First off, I think this issue of the debt ceiling has revealed again and maybe more starkly than others a severely bad habit of the press to need to understand their role as non-partisan as always necessitating their taking the view that both sides of the debate are equally valid or equally a cause of a problem. In this case, both the creation of the gargantuan national debt, and the contributors to the on-going deficit need to be characterized as the fault of both both the Dems and the Rep. While the polices of each may have each have contributed to these problems, there can be little doubt the majors contributors have been policies Republican s have proposed, passed and largely supported. The many phases of the W. Bush’s tax policies, the war in Iraq, the Medicare part D prescription drug plan, being the primary examples.
This graph tells you all you need to know about that
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3036
Next, each side seems somehow to be equally characterized at fault for the partisan mess we are in; that is each side is blamed for being unwilling to compromise. But tell me, on what hasn’t President Obama been willing to at least tip his toes in the water and suffer the slings and arrows of his progressive caucus? Social Security? check. Medicare? check. Medicaid? check. Major budget cuts to domestic programs? Check. Now, name one area in which Republicans have been willing to compromise? (crickets chirping) For criminy how is it socialist apostasy to have tax rates roughly what Ronald Reagan signed into law in 1982? Or the tax rates that G.H.W. Bush signed into law in 1991 that along with Clinton’s budget bills produced budget surpluses by the time G.W.Bush took office with a projected 6 trillion (got it?) budget surplus over ten years?
One thing president Obama does recognize is that this is a political problem, appropriately to be solved by political branches. I mention this because some circles have considered that the 14th Amendment might hold the answer: the Debt Limit ceiling is unconstitutional!! Pres. Obama should just ignore the debt ceiling and continue along with business as usual. Why, because Section 4 states: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law,…shall not be questioned.” Now I am no Constitutional lawyer, but Barry O is, and he has (at least for now) taken this off the table. Why? I can only guess he sees this as a win-win-win for Republicans. They don’t have to vote for raising the debt limit (WIN), the debt limit gets raised avoiding economic catastrophe (WIN), and they get to pillory the President for avoiding the law, perhaps take him to the Supreme Court, all the time having shirked their responsibility to deal with the issue. No, President Obama will not fall for this, at least not without having long pushed past the debt ceiling point of no return.
But back to the way this is being discussed, what astounds me is that the Republicans are listened to as if they are serious, when clearly they are not. What is their economic plan? The Ryan plan? Pass it, and he debt ceiling needs to be raised? Is the deficit the issue? Why not include raising taxes? they claim is will hurt the economy and jobs, but if that is the issue, the who cares about the deficit? Clearly not the bond markets or factors that affect inflation?
I cannot say (or rant) this better than Kevin Drum did a week or two ago:
“But then, for about the thousandth time, my mind wanders over the past ten years. Republicans got the tax cuts they wanted. They got the financial deregulation they wanted. They got the wars they wanted. They got the unfunded spending increases they wanted. And the results were completely, unrelentingly disastrous. A decade of sluggish growth and near-zero wage increases. A massive housing bubble. Trillions of dollars in war spending and thousands of American lives lost. A financial collapse. A soaring long-term deficit. Sky-high unemployment. All on their watch and all due to policies they eagerly supported. And worse: ever since the predictable results of their recklessness came crashing down, they’ve rabidly and nearly unanimously opposed every single attempt to dig ourselves out of the hole they created for us.”
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/07/what-if-you-held-class-war-and-no-one-showed
– Lawrence Spaulding
[Updated 7/12/2011] – Here are two other people who made a similar argument today about false equivalency in the press:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/when_inflexible_loses_all_mean030801.php
.
