Our guest blogger is Michael Linden, Associate Director of Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

That whining sound you’ve been hearing today is the traditional mating call of the Deficit Hawk. Every year, right around early February, you can hear them as they fly from media outlet to media outlet complaining how, in terms of deficit reduction, the President’s new budget isn’t good enough.

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), for example, moaned that we need, “a much more robust package of deficit and debt reduction over the medium and long term.” Alice Rivlin, a member of the now-completed Deficit Commission, pouted, “I would have preferred to see the administration get out front on addressing the entitlements and the tax reform that we need to reduce long-run deficits.” And the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget sent out a press release grumbling that, “this budget does not go nearly far enough.”

Their hearts may be in the right place, but all that rushing about trying to impress each other with their deficit-cutting plumage is leading them to the wrong conclusion. The President’s budget goes exactly as far as it should, showing deficits declining from a high of 10.9 percent of GDP down to 3.2 percent of GDP by 2015. The budget includes more than $2 trillion in deficit reduction, most of which come in the form of spending cuts, and would stabilize the debt as a share of GDP.

True, as Rivlin complained, it doesn’t “get out front” on addressing entitlements or tax reform. But since she herself was a member of not one, but two bipartisan deficit commission, Rivlin should know better than anyone that a comprehensive plan that cuts entitlement spending, raises taxes, and generally goes after everyone’s sacred cows will quickly find itself gathering dust.

f the president had followed her lead, his budget would be just another impossible plan to be mocked, attacked, or ignored. As Center for American Progress Action Fund Vice President for Economic Policy, Michael Ettlinger, put it:

While the impatient purists would like to see plans to solve the nation’s long-term problems right now, trying immediately to completely solve our substantial long-term budget challenges would both make success unlikely and be largely pointless because other presidents and Congresses will have much to say about the budgets of the future.

Instead, the President did exactly the right thing by showing how to meaningfully improve our fiscal situation in the near and medium term, without relying on massive, sure-to-be-unpopular reforms, or hoping for a sudden outbreak of bipartisan comity. His budget is a realistic path to stabilizing the debt-to-GDP ratio within five years, and reducing our deficits to more manageable levels.

Getting broad agreement on how we control rising health care costs, protect and reform Social Security, cut back on defense spending, and raise new revenue is going to take years. We are at the beginning of that process, not the end. We shouldn’t want, nor do we need, the president to offer a comprehensive long-term plan for balancing the budget. What we do need is a way to get some fiscal breathing room, so we have the time it’s going to take to come to a workable agreement. And we shouldn’t wait until a “grand bargain” is struck to start down that path.

Last week, ThinkProgress revealed that top lawyers for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce solicited private security contractors to investigate the Chamber’s political opponents. The law firm, Hunton & Williams LLP, represents the Chamber against campaigns by unions and political activists. In 2009, the Chamber paid Hunton & Williams $1,147,644 for its services. The law firm has represented subprime mortgagers, global warming polluters, and tobacco giant Phillip Morris.

Three Hunton & Williams partners engaged the services of Palantir, Berico Technologies, and HBGary Federal to perform the invasions of privacy the Chamber itself now describes as “abhorrent“:

– Richard L. Wyatt Jr., co-head of the firm’s Litigation Group, who is suing the Yes Men on behalf of the Chamber. Wyatt negotiated with the spy firms on pricing and told them he would sell the project to the Chamber.

– Robert T. Quackenboss, a lawyer who handles “the tactical and public communications response to union-coordinated attack campaigns.” In this effort, Quackenboss was the “key client contact operationally” with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

– John W. Woods, an expert on “electronic surveillance” and “corporate crimes.” Woods was the “primary point of contact” with the corporate spy contractors.

A key service that attracted the Chamber’s lawyers to the corporate spies was the ability of HBGary’s CEO Aaron Barr to use computer programs and false “personas” to “scrape” personal information from the websites of Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media sites. Such acts are in explicit contravention of the legal terms of service of Facebook and LinkedIn.

Emails leaked from HBGary’s servers describe how Hunton & Williams solicited Berico, Palantir, and HBGary — who named their collaboration “Themis,” after the Roman goddess of law and order — to use social media scrapers developed by HBGary to investigate political opponents of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Although Hunton & Williams avoided paying for the months of work, their officials solicited the proposal; repeatedly met with all participants; were fully aware that HBGary was scraping sensitive personal information about political adversaries of the Chamber; and praised the results of joint presentations by Berico, Palantir, and HBGary showing off the scrapers.

In January of this year, H&W sent by courier a CD with target data to the contractors. H&W also solicited the Themis team to produce a presentation on WikiLeaks for Bank of America that promoted their Facebook scraper.

“Misuses of social media can result in damage to the employer’s reputation, breach of confidentiality, and trade secret theft,” Hunton & Williams ironically noted last year on one of its blogs. As of yet, it has refused to comment on its own misuse of social media on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Last month, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) said that if employees strike, “they should be fired,” and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) wrote in an op-ed that the moral case for unions “does not apply to public employment.” Now, facing a $137 million budget deficit, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has proposed a “budget repair bill” that would severely limit collective bargaining, eliminate the right of unions to negotiate pensions, retirement and benefits.

Walker is facing fierce criticism for this all-out assault against state workers, especially after he insisted that the “National Guard” will be used against a walkout:

When asked by a reporter what will happen if workers resist, Walker replied that he would call out the National Guard. He said that the National Guard is “prepared…for whatever the governor, their commander-in-chief, might call for. … I am fully prepared for whatever may happen.”

Traditionally, the National Guard is called to assist Americans in times of crisis; so Walker’s attempt to use the National Guard as a tool to suppress dissent is particularly deplorable. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, more than 50,000 Guard members were called to help, and following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, more than 50,000 Guards were deployed. Veterans have strongly objected to Walker’s recent intent to use the National Guard as a vessel to intimidate state workers. VoteVet released a statement today that says Walker shouldn’t use the National Guard as an “intimidation force“:

“Maybe the new governor doesn’t understand yet – but the National Guard is not his own personal intimidation force to be mobilized to quash political dissent,” said Robin Eckstein, a former Wisconsin National Guard member, Iraq War Veteran from Appleton, WI, and member of VoteVets.org. “The Guard is to be used in case of true emergencies and disasters, to help the people of Wisconsin, not to bully political opponents. Considering many veterans and Guard members are union members, it’s even more inappropriate to use the Guard in this way. This is a very dangerous line the Governor is about to cross.”

Wisconsin state employee unions already made $100 million in concessions last December. Now, under Walker’s new proposal, state workers would have to make further sacrifices by doubling their contributions to health insurance premiums and increasing allocations to their pensions. Walker’s bill would effectively take away the right of state employees to collectively bargain for everything from vacation, sick hours, and even the hours they work. But, smacking of political favoritism for the unions that supported Walker’s campaign, the State Patrol, local police, and fire departments would stay absolutely unchanged.

In response to Walker’s assault, the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO launched a major advertising campaign, in which they say Walker and other politicians plan to “take away rights of thousands of nurses, teachers and other trusted public employees” with almost no public debate.

A pattern is emerging, where Republican dominated governments across the country are shaping up to strip workers’ rights. In addition to Walker’s new proposal, last week, Ohio Gov. Kasich said that if lawmakers don’t pass a collective bargaining bill that he approves, Kasich will impose his own changes in the Ohio budget next month. Following in lockstep, Indiana, Idaho, and Tennessee all have legislation in the works to strip teachers’ ability to collectively bargain.

– Paul Breer

ThinkProgress has previously revealed how Hunton & Williams — a top law firm working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — solicited three private security contractors to investigate political opponents of the Chamber. A key service that attracted the Chamber’s lawyers to the corporate spies — Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies, and HBGary Federal — was the ability of HBGary’s CEO Aaron Barr to use computer programs to “scrape” personal information from the websites of Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media sites.

Leaked emails show that Berico, Palantir, and HBGary conspired to store information scraped from social media sites on Palantir’s servers. On November 11, Barr sent Facebook data about the supporters and leaders of Change To Win, CodePink, US Chamber Watch and other organizations to Berico, who then passed the “scrapes” with “mugshots” along to Palantir:

Just after the November elections, Hunton & Williams partner John Woods specifically requested that Barr “impress” his colleague Richard Wyatt, the head of the firm’s litigation group, by investigating Chamber adversary Stop The Chamber. Woods made the request after Barr demonstrated unethical personal data collection about Wyatt. Woods noted that invading Wyatt’s privacy “might freak out” his partner, but then encouraged Barr to go after the Chamber’s political opponents using the same methods.

Woods also solicited the corporate spies with the “URGENT OPPORTUNITY” to produce a presentation on WikiLeaks for Bank of America that promoted their “social media exploitation.”

Such acts are in explicit contravention of the legal terms of service of Facebook:

You will not collect users’ content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission.

If you collect information from users, you will: obtain their consent, make it clear you (and not Facebook) are the one collecting their information, and post a privacy policy explaining what information you collect and how you will use it.

Facebook has strict policies for registering researchers who wish to conduct automated data collection, which it does not appear that Hunton & Williams or the contractors followed.

“Collection through automated means of people’s information violates our terms,” Facebook spokesman Fred Wolens told ThinkProgress. “We have taken, and will continue to take action against organizations that violate these terms.”

Likewise, it is a violation of the legally binding LinkedIn terms of service to use “manual or automated software, devices, scripts robots, other means or processes to access, “scrape,” “crawl” or “spider” any web pages or other services contained in the site” or to “[c]ollect, use or transfer any information, including but not limited to, personally identifiable information obtained from LinkedIn except as expressly permitted in this Agreement or as the owner of such information may expressly permit.”

On Friday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — the big business lobby representing Exxon Mobil, Goldman Sachs, AIG, and other major corporations — released its second denial in the ongoing ChamberLeaks controversy. In it, they claimed that HBGary’s proposal “was never discussed with anyone at the Chamber” and that “the Chamber was not aware of these proposals until HBGary’s e-mails leaked.” However, at least six separate leaked HBGary emails suggest that, contrary to their denials, the Chamber was repeatedly made aware of the activities of HBGary and two other private security firms.

As ThinkProgress laid out last week, the lobbying law firm Hunton & Williams (H&W) served as the go-between for the Chamber and three private security firms — HBGary, Palantir, and Berico Technologies — who were collectively known as “Team Themis.” Emails indicate that three top lawyers at Hunton & Williams — John Woods, Bob Quackenboss, and Richard Wyatt — met on multiple occasions with the Chamber in order to brief them on Team Themis’s proposals.

First, emails clearly indicate that the “client” whom Team Themis was assisting was indeed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

– December 13: Pat Ryan of Berico Technologies emailed John Woods that the team was excited “to provide the client with a powerful, innovative solution” and were “still working through the details of our Phase I research/analysis support for the Chamber.”

– January 9: Pat Ryan emailed his Team Themis colleagues that he had received a message from H&W lawyer Bob Quackenboss’s secretary “requesting a conference call on Mon at 10am to discuss the way ahead for the Chamber effort.”

Despite the Chamber’s insistence that they were “not aware” of HBGary’s proposals, a November 16 email between Aaron Barr of HBGary and Berico Technologies indicated that members of Team Themis had been communicating about contracts with Hunton & Williams:

Other emails records indicate that H&W told Team Themis it was in constant contact with the Chamber about the project:

– November 16: In a Team Themis internal memo, Eli Bingham of Palantir informed the group that H&W would soon “write and return a contract.” A week later, on November 23, a meeting was scheduled where Richard Wyatt, one of H&W’s top laywers, would be “presenting to the client.” Bingham pushed to “have a team representative there, or a demo video.”

– November 23: H&W lawyer John Woods wrote to Sam Kremin of Berico Technologies to explain that fellow H&W laywer Bob Quackenboss was the point man between H&W and the Chamber. “Bob is our key client contact operationally,” Woods wrote, “and he will be called upon to explain to a different group what you all will actually be doing.”

– November 29: After Aaron Barr wrote the email detailing Team Themis’s plan to create a “false document” and “fake insider personnas (sic)” intended to trick the Chamber’s political opponents, Sam Kremin approved and said he would forward the plans to Bob Quackenboss in order to brief the Chamber. “When I give these to Bob,” Kremin wrote, “I will emphasize that these are just examples to give him an idea of what he is pitching to the Chamber.”

– December 1: Matthew Steckman of Palantir updated Team Themis on a meeting he had just concluded with H&W. Discussing the proposed $2 million project fee, Steckman noted that H&W lawyer Richard Wyatt was “looking to push that number to the Chamber.” In the meantime, non-disclosure agreements were being drawn up for the team. H&W was enthusiastic because they saw the “potential for huge gains in this market especially since ‘the results of the election made some people angry.’” Steckman wrote that following Phase I of the project, H&W was “looking forward to briefing the results to the Chamber to get them to pony up the cash for Phase II.” That meeting had been set to take place today, February 14. It’s unclear whether it will still happen.

– February 3: Pat Ryan of Berico Technologies wrote Team Themis that they should meet with H&W lawyer Bob Quackenboss in the next few days to “select focused topic(s) for the demo to the Chamber” that had been scheduled to occur today. Ryan noted that Quackenboss told him that a separate demo had “sold the Chamber in the first place.”

While many questions remain in the unfolding ChamberLeaks controversy, what’s clear is that this multitude of emails clearly contradicts the Chamber’s claim that they were “not aware of these proposals until HBGary’s e-mails leaked.” Rather, H&W’s lawyers appear to have consistently kept the Chamber informed on Team Themis’s progress.

The Obama administration officially releases its fiscal year 2012 budget today, but the fate of government funding for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year (which ends in October) is still up in the air. The House Appropriations committee last week released its initial plan to finish the fiscal year, which involved about $30 billion in cuts.

However, more conservative Republicans revolted, and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) was forced to go back to the drawing board for more cuts. His new product would cut about $60 billion relative to the 2010 baseline (under which the government is currently operating), or about $100 billion compared to President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget request (which was never enacted).

The GOP’s proposal includes a slew of cuts to important programs, agencies, and investments, and would be detrimental to job creation, education, and scientific research. But, according to a list obtained by The Wonk Room, they also specifically zero out many programs, cutting their funding entirely, including:

– High speed rail investments ($5 billion)

– COPS Hiring (supporting local law enforcement) ($298 million)

– High School Graduation Initiative ($50 million)

– Weatherization assistance program ($210 million)

– National Park Service climate change monitoring and response ($4.5 million)

– Corporation for Public Broadcasting ($86 million)

– Green Jobs Innovation Fund ($40 million)

These are just a few choice selections. A more complete list of program terminations can be found below. And of course, the Republicans propose deep reductions to other programs that promote health, education, job training, and innovation, even while leaving them some sliver of funding.

The Republican proposal highlights, once again, how pound-foolish the GOP approach to budgeting is. As CAP economist Adam Hersh wrote, “If there is one point on which all economists can agree, it is that investment — in infrastructure, in research and innovation, and worker productivity — is the foundation for economic growth. Rep. Rogers’ plan robs the U.S. economy of all three.” And Republicans are promising even deeper spending cuts, with Rogers saying “this CR legislation will be the first of many Appropriations bills this year that will significantly reduce federal spending.”

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