Debt Ceiling Debate (aka) The 3-Step Self-Deception Plan for Economic Salvation
No, it’s not just a rhetorical device to get you attention, this country is really screwed? Why, you ask fair reader. The answer is simple, and this story in USA Today captures why perfectly:
House leaders have said they will accept the Senate deal to end the 16-day partial shutdown and meet a Thursday deadline to raise the nation’s $16.7 debt ceiling.
“The compromise we reached will provide our economy with the stability it desperately needs,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who reached the agreement with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
“This has been a long, challenging few weeks for Congress and for the country. It is my hope that today we can put some of those most urgent issues behind us,” McConnell said.
In 3 easy steps we can dissect the logic at work in Senate Republicrats–Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell. Let’s call it the “3-Step Self-Deception Plan for Economic Salvation.” Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Pretend raising the US debt ceiling to $16.7 billion is a good thing. (Washington logic of more = better)
Step 2: Pretend raising the US debt ceiling to $16.7 billion will “provide our economy with the stability it desperately need.” (Democratic logic of stability through spending)
Step 3: Pretend raising the US debt ceiling to $16.7 billion will allow the country to “put some of those most urgent issues behind us.” (Republican logic of strength through unity)
When did politicians convince us that raising the credit limit to support an even more extravagant lifestyle is a good idea? When did the economists convince us this runaway spending is really economic stability? How does a near-government shutdown and actual gov’t employee layoffs now magically allows us to put the urgent matters behind us? This entire charade is the urgent matter at hand, and it certainly is not behind us. Should I remind you this “credit limit” that is being celebrated is in the tens of billions? Or that the ones bearing the costs are us plebes, and not those assholes in Washington dressed in expensive suite and heels?
Do I need to remind anyone that all this agreement actually does is create “a stopgap measure that would fund the government through Jan. 15, [and] suspend the debt ceiling until Feb. 7.” What exactly is “behind us” again Mr. Senators?
Please, enough of the bullshit lies Washington.
Until next time…er, um, I mean until Jan 15th
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It seems to me you don’t fully appreciate what the debt ceiling law does, and does not do.
The law authorizes Treasury to pay our bills, borrowing money when necessary to meet obligations beyond that week’s income.
In short, it answers the question “Should we pay our bills on time?” with a “Yes!”
Do you want to limit spending? That’s done in appropriations bills. The GOP has blocked those bills for nearly four years now.
Do you want to get a good grasp of the entire U.S. budget, to set appropriate priorities? That’s done with the annual budget resolution. The GOP in the House have refused to pass that resolution this year, won’t even discuss it with the Senate.
Do you want to change the direction of certain programs, or abolish unneeded agencies of the government? That’s done in the authorizations bills. The House GOP has been blocking those, too.
All the debt ceiling does is guarantee we won’t be a deadbeat nation. Who, in their right mind, could oppose that?
Thanks for your comments Ed. I do understand what the law authorizes, but I think you missed my larger point, which is the claim by Senate leaders in that article I quoted that continually raising our debt ceiling as a mechanism to avoid loan defaults–ostensibly to spur or at least stabilize economic growth–is premised on some very dangerous logic. Your other points are right as to the importance of appropriation bills in setting spending priorities and limits, and I don’t disagree with you on that. And no, I’m not advocating loan defaults of sovereign debt–although I do think it is time to revisit the old idea of Jubilee. And yes, there has been a lot of partisan politics causing ongoing problems there, and that is a trend not likely to change anytime soon.
But this still misses the central issue in my mind–which is that our out of control spending is itself just a symptom of a deeper problem that cuts across all major party lines, Dems and Repubs. While I won’t go into a discussion of economic history here, it’s clear that even if we had some bipartisan support for developing appropriations or annual budgets, neither party is going to propose any massive cuts in US spending. The sequester cuts were already seen as too much by many actors in Washington, so imagining a more drastic spending reduction scenario seems highly unlikely.
If we take this scenario as likely for the foreseeable future, then spending will continue to increase each year over past levels, and every 3 or 6 or 9 months Congress will have another debate over spending cuts, budget allocations and debt ceiling increases. At some point, when will the burden of our national debt be so heavy that it starts to implode the larger economy, and then spirals out into the world market? It seems to me only a matter of time.
Democrats regularly propose massive cuts in spending. In the Clinton administration, with a GOP Congress willing to work to improve the nation, instead of wreck it, balanced budgets with disappearing debt were achieved, with rising incomes and increasing employment.
Bush successfully argued to give those gains to America’s very rich. Now we are engaged in a great debate, whether to go back to a growing, increasingly-rich America, or continue giving money to the very rich.
It’s true that Democrats have proposed spending cuts, and Clinton was certainly much better in terms of a balanced budget than his Bush or Reagan predecessors, no doubt about that. But we also saw a huge expansion of neoliberal market policies under Clinton and an aggressive promotion of the WTO and NAFTA as remedies to our economic woes. Both efforts have been disastrous for real people living in these sacrifice zones, as compared to the corporate interests that continue to write and shapes these policies. The Democrats are equally at fault in this regard.
My point is that neither the Dem/Rep parties have any solutions to get us out of our mess because they are both squarely beholden to the same neoliberal economic logics–the Dems just prefer to spend more on social services, whereas the Repubs prefer the Defense and Technology sectors. Neither has a plan or even an analysis that seriously acknowledges the depth of our current economic problems (here I mean both locally and globally), which are part of the growth at all costs ideology driving modern capitalism. Until someone in the Dems/Repubs parties start talking about this issue seriously, they’re both the problem in my view.