A Debt Ceiling Compromise That Actually Looks Like A Compromise

by JASmius

Hot off the Assholiated Press wires:

Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders are indicating they have agreed to a compromise debt ceiling deal with the White House. The framework of the deal includes $1 in cuts for every dollar raised in the debt ceiling; no new taxes; and no more votes on the debt ceiling until after the 2012 election.

Wins for our side: Actual spending cuts, no new taxes to clobber an already depressed economy (beyond the ones already in place); wins for the other side: Spending cuts not nearly large enough, entitlements remain untouched, no more debt ceiling votes until after November 2012. Essentially, a stalemate.

Could we have done better if we had kicked Red Barry and Dirty Harry in the nuts and dared them to force a default? No, we could not, because a default was entirely at the White House's discretion, and if we had given him that garishly overt an opening, he would have taken it, ordered a default, and then claimed that it was solely because of Republican extremist intransigence. "I tried to meet them halfway, but they let the radical Tea Partiers drive the country's finances back into the ditch." And independent (i.e. ignorant, low-information, emotion-driven) voters would have swallowed it hook, line, & sinker. It would have been Newt Gingrich's overreaching in the second government shutdown showdown with Bill Clinton back in the winter of '95 all over again.

The irony? We'll get a crisis anyway. The effect of this deal will be negligible. The problem isn't whether or not the debt ceiling got raised and never was; it's the magnitude of debt we already have and the direction in which that number is heading. Nothing that came out of the debt ceiling melodrama was going to change that. It's been decades in the making, the Obamidency has simply (and by design) served to bring it to a head a decade or so sooner than it otherwise would have.

But because the GOP hung tough and forced the White House and Senate Dems to accept a genuine compromise (i.e. nobody likes this deal), it also means we forced them to take at least partial ownership of the debt crisis still to come. Which means it'll be much more difficult for The One to duck responsibility when it happens.

Crises only work for wannabe dictators when they're not likely to wind up the ones (figuratively or literally) hanging from lampposts. And with the Obamaconomy in its current dismal straits, his avenue of re-election escape is about to get even narrower.

[cross-posted at Hard Starboard]