After the Debt Ceiling Fiasco
Jul 25th, 2011 | 18 responses
WASHINGTON — Hours before the negotiations on the debt limit between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner collapsed, political reporters received a missive from Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign that served as a reminder of how irrelevant this kerfuffle might feel next year.
The headline read, “Romney for President Launches New Web Video: Obama Isn’t Working: Where are the Jobs?”
The video spoke to the difficulties that new college graduates are having finding work in a brutal job market. This bit of campaign propaganda went straight at the core of Obama’s political base — young Americans who volunteered for him by the tens of thousands in 2008 and powered him to victory in state after state. If joblessness disillusions enough of them, the president will be in trouble.
Romney’s exercise was a passing bit of politics unlikely to make many waves in an environment obsessed with debt and fears of default. But it was hugely instructive.
The Romney message was more in touch with what voters are worried about than the spectacular show of dysfunction Washington politicians are putting on. Consider a Gallup Poll released last week. Asked what was the most important problem facing the country, 31 percent of Americans said the economy and an additional 27 percent specifically said unemployment and jobs, for a total of 58 percent. Only 16 percent listed the deficit or the debt.
While the president was snared in a trap set by the Republicans over the debt ceiling, Romney was out there campaigning on the electorate’s animating issue. It’s a nice division of labor for the GOP. Obama is caught up in the tea party’s priorities. Romney isn’t. It’s upside-down politics.
None of this takes away from the fact that Obama was right to be angry at the collapse of his talks with Boehner. He was entirely justified in calling out House Republicans for refusing to accept what would have been an excellent deal from their own point of view. Obama went far more than half way to accommodate conservatives with a deal that tilted heavily toward spending cuts. As the president himself said, if the deal he offered was “unbalanced,” it was unbalanced on the side of not including enough tax revenues. This would have made Obama’s own supporters very unhappy.
By rejecting this way out, House Republicans have shown they simply cannot govern. When control of government is divided between two parties, each party has to give some ground. But Boehner’s GOP majority includes dozens of members who don’t even think that defaulting on our debt is a problem, and do believe they can eventually get what they want if they keep saying “no” to every other alternative.
This is a recipe for catastrophe, which is what we are getting perilously close to now. It is a clear demonstration that this House majority does not take its responsibilities seriously. Too many of its members seem to forget that they are no longer outsiders free to protest, and proclaim their purity. They are part of the government of the United States. The fact that they are not willing to act that way now threatens the nation’s economy.
Which brings us back to Romney. To this point, he has been free to run more of a general election race than a primary campaign. He can talk about jobs while Obama is grappling with how to run a government paralyzed by the tea party.
But this breakdown in Washington is too big an issue for Republican primary voters to ignore. If Rick Perry, Texas’ right-wing governor, enters the race as expected, he will appeal to the tea party rejectionists and try to cast Romney as some sort of moderate — a very dangerous thing to be among Republican primary voters these days. Will Romney have the courage to insist that the radicalism represented by the tea party is not authentic conservatism, not the path to a Republican victory, and not a formula for effective government? I’m not holding my breath, but this crisis calls for a period of reckoning inside the GOP. The presidential primary campaign is the obvious moment for it to happen.
In the meantime, Obama should watch that Romney ad on jobs several times. By letting the congressional Republicans set his agenda, he’s gotten away from the one issue most likely to determine his fate in 2012. He should remember that the day after this debt crisis is settled, the Republicans’ question will be: Where are the jobs?
E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com. (c) 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
18 Responses to “After the Debt Ceiling Fiasco”
Phffft –
Dionne ‘n’ peers:
http://www.fossilmuseum.net/DinosaurFossils/Diplodocus/Diplodocus1905.jpg
The implication, as always, is that government spending can permanently fix the job market, recent reality to the contrary.
The other implication is that if the people want jobs, just hand them out and ignore any deficit or debt problems it may cause.
Neither of those make much sense.
In so many ways, Prof, that growth of government power in Washington as well as all that stupid vote-buying spending is truly insensitive. Dinosaurs who want Washington to be everything hurt.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703749504576172714184601654.html
Liberals sought and got a “great” federal (“national”) government, made a monster.
(We may as well make good intellectual and political lemonade of Stein’s latest lemon.)
Spot on. They need to stop whining, grow up, and pass a balanced measure. This debt ceiling debacle is ruining both investor confidence and consumer confidence and that spells doom for this economy faster than any tax increase.
The GOP, by latching on to dogma and pledges they can’t possibly keep, have failed and look irreparably foolish.
I find it sad that the job of the President is to be in constant campaign mode. It seems like our elected officials are too busy campaigning to do their real jobs.
So must the Democrats, Barky. They have been as bad or worse than the House Republicans, just not the subject of criticism by the liberal media. Why don’t they agree to entitlement reform, the key for any serious budget?
“Why don’t they agree to entitlement reform, the key for any serious budget?”
PPACA is only five letters. Even you should be able to remember it.
“By rejecting this way out, House Republicans have shown they simply cannot govern.”
This inability to govern has been in ample evidence for half my lifetime, but it hasn’t stopped a foolish electorate from imagining otherwise. We get the govt we deserve and it’s pathetic.
Congressman Reid said social security checks would not be paid if the dept ceing wasn’t raised, how about the bombs falling on Libia will they stop falling if the dept ceiling isn’t raised, the answer is no they have money for that.
I am a Democrat but I may have to cross party lines unless the Democrats get someone to run against Obama.
RainesGD…Did you notice that Reid listed almost every government function being cut except one? That being salaries paid to congress and the President. That’s the first place they need to stop checks.
As for this article, “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” Well it appears Boehner has realized that B.O. is not trustworthy.
It is hard to understand the motivations behind what is going on. The deficit is extremely high, mainly because of the recession and the high unemployment that resulted. But no one is talking about reducing the unemployment any more. This is, according to the polls, the largest concern of the voters. And no one in Washington seems concerned about it.
It doesn’t take a genius to understand that cutting spending now will result in more unemployment now. And yet this is what everyone in Washington has apparently agreed that we must do.
That government spending can’t produce jobs is a falsehood that is believed only because it is repeated endlessly in the fact free echo chambers that have produced so much of the nonsense that has dominated governance for thirty years. “Tax cuts pay for themselves”, “Government is bad”, “The way to solve the health care problem is the free market”, “Create jobs by unburdening the job creators”, “Regulation is evil”, “Wages must be suppressed or we can’t compete”, “We can’t afford health care for all”, “Employers will hire more people if their wages were lower”, etc.
Slogans that when applied as policy produced the economic mess we have now. And the proposed solution from the faith based echo chamber for the mess we have now? More of the policies that caused it. Double down on failure. Try again using what hasn’t worked, give it another thirty years, maybe they will finally work.
“It doesn’t take a genius to understand that cutting spending now will result in more unemployment now.”
Yes, since we came into this recession with both a large debt and a deficit budget, our options are limited. But I’ve seen no evidence that government jobs increase employment long-term. They work great for papering over a short-term lull, but this doesn’t look anything like a short-term recession. Bernanke is applying his philosophy to extremes, but it isn’t working.
Thanks for the reality check merkin. When it comes to clarity, demand exceeds the supply – copious opining notwithstanding.
Prof: Yet, Krugman and others say Bernanke (as well as spenders in Washington) aren’t doing enough, that insufficient idiocy is the real problem.
At least we haven’t (yet?) reached the point where inflation once more is an established part of American life. As for over-spending by Washington, we’re running into limits with spending and even with debt already, perhaps. (Debt trap will happen without reform.)
“Yesterday there was a tentative agreement among Speaker Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and Senate Minority Leader McConnell on the outline of a bill to increase the debt limit and cut spending.
This tentative agreement would increase the debt limit by about $900 B to $1 T, enough to make it into the first quarter of next year, packaged with a bit more than $1 trillion of spending cuts, discretionary caps, and no tax increases. There would be a second debt limit extension next year that would go into 2013, upon action of a joint committee of Congress that would make recommendations for further deficit reduction.”
http://keithhennessey.com/2011/07/25/president-obama-says-no-to-a-bipartisan-debt-limit-plan/
So, apparently there does exist bipartisan, bicameral support for a debt increase deal.
However, there is also apparently the campaign priority for Obama to not have to deal with this subject again prior to the 2012 campaign…….”The only bottom line that I have is that we have to extend this debt ceiling through the next election, into 2013.”
Most debt increase deals have historically been for less than one year at a time…..but apparently not this time.
C.O. has noted a key item. In addition to the Congressional Dems being as bad or worse than those notorious House “Rethuglicans,” Obama has a) been derelict in not presenting his own concept and plan for a budget; and b) insisting that any debt increase carry him beyond November, 2012.
(There may be any number of reasons why he wants to continue to increase misspending, but his most recent demand for increased spending no doubt would also carry him beyond November, 2012.)
Well, we can’t know the amount of idiocy that will be tried, but they certainly aren’t happy with the pace of it.
I mean, it was less than a trillion when we were facing (don’t let impressionable children read this) the really, unfathomably, unbelievably terrifying possibility of [scary musical stinger, echo voice] core deflation [end echo] (while everything was merely getting more expensive to buy). That’s barely into the thousands per taxpayer, much less anything substantial.
But QE3, which was definitely not a possibility during QE2, has been hinted at. Also, some other money was spent for the same purpose, as a sort of QE2(b).
So the question of whether the Fed will support the government with more monetizing, or hold back for fear of eventual hyperinflation, is still up in the air.
Did you read about Ron Paul’s suggestion that the Fed simply forgive that 600B in debt, in order to extend the effective debt ceiling deadline?