We’ve known all along there were two things Republicans dearly wanted. Indeed, these two things were most of the reason the debt ceiling “crisis” was ginned up.
First, they wanted Democrats to vote to cut Medicare. This was to take the sting out of the unpopular Ryan budget vote that promises to hurt Republicans in the 2012 elections. And second, they wanted a deal that guaranteed renewal of the Bush tax cuts.
Republicans failed to achieve either of these objectives. The final deal contained no new revenues, but neither did it promise away future revenues. And Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security remain untouched.
The question is, will they remain untouched, at least through the end of 2012? As you’ve probably heard, the “deal” includes formation of a special committee that will identify another $1.5 trillion in spending cuts. This committee must issue their findings by November 23, and Congress must give these findings an up-or-down vote, no changes allowed, by December 23.
If Congress fails to pass the recommended cuts, automatic spending cuts go into effect. Half of these cuts will be in the defense budget. The trigger “would exempt Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, programs for low-income families, and civilian and military retirement. Likewise, any cuts to Medicare would be capped and limited to the provider side.†Matt Yglesias has a chart showing how the non-defense automatic cuts would be distributed.
It’s not clear to me whether there are any restrictions on what the committee might recommend. However, the “trigger” deal is something like a mutually assured destruction pact. Michael Scherer writes,
If Democrats and Republicans do not agree to another $1.5 trillion in cuts later this year, then automatic cuts of about $500 billion in both national security and Medicare provider spending will be triggered, beginning in 2013. Republicans think the threat of cutting Medicare will force Democrats to bargain, and Democrats hope that the threat of defense cuts will force Republicans to bargain.
But what is really happening is something else: Both Democratic and Republican leaders have realized that they don’t have enough political heft on their own to cut a deal. So they are pointing a gun to the knee caps of corporate lobbyists for the defense contracting and medical provider communities and saying, “Help us, or else.â€
Be sure to read all of Scherer; it’s fascinating.
Of the initial $1 trillion in cuts that the deal does specify, the “good” news is that only (only?) about $22 billion of those cuts come out of 2012 spending. That might not make the economy noticeably worse before the 2012 elections, although it might not get noticeably better, either. This also leaves open the possibility –well, maybe more of a theory — that the next Congress could repeal this turkey before the bulk of it is in effect (see Nate Silver).
So, if progressive activists manage to not shoot the cause in the foot by spending the next year badmouthing Obama, and instead focus on electing a more progressive Congress, maybe some things can be turned around.
I suspect the political fallout of this mess will do neither party any good. Democrats are disgusted, but so are a lot of Republicans. Both the True Believers of the Tea Party and the hard-core neocons feel sold out today. Jonathan Chait writes,
In other words, the members of the conservative coalition looked around and decided to eat the defense hawks. …
The result, at the risk of spoiling your enjoyment, is that Kristol is not happy. Quite the turn of events. Here was Kristol, loyally serving the party for years on end, including its monomaniacal hatred of taxes, in the belief that this would give him a veto in the one corner of policy he actually cares about, defense and foreign affairs. KristItol was happily chortling along with the party’s plan to hold the entire economy hostage to its demands to slash spending and hold revenue low, confident all along that this couldn’t impact the $700 billion a year we spend on defense. And then, wham, before he knew what was happening, the hostage was out of the closet he was helping guard, and he was standing in his place with duct tape around his wrists. Funny how that works.
This puts Dems in an interesting position. If they make ending the Bush tax cuts for the rich a condition of voting for the committee recommendations, the entire GOP might find itself duct taped —
Then what? Well, then the entire defense lobby plus the entire medical and insurance lobbies turn fiercely against the very people with whom they had marched shoulder-to-shoulder under Bush. If the Democrats hold the line and insist on more revenue, the committee has the potential to split the GOP coalition wide open.
A lot will depend on what the committee recommends, of course. The point is that while the deal stinks, there’s a potential here for Dems to regroup and strike back, if they are willing to do so. My advice to progressives — like they ever take it — is to stop whining about Obama and focus instead on Congress.
Stuff to Read —
Kevin Drum, “It’s Public Opinion, Stupid.” I especially liked this part —
This is why I blame the broad liberal community for our failures, not just President Obama. My biggest beef with Obama is the same one I had three years ago, namely that he’s never really even tried to move public opinion in a specifically progressive direction. But that hardly even matters unless all the rest of us have laid the groundwork. And we haven’t. Wonks, hacks, activists, all of us. We just haven’t persuaded the public to support our vision of government. Until we do, the tea party tendency will always be more powerful than we are.
See also George Monbiot, “A Billionaires’ Coup”
What I don’t like about the Medicare and Defense triggers is how I think both can be twisted against the Democrats as well.
Forcing Republicans to defend the Military Industrial Comples feeds right into one of the oldest meme’s out there – the Democrats don’t care about national defense.
And about Medicare and Medicaid, I can see the Republicans doing ads that say, “Well, the Democrats aren’t defending the old and sick people here – they’re defending the ‘Medical Industrial Complex” – which contributes to their elections. SHAME, Democrats! Why aren’t you defending Grandma and Grandpa instead of rich doctors and hospitals.”
You know they’ll figure out messgaes to twist this around. And the Democrats aren’t exactly a message machine.
Drum wrote: “My biggest beef with Obama is the same one I had three years ago, namely that he’s never really even tried to move public opinion in a specifically progressive direction”
What I don’t get is why anyone ever really believed President Obama was going to be some liberal in the mold of Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold, etc. He is just not that liberal, he never campaigned as a liberal, he campaigned as a center left democrat. People who get disappointed when a politician doesn’t deliver everything he or she promised in a campaign are foolish, this is a democracy, it don’t work that way. I was disappointed when he extended the tax cuts, started bombing Libya, endorsed some trade deals, etc. but he’s pretty much done what I expected, given the limitations of congress. And considering the shit sandwich he was handed and the childlike behavior of the new house majority I’d say he’s doing about as well as can be expected. Part of the problem is that we have so many voices in media, they just have to whine about something, if not who would pay attention?
Yes, and on top of that, a lot of progressives didn’t bother to look closely at Obama’s positions during the campaign, which as you say were more center than liberal. He and Hillary Clinton were in the same ball park on nearly every issue. Where they differed, it seemed to me the two of them were trying to distinguish themselves from each other more than stating bedrock principles.
I have an idea!
How about we don’t wait for magic fixes from Presidents, Senators and Congresspeople, in the near future, and instead work on restructuring the Democatic Party from the bottom up, to be Liberal and Progessive, and work to replace the Whoreporatist center-rigth defenders of money we have representing ‘us’ in that party today.
That’s what the Consevatives have been doing since Goldwater lost. They started with local elections, like school boards, and town clerk, and kept working those people on up through the system. Where does anyone think loony-tunes like Bachmann and Gohmert and Pence and Kingston came from? Sure, it seems like they were hatched, but they weren’t.
And it can happen.
Unless everyone sits and moans on the internet, or wants to echo Tom Friedman’s calls for a 3rd Party, but instead of a Centrist one like he wants, hey, we kids can put on a show with a Liberal 3rd Party!
This isn’t a sexy as wanting a 3rd Party. And it’s more work. And people my age might not live to see it flower. But I believe it’s the only way to change and ‘take our country back!’
You see, if we present local people with Liberal and Progressive options, we also build up our base. We’re also less reliant on a cowered, complicit, and compliant, conservative financed MSM to get our message out. We need to create a bunch of local people who support the DFH’s, and expand that base beyond the union the town, to the county, then the district, then the state, and finally the nation.
No one will do it if we don’t. And bitchin’ ain’t part of the solution. Work is.
The Right really didn’t build itself from the bottom up. Wealthy individuals and corporate interests built a framework of “think tanks” and media outlets in the 1970s, and coalitions were built across interests (Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, the AMA pushing “tort reform,” for example). They got behind Reagan, a leader who could move the disaffected masses, and they’ve dominated U.S. politics since.
“the entire GOP might find itself duct taped –”
I like that image.
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Oh, C U N D Gulag, I’m on board with that. I live in a highly conservative county, but there is a Democratic office here in Gettysburg. I need to start doing something to back up my principles politically.
maha,
That’s all true about conservatives, and I knew that, but ooops, I must have blocked it out.
But a part of their agenda was definitely for activists to start from the grassroots and work up. And that has been a part of their success.
I don’t know if we can do the same without the money from corporations for think tanks and access to the MSM for propaganda, but maybe we could continue to work through alternative media like blogs and local TV and radio – though, without the ‘Fairness Doctrine,’ it’s almost impossible for a Liberal to get on.
I still think it’s worth a try. Depending on the Democratic politicians we’ve had in place for upwards of the last 30 years hasn’t gotten us anywhere. We’ve got to try something.
Suggestions folks?
I mean short of the obvious:
Pitchfork meet torch,
Head meet pike.
I have my “glass is half full days” and “glass is half empty days”. Today is one of the latter. Obama’s problem is that he always seems to start his bargaining from the center or even right of center. The end result is often to the right of Reagan. From a glass-half-empty perspective we have: a health care law that was Republican a few years ago; two continuing wars; the Bush tax cuts still in place; Gitmo; prosecuting NSA whistle blowers like a right wing fanatic; defending torturers; offering up entitlements; (someone could add many more things to the list). I had no illusions that Obama was a far left liberal, but to say we should have expected this from his campaign positions is a little silly. These positions are wrong wrong wrong.
That Scherer piece is thought provoking. We seem to have reached the point where you need hostages to get anything done politically. And it’s no longer taking someone’s earmark hostage, it’s taking entire industries hostage.
What Didn’t Happen?
Job creation!….Or even the prospect of creating jobs.
Suggestions folks?
The internet!….It’s probably the most effective weapon formed against them.. No matter how they try to dismiss us,the fact will always remain that we are in part the voice of the American public. I can handle dismissive insults of being called an Obamabot ,or a Libtard,or accused of living in my mother’s basement..but no amount of insult can knock down the truth of my words,if in fact they do contain the truth. The truth might emanate from anyone but it becomes established as truth within the hearer.
I see it as the difference between reading a book or watching a movie of the same story. They way we process that difference is the difference between intellect and emotion. That’s where I see so many people who act against their own self interest because they don’t process with their intellect…they rely solely on their emotions to filter the truth.
The one thing that keeps getting lost in the shuffle is the FAA. Our esteemed Congress took off for vacation before reauthorization of the FAA Budget because of a fight over an anti-union clause in the authorization bill. This is something I found written at ThinkProgress:
“Airport inspectors are currently working without pay.”
Isn’t that slavery? Also, the airlines are pocketing money earmarked for taxes because the government has no authority to collect taxes. The lack of authorization will be like dominoes and collapse the construction of airports, construction companies that perform this work, etc. If I were you, I wouldn’t fly for the month of August. Only essential work will get done, which means a skelton staff in the air traffice contol towers, etc. In the end, this doesn’t SAVE any money because all workers (including the ones who are not working at all) will be paid for all the time the bill was re-authorized. Thus, our taxdollars will be paid out to people who did not do any work. This just more of THE STUPID brought to you by the GOP.
First, The tea party did not get the Balanced Budget Amendment.
Second, the situation must have scared the carp out of Boehner, Wall Street, and the Chamber o Commerce. Until this week, the PTB thought these kooks were under control. And they are -Norquest and the Koch Bros. And their agenda is scary, not just to Progressives, but it clearly threatens a LOT of institutional players.
True, I don’t know how Wall Street thinks – way beyond my pay grade. But if I had a net worth of a few million and all my econmic roots were in US soil, I would want stability. The Koch Bros. are willing to gamble my fortune on their fantasy. Betting on the GOP in 2012, and I’m talking big money doners, is a scarey proposition. What if the GOP wins? After the last round when a minority of Teabaggers almost crashed the economy…. what might the Tea Party do if they also owned the Senate and Bachmann was president? It might not be hard to convince some CEOs that there are worse things than seeing taxes go up…..
While I’m in my fantasy….. smokin’ some good stuff… (not really) wouldn’t it be cool if CEOs of the calibre of Gates and Buffet delivered the message privately that conservatism is fine, but Tea Party is pure poison.
Doug, I love you, but conservatism ain’t fine. It’s the very for the sorry shape our country is in.
It would be better if Gates and Buffet pointed out how much our country grew under those Fifth Columnist Communist/Socialists like Truman, Ike, and JFK.
I’m reminded of September 2008, and Obama’s record-breaking fundraising, from among average folks like me. That’s one option for voicing an opinion: redirecting funds if necessary.
And also getting out my field glasses and searching the prairie for the Last Liberal Nebraska Democrat. (Bob Kerrey, won’t you please come home?)
BOb Kerrey liberal? OH that’s scary
CUND GULAG – You have some idea how much i respect your opinion. I hope. Allow me to expand on my comment, “conservatism is fine” by quoting an editorial from CNN.
“I’m a Republican. Always have been. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation and limited government. But as I look back at the weeks of rancor leading up to Sunday night’s last-minute budget deal, I see some things I don’t believe in:
Forcing the United States to the verge of default.
Shrugging off the needs and concerns of millions of unemployed.
Protecting every single loophole, giveaway and boondoggle in the tax code as a matter of fundamental conservative principle.
Massive government budget cuts in the midst of the worst recession since World War II.
I am not alone.
Davis Frum… 8/2/11
I’m not saying I agree with Frum on specifics. I know we would not agree.But we could hammer out a good deal. Neither of us would get everything we wanted, but that’s not necessary.
The elimination tone of the Teabaggers is not pretended. They want to stamp out liberalism in every way. That attitude of total intolerance is intolerable FROM EITHER SIDE. I hope I always remember Ted Kennedy’s funeral. Two prominent republican Senators who spoke of Kennedy, explained WHY he was effective. It wasn’t personal or hateful to bargain for your side and respect the other side.
Republicans of the Tea Party haven’t got it. We better not loose it…. or how can we bring it back?
Doug,
I hope you’re right and that this fight exposed to people how the Conservatives and conservatism that I grew up with, and repected even though I didn’t believe in what they did, have morphed into some anti-intellectual, anti-American cabal of eliminationist nihilists with a heaping helping of Fascism on top like whipped cream on a sundae.
“…..Conservatives and conservatism … have morphed into some anti-intellectual, anti-American cabal of eliminationist nihilists with a heaping helping of Fascism on top like whipped cream on a sundae.”
C u n d gulag, this is why I love you so much. Your outrageously glorious use of our language is always spot on, entertaining, thought provoking and enlightening.
Maha, your insights and knowledge on the topics discussed are the best…and the questions and input from everyone is also refreshing and thought provoking. It’s why I don’t contribute much, you all say it so well. Thanks to eveyone who participates in this blog…and it is why this is the only blog I read, daily.
Namaste, kathleen
Bonnie …When I read further details on that FAA issue and hear about the money issues involved..it presents probably the best example of spending money to make money…The Repugs don’t want to subsidize the airlines for $200 million a year for a program that brings in $200 million in tax revenue a week.
Pound wise and penny foolish?
Thanks, Kathleen!
And I appreciate the positive feedback. 🙂