The New York Times today: “… many Congressional Republicans seem to be spoiling for a fight, calculating that some level of turmoil caused by a federal default might be what it takes to give them the chance to right the nation’s fiscal ship.”
In one of the more spectacular examples of political short-termism, it seems a large chunk of rank-and-file members of the GOP are willing to drive the US economy into a wall with their refusal to play ball with President Obama in his bid to lift the US debt ceiling.
As Harley Dennett wrote from DC in Crikey on Monday: “… there is now nobody from the Republican House leadership team willing to go back to the White House whilst modest revenue increases are on the table.”
The Washington gridlock means whichever way the vast majority of the American public look at it, they’re getting screwed. Remember this stand-off is set against the backdrop of huge unemployment numbers and a large number of Americans sinking into poverty. And yet … congressional Republican leaders are standing firm against raising taxes on the wealthy and businesses after 2013, and President Obama — giving new meaning to the term “lame duck” — is bending over even further promising deep spending cuts, including in Medicare and Medicaid, as part of a “balanced package”, much to the disgust of many Democrats.
In an indication of how nail-biting this stand-off has become, in an interview with CBS News, President Obama has said he “cannot guarantee” the government can pay benefits next month to Social Security recipients, veterans and the disabled if Congress does not increase the federal debt limit.
But as Dennett wrote, Republican Speaker John Boehner “is caught between a party base that refuses the compromise on its evolving anti-tax ideology, and a White House that is willing to play dirty politics”.
Congressional gridlock on this grand scale throws our own minority government into sharp relief.
Yes it has its imperfections — the poisonous political debate, the question time stunts and the communication failures — but by the end of the last budget session, more than 160 bills had been passed since the election. And whatever your thoughts on the Multi Party Climate Change Committee’s carbon pricing plan, you cannot accuse it of being short sighted. Something the US is suffering from a potentially fatal case of right now.
You really should try and be a little less partisan in your reporting.
The Republicans want major spending cuts. The Democrats will only agree to spending cuts if new taxes and charges are leved on an array of individuals and businesses large and small.
The Republican’s have stated that adding new taxes on people and business isn’t going to help people get back to work, so they are standing on no tax cuts, just spending cuts.
Basically the Republicans want to reduce Government’s overall spending, the Democrats want to cut some programs while ramping up tax receipts which can be used to fund other programs, resulting in no net reduction in government spending.
There is validity in both viewpoints, perhaps you should try a little objectivity and try reporting on both.
The last detailed White House plan included $4 trillion in cuts to program across the board accompanied by less than one billion in a range of measures that could be called tax hikes. The taxes increases target wealthy individuals who earn enough to structure their income at the lower business tax rate.
The Republican’s actual talking points on these negotiations has been reported in Crikey as far back as last month. If you listen to what they actually say, they don’t claim the White House plan doesn’t reduce government spending. They do claim the taxes target the people who created jobs. The Republican leadership has yet to put forward the list of cuts that it wants, so there’s nothing to report on that yet.
As I reported on Monday, the only Republican negotiating concession that the White House allowed reporters like me to learn turned out to be false: that Boehner would allow some of the current Bush tax cuts to expire in two years. Boehner’s office won’t give me any more details than the talking points that Crikey has already published. Should the media simply republish the same talking points ad nausea as if they explain or advance the issue of when will congress raise the national debt ceiling to avoid default?
Michael James – the simple truth is that under Clinton the budget was in balance (admittedly with a conservative but not completely bonkers Republican Congress). Under Bush Jnr the deficit went through the roof due to reckless “temporary” tax cuts (the ones that Obama wants to repeal) and even more reckless, starting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Again and again the borrowing limit was raised by Congress.
So why is it so different now? The greater government outlays aren’t due to structural deficits or tax cuts or wars, they are (1) the result of a deep recession with reduced tax revenues and greater social spending (2) the cost of bailing out the US banking system. The latter is the real disgrace – after the reaction from the markets when Lehman (sp?) Bros was allowed to the go under, the government had to make sure no others did. Capitalising your profits and socialising your losses on an obscene scale. The recession and the Wall Street problems go back to deregulating the financial sector, mostly done by Republicans, where the hard-won lessons of the 1920s and 30s were ignored.
Latest news: Rethuglicans have given up on the debt ceiling and are saying Obama can raise the debt ceiling. Wimps!
Does anybody still doubt that the USA is a failed stae?