In politics, it’s often hard to tell the Kabuki from reality but if you’ve been following the debt ceiling process, reality may seem to have left the scene altogether – it ain’t really so.
Everyone has some experience with negotiating, even if it’s only with the spouse or the kids. Most folks know that the complexity of negotiations grows exponentially as the number of people involved increases. In business, negotiations are conducted by recommenders – sometimes there are many – and if an impasse arises, the deal is bucked upstairs to the deciders which often means just two people. In business, the deciders’ view is final.
It starts the same in politics, deals are negotiated by recommenders but impasses are standard and the deciders are many; 535 plus one, to be exact. The direction from Presidents and Party leaders can easily be rejected. In addition, those 536 people spend a lot of time worrying about their thousands and millions of bosses in the general voting public. I’m saying that we may be less forgiving than we should be of elected officials who are actually engaged in negotiations. We have every reason to be disgusted with government for the situation the nation is in but two other things are true:
1. We the people – particularly the shrinking center portion of the nation that has retained a little common sense – have failed to exercise our voting duties competently.
2. At the moment, elected government officials are actually trying to address the deficit/debt issue but they have found that we, the angry people, are blocking all progress.
Consider this latest Fox poll that backs up the many polls before it.
Fox News Poll: Balanced Budget Amendment Favored, Obama's Stimulus Panned
By Dana Blanton, June 30, 2011
Americans overwhelmingly want the federal budget balanced but refuse, with equal adamancy, to pay for that action with either increased taxes or decreased services. We are completely stupid.
· 72% of registered voters demand that government balance the budget. These people are so adamant that they favor amending the Constitution to require a balanced budget by law.
[The balanced budget amendment is possibly the dumbest and most counter-productive legislative idea ever conceived – look at California Proposition 13 – but that’s for another post.]
· 63% of registered voters reject any change to entitlement benefits.
· 62% of registered voters reject any increase in taxes.
How stupid can we be? How can we be well enough informed to know that we are on a nation ruining path but dumb enough to think that the solution won’t involve both tax increases and benefit cuts? We are not only stupid enough to listen to – you pick ‘em – Michelle Bachman, Nancy Pelosi, Eric Cantor, Barack Obama, Glenn Beck, Paul Krugman, et al but we believe them! Where is our common sense?
Consider this excellent analysis of the debt ceiling negotiations from Douthat.
The Method to Their Madness
By Ross Douthat, NYT, July 10, 2011
This is what the politicians know that we are too disgusted to think about:
1. The debt ceiling will be increased.
The deal making of the moment is all about the completely artificial custom that raising the debt ceiling is the responsibility of the Party that holds the Presidency. The other side gets to extract some concessions. What is gained is strictly a matter of the skill of the negotiators, the mood of the public and the overall quality [statesmanship] of Congress at that moment. This could be done with no deal, just a simple vote – there is no choice but to raise the ceiling.
2. The President wants a deal and he wants it to look conservative.
The more centrist looking the final deal is, the more likely the President will gain a second term. He needs spending cuts and entitlement cuts to make the deal look conservative and thereby gain the support of independents.
3. Tax increases are on the horizon.
The President and Democrats know that taxes will rise automatically in 2013 unless Obama is defeated – an unlikely case – so they can negotiate an immediate deal that appears lopsided on the spending cut side.
The last deal struck – to keep the government operating without a budget – ends all of the Bush tax cuts right after the 2012 election. With President Obama in the White House controlling the veto, Republicans will either have to do nothing in 2013 – tax revenues would increase $3.8 trillion – or they would have to fight which would end with taxes going back up for just the “rich” – a gain of $700 billion in revenue. Either way, taxes go up.
4. Bipartisan, grand bargain budget deals never deliver the spending cuts they promise.
Think how many times Congress has “paid for” spending by promising future Medicare cuts and then failed to pass them even though they were “required by law”. Thus the President and Democrats can promise entitlement spending cuts to get the deal the President needs for his re-election.
A second reason for Democrats to promise entitlement cuts – so long as they are future cuts – is that the next Congress is likely to be Republican by narrow margins. That would make Republicans the benefit cutting villains rather than the current Democrats who actually did the deal.
5. The national deck is stacked in favor of long term tax increases.
At the moment, tax increases and entitlement cuts are equally unpopular. But with every passing every day, seniors become more selfish while their numbers steadily increase – and we vote. As seniors we demand our benefits and don’t care much about taxes – we care nothing about FICA taxes anymore. Our kids and grandkids are in serious trouble and we just don’t give a damn.
Republicans absolutely deserve credit for demanding work on deficits and bringing the issue to the public’s attention. Democrats were planning to do nothing. Republicans are also correct to be as demanding as they are regarding both spending and taxes. The President needs this deal, can agree to spending cuts that may be tough to actually implement later and knows that taxes are going up no matter what.
The rhetoric is still often frustrating but Paul Ryan and John Boehner are demonstrating real statesmanship. The President is going along because he can and it’s in his interest. At this point, any debt ceiling deal helps the President. Republicans must make sure the President actually earns his budget-cutting bona fides.
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