Manufactured Crisis

If the main problem with America is jobs right now, why is the NY Times' Jackie Calmes on the front page of the Grey Lady screaming about the national debt?

Oh yes, because that's what the Republicans want.  And the "liberal media" delivers.

Elected Republicans, however, are under intense pressure from their party’s conservative base to oppose any tax increases — a line in the sand that dims any prospects for bipartisan cooperation. Yet economists, including veterans of past Republican administrations, are vocal in insisting that the debt problem is too great to be solved without increasing revenues somehow and perhaps moving to a new consumption tax system like Europe’s.
The same economists also say a significant deficit-reduction plan is not possible unless Mr. Obama breaks his campaign promise not to raise taxes for households making less than $250,000. Last week, Mr. Obama said he would not impose that condition or any other on a fiscal commission.

The situation is complicated by a debate over how quickly Washington should act even if it could. The Obama administration, Congressional Democratic leaders and many economists are pushing for additional government stimulus measures while the private sector remains weak. But anger about big deficits has stoked the populism roiling politics, and Republicans as well as some conservative Democrats want to cut spending right now as a way of addressing perceptions among voters that government has gotten too big, too intrusive and too profligate. Mr. Obama himself proposed a budget that would freeze spending on some categories of domestic spending for three years.

Many analysts say the president and Congress could send a strong signal to global markets by agreeing this year to a package of both long-term tax increases and spending reductions, especially in the popular entitlement programs, that would not take effect until 2012. That is the recommendation of two new studies, one from a diverse group sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and a separate joint project of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The Village wanking on deficits aside, there's the much larger issue:  Republicans refuse to raise taxes, so Democrats are just going to have to cut entitlement spending.   It's amazing, Republicans and ConservaDems are screaming that the solution to a jobless recovery is to cut spending and send us into a double-dip recession.  Obama has to be the bad guy and take all the electoral wrath for tax increases...and he's being set up to take all the pain for entitlement cuts too. 

Through eight years of the Bush administration, deficits didn't matter.  Only now with a Democrat in the White House for a year, with Republicans like Michele Bachmann already pinning Bush's profligacy on him, are Republicans worried about deficits.  They are demanding massive cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

And if they don't get them, why they might not cooperate with the President.  Oh no!

Here's the kicker however.  Obama is going along with this stupidity.  I'm not sure why, but he is.  He has to know he's being set up to take the fall and as soon as the GOP gets back in control from the economy being wrecked from following GOP advice, the GOP will turn around and cut taxes and run up trillions in deficits again, forcing the elimination of social programs across the country.

Obama must see this coming.  And so far he's walking right into the trap.