PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley interviewed two Democrats on Wednesday, and he asked both if the $878 billion "stimulus" package was "not robust enough," and asked if the nation should really be fixating on the deficit, instead of more so-called "stimulus." Smiley also told former Sen. Gary Hart that partisanship and gridlock was the worst ever: "I've heard this a thousand times now, that 'I have never seen it this bad.'" Hart blamed the GOP and "their so-called base, the haters."
If the theory is the "stimulus" is tiny, you can bet your liberal host is going to cite Paul Krugman, as Smiley did to Sen. Richard Durbin:
SMILEY: Some would argue, Senator, that the results have not been robust enough because the effort, quite frankly, was not robust enough. Put another way, there are any number of economists - Joseph Stiglitz comes to mind, Paul Krugman comes to mind, both Nobel laureates, of course, and others who suggest that that stimulus was not big enough in the first place and so you don't have a robust enough turnaround because the effort was not robust enough in the first place.
DURBIN: I agree completely, and if you'll remember, it went over three Republican Senate votes to pass it in the United States Senate, the first thing the president offered, we had to cut the amount of money that was going into the stimulus package. Many of us thought we were moving in the wrong direction - let's do something big and bold that will have an impact on the economy quickly.
But unfortunately, we weren't able to. To win over three Republican votes, we had to reduce the size of this package. I think that money invested at that time in a larger amount would have had a much more positive impact.
Smiley insisted from the left that Durbin had to convince him that in the new era of divided government, the Democrats were going to be "lifting up the weak working class" in their legislative proposals:
SMILEY: Show me again, or tell me again, in terms of actual legislation coming from the Democratic Party, the argument that you can make now that the focus after November is going to be on lifting up the weak working class, legislation aimed at everyday people. Talk to me.
DURBIN: Well, I can tell you several things that I think need to be done. If we're going to have tax cuts, let's focus on those in lower and middle income groups. Make sure that they get the breaks they need to continue to try to provide for their families.
Secondly, when it comes to some of the tax provisions, the earned income tax credit, the childcare tax credit, the make work pay tax credit - all of these are designed to reward working families to give them more spending power to cope with a very difficult and challenging economy.
I think the unemployment benefits, the same way. Today, December 1st, is the first day that we've cut off unemployment benefits. I think that's a terrible decision. We should restore them quickly. Some two million Americans across the United States will lose their unemployment benefits before Christmas - happy holidays.
Smiley also performed what Laura Ingraham calls the "but-monkey." He insisted the deficit was a real issue, and then absolutely reversed course as if the first clause was just a dodge. There isn't an actual "but," so I inserted one:
SMILEY: I think most Americans agree, although I've not done a scientific poll, but I think most of us would probably agree, Senator - I'm sure you do as well - that deficit reduction is a real issue. [But] The question is when the time for that conversation has come, and whether or not, given the condition of the economy, we ought to change our focus to talking about deficit reduction versus stimulating this economy.
So everybody knows now this commission has come out with their report about what ought to be done with regard to deficit reduction, so I'm asking two questions. One, your take on that report, just a top-line take on it, and your take, more expressly, on whether or not this conversation in Washington is going to shift at the wrong time.
DURBIN: This is a reality. The deficit faces us. We borrow 40 cents out of every dollar that we spend. We borrow most of it from countries like China. They have become major creditors of the United States and have more power over our economy than we want them too. So dealing with this is not only the right thing economically, it's certainly right from a moral viewpoint. We can't leave this debt to our kids and expect them to shoulder that responsibility, but the reality of the situation is if we hit the brakes now on spending and stimulus, right in the midst of a recovery economy, we could plunge this economy back into recession, with even higher unemployment.
So the deficit commission that I serve on debating this week has said let's not do anything to really reduce the spending dramatically until we are clearly through the recession. I think that's a sensible approach. We've got to keep a foot on the accelerator, moving forward until more people get back to work. That, incidentally, is a good way to cure part of the deficit that we face.
Durbin did just what Smiley did. We have a serious deficit -- but we've got to keep punching the accelerator on spending. Then Smiley interviewed Gary Hart, and laid it on thick about how the Obama era is so poisoned by Republican resistance:
SMILEY: If I've talked to one politician, I've talked to countless, talking specifically about those who've been around for a while, persons like yourself, who've served over a period of decades.
I've heard this a thousand times now that I have never seen it this bad. I've never seen the gridlock, I've never seen the partisanship, I've never seen the infighting. Talk to anybody who's been around as Gary Hart been around, they'll tell you the same thing - "I've never seen it this bad." So, have you not seen it this bad, and what do you make of how bad it really is in Washington, in our politics?
HART: Well, the mood is certainly the worst in my lifetime. I served under both Democratic and Republican presidents, under both Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, as well as Jimmy Carter, and Democrats lent a hand under Republican administrations. We voted for quite a lot of the things those Republican presidents wanted simply because they had won a majority of the votes.
Not the case in President Ford's case, but certainly in Ronald Reagan's case, and now we have an opposition party which has publicly announced it is opposed to everything -- everything and anything this president and this administration wants. That may be - their so-called base may like that, the haters, but it is not in the interest of this country. It is not in our national interest, and it weakens America. People simply have to acknowledge that.
This is untrue partisan petulance -- for example, did Republicans oppose sending additional troops to Afghanistan? But apparently on PBS, taxpayers pay for the recitation of Democratic talking points, from the hosts and the guests. Smiley concluded the interview with Hart by unleashing a gooey question paying tribute to the "burnished life" of Hart, and Hart spoke of his religious background. No one on PBS seems to remember the whole "Monkey Business" adultery stuff that ruined his '88 presidential bid.
SMILEY: So finally, what's the abiding lesson that you want to share with me and the viewers tonight that you take away from these four seasons in this burnished life that you have lived and continue, of course, to live?
HART: Well, back to the theme that we started with, and that is that life, at least in my understanding and given my religious background, isn't simply about doing something for myself or my family and leaving everybody else behind. We are a national community. We recognized that in the age of Roosevelt, when the country was in terrible trouble. The more we unite, the more we think of ourselves as a big society and a big family, the better off this country will be - not just today, but for generations yet to come.
Hart discussed his religion (or at least an upbringing in the Church of the Nazarene) in a 2004 New York Times op-ed suggesting, as most liberals reflexively do, that religion should only enter politics if it's for liberal goals.
