Over at YidWithLid, Jeff Dunetz calls the bipartisan debt deal “a huge victory for the Conservative wing of the party.” He includes a lot of bullet points about the deal as well as the Speaker’s PowerPoint presentation offering details of the “Two-Step Approach” to hold the president “accountable,” contending that it cuts government spending more than it increases the debt limit. (H/t: Instapundit.)
Jennifer Rubin agrees with Dunetz that all “in all Republicans have much to crow about.”
I learned of the deal via CNN, having looked up from my cardio machine to see the “Breaking News.” I initially thought it was a bad deal, given how some commentator on the “news” network seemed to be gloating, but then they showed the president who didn’t seem too pleased, especially when he lashed out at those Republicans who prevented millionaires and billionaires from paying their fair share.
(Question for consideration: why does Obama feel the need to attack Republicans for this failure to increase taxes on some of the most productive in our society.)
I’ll just say I have mixed feelings about the deal. I don’t think Republicans should have given in to the president’s demand that they agree to extend to the debt limit through the 2012 campaign. If Ronald Reagan, as Obama claimed in his speech last week, raised the debt ceiling eighteen times, that means he did it, average, more than twice a year. Why shouldn’t a president who has lately (rhetorically at least) become so fond of the Gipper have to do it less often, only once in two years?
That said, before the deal was announced Michael Barone said Republicans had won because the fight was on our proverbial turf, “over cuts not more taxes.“ That is, while the deal is far from ideal, at least we’re no longer talking about federal “investments” (i.e., more government spending) but instead about cutting government spending.
In his pitch to House Republicans, Speaker Boehner concedes, “this isn’t the greatest deal in the world. But it shows how much we’ve changed the terms of the debate in this town.”
Conservatives may have won this battle rhetorically, but we’re still spending at a pace far above that of the Clinton years. The only way to make this deal work is for this and future Congresses to remain ever vigilant against the spendthrift ways of Washington politicians.
And to elect representatives and Senators willing to hold true to Reagan’s core principle, men and women who will work to reduce the size of the federal government.
Hasn’t Obama done it three times now?
And I STILL want to know: How is demanding those who pay 97% of all taxes pay more is “fair”? If liberals wanted Americans to pay their “fair share”, shouldn’t they be demanding that those who don’t pay any taxes + get money back actually pay taxes now?
I’ve come to the conclusion that when liberals say that Republicans want to “protect the rich”, they really mean THEY do. Given their predilection for projection plus the fact that higher taxes means “the rich” have less of a tax burden, plus all the rich who support the liberals, I can only conclude that they favor the rich far more than Republicans do.
Here we go:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Special-Features/Interactive/Debt_Ceiling.aspx
Here is what bothers me about the Debt Ceiling Compromise. Obama gets $2.8 Trillion more to spend, spend, spend. Then, you have this “Super Commission” that has to recommend cuts, and if it doesn’t recommend cuts, then cuts are automatic.
But none of this seems to be binding on Obama, only Congress. There doesn’t seem to be anything stopping him from vetoing the cuts recommended by the Super Commission and continuing to spend anyway he pleases. And I just plain don’t trust any of ’em.
One possible advantage in this for Tea Party to take advantage of is that since the debt ceiling technically won’t be an “issue” through 2012, they’ll have one less excuse to avoid resuming discussions about repealing ObamaCare. One can hope that enough people keep bringing that up because I was one of many struck by how that was completely ignored in all this grandstanding.
The MFM is dismayed that the Tea Party stands on principle and won’t be bribed.
The debt ceiling was always going to be raised. In no way were the players in place to force a shutdown.
Obama and his team expected the House to fold under the first sign of a puff of resistance. They never, ever expected to be forced to cooperate in any meaningful way. Obama wore his tribal top hat and golfed for effect. Pelosi and Reid promised to bury everything the Republicans offered up. No plans were put on the table, because their only plan was for the Republicans to sign the increase, shut up and go away.
What John Boehner and his team achieved is monumental in terms of the game the Democrats laid out. And what Boehner achieved is directly related to his lack of alternatives and the steadfastness of the TEA Party members of the House. There were no earmark arrows to buy votes in his quiver. All Boehner had to trade on was his word and his reputation.
It must have been a rude awakening to the Democrats when they realized that their cheating ways would not carry the game.
Gone is the talk of raising the debt ceiling with no strings attached. Gone is the insistence that the rich share in the sacrifice. Gone is the refusal to discuss cutting the budget.
We must now flood the House and the Senate with “amateurs” who don’t “know how the system works” and who will get the nation’s fiscal house back in order and who will work to reinvigorate the economy and the engine of enterprise that made America great.
It’s kinda fun to see the Left being “dragged kicking and screaming” to a deal.. Congressman Grijalva, head of some “progressive” caucus or other, is denouncing it: http://grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=13§iontree=5,13&itemid=1063
And Dick Durbin calls it the death of Keynesian economics: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/31/durbin-debt-deal-keynes-deficit_n_914356.html
But another part of me thinks the Left is staging it. In fact, bondholders – and the American people – have still lost.
Picture a household that borrows 40 cents of every dollar it spends on credit cards. It is maxed out. It has no ability or intention of paying the money back, except if its counterfeiting operation takes off. (Its Uncle Ben has a secret printing press in the basement, but that’s another story.) Its hits its card limit. The limit is there to make it stop – to make it start living within its means. The household writes a letter threatening to declare bankruptcy if it can’t keep borrowing, and asserting that it “needs” to keep borrowing in order to service its other cards and keep up its credit rating (ahem). After some hand-wringing, the company caves in and gives the household a juicy limit increase. Who just won?
(continued) The company tells itself, “Well they’d also demanded an assessment on other cardholders. At least we convinced them that was crazy. At least we got them to promise to start thinking about reducing their future spending. So, we won.” Yeah. Right.
bugger and it’s monday and I frakked up the block quotes.
I don’t suppose this means that conservatives will accept any responsibility for the state of the economy over the next few months… Isn’t the mere promise of government spending cuts supposed to inspire some kind of rapid economic expansion from the private sector?
Levi, since conservatives can’t undo the damaging policies of the 111th Congress or scale back the administration’s regulatory excess, why should they accept responsibility for the failure of the Obama Democrats’ policies?
And no, it’s not government spending alone which spurs economic growth, but also removing regulations which impose an excessive burden on innovation and expansion.
>Isn’t the mere promise of government spending cuts supposed to inspire some kind of rapid economic expansion from the private sector?
No, it’s not enough to overcome the real drag on the private sector – the policies and especially rhetoric of the man at the top – Barack Obama.
There is only one way to return private economic expansion, get him out of there in 2012. Obama cannot pivot or morph into a pro-growth leader, he is not Clinton.
This debt crisis was his Katrina ( You’re doing a heck of a job Timmy Geithner). The Obama presidency has played out EXACTLY as we all feared it would….
An economic disaster…
I love the insane economics of Levi/Krugman. The solution is always for the Government to spend more money to create jobs. Obama’s administration admits that each job created or saved by his Keynesian policies cost $278,000 per job. At this rate, (And I’m doing math here, which Levi hates because things he doesn’t understand confuse and enrage him), just replacing the 2,500,000 jobs lost since the start of the Obama presidency would cost a mere $695,000,000,000,000 (695 Trillion dollars).
In other words, using the Levi/Krugman/Keynes recovery model, the Obama regime only needs to borrow about 12 times the annual GDP of the entire planet to get unemployment back to where it was when he started.
Lindsey Graham joins the Dark Side
Hi Dan,
Maybe because Reagan never had to deal with the type of debt raising process that we are going through now. I don’t remember Congress being willing to take us to 11th hour and 59th minute of that sort of adventure. And, do we really believe that the next debt raising adventure, before the elections, would be any different from what we are experiencing now, given the ideological positions of the two parties? I can only wonder at what economic markets might think (and do), if we went through this little dance–again–six months from now…
It’s more significant that this one debt increase is larger than the total debt accumulated in all the Reagan years combined.
Where are all those liberals who were bitching about deficit spending 5 years ago?
Hi Cas,
The Gephart rule was in effect during the Reagan years.