This lemon has already been squeezed pretty dry, but Bai still gets a few drops, or at least makes a few points by shifting emphasis on the story. The first point is that it was John Boehner, closet moderate, who got the ball rolling, by proposing a budget deal that could include $800 billion over current projected revenues, though he coyly refused to say if this cash could come from “efficiencies” (which almost never materialize), enhanced economic growth (the favored Republican fantasy), or (this cannot be spoken out loud) increased taxes. The second point is that it was Boehner who let it all collapse, when the President, after briefly chasing a senatorial proposal that would allow for a $1.2 trillion increase in revenues, asked Boehner if they could go back to the $800 billion deal and Boehner simply let the clock run out, not returning the President’s call.
Entirely missing from Bai’s account, however, are what’s really important:
1. THERE WAS NO CRISIS! The “crisis” was invented by blood-thirsty Republicans determined to destroy the President in the quickest manner possible, by blowing up the country’s economy. Boehner and Wall Street refused to tell the Gang of Ninety, or how many of these folks there are, that they were crazy. The Republican Party is trying to swallow a group that is trying to swallow them.
2. OBAMA’S ENDLESS BIPARTISANSHIP MAKES HIM LOOK LIKE A FOOL. The President keeps striving to do Wall Street’s bidding: make a permanent deal that will permanently cut entitlements. He was willing to make a deal when his political capital was at an all-time low, when his adversaries were confident they could destroy him and, in January 2013, rewrite the laws with a Republican President and a Republican Congress.
3. REPUBLICANS DO NOT WANT TO CUT SPENDING. The “substitute deal” that emerged after the real deal fell through supposedly set up automatic sequestration of both domestic and defense spending if the regular congressional committees failed to reach agreements on spending reductions. The committees reached no agreements, and now it is clear that Republicans will decide that the defense sequestrations would be disastrous and thus will overturn them, which the Democrats will not allow to happen without similar action on the domestic sequestrations.
Republicans pat themselves on the back for promising to cut spending ten years from now. If the current Congress cannot bind itself to accept spending cuts, how can it bind future Congresses to do so? President Obama’s Affordable Care Act cut Medicare spending in real time. For this he was reviled by every single Republican. There is every reason (every economic reason) to go back to the Clinton-era tax rates, and the Clinton-era defense budget (which was actually too high), which would increase available revenues in the coming decades by trillions of dollars, but of course this was regarded as madness.
The fake deal—the sequestration arrangement that Congress will actually prevent from going into effect—was probably the best possible outcome. Though the President frequently looked foolish, the Republicans looked even worse, and the Administration learned (a little) about untrustworthy the Republicans are, and how little they can rely on their Wall Street friends (the departure of non-dealing making deal maker Bill Daley is testimony to this). Now, if Obama would only learn that murdering people is wrong, we might be making some progress.
