Ezra Klein, demonstrating a yoga pose in which you bend over so far backwards that your head rests on your ass:
Which gets to the essential irony of this whole conversation: By taking the debt ceiling hostage in a bid to address the deficit, Congress could provoke the exact calamity it’s seeking to prevent.
If Congress wanted to address the deficit then they would have jumped at the spending cuts that Obama offered to resolve the budget crisis. They would put revenue on the negotiating table. Paul Ryan would have proposed a budget that did not cancel out its spending cuts (and then some) with a tax windfall for the rich.
A model in which Boehner’s Congress cares about the deficit does a terrible job of predicting what Boehner’s Congress has actually done. The simplest explanation for their behavior is that Boehner’s Congress wants to destroy Obama and the Democratic party, and deficit panic is one convenient tool to get that done. Everyone knows that a conversation about the Democratic policy agenda will help the Democrats. Our policies are quite popular, debt is on par with historic levels and people would feel more ambivalent about keeping the Bush tax cuts if they weighed them against tangible benefits like access to health care or better, more affordable rail transit. If we talk about nothing but the deficit then Obama’s hands are basically tied on policy and Republicans can spend their majority on relentless offense.
Other than acting like chocolate-smeared toddlers over tax policy, the other tell is how the GOP seems increasingly willing to blow up the economy over irrelevancies like abortion and the Affordable Care Act. In fact two key GOP demands that keep derailing budget negotiations, tax cuts and throttling the health care bill, both increase the deficit.
I agree that everyone deserves some benefit of the doubt, but at some point you look less like Larry King and more like Charlie Brown making one more run at that football.
Jay C
Well, aside from the last bit about rail transit (much as you or I might like the idea, it IS a debatable issue for the allocation of government funds), you’re 100% correct. The biggest problem is that hardly anyone (from the White House on down) on “our” side seem willing or able to make a consistent and coherent – and public – argument against the onslaught of Republican BS along these lines.
Yes, abortion, gay-bashing, birtherism, and “death panels for Granny” issues ARE, in the grander scheme of things, peripheral and irrelevant: but, since they appeal to peoples’ fundamental prejudices, are a lot easier to introduce and enact in Congress: and thus divert attention away from the important stuff. Like the national economy for the “rest-of-us” 98%.
Bob Loblaw
I’m pretty sure this post could have come out of some liberal blogger hivemind online generator or something.
High-speed rail? Check.
Weary cynicism? Check.
“But if we could just get our message out, the people would flock to us”? Check.
Defeatism? Check.
Peanuts reference? Motherfuckin’ yeah there’s a Peanuts reference.
Jay C
@Bob Loblaw:
Bob: you forgot one:
Deflection of serious debate on any issues by stale repetitive snark from commenter? Check.
Uloborus
Ezra and Krugman are both brilliant economists, and I respect their knowledge of those fields deeply. I will be forever grateful for Klein’s analysis of the ACA all the way along. But that doesn’t make them more knowledgeable about politics than anyone else. They’re just smart people with opinions in that field.
Tom Levenson
This. Should be posted to the top of the bezel on every reporter/commentator’s computer screen.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jay C:
Rick Massimo
Klein’s usually smarter than this. Who is this “Congress” he’s talking about? From where I sit, it’s Republicans who are pulling this crap; no one else.
And yeah: If they’re provoking the calamity they’re supposedly seeking to prevent, maybe they’re not really seeking to prevent it.
Zifnab
I don’t see a problem with Erza’s statement here. He’s taking the GOP at its word and then following through, logically, on why their means won’t result in their stated ends.
“If you pursue path X to avoid situation Y, you will very likely end up at situation Y. So don’t do that.” That’s hardly asshatting the conversation.
On the contrary, Erza spells out in detail why paying out debts is so vital and why default on the debt would be such a monstrously bad mistake. For someone who doesn’t follow politics and markets religiously, this kind of deep and critical examination of what even the threat of default could mean is wonderful and should be applauded.
Just because Erza isn’t bleating
“Raise Debt Limit go-o-o-o-d!”
“GOP agenda ba-a-a-a-d!
doesn’t mean he’s taking the deficit peacocks seriously. On the contrary, his article pushes us into a more serious conversation about what can make the deficit better or worse and how to best approach the problem. In that sense, he’s doing a much better job of winning over readers than a passionate “ARGLE, BLARGLE! ERZA SMASH!” rant.
PeakVT
@Uloborus: Klein knows quite a bit about policy, but he’s not a “brilliant economist” by any stretch of the imagination. He doesn’t even have an undergrad degree in the field.
piratedan
well it doesn’t help John of Orange that a full third of his caucus appears to be comprised of nihilistic pyros that apparently have no understanding of the actual process of governing and the creation and enacting of laws that are even remotely constitutional.
That shell game is not exactly paying dividends other than the expected two years of jack shit getting done while the country slowly awakens to buyers remorse as independent voters slowly clue in to the fact that the R’s aren’t remotely serious about solving the problems of the country and just want to be in power because hey, we’re in power.
So we get to watch more kabuki of will he/won’t he have a show down with the TP crowd (and only his hairdresser will know for sure) regarding staying on board and actually getting down to business of just how much damage they can do while they have the opportunity that is before them. The thing is, no one is sure if John of Orange is even up to the task. The leadership void is clear as the AFP folks are too busy assembling their pastiche of hate ads for 2012 to lend a guiding hand to their purchased lackeys and as far as they are concerned, the status quo suits them while the real wrecking crews are busy doing misdeeds at the state level.
I’m guessing the debt level kerfuffle will pass with a slight burp of indigestion unless something juicy shows up that the R’s can use as a new bludgeon to bring this back up as another method to hamstring the Dems. What this country apparently needs is a nice effective antibiotic salve to purge the Republican infection from politics, but sadly, its not covered under our current health care plan.
Nathanlindquist
Agreed on all except for “debt is on par with historic levels”. Its not, google a chart of federal debt over the last hundred years. And Tim F., as someone who understands the implications of peak oil you should understand that we are not going to grow our way out of the debt problem.
Its clear the Ryan plan is an excuse to cut taxes on the rich now and let future Congresses tell granny she’s not getting the operation with the understanding that they will cave. But the rich will still have their tax cut!
That this is true is no excuse for liberals to ignore the debt problem.
Bob
Here is an illustration, an alternative, to the mentioned yoga position,
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=asshat
Tim F.
@Nathanlindquist: The trouble with peak oil is that it basically puts an endpoint on this whole silly game. When inelastic demand meets inelastic supply we will most likely have a short and very unpleasant period where we settle who owns what patch of oily turf and then most business will become local again. The trick is that you simply cannot handle (for example) nuclear power generation locally. It takes a national infrastructure to keep a power plant running, or even to safely shut one down without its fuel killing a couple of area codes worth of real estate.
Basically it makes everything else look a bit pointless. I try not to think about it much.
Nathanlindquist
@Tim F.: true, peak oil can lead one to question the meaning of arguing over the rest of it.
I’ve been pondering the implications of another trajectory, a continuation of “bumpy plateau” oil that means oil production stays flat as it has since 2005. This is not the doomsday scenario, but it means that the economy keeps hitting its head on the oil-ceiling over the medium term. This would not be a huge problem if we didn’t have this enormous debt hanging over our heads, both government debt and consumer debt. Debt service is based on the assumption of continued economic growth, and since we aren’t going to get that, the markets and Obama are right to be jittery, and they are right to try to cut the deficit now before the bumpy plateau problem is more widely understood.
liberal
@Uloborus:
Let’s see…Ezra Klein (according to Wikipedia) has a BA in political science.
Krugman has a PhD and a Nobel.
kwAwk
You don’t get it. If you cut spending and don’t cut taxes at the same time, then the deficit really will go down, which takes away the need to cut spending again in the future.
This has been the game since W. If there is no deficit then there isn’t a way to make the case that the government is over spending.
This is also the reason in my opinion behind the sense of urgency to get W elected in 2000. If there is no W then there is no W tax cut and the budget would have run a surplus for most of the first decade of this century. If that happens then privatizing SS is off the table. Cutting entitlements is off the table. Reducing the size of the federal government is off the table.
The deficit has to be maintained in order to fulfill right wing talking points.
Tom
Why aren’t the dems HAMMERING republicans on their refusal to let the Bush tax cuts expire. If the debt is such a crisis, as conservatives claim, then wouldn’t expiring the cuts be a reasonable thing to do?
Why can’t the dems just come out and say: negotiations on what we cut from the budget start when you agree to let the tax cuts expire? Period.
Judas Escargot
Alan Greenspan has now gone on the record urging for the “so-called Bush tax Cuts” (his words) to expire ASAP. IMO that’s a Big Deal.
Seems a little underreported.
MTiffany
When the hell did ‘irony’ become synonymous with ‘hypocrisy?’
mclaren
@MTiffany:
When `serious’ became synonymous with `batshit insane.’
mclaren
@Rick Massimo:
LOL.
Ezra Klein couldn’t figure out how to empty a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel.
Anne Laurie
Because the
mathblog demands it: Yes, they are hyperactive, but dude, that’s not chocolate.@Judas Escargot:
Mr. Andrea Mitchell is desperate to achieve public favor with the current occupant of the Oval Office, and such is the unsubtlety of his mind that denying everything he’s said since 1980 is his first recourse. This has made him a great embarrassment to his wife’s fellow courtiers, who pride themselves on the skill with which they can pivot without being caught doing so. The Media Villagers therefore respond as they would if the old coot were to fart loudly at a dinner party — they raise the volume of the conversation slightly and try not to grimace on-camera.
Chris Grrr™
Congressional leadership is “seeking to prevent” a calamity?!?
Extraordinary claims require proof.