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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

The Strategic Incompetence of Mitch McConnell

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  December 20th, 2011 at 04:46 AM  | 

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Mitch McConnell‘s minion are in full on spin mode trying to blame Speaker of the House John Boehner for botching the payroll tax cut extension. The only person who deserves any blame is Mitch McConnell. In this, the first deal he pretty much single handedly negotiated with the Democrats, he not only screwed up, but proved he has no freaking clue how to get the economy growing again.

The House has postponed a vote on the matter but members of the House are in open rebellion about it. In exchange for the Keystone Pipeline, which would probably make the President veto the whole thing anyway, the GOP would go for a two month extension of the payroll tax cut and raise fees on mortgages permanently.

Note the last bit. McConnell was okay raising fees on the American people permanently to offset a two month payroll tax cut. And it would not just raise fees on mortgages, it would, in effect, perpetuate the sad, sick cycle of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac controlling the mortgage industry with no reforms to either.

McConnell now wants us to know this is all John Boehner’s fault and John Boehner had intended to go along with it. Except that comes as news to plenty of people in the House. There is a larger point, though, that is being ignored.

Mitch McConnell negotiated a two month extension of the payroll tax cut and businesses in America, particularly small businesses, need to plan for a full year. The GOP has blamed Obama and the Democrats for “uncertainty” in the economy and Mitch McConnell sought to exacerbate that uncertainty playing political games with a payroll tax cut.

To compound the stupidity of it all the deal cannot even be implemented by most businesses in America. Mitch McConnell, who supposedly is on the side of job creators, seemingly has no clue how this payroll tax cut would affect businesses and clearly did not understand its implications enough to know just how wholly unworkable it is.

In other words, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate has become such a creature of Washington, he like the Democrats we fight, knows not a darn thing about how to get Washington out of the way of the job creators or, worse, he does not care.

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COMMENTS

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  • davesinsanantonio

    Is he (are they) incompetent or does he (do they) really mean it???

    I think Weasel McConnell would rather let America go to hell than let conservatives have any part in saving it.

  • jimmyneutron

    He has no idea how to fight and he doesn’t know what he is supposed to be fighting for. He strikes me as the perfect example of someone who is real happy with all the perks he is getting in his ‘DC job’ and does not want to do anything to rock the boat or change things. Pathetic!
    Please oh please send us some new leadership for Christmas!

  • daniel22

    You can also look at it as mission accomplished. I know that sounds ridiculous but the dems got the payroll tax cut they wanted. It also did help the perpetual life of Fannie and Freddie in the housing market by also making it a tax collector. Nobody really thinks that the government will downsize a tax collector do they? I am also sure that by making housing more expensive it will boost the job market recovery. Not!!!
    I really do not believe that the current republican office holders want to shrink the size of government as highlighted by actions such as these. It seems to me that what is going on here is the pretense of representation by both political parties. It seems to beg the question of what is the point unless it is to keep the masses distracted while another agenda is put into place. How else can you explain the core incompetence of the republican party let alone the dems?

  • acat

    Time for a replacement.

    Mew

  • morninginamerica

    Cutting the payroll tax only blows out the deficit and leads to welfare for retirement and a national health service by not making the monthy payments for retirement and health insurance plans. It’s the opposite of Reagan’s supply-side tax cuts to promote growth. Republicans don’t understand tax cuts, they fall into the Democrats’ trap of essentially postponing the electric bill, rather than encouraging people to supply jobs to the economy with lower tax rates on income they would earn.

    Democrats understand Republicans don’t understand this and take advantage of them using their own rhetoric. The best answer would be to mutualize Social Security and Medicare, change the ownership to the beneficiaries, you and me, just like a lot of insurance companies. That would get rid of the fraud and waste, while raising outcomes, but that’s another project.

    Fannie and Freddie should have to sell their mortgages along with the banks and brokers who bought them AT THE MARKET to raise capital before those guys hit up the taxpayers – not charge new fees to cover their mistakes. Low and behold, the dollar value of morrtgages would fall to get rid of the Federal Reserve’s inflation, and we would be able to refinance and buy houses at today’s prices.

    If house prices have fallen 40% mortgages have to as well. It’s an eqaution: your house has to equal the mortgage plue a down payment. One side can’t fall without taking the other down. Unless Washington adds money to prop up the banks at our expense. And then, they can’t make loans, becasue they are right back where they started with mortgages and houses they can’t sell, but even more dollars are involved.

  • http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

    a leader.

  • ihateliberals

    McConnell is a Moderate, RINO, Liberal. He is a traitor to the Republican Party and has no intention of siding with the demands of the people of this country. he threw the party under the bus when this deal was and I use the term loosely, negotiated. This couldn’t even really be considered a deal as much as a surrender of Power. When you look at the voting record of the Senate i think we can see wha the problem is. According to the Heritage Foundation the Senate votes 60% of the time siding with the liberals. With forty plus Republican Senators this is outrageous to happen. It is just plain stupid to keep putting the extension on two month intervals. This means that in February we have to go through ll of this turmooil gain and still end up with no deal. This is entirely a Democratic move to keep the public thinking the Republicans are say “No’ to a tax cut. Politics only. If this tax cut is extended to next December Obama can’t use this as a campaign issue.

  • PubliusII

    Clearly, the Senate Republicans crossed signals with the House Republicans last week. I cannot understand why the Senate Republicans agreed to provisions they knew the House could not accept, pass a bill containing those provisions, and then going along with Reid’s adjournment of the Senate for the holidays.

    Who knows what actually happened. But McConnell’s claims, i.e. that Boehner rejected terms he previously accepted, cannot be right, at least not entirely.

    This is not only strategic incompetence, it is also tactical incompetence.

  • PubliusII

    Clearly, the Senate Republicans crossed signals with the House Republicans last week. I cannot understand why the Senate Republicans agreed to provisions they knew the House could not accept, pass a bill containing those provisions, and then going along with Reid’s adjournment of the Senate for the holidays.

    Who knows what actually happened. But McConnell’s claims, i.e. that Boehner rejected terms he previously accepted, cannot be right, at least not entirely.

    This is not only strategic incompetence, it is also tactical incompetence.

  • http://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com nathanalbright

    …time to throw it out.

  • debjim90

    I’d pull my hair out if I had any…….

  • geoph

    In that last paragraph?

    I think the frustration Cons have felt all year is bubbling over.
    I think the failures by “not-Romney” this Fall has taken it’s toll, but has also shown us how little Republicans differ from Dems.

    Here we are, 12 months later, still arguing a trillion dollar omnibus; still arguing unemployment benefits; and still spending money we just don’t have.

    I’ve been looking in the House rules, but can not find a definitive answer as to whether (or the process of how) a Speaker can be removed from that role. Is it just a matter of a new vote for leadership?

    One thing truly stands out from this series of events and postings – we don’t have Republicans in leadership roles of the GOP, let alone Conservatives. Maybe we need to get our House and Senate in order before we bungle our Presidential nomination.

  • carolina

    (as I said in an earlier post) Any kind of a two month TAX plan is total stupidity any way you look at it. The Washington creatures are so out of touch with working Americans that it is sickening.

  • carolina

    (as I said in an earlier post) Any kind of a two month TAX plan is total stupidity any way you look at it. The Washington creatures are so out of touch with working Americans that it is sickening.

  • edintexas

    “If house prices have fallen 40% mortgages have to as well. It?s an eqaution: your house has to equal the mortgage plue a down payment. One side can?t fall without taking the other down.”

    So because my mortgage was paid off some years ago, and now is $0,00, my house is worth $0.00 (“One side can’t fall…”)? Or (hypothetically this time), if I had taken a mortgage loan in 2005 for $200,000.00 on a home valued at $250,000.00, and now that home is worth $150,000.00, you are claiming the remaining balance of the mortgage loan should be $150,000.00?

    A mortgage loan is a contract between borrower and lender influenced by, among other things, the valuation of the real property on the day the sale is completed. It is no different than any other loan, other than the length of the term and the ability to write off the interest paid against income taxes (which used to be true of other loans also). A vehicle depreciates the minute it is driven off the lot, yet we do not expect the amount of the car loan to decrease. And there is no legal basis for such decrease in loan balance, for either the vehicle or the house.

    We are told people are refusing to make mortgage payments. There are those who can’t make the payments because they no longer have a job. Then there are those (how many I don’t know) who still have sufficient income to make the payment, but their home is no longer worth as much as the loan balance and now is a bad investment. When did we, as a people, start to refuse to honor contracts because it was inconvenient? I can understand people defaulting because they no longer have income. But to have the ability to make the payment and still default on the loan, remaining in the house “free” while depending on the lengthy time the mortgage company will take to kick you out? These people have no honor.

  • edintexas

    Or was that (mortgages must equal the value of the real estate less down payment) a statement of obvious fact, current sales of real estate must have mortgage loans based on the current price? That is really, really obvious. And, in the current market, leads me to doubt that is the actual intent of the statement. But I could be wrong.

  • geoph

    Get a good look at 2012 if we are not more forceful.

    All that remains to be seen is if Boehner can sell this to the House Dems for passage, or if the Dems are happy to hang this would be shutdown on the GOP yet again.

  • georgehill

    McConnell has always looked like a RINO to me. I would like to see Jim DeMint or David Vitter succeed Mitch McConnell.

  • jakeofalltrades

    Congress seems to think America can jump to regulatory changes – and temporary ones, at that – at the drop of a hat. How many lines of code have been written for payroll systems that implicitly assume the rules will stay the same all year?

    In the payroll software world, this is bigger than the Y2K bug.

  • jakeofalltrades

    It’s been settled in this country that you have the right to breach contracts, just like the other party has the right to have it enforced against you.

    I don’t think it’s a matter of honor when you’re dealing with a banking system that prints its own money. Honor only applies when it runs in both directions.

  • ohiohistorian

    You also contracted by signing your good name to a pledge, but that should be abrogated through no fault of the banker? With an attitude like this, your word is about as good as Ben Bernanke’s when he promised that he would not support the Fed buying Federal loans during his testimony before his reconfirmation. In other words, you are as good as your banker based upon your words.

    With an economic philosophy like that, you and Robert Reisch should be soul-mates.

  • ohiohistorian

    These Republicans run around supposedly being able to have friends across the aisle. They are real friends when they will sell you down the river for a brief political advantage. That is the sort of true friend I see in Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and about 200 others in Washington, DC. Politics is their only friend.

    Probably John McCain was involved in this somehow also. It is just too stupid and one-sided a deal not to involve the pseudo-conservative from Arizona. Lindsay Graham probably bobble-headed right along.

  • jakeofalltrades

    In baseball, you can “steal” a base. I suppose your simple morality would ban such, and perhaps even require you to get all judgmental on players.

    Don’t hate the player; hate the game.

  • ohiohistorian

    Write your programs. Actually, I just decided that the fourth word in my title was spelled incorrectly.

  • jakeofalltrades

    I believe that honor applies in certain contracts. But I won’t call people dishonorable for breaching a mortgage agreement with an institutional lender – that’s just business.

    If the mortgage was financed by their church or a friend, then honor absolutely applies.

  • jakeofalltrades

    n/t

  • joecollins

    Someone – someone conservative with a public record, someone with principles and moral values, someone with common sense – step forward and primary McConnell. We’ll support you!

    McConnell goes down in 2014.

  • cbartlett

    from the beginning. This NOT an income tax break – most people don’t understand that the “payroll tax” is their Social Security contribution! The Social Security system is one of the most deficit bound parts of our economy – why on earth are we putting LESS into it and putting it even further into the red? Republicans should have voted this down from the beginning and found some other way to “give people more money”. I reviewed our small company payroll and this stupid “tax cut” averages about $40/week, with the highest at $62 and the lowest at $24. That is a couple of trips to Burger King, maybe – if your family isn’t too big. Does anyone really think that people are paying more bills with this or that it is truly stimulating the economy? Do they think companies are going to hire more people because of this “cut”? Well, guess what? The company share of the SS tax did NOT change – we still have to match with the higher percentage! Republicans need to get the message out that we are only robbing the already broke SS fund by doing this. The Public does NOT understand this!!! I do payroll for four companies and these idiots in Washington have no idea how difficult they are making life for those of us who have to calculate and plan for these kind of idiotic political stunts they are pulling. Give it up. Find something else to fight about that will really make a difference – please.

  • morninginamerica

    Sorry to create confusion. Mortages are a contract between homeowner and lender for sure; but they are traded as securities, usually pooled by Fannie and Freddie. That market value changes, just as it does with Treasury bonds, which are far more secure.

    The idea is someone who bought a mortgage in the secondary market, as he would any other bond at a discount, could go back to the borrower and renegotiate the loan at half price as the new owner. The present mortgage holder can do the same, if he wanted to.

    Dropping the value of mortgages bought at higher prices will do a lot of damage to banks and brokers who hold them now. That is why the feds came up with TARP and all the other schemes to have the Federal Reserve give them money. Goldman Sachs became a bank to participate for example. All this did was patch a big hole in their balance sheet. It didn’t give them new money to lend.

    There were investors willing to buy the good pieces of failed banks and brokers, as with Lehman, but Washington stepped in and paid top dollar to “save the banking system.” From what, the other banks that didn’t buy too much junk?

  • wbb1950

    I threw a fundraiser for him a decade ago at my house. That was the price of gaining his support on a merger deal. I spent the evening with him, and agree wholeheartedly with the comments about him expressed here. At this pioint, I believe his primary concern is to become Senate Majority Leader. He will gladly throw conservative principles down the drain to achieve that objective. Anyone who believes otherwise will be hard pressed to explain his behavior.

  • Glaucon

    Time to throw him out! The recent, narrow defeat of Ron Johnson for the position of vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference shows that we are almost there.

    http://hudson-wi.patch.com/articles/ron-johnson-narrowly-loses-senate-leadership-bid

    We need to focus on the Senate Conservatives Fund and related candidates. The sooner that Jim DeMint has a majority the better.

    http://senateconservatives.com/

  • jacobite

    As the movie “Patton” pointed out — nobody accomplishes anything by dying. You make things happen when you kill the enemy. Kill enough and they surrender to your will and do your bidding. Henry had better have said: “Give me liberty, or I’m gonna kill you.” What the heck, maybe he had Reagans’ speechwriter.

  • wonkish1

    I was actually rooting for that increase before this bill was ever passed. And now you have some folks who had no idea what the G rate even was acting with disgust that congress would increase an artificially low guarantee for something that shouldn’t have even existed in the first place.

    The G rate is the percentage Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae charge to guarantee a mortgage a lender makes. Its practically the exact same business AIG was in with CDS. Today guarantees those two GSEs plus FHA essentially represent off balance sheet risk for the federal government. Leading up to the crisis the G rate was an amazingly low 20 to 30 basis points. So if defaults spiked at all the entities were bankrupt which is precisely what happened.

    I doubt there is anybody here that would more like to put a bullet in these entities than me, but probably the best way to do that given the current situation and the massive portfolio they are sitting on is to increase the G rate so that revenue increases to mortgage giant(and therefore reduces their reliance on the federal government) and increasingly more banks decide to forgo agency backing.

    So a rise from an average of 30 basis points to 40 basis points is a good thing. And I wouldn’t stop there. Once it hits about 60 basis points you’ll start to see Fannie, Freddie, and FHA(which is the vast majority of the market and likely on the verge of bankruptcy unless they get bailed out next year) slowly extricate themselves from the industry.

    Increasing the cost of an artificially government created service that adds extra risk to the federal government is not a bad thing. On the contrary its one of the smartest things you can do.

    And PS I would easily take this deal in a heartbeat. Once you realize that raise of the G rate is the conservative option(not the liberal one) then you realize there is on the whole a win for us not the other way around.

  • wonkish1

    “Tax collector”? Please! Do you even know what the G Fee is? Or for that matter what their main business was?

    The G-Fee is the amount of basis points Freddie, Fannie and FHA(which has mostly taken their place as the majority of the mortgage market) charge a bank to guarantee the mortgage.

    Besides the fact that these entities should have never existed in the first place the G-Fee they charged was way artificially low, about 20 to 30 basis points on a mortgage. That means that not only were they skewing the mortgage market(and still are at an unprecedented level), but they also were and are creating huge amounts of risk for the federal governments balance sheet.

    If you want these entities gone the best way to do that from our current position is to increase the G rate enough that lenders don’t want to pay the fee to guarantee the mortgage and so they take on the risk themselves or look for a private alternative. So yes raising the G-fee to 40 basis points will bring in extra revenue, but it also puts them on the road towards winding down their portfolios and exiting the market.

    You are not taking the conservative position by recommending that the G-Fee stay at an artificially low amount and then transferring all the risk to the federal treasury. That is the crap liberals want.

  • wonkish1

    The G-Fee increase is a good thing. They should increase it more. Its artificially low right now and that is allowing lenders to transfer their mortgage risk to the treasury for a cost that is lower than risk they are taking.

    You want these entities gone? Continue to increase the G-Fee until a lot of lenders decide to forgo the guarantees.

  • quad4x4

    The republicans will play hell getting rid of Reid or McConnell, but the entire senate could vote them out of leadership. Perhaps I speak without full knowledge, but it makes for a great thought. All it takes is the will to fight. Lilly livered pol’s, is the public view of them all.

  • carolynr

    Could you imagine if a Republican President has suggested a payroll tax break…oh…the Democrats would be out in force…led by Pelosi…with throwing Granny to the curb. But..now that idiot is doing it…it’s OK. $213 BILLION cut in SS. for the two year vacation.

    McConnell…NEEDS TO GO.

  • snowshooze

    But I won’t hold my breath.

  • Joe Cor

    He said McConnell could negotiate the deal. Why didn’t he have a more “hands on” approach to the Senate negotiations?

    Deroy Murdock and Charles Krauthammer both said that all Boehner needed to do was amend the Senate Bill to read “Dec 31″ rather than “Feb 29″ and then send it back to them. That would have addressed the whole issue of one year versus 2 months and put the onus back on the Senate. But that apparently isn’t within Boehner’s mindset, which is entirely defensive and passive. Instead he’s calling for a new conference committee. The first and last resort of a Republican is always reachout.

    Both have been awful and both need to be replaced before they blow any more wind into Obama’s sails.

  • travis690

    Let’s clear up a few things here. If there is one person who can screw up a one-person parade on the Republican side, McConehead is the one. It should never take two people to screw up a one-person parade, and McConehead is always looking for that second person. He can keep looking until the cows jump over the moon, and he still won’t find the shine, but he will try to find someone else to blame.

    As far as McConehead on the side of job-creators: HA! It’s pretty difficult to be on the same side of a person who has no one on his side. Maybe that disgraced former opponent of Rand Paul might be on McConehead’s side, but even I doubt that by now.

    Somebody please remind me: Why did the Republicans in the Senate choose HIM as their leader/spokesperson? Was Jim DeMint busy the day they took that vote?

  • mndasher

    The President and the Senate were pretty adamant in demanding a 2 month extension to the payroll tax holiday instead of the full year that the house had previously passed.

    If I were the house leadership I would just say that’s what you wanted now live with it.

  • mndasher

    The house already passed the full year tax holiday, so if they want a full year, pass the house bill.