounts, Biden asked Americans to help him “finish the job” and cast the race as a referendum on freedom and democracy itself.

“When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are,” Biden says in the video, which was posted four years to the day after he announced he would run for president in 2019. “That’s why I’m running for reelection.”

Opening with scenes of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and segueing quickly to scenes of abortion rights protesters, Biden warned against the rights that would be rolled back if Republicans were to take charge.

“Around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take on those bedrock freedoms, dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books and telling people who they can love – all while making it more difficult for you to vote,” Biden warned in the ad.

as quoted in a piece at Newsweek by Susan Milligan. I have no idea what that means. 20 years ago I thought I might have been able to tell you. Not only that but that to the degree that America’s values had changed over the last 80 years, the change had been for the better.

Now not only do I not know what is meant by “the soul of America”, more Americans than ever before think our values are deteriorating as noted by Gallup:

and here’s what they found as the relative priorities:

That’s from June of last year. We’ll need to wait until June for an update.

Does what President Biden said align with that or not?

The singer, actor, and activist Harry Belafonte has died. From his obituary in Variety by Chris Morris:

Singer, actor, producer and activist Harry Belafonte, who spawned a calypso craze in the U.S. with his music and blazed new trails for African American performers, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his Manhattan home. He was 96.

An award-winning Broadway performer and a versatile recording and concert star of the ’50s, the lithe, handsome Belafonte became one of the first Black leading men in Hollywood. He later branched into production work on theatrical films and telepics.

As his career stretched into the new millennium, his commitment to social causes never took a back seat to his professional work.

I think that Mr. Belafonte has been somewhat overshadowed, unfairly I think, by Sidney Poitier, his precise contemporary. Not only did he have hit records while Sidney Poitier was still playing supporting roles, he began playing leading men in movies before Mr. Poitier. To the best of my knowledge he was the first black actor to have a white love interest (in The World, the Flesh, and the Devil) almost ten years before Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. None of that is to take anything away from Mr. Poitier—I just think a revival of interest in Harry Belafonte is long overdue.

The only observation I will make about President Biden’s announcement that he is running for re-election in 2024 is that today is April 25, 2023. November 5, 2024 is a long way away, particularly when you’re 80 years old.

It reminds me a bit of when my mom had a new furnace installed (she was in her 80s). When the installer asked if she wanted a lifetime warranty or the standard 5 year warranty she laughed.

My quote of the day is from the Roman historian Tacitus: Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges. The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.

The editors of the Washington Post remark on an after action report of sorts on the federal government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic:

Looking back at the U.S. response to the pandemic, many setbacks and mistakes are well-known. But a closer examination by a team of seasoned experts has brought to the surface a profoundly unsettling conclusion. The United States, once the paragon of can-do pragmatism, of successful moon shots and biomedical breakthroughs, fell down on the job in confronting the crisis. The pandemic, the experts say, revealed “a collective national incompetence in government.”

This warning comes through over and over again in “Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report,” a book published Tuesday by a group of 34 specialists led by Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission and a history professor at the University of Virginia. Their verdict: “The leaders of the United States could not apply their country’s vast assets effectively enough in practice.”

concluding:

The United States did some things well, the experts conclude, such as the crash vaccine development and manufacturing effort, Operation Warp Speed, which was a bargain at $30 billion. But “one of the worst consequences” of the bungled response “was that Americans sensed their governance had let them down. It had let them down in performing the most fundamental task governments are expected to perform, to protect them in an emergency.”

This is a sobering, realistic assessment, one of the most important to come out of the pandemic. The nation should pay heed to it.

There are quite a few assumptions baked into their analysis. In this post I want to consider in particular how we think things should work and how we want them to work.

One way of looking at those is what might be called the “top down” or ‘the buck stops here” approach. In that way of looking at things everything that happens during a president’s term of office is the responsibility of the president. There’s a kernel of truth in that but just a kernel.

For one thing it quickly degenerates into something that might be called the “political” approach. Under that approach everything is blamed on the Republicans/Trump/Democrats/Biden. Here’s an example of that. If you focus on deaths due to COVID-19 (as the editorial does), the fact is that more deaths due to COVID-19 occurred from January 20, 2021 to present than did from December 2019 to January 20, 2021. Do you blame the deaths on Trump or Biden?

Another approach is the technocratic approach, relying on experts. The defect in this approach is that no one is an expert in everything but the temptation to parley your expertise in one field into others in which you have little expertise is irresistible. Under genuine technocracy public health experts would have determined the proper course of action, it would have been managed by those with that expertise, and ensured that it conformed to the law by legal experts. Practically no one wants genuine technocracy. What we have instead is phony technocracy is which, as noted above, people claim expertise in areas in which they have little training, experience, or temperament.

Some would prefer what might be deemed a market-based approach in which the private sector provided solutions largely unfettered. That works for some things but I don’t believe it would in a pandemic. When the poor get sick so do the rich and in a market system willingness to pay which includes ability to pay regulates the system.

My own preference would be for a procedure-based system which I think is more suitable for us fallible mortals. Under such a system legislators, the president, and judges cooperate in establishing procedures for handling contingencies with provisions for the procedures to evolve over time. They would also cooperate in ensuring the procedures are followed.

While I agree with the editors that dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic has not been our finest hour, I’m not sure what approach would be more effective when no one is actually held accountable for anything. I also note that the editors describe losing confidence in the federal government as though it were a bad thing. Is it?

I would also observe that one of the examples of effectiveness they provide, landing on the moon, took place in an America which was very different from the present one in which “the government” consisted almost entirely of white men most of whom had served in the military. I don’t believe we can or should return to that America.

Yesterday’s big news was that Tucker Carlson had left or been removed from Fox News while Don Lemon was removed from CNN. I don’t watch cable news or pay any attention to it so neither move means a great deal to me.

Various explanations have been proffered for Carlson’s departure but what seems the most likely to me is that following the settlement of the Dominion suit Fox is looking to change its highly partisan stance and Carlson was seen as an impediment to that. Similarly with CNN and Lemon.

The two situations aren’t completely parallel. Mr. Carlson was by far the most popular figure on Fox News. Clearly, he was giving his audience what they wanted. There are a number of onscreen personalities as or more popular than Don Lemon on CNN.

In my view there needs to be a sharp line of demarcation, what used to be called a “Chinese wall”, between the news and opinion segments in news media. That pertains to cable news, broadcast news, print news, and online. Such lines have eroded over the last couple of decades and the decline in confidence in journalists more generally can be related to that erosion. It will not be easy to restore the credibility that has been lost.

An alternative solution would be explicitly partisan news outlets as they have in the UK. I believe those can only work with libel laws like those in the UK which are not nearly as rigorous as ours have been. I suspect with the increasing visual orientation of the media we will see an attendant increasingly agonistic tone. That’s completely consistent with the “point of view” approach to journalism that has replaced the “5Ws” style.