**This post has been cross posted on Western Mass Politics & Insight and DailyKos**
President Barack Obama has announced that a deal has been reached to raise the debt ceiling. It is abysmal. The unemployed, sick and poor are thrown under the bus. That there can be no doubt. However, for all that there are some bright spots to be pried out from under the rear bus wheel.
1. Congress cannot bind itself into the future. There remains plenty of ammo for Democrats to hang onto as they venture forward into the 2012 Congressional races. Although hits will probably be sustained in North Carolina new Congressional map and redistricting will protect Republicans elsewhere Democrats have some hope to hang onto in California and Illinois. So recapturing the House remains possible and holding the Senate is not outside the realm of possibility. Should both things happen and President Obama wins another term, though not a definite thing, the worst of this can be reversed. Think reconciliation.
2. Although changes to the tax code are not included in the deal or seemingly allowed to raise revenue in the new Super Congress, the Bush tax cuts expire January 1 2013. President Barack Obama has ZERO incentive to extend them again for the wealthiest before election day. If Republicans want to protect the wealthy at the expense of the poor, let them. Trying the opposite argument bought Democrats nothing in 2010 and it will do the same in 2012.
3. The White House promises that most of the reduction will be done in the out years. If true, see point number 1.
4. Although the president consistently called for a balanced approach, it is worth noting that the tax revenue was really only ever an adamant requirement if the Big Three were cut. Medicare risks knicking, but Medicaid and Social Security survive unscathed.
5. We finally make seriously cuts to our bloated Defence Establishment.
6. Although no unemployment or payroll deduction was included, we can now (hopefully) move onto job creation as our main conversation, even if this deal could weaken the economy.
7. All the details are not yet out.
Let me be clear once more. The deal appears to be simply awful. However, there is some wisdom, however disconcerting, to be taken from the New York Times editorial about the calculation of dealing with extortionists. Unlike in years past, the extortionists were really willing to destroy the economy and frankly the longer term impact of that would have hurt Democrats and President Obama far more. For whatever wrath some Republicans in moderate districts may fact, we need only remember that the GOP had higher unfavorables last year than Democrats and still won. They would have destroyed the economy, but the Republicans that vote against this deal can and will have their irresponsibility shoved in their face either in primaries or generals (preferably the latter).
As many Democrats that can should vote against this deal. However, the deal must still pass. President Obama would be inviting political character assassination of an unprecedented degree if he exercised the Fourteenth Amendment option. The White House could only have plausibly used this method if it lines up individuals affected by the debt ceiling to sue for it to be overturned. By the time judges would get around to this, the damage may already have been done.
As liberals, it is always troubling to be shoved to the center when the leaders we have placed our hopes in fail to meet our expectations. Arguably, we have experienced this for decades now. However, uncomfortable fact though it may be, this situation would have been far worse if Republicans controlled the White House and none of the candidates on the GOP side could be trusted to do anything short of privatizing Medicare, “personalizing” Social Security and dumping the EPA, Medicaid, financial reform and education generally. Some candidates, including several frontrunners, would even be a threat to the minimum wage, unemployment and virtually all assistance to the poor.
It does not say much for our society when the alternative to what we have now is the destruction of our post-McKinley society. Yet we, that is Democrats, liberals, leftists, progressives and indeed anybody who values fairness and compassion, have to keep fighting and NOT STOP fighting. This time it was a bad budget deal, tomorrow if we give up, it can and will be far worse.
There are other battles to fight starting right now. October starts another federal budget. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the EPA and women’s health still need protecting. The battle is not just on the front lines of elections. It is also a battle for the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens and winning there, where winning elections alone has failed, will yield far greater dividends for the long term.
etc. etc.
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=c4951e86-7319-4f22-b5e9-3054bff16627
We were told to suck it up over the budget deal earlier this year and to some extent health care with the live to fight again line. That’s getting awfully old awfully quickly.
If the unpleasantness of accepting a bad deal to avoid default drives a wedge into the Democratic Party, such that we sulk instead of fight in 2012, the Republican victory will be permanent. If we see the enemy as the teabaggers and not ourselves, we can introduce revenues into the equation and avoid the draconian cuts the Republicans would force through left to their own devices.
When we cave before the battle is even joined, we cannot HOPE to accomplish anything.
We are represented by chicken-shit spineless wimps.
The Republican victory has already happened. The question now is whether we have the moral fiber and courage to win back the hearts and minds of the this nation.
I think that perhaps the thing to do right now is let Republicans have their way with the country, and then regroup after it has been destroyed.
I don’t think I can vote for anyone who voted for this deal. I don’t care if “the alternative was worse” – anyone voting for this deal fails negotiated with terrorists, and having done so, will be susceptible to terrorist strategies in the future.
This is not the way government should work. Republicans have a small majority in one of the three branches of government. They got more than what they asked for from this deal.
They proved that if you can put your finger on the nuclear button, you can have anything you want. The possibilities are now limitless for them.
We are clearly no longer a representative Democracy, because Republicans have figured out how to win big even though they are not the party in power.
Could you explain what the Democratic position was in this fight? I think it was “we need to raise taxes”. Anybody who thought this was a winner was reading too much talkingpointsmemo and thinkprogress. That’s what happened when Bush read his own propaganda about the wars.
I’m not in favor of the Republicans’ approach, but it’s easy to see how they won. They are the party in power because as the debate is set up, they represent a majority. The question as presented was “do you want to throw Granny out in the street, or do you want to raise taxes”. The answer from America is “I want to raise employment, wages and salaries and pay the debt off that way”. But nobody is presenting them with that option. Maybe the Republicans are 10% in that direction, but the Dems are 0% so the Republicans win.
The Democrats have lost two decisive battles. They went into 2010 with Paul Krugman as the leader, saying we need to spend more to create jobs, there is a multiplier effect when government borrows and spends. In reality there is a heat-loss effect from spending to create government jobs, it’s a jobs-divider, not jobs-multiplier. They offered the Republicans the weapon of spending without winning any jobs.
In this debt battle, the Dems were poorly organized. Many still were loyal to Field Marshal Krugman, and did not understand that they were defeated in 2010. Those who did understand that spending was the issue instead proposed to raise taxes and make things worse on the jobs/wages/salary front.
IN a way both parties are presenting contractionary plans. The Republicans are saying we need to contract but the baby-boom will maintain its standard of living into old age through lower wages and salaries on the workers who serve them. The Democrats are saying we need to contract, that growth is unsustainable, the planet is dying. Somehow they want to chew more out of the people who are able to do productive business.
As our rules demonstrate, perhaps our demographic situation demands that we live in a time of contraction where both parties will have to point essentially in the same direction. If this is so, then each party will develop zombie constituencies to serve and protect. Each will spend its energy clawing money away from the zombie constituencies of the other. For the Republicans this would be the defense contractors, wall street players, health insurance companies etc. The Dems have their own zombie constituencies of green industries, governments and quasi-governments, non-profits and so on. This will go back and forth for 20 years until enough baby-boomers are dead.
However with the defeat of the Democrats agenda on big borrowing/spending, and the defeat of high-tax austerity, the opening is there for a new leader to get rid of Krugman and take the Democrats to the land of growth. Could be Obama or could be somebody else.
In an ideal world, this should not have even been a fight. “Raising the debt ceiling” is not the same as “proposing a budget which is bigger than last year”. It is “paying for the budgets that previous Congresses passed”. So that was Obama’s mistake #1, to not shame the Republicans and call them out harder on creating this crisis.
Excusing mistake #1, Obama and Democrats should have repeatedly made that point that growing the economy makes the deficit go away because more taxes get collected and fewer people need things like food stamps. That is the direction the country should take – putting people back to work.
How? Start with penalizing trade with countries that don’t play fair by either manipulating their currency or paying slave-labor wages (or in some cases, actually using slave labor). I’m pretty sure that even the Tea Party would back that point.
Next, point out that in our consumer economy, a small number of very rich people are siphoning away most of the money. People need to understand this and see billionaires for who they are — not “the noble job creators” – instead, those who accumulate their vast wealth by destroying US jobs. And then they harm the rest of us by speculating on global markets, resulting in higher oil and food prices. I’m pretty sure that the average American can understand this point – Our economy is like playing poker with a guy who cheats for a while, takes most of everyone’s money, uses that money to bluff everyone into folding, and then refuses to give anyone a chance to win back their money.
Yes, it means taxing people like that so that they put their money back into the game, so that they hire US workers, so that they pay US workers a fair share of the money being made.
Finally, Obama should have said “Social Security and Medicare are off the table, period”. These are programs that are relied upon by the middle class and lower. People would literally die without them. Removing them as an insurance policy will fundamentally change our country – an analogy I can think of is that if we all have to squirrel away enough money to replace our cars and houses if they are wrecked, we will not spend as much in the consumer economy, virtually guaranteeing a long-lasting decline in our consumer economy. People will now need to bail out their parents, their relatives, their children, their friends. We will collectively worry more as a nation, and that will greatly affect our way of life.
Obama and the Democrats can start doing this now. It certainly helped the points you followed with, which I did not disagree with off the bat as usual.
The small investor is certainly at a disadvantage trading his money trying to build up his retirement, when Goldman Sachs and so on are getting caught buying favorable treatment on the trading floor. So more muscle in oversight of the financial markets is necessary. This is something the Rs are completely against but it is really hurting confidence in our investing markets. Why do I put my money into etrade when my trades are getting telegraphed to the big banks before I make them?
also I think it’s time we looked at examples in banana republics to see how these disparities between rich and poor are kept alive, by favoring import/export businesses over the common population. It really seems to be reaching that point here though not as simply because we have a wide range of products.
I think the teabaggers’ overreach is going to hobble the Republican Presidential candidates. How do they keep these fanatics motivated and happy while appealing to the center? The deal is the deal. It’s what comes next, especially in 2012, that counts.
2001-2009. The Republicans flushed the economy down the pipes, redirecting the money toward bankers, and also somehow cruised to re-election on the fact they presided over the worst terrorist attack in the nation’s history.
If we let the Republicans have their way with the country again, I’m not sure they’ll be a country left after that.
But, of course, he’ll do it. The Republicans will find another hostage to take and force his hand. Why would we expect anything else? Just look at a little recent history from Krugman’s column today:
And now that the Republicans know their adversary very well, they’ll be even more emboldened to take hostages. Krugman again:
hand was forced. While it’s true that the GOP lives on a flat earth off the right side of which they would drag the country for the sake of maintaining their sick hold on the political system, Obama negotiated this debt crisis with an embarassing amount of naivete trusting in Boehner’s control of the GOP and sacrificing Democrats’ bread and butter issues of Medicare and Social Security.
Here he is not understanding the the GOP as well as many of us: With his naivete:
If you look at actual reporting,the real negotiations were going on between Obama and Boehner, with Obama going beyond what Democrats would find palatable.
And by putting Medicare on the table, Obama took away an issue that the Democrats were clearly winning due to the Paul Ryan budget:
I admire your spirit, and wish I could share your optimism. But here’s the thing.
To fight again, you have to have fighters.
Do you see any? Who?
I plan to keep bringing up this theme. The fight is bigger than Obama. What we lost is our national image and after years of being told by Republicans that liberal and Democrats less specifically were doing that we now have the evidence. Frankly, many Americans won’t get bogged down in the details, but they will understand national embarassment and the Republicans gave it to us. Hone that image and take to the bank.
On policy, I fully agree. Obama screwed up last December. However, beyond that, his other problem is believing that people really want to do good. The problem is that you have people who do not (Mitch McConnell), people who only do good when forced, but just as likely to not do it if force (John Boehner) and the tea party whose hysterical view of the world has convined them that they being emissaries from God they can only do good.
So the task for us is to fight, but the battlefield is not just in voting booths. It is changing the way people think about Democrats, about liberals and about government and beyond. Without that all the spine in the world of politicians won’t change a thing. Because voters old views about Reagan and Morning in America, blah, blah will bring them to vote Republican to balance it out. Gains will be lost just as quickly. Its not just about reelecting Obama it is about changing the board up before the next President is sworn in. If we do not fight and do not win that fight, no amount of elections is going to change anything. This is just one source of my thinking on this subject. I hope to expand on it in the future.
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