Andy Kroll

Reporter

Andy Kroll is Mother Jones' Dark Money reporter. He is based in the DC bureau. His work has also appeared at the Wall Street Journal, the Detroit News, Salon, and TomDispatch.com, where he's an associate editor. He can be reached at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com. He tweets at @AndrewKroll.

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Veteran WI GOP State Senator: "I'm Not Sure" I'll Survive Recall Election

—By Andy Kroll

| Wed Aug. 3, 2011 9:48 AM PDT

It's less than a week until Wisconsin voters hit the polls in the recall elections of six Republican state senators. According to polling by Wisconsin's Democratic Party, Democratic challengers are, for the most part, sitting pretty right now, leading in three races and tied in the rest. Mind you, these are internal polls, so they should taken with a grain of salt.

But in the case of Republican Alberta Darling, a 20-year veteran of the Wisconsin state senate, you don't need polls to know she's in trouble in her race against Democratic state assemblywoman Sandy Pasch. Darling herself admitted as much on Tuesday. In response to an audience member's comment "Obviously you think you're going to win this," Darling said, "I'm not sure. It's going to be about turnout." From a long-time member of the Wisconsin GOP and a lock to win her recall mere months ago, that's a striking admission.

Here's the video, from the state Democratic Party:

Now, since the clip is short, we don't know what Darling said after this. According to polling data, Darling has some cause to worry: One poll released in mid-July by the Democratic Party showed Pasch ahead of Darling by 1 percentage point, while a Public Policy Polling survey commissioned by the liberal Daily Kos put Darling up by 5 points. Even then, it's a sign of the shifting political headwinds in Wisconsin that the Republican state senator considered by Democrats to be the least likely to lose her recall election is now conceding that she may be unseated.

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Man, That Debt Ceiling Fight Sucked! Let's Do It Again!

Think the partisan warfare over the nation's debt is over? Think again.

—By Andy Kroll

| Wed Aug. 3, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner.

On Monday, with a flick of his pen, President Obama signed the Budget Control Act of 2011, ending a contentious, months-long fight over the nation's debt ceiling, spending, and taxes that brought the nation to the brink of default and possibly economic catastrophe. You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief as the president turned the lopsided, GOP-friendly bill into the law of the land.

At least we won't have to go through that again—or so you might think.

Bzzt. Wrong. If you listen to Republicans, you'll know the debt ceiling fight was just the beginning.

[Read the full article]

What's Happening With the Debt Ceiling Explained

—By the Mother Jones reporting staff

| Tue Aug. 2, 2011 5:45 PM PDT

President Barack Obama signs the Budget Control Act of 2011.

Welcome to our debt ceiling explainer. As of August 3, this explainer is no longer being updated on a daily basis. You can read on for the basics of Congress' debt ceiling fight and a blow-by-blow account of the action from late June to the day President Obama signed the Budget Control Act of 2011 into law, on August 2. In addition, you can read about the deep, painful cuts to public investment and safety exacted by the bill, Kevin Drum on why the bill sucks, David Corn on the White House's strategy and Nancy Pelosi's crucial role in sealing the deal, and why this fight was just one of many to come. Going forward, major developments will be noted on our main Political Mojo blog.

The Basics: On August 2 (or maybe a few weeks later), the US government will reach the point where it can no longer pay its bills. That's because, earlier this spring, the federal government reached the legal limit on how much money it can borrow—a.k.a., the "debt ceiling." It's currently set at $14.3 trillion. The government borrows money to pay for everything from tax refunds to wars and veterans' benefits, not to mention repaying our creditors, which include China, Japan, the United Kingdom, state and local governments, pension funds, and investors in America and around the world.

A debt ceiling has existed since 1917. Before that, Congress had to provide its stamp of approval each time the Treasury Department wanted to sell US debt to raise money. (Here's a wonky history of the debt ceiling [PDF], courtesy of the Congressional Research Service.) Putting a borrowing limit in place gave the federal government more flexibility to fill its coffers without going to Congress over and over. Lawmakers in Congress have raised the debt ceiling on many occasions, including eight times in the past decade, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has said that failing to raise it and allowing the US default "would shake the basic foundation of the entire global financial system."

What Happens If Congress Doesn't Raise the Debt Limit? In a word: Catastrophe.

At least that's what Geithner told Congress in January. In an ominous letter, he wrote that a US default would wreak havoc on the domestic economy and essentially result in a hefty tax on all Americans.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

John Boehner Is Wrong: Deficit Supercommittee Can Raise Taxes

—By Andy Kroll

| Tue Aug. 2, 2011 8:17 AM PDT

When House Speaker John Boehner's office released an outline of the final debt deal he hashed out with President Obama, one message was clear: This plan would not raise taxes.

In the near term, Boehner was right. The Budget Control Act, as the debt ceiling deal is officially known, contains no outright tax increases and does not eliminate any tax loopholes or corporate subsidies, including $4 billion a year for large oil corporations. But Boehner and other Republicans say the debt ceiling bill goes even further: They claim it's "effectively...impossible" for the "supercommittee" of 12 lawmakers tasked with cutting the deficit by $1.5 trillion more to raise taxes at all, tipping further deficit reduction even more to-the-bone spending cuts.

But Jim Horney, an economist at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities who analyzed the bill, has a message for Boehner: You're wrong.

Horney's argument gets pretty far into the fiscal policy weeds, but here's the gist. For starters, eliminating those oil company subsidies and tax perks for corporate jets is a quick and easy way for the government to bring in more money and, as Horney points out, doing so "is clearly allowed under the proposed agreement."

Next, to gauge how much you've trimmed the federal deficit, you've got to have a baseline from which to start. The GOP claims the debt ceiling bill's supercommittee uses what's called a "current-law" baseline; in plain English, a starting point in which the status quo reigns, in which laws governing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and taxes remain untouched.

This matters because it puts Democrats seriously behind the 8-ball in demanding new revenues from the deficit supercommittee. Take the Bush tax cuts. The way the GOP sees it, their expiration at the end of 2012 would not be considered new revenue; after all, that's what the law already says. Why is this important? Because in the search for new revenue, under the GOP's rules, supercommittee members would be fighting an uphill battle to enact more tax increases on top of the Bush tax cuts' expiration. In short, it becomes really, really hard for Democrats to demand a balanced proposal out of the supercommittee, setting us up another lopsided round of cuts. And that's why, in the GOP's words, a current-law baseline "effectively mak[es] it impossible for [the] Joint Committee to increase taxes."

Wrong again, Horney argues. Nothing in the debt ceiling bill, he says, requires using a current-law baseline to measure deficit reduction and so blocking future revenue from tax increases. If the supercommittee's members want to use a different starting point, one that takes into the account the deficit-cutting effects of tax reforms, they're free to do so. "It is not the terms of the new agreement," Horney writes, "but rather the opposition of Speaker Boehner (who has promised to appoint to the Joint Committee only members who will refuse to consider any revenue increases) and other Republican leaders, that threatens to prevent the Joint Committee from considering a balanced approach to deficit reduction." And with the short-term mandates of the Budget Control Act centered entirely on spending cuts, the supercommittee is the only remaining opportunity for lawmakers to squeeze some balance into the deal.

Welcome to the United States of Austerity

Polluted water, smoggy skies, crumbling bridges, less education funding, more unhealthy Americans: the impact of the debt deal's massive cuts.

—By Andy Kroll

| Tue Aug. 2, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

The Detroit Public Schools book depository, built in the 1930s and designed by famed architect Albert Kahn, now stands abandoned, its floor covered in rotting textbooks.

The debt ceiling deal hammered out by President Barack Obama and congressional leaders and passed in the House on Monday afternoon makes deep, painful, and lasting cuts throughout the federal government's budget. What's on the chopping block? The numbers tell the tale.

The Obama-GOP plan cuts $917 billion in government spending over the next decade. Nearly $570 billion of that would come from what's called "nondefense discretionary spending." That's budget-speak for the pile of money the government invests in the nation's safety and future—education and job training, air traffic control, health research, border security, physical infrastructure, environmental and consumer protection, child care, nutrition, law enforcement, and more.

The White House's plan would slash this type of spending nearly in half as a percentage of gross domestic product, from about 3.3 percent of America's GDP to as low as 1.7 percent, the lowest in nearly half a century, says Ethan Pollack, a senior policy analyst at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Pollack's calculations suggest the cuts in Obama's plan are almost as deep as those in Rep. Paul Ryan's slash-and-burn budget, which shrunk non-defense discretionary spending down to just 1.5 percent of GDP. The president has claimed that the debt deal will allow America to continue making "job-creating investments in things like education and research." But on crucial public investment, Obama's and Ryan's plans are next-door neighbors. "There's no way to square this plan with the president's 'Winning the Future' agenda," Pollack says. "That agenda ends."

[Read the full article]