No Dealing On The Debt Ceiling, Part 48

Today, both parties try to sell the Big Deal(tm) to their respective caucuses with votes today.  With some 40 hours until the deadline, time is of the essence.  But in no way is everyone on board.

Urbandale, Iowa -- Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann issued the following response to President Obama's statement on the proposed debt limit deal:

"Mr. President, I'm not sure what voice you're listening to, but I can assure you that the voice of the American people wasn't the 'voice that compelled Washington to act.' It was you that got us into this mess, and it was you who wanted a $2.4 trillion dollar blank check to get you through the election. Everywhere I travel across the country, Americans want less spending, lower taxes to create jobs, and they don't want us to raise the debt ceiling.

"The President continues to press for a 'balanced approach,' which everyone knows is code for increased spending and taxes. Throughout this process the President has failed to lead and failed to provide a plan. The 'deal' he announced spends too much and doesn't cut enough. This isn't the deal the American people 'preferred' either, Mr. President. Someone has to say no. I will."

First of all how does a $2.4 trillion blank check work?  Second of all, for us not to raise the debt ceiling, we would have to go back and rework the 2010 budget resolution which already passed, and we would have to cut Social Security and Medicare.  Thirdly, raising the debt ceiling is so we can meet the obligations that Congress itself directed us to take, not to create additional spending.  Bachmann's simply lying about things.



On the other side of the coin, The Kroog is pissed.

Make no mistake about it, what we’re witnessing here is a catastrophe on multiple levels.

It is, of course, a political catastrophe for Democrats, who just a few weeks ago seemed to have Republicans on the run over their plan to dismantle Medicare; now Mr. Obama has thrown all that away. And the damage isn’t over: there will be more choke points where Republicans can threaten to create a crisis unless the president surrenders, and they can now act with the confident expectation that he will.

In the long run, however, Democrats won’t be the only losers. What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t. 

That choke point he's talking about is the FY 2012 budget fight in September, with a government shutdown looming as early as October 1.  Krugman's overreacting more than a bit here, especially since most of the economic action doesn't kick in until January 2013.  But that FY 2012 budget fight will have an impact on spending in a recession.  And if Tea Party Republicans start calling for a balanced budget, along with more tax cuts and massive, immediate spending cuts or else, and are willing to shut down the government, then the validity of Paul Krugman's theory will get a major test very soon.

And let's keep in mind this is still a terrible deal that the country's going to have to find a way to merely survive.  There are no winners, only major categories of losers.  The fact we're even talking about serious budget cuts when we need stimulus right now assures that the country's economic woes will absolutely continue well into the twenty teens.

I for one plan to resolve this horrendous situation by getting rid of the Republicans responsible for it so it can then be fixed.  It's the only way out, winning in 2012.  Greg Sargent expertly sums up how I feel:

I wish Obama had done all these things. That said, an additional question needs to be posed. If the basic premise of this critique holds that Obama should have stood up to a party that was prepared to allow the economy to implode in order to get its way, then why are we assuming that Republicans wouldn’t have done that anyway, no matter what the President did? If Obama had barnstormed the country for weeks, hammering the GOP with the demand for a clean debt ceiling hike and threatening the Constitutional option if the GOP didn’t buckle, would Republicans really have changed their behavior?


There are a couple of nuances that need to be added to the criticism of Obama, even though much of it is fair. First, with the deadline looming, Obama and Dems faced a choice: After their demand for a debt ceiling hike was rebuffed, they had to decide whether to shift to negotiations. Given that the deadline was fast approaching, this had to be done earlier rather than later to ensure that a compromise could be reached.

Could Obama have adopted a far more aggressive posture while negotiations were going on? Absolutely. But the simple fact of entering into talks inevitably reinforced the sense that Obama and Dems were not prepared to allow default — no matter what — reinforcing a set of dynamics that were stacked against them. Was that avoidable?

And the answer to all that is no, the Republicans still would have been completely barking mad.  The question is not what President Obama should have done differently, but would anything have stopped the Tea Party GOP from taking the country hostage with a Democrat in the White House?

Of course the answer to that question is no.  And if it was Hillary Clinton doing this, going big, barnstorming the country and STILL getting this exact deal that pushed most of the pain until after the 2012 election, would we have the same people demanding her head that are wanting to primary President Obama?  I'm not convinced in the least that the answer would be yes.  In fact, I'd be convinced that people would see Hillary as having grandly fought for liberals to preserve what she could.

Why is that?  There's an obvious theory, but I have to believe the left is better than that.