Don the Builder

 

Hotel Commodore, on East 42nd Street at Lexington, 1970s, via an exceptionally modest blog called "Random Musings". Pretty sure the gray wall at right is the base of the glorious deco Chrysler Building. 

Trump: "Now we have a big decision to make. Do we take the pavers that are red -- the red, brick pavers -- and do we change them into a granite?"

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) August 3, 2026 at 2:39 PM

And Maggie Haberman comments, in her book promo interview with Ezra Klein, “If you looked at a chart of his mind share — this I will say about getting into his mind: Seventy percent of it would be on his renovations.”

It occurred to me that there's a reason nobody has figured out yet for this obsession with "renovations" as Maggie calls them, connected with something we've understood for a while: that there's a world where Trump really feels pretty comfortable. Where he has felt comfortable for a good 50 years, since 1975, when he first formed a partnership with the Hyatt Organization to buy the skanky old Commodore Hotel next door to Grand Central Station in midtown Manhattan and and spend $100 million to turn it into a Grand Hyatt, is in the guise of Don the Builder ("Can you fix it?" "Yes I can!").

What's Next on the Debt Ceiling?

Random denomination. too. Via.

So Joe Biden, having sworn never to yield to McCarthy's blackmail and negotiate appropriations under the threat that the House could refuse to do its constitutional duty and pass a rise in the debt ceiling and allow the nation to default on its debt for the first time in our history ...

... has started negotiating appropriations under the threat that the House could refuse to pass a rise in the debt ceiling, and so forth. Have we got that right?

Possibly not. David Dayen at The American Prospect, who certainly knows more about these matters than I can even imagine, has come up with a more benign way of looking at it, anyway, based on the fact that McCarthy really did pass a rise in the debt ceiling, in his own peculiar way, even though it was in a bill the Senate and White House couldn't possibly agree to; that changed the situation, as Dayen said:

I do believe there was some inkling, at least within the White House, that McCarthy would never get that bill passed. It took a fairly superhuman effort for him to thread the needle of his caucus and find a majority, and then only when two Democrats missed the vote. You can’t fight something with nothing; if McCarthy couldn’t get consensus, at some point he’d have to acquiesce to a clean debt ceiling increase. That would have been humiliating and reasonably possible. It was worth going for from the Democrats’ perspective. 

I remember thinking that way myself, and it came agonizingly close to being true. But in the end it wasn't, and Democrats (and Mitch McConnell) had to turn to a different approach. What they're up to now is negotiating, but politely disagreeing on what they're negotiating about: the debt ceiling is "off the table", say Schumer and Biden; the debt ceiling is "off the table", says McConnell; "No it isn't," says Kevin, and it's a free country, so he has a right to his opinion. But the fact remains that when the solution comes, over the next couple of weeks, it will include a rise in the debt ceiling.

Class War Comix

 

Class War Comix 1, by Skip Williamson, ca. 1970

Eric Levitz at New York informs us:

In a 2019 report, the consulting firm Cerulli Associates projected that, over the next quarter century, roughly 45 million U.S. households will collectively bequeath $68.4 trillion to their heirs. This transfer will constitute the largest redistribution of wealth in human history. Generation X stands to inherit 57 percent of that $68.4 trillion; millennials will collect the bulk of the rest.

Millennials, in other words, are one day going to be a lot richer (or at least, some millennials are). In the coming years, that reality is likely to heighten the generation’s class contradictions – and just might redraw the dividing lines in American politics.

How many millennials, exactly? Not too many, apparently. Levitz calls it about 10% who will be getting all that money, while the other 90% will continue being "one of the the poorest generations ever", crippled by debt and largely unable to build wealth, unstable in employment, often deprived by employers (in the gig economy) of benefits, and delayed in starting families. The typical Millennial holds 41% less wealth than an adult of similar age did in 1989, according to one report in 2019, and these meager holdings are very unequally distributed, especially on ethnic-racial lines:

For the Record: I Was Proved F*ing Right

Used this back in 2018.

Or at least that's where Professor Rosen seems to have ended up, though he doesn't seem clear himself whether he's saying it or not:

Here's the AP: "Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure deal was thrown in doubt Friday as Republican senators felt 'blindsided' by his insistence that it must move in tandem with his bigger package." https://t.co/1PhLSHt4ao

Again: Why did @AP buy the "we were blindsided" gambit? 2/2

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) June 26, 2021

Schrödinger's Group of 21 Update

Photo by J. Scott Applewhite/AP, via.

Jordan in comments trying to figure out what I was saying:

I'm having real trouble following this (not because your explanations and analyses have been lacking in any way, but just because it's so complex and multilayered).

Basically, you're concluding by saying that the deal is done — both parts of it — despite McConnell etc. publicly bitching, because if it wasn't, then Biden wouldn't be talking about it being accomplished...right?

To clarify, I'm afraid it was basically bad writing--or blogging, web-logging, in the most literal sense, just typing up information as it came in. I'm feeling very uncertain whether this was a brilliant plan or an awful error.

I started off just to record how Rosen jumped on me, with the idea that I'd then try to figure who was right—was it a group of 10 senators or was it 21?—but can't even draw a conclusion on that at this point, let alone on the significance of what happened. The thing Jordan mentions is from inside the argument with Rosen (what do Biden's remarks mean, what are they evidence of, with reference to that?). Rosen later sent some tweets without tagging me, complaining that USA Today had been irresponsible in claiming that it was a group of 21. He still thinks he and The Times were right, and I can't say I even have a right to disagree, only at best that I don't think it matters much who was right: I mean, I still don't know the answer, but my best defense is that the question itself, 10 or 21, wasn't at all the major thing.

For the Record: Schrödinger's Group of 21

 

President Biden with the Group of Ten Minus Two (Tester and Collins invisible behind Portman?), or something. Photo by Jacquelyn Martin/AP via Deseret News. 

They already claim to have 11 Republicans. https://t.co/BFe61ZM6cL I think it's that earmarks are back

— Specter of Happiness (@Yastreblyansky) June 25, 2021

I just meant to be helpful, I'd got this thing nobody was talking about from Wonkette, reading for the previous post. But Professor Rosen kind of snapped at me.

The Byrds and the Budgets

 

In Dearborn in the F-150 in May, Reuters photo via Hindustan Times.

So last night I saw Senator Klobuchar on CNN discussing the latest iteration of the Romney-Manchin American Heritage Infrastructure Plan (my name for it; the one where they're sworn to only have the kind of infrastructure admitted in the 1969 original edition of the American Heritage Dictionary) saying plain as day that we didn't need to worry about the other $2.7 trillion of the Biden plan because Democrats would be simply going on to pass that part independently as a budget reconciliation bill, more or less the way I've been saying it was going to happen, and I said to myself, Holy Cow, so it's all out in the open now?

And apparently at the same or almost the same time Doktor Zoom was seeing Senator Warren on MSNBC doing the same or almost the same exact job, and in the following hour Senator Markey: The Jobs and Families plans will now be sent through Congress on a two-track basis, sort of as I've been predicting, as the Doktor put it in inimitable Wonkette style:

Joe Did What? Budget edition

 

So the thing Biden is releasing tomorrow is the White House budget proposal for fiscal 2022, with projections out to 2031 (don't forget that it's only a statement of what the president would like Congress to do, and what they actually do will certainly be different in small or big ways), and Jim Tankersley/NYTimes got enough of an advance look at it to give us a preview.

The most "Joe Did What?" bit for me is that in addition to lowering the Medicare qualification age to 60 and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, both sort of predicted, he recommends adding dental, vision, and hearing care to the Medicare list of services, an obviously great and needed item that has long been on the Sanders agenda but I think never taken seriously by a president before (though there's no cost estimate and it's not part of the budget proper, like our beloved ACA public option, which is apparently recommended in the same way). But the thing that's really interesting me is the picture it provides of not just how big this New Deal–sized program is but how it's timed, not just the spending but also the funding, through borrowing and progressive taxation. Tankersley didn't mention the last in his tease tweet—

Rarely Asked Questions: How Does Government Pay Its Bills?

Winner of my "Best Visual Illustration of Rarely Asked Questions" contest, via EntheoNation.

I'm crazy about the Biden proposals introduced in Wednesday's Joint Speech, or as Susan Glasser/New Yorker says, in what seems to me like the most accurate summary I've seen,

To anyone who remembered last year’s Democratic primaries, the President’s first address to a joint session of Congress sounded as if Elizabeth Warren, and not Biden, had won.

and I'm going to want to take issue with scoffers, not necessarily representing "Modern Monetary Theory", including the generally very estimable David Dayen at The American Prospect, complaining of "that old deficit hawkery" in the way the plan is being sold.

I don't think it's that at all. But before I get there, I'd like to lay down some basics on the nature of government spending in a modern state that I think aren't well understood. because most of us think we already know, and as I've been learning recently we don't:

Rarely Asked Questions:

Q: How does the government pay its bills?

A: It has a checking account, known as the Fund Balance With Treasury (FBWT).

Q: Where does the money come from?

A: Everyplace that gives the US government money, including tax collections by the IRS and other agencies, fees it collects from various enterprises (think parking at national parks. but there's lots more), and of course money it has borrowed from the private sector by selling bonds and other kinds of federal paper. Unlike your checking account, it also includes all the assets the government owns that it can't easily convert into cash, generally inventory, and isn't supposed to sell, like stocks of toilet paper and paperclips and nuclear weapons and land, plus the loans it issues to veterans, students, small business owners, etc.

Q: So that's a lot of money, right?

Reconciliation is Real

Peter Paul Rubens, The Reconciliation of Henri III and Henri of Navarre, 1628, via Wikimedia Commons.

Ezra Klein's dour Times piece last week ("Democrats, Here's How to Lose in 2022: And Deserve It") put it in pretty distressing terms, though he didn't seem quite aware of what he was saying: he knows how Democrats can hold onto the Senate in 2022, by quickly passing some legislation that makes a difference in people's lives, which has already been basically written—

The good news is that Democrats have learned many of these lessons, at least in theory. The $1.9 trillion rescue plan Biden proposed is packed with ideas that would make an undeniable difference in people’s lives, from $1,400 checks to paid leave to the construction of a national coronavirus testing infrastructure that will allow some semblance of normal life to resume.

—and doubling of the federal minimum wage to $15, that's pretty popular too. All they need is to abolish the Senate filibuster, which is unfortunately not going to happen:

Literary Corner: Noir

Photo by Mark Coggins/flickr.

Do not underestimate how many congressional Republicans would like to send checks to their people. Recently, I was on a call with the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus and a similar group of senators. I was struck by how passionately these Republicans and Democrats are committed to one another across party lines, how deftly they used the evenly divided Congress to restart the Covid-19 relief effort in December, how fervently they want to break the partisan logjam.

If this doesn’t work and Republicans go into full obstruction mode, Democrats should absolutely kill the filibuster. (David F. Brooks, "The Case For Biden Optimism", 21 January 2021)

The phone rang, a familiar number. I let it ring, long enough to take a shluk from the bottle of Waldweben Peach Schnapps and shove it back in the upper left desk drawer, then picked up. "Brooks here."

"Hello, David. How's married life?"

"Suits me. What can I do for you, outside of something I can't do for you?"

"You can do us a favor."

"Where have I heard that line before?"

"It's just a little thing."

I sighed, probably audibly, and tried to gather my wits. "I'm out of the game, pal. I don't do it any more. I just have to do one column a week, I have a gig at Aspen. I have a nice new wife, she doesn't like politics, she likes religion, go figure. I like religion too. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside."

What a Relief

 

Photo by AFP via a website my computer says I shouldn't trust.

My unpopular opinion on the "stimulus" bill is in the first place that it isn't a stimulus, which is a good thing, because that's not what we need, at the moment, economically; the purpose of a stimulus program is to pump up weak demand, and weak demand isn't our problem. Plenty of us have plenty of money, which we could spend to encourage economic activity and create jobs and make everything boom for everybody, and the reason we aren't spending it isn't that we don't want to, it's that we're scared to go out. There's a pandemic on, people!

The problem we have is a pandemic problem, and the way to fix it is to end the pandemic. That's the only stimulus we need, and we're doing what we can, though we could no doubt be doing it better (and will be, after 20 January), and it's going to take about a year, during which things are just not going to be too lively on the economic front no matter how much we try to goose it. What we need in the meantime is a relief bill, to tide us over and keep us alive while we're waiting, and this is in fact what Congress has just produced—an installment, at any rate—lightly disguised as a stimulus. My unpopular opinion is that Speaker Pelosi has just rolled Majority Leader McConnell, once again, the way President Obama did in 2011, and sneaked a pretty good bill past him.

My Unpopular Opinion: In favor of Paygo from the left

It looks as if the new House of Representatives is going to adopt what is known as a "Paygo" rule for legislation, short for "pay as you go", which reminds us all of deficit-busting hysteria from 1990 through 1997 and the worse that came after, and is going to cause a lot of howling out here in the peanut gallery, and I've been reading around a little bit about it, and I'm afraid I'm going to ask folks to calm down a little bit—not that congresscritters who have promised constituents to vote against it should go back on their word (if only because I'm sure Speaker-to-be Pelosi knows who she can spare in the vote), though Progressive Caucus chairs Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal will in fact be voting in favor

In good sign for Pelosi/Dem leadership, Congressional Progressive Chairs Reps. Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal will vote for the rules package despite including PAYGO

Makes path to 18 much more difficult for Khanna and AOC

Read @mikedebonis https://t.co/BG8l7d3dkl https://t.co/JZUPgWP3Sd

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) January 2, 2019

—but that persons of progressive views in general need to understand that there are a lot of serious misconceptions going around about what Paygo is and what it isn't: and that it is not a neoliberal conspiracy to privatize Social Security, as I've been learning from a piece from early December by Robert Greenstein for Dean Baker's Center on Budget and Policy Priorities suggesting that "Paygo" is a tool that can further progressive goals, especially if you're among those of us who believe the reduction of economic inequality entails taking away wealth from those who have too much, in the very stern terms laid down by Anand Ghiridaradas:

Trumpism Without Trump

Betty Bronson in the 1924 version by Herbert Brenon of Peter Pan, with Virginia Brown Faire as Tinker Bell, via Raiders of the Lost Tumblr.

Shorter Monsignor Ross Douthat, Apostolic Nuncio to 42nd Street ("The Pull of Populism"):

Crude and demogogic, haphazard, hypocritical, and often stupid, but you've got to hand it to the Trump administration, they're doing the right thing.

Which is, to be exact, getting the isms under control, with the "nationalism-infused deficit-financed populism" implementing the "Trumpian or George W. Bushian mix of cultural conservatism and economic populism", which sounds like an item from one of those farm-to-table restaurants (Champagne-braised leg of Long Island rabbit in a bath of fennel-infused truffle broth napped with ginger-cloudberry Ranch dressing) but "is in fact the natural basis for an American center-right majority".

Or in English, if you prefer, he thinks there's something there that might win elections, a composite new ism, and if there are any conservatives who don't like it they should shut up.

KAG!

Sometime early Thursday morning, I think, the phrase "ignoring Trump", captured on the screenshot from my phone, disappeared from the New York Times teaser headline in the computer version, although "disregarded President Trump's threats" remained in the body copy:

Then again, Trump had moved in Wednesday afternoon to claim implicit credit for the coming resolution: