President Obama (Wikimedia Commons)
If you want to talk pragmatism and reality and all the other excuses propounded by self-styled Serious People, it starts with
this (pdf):
When implementing the sequestration of direct spending pursuant to this paragraph, OMB shall follow the procedures specified in section 6 of the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010, the exemptions specified in section 255, and the special rules specified in section 256, except that the percentage reduction for the Medicare programs specified in section 256(d) shall not be more than 2 percent for a fiscal year.
No more than 2 percent per fiscal year. As in up to 2 percent per fiscal year. Chip, chip, chip. All the Republicans have to do is to ensure that the Super Duper Special Catfood Commission 2.0 doesn't come up with a plan that can pass, so Medicare can be cut up to 2 percent per year, with most of the rest of the domestic budget slashed across-the-board. But some still seem to think the Republicans can be trusted to negotiate in good faith. If you want to talk pragmatism and reality. As explained by Don McCanne, former president of Physicians for a National Health Program:
The probability of reaching a complex and controversial agreement that leaves Medicare totally unscathed is almost zero in this dysfunctional Congress. President Obama has already demonstrated that he is quite willing to capitulate to the demands of the right-wing obstructionists in Congress. This next time it will be much easier since the terms of the extortion have already been included in this legislation. Since Medicare remains a prime target for the reactionaries, it is very unlikely that it can clear this hurdle without further reductions.
Medicare payment rates have not been increasing at the same level as private insurance rates, understandably creating considerable uneasiness amongst the providers of health care. The Affordable Care Act will further reduce some Medicare payments, and now the Budget Control Act of 2011 will reduce them even further.
If you want to talk pragmatism and reality, consider that Paul Ryan's plan to cut Medicare had created a firestorm in Republican Congressional districts. It was a key factor, if not the key factor, in Democratic Rep. Kathy Hochul's election from a Republican-leaning district. Like any good new member of Congress, Hochul voted the way her president wanted her to vote, but Democrats with that vote handed back to the Republicans an issue that could have been decisive in their quest to regain the House and hold on to the Senate and the White House. If you want to talk pragmatism and reality, consider that the Republicans already are planning to use Medicare cuts against the Democrats in next year's election.
Some say the Democrats have a silver bullet in the structure of the new Catfood Commission 2.0. Some say the Republicans will have to play nice lest there be massive cuts in defense spending. If you want to talk pragmatism and reality, take a look at this curious wording from the actual law:
(B) The term ‘security category’ includes discretionary appropriations associated with agency budgets for the Department of Defense, the Depart- ment of Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the intelligence community management account (95–0401–0–1–054), and all budget accounts in budget function 150 (international affairs).
It was reported that the wording was included to appease Boeing. Even before the deal, McClatchy's Nancy A. Youssef explained that even as the rest of the government was being put on the butcher's block, the Pentagon was being protected:
The last-minute deal that Congress is considering to raise the federal debt limit probably will mean trillions of dollars in government spending reductions for most agencies. But one department stands to gain: the Pentagon.
Rather than cutting $400 billion in defense spending through 2023, as President Barack Obama had proposed in April, the current debt proposal trims $350 billion through 2024, effectively giving the Pentagon $50 billion more than it had been expecting over the next decade.
With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, experts said, the overall change in defense spending practices could be minimal: Instead of cuts, the Pentagon merely could face slower growth.
And McClatchy's Michael Doyle had an update:
"They wanted some lambs in the cage with (the Pentagon) when it comes to cutting," Winslow Wheeler, an analyst at the Center for Defense Information, said in an interview Wednesday, and "they probably will be much more kind to defense than to foreign aid."
Bluntly put, the legislation throws warplane contracts into the same budget-cutting arena as aid to Armenia and Israel, agricultural border inspections and research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. While it's unlikely, even the nation's 152 VA hospitals could be dinged to protect a favored defense program.
"The chairman came around to support the deal after seeing the expanded defense and security category, and the possibility that we can retain our defense equities," House Armed Services Committee spokesman Claude Chafin said Wednesday."
If you want to talk pragmatism and reality, Meteor Blades explained that the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex already is prepared for the lobbying fight, while Markos summarized the politics:
But the GOP won't fret over those defense cuts. Because all they have to do is pass separate legislation refunding the Pentagon and Senate Dems (either too scared or too compromised) will cave on that and what will Obama do? Veto spending "for the troops"?
As for the politics of the debt ceiling debacle, Nate Silver, who long has been a strong supporter of Barack Obama, had this to say:
By 32-to-28, members of the Tea Party Caucus voted for the bill, despite earlier claims — which now look like a bluff — that they wouldn’t vote to raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances.
These results seem to suggest that Mr. Obama left something on the table. That is, Mr. Obama could have shifted the deal tangibly toward the left and still gotten a bill through without too much of a problem. For instance, even if all members of the Tea Party Caucus had voted against the bill, it would still have passed 237-to-193, and that’s with 95 Democrats voting against it.
Specifically, it seems likely that Mr. Obama could have gotten an extension of the payroll tax cut included in the bill, or unemployment benefits, either of which would have had a stimulative effect.
That's pragmatism and reality. The Republicans were bluffing. And the White House blinked. Or maybe it got mostly what it wanted. Keep in mind that when Senate Majority Minority Leader Mitch McConnell floated the idea of a clean bill with periodic toothless Congressional votes, the president rejected it. He seemed to want cuts. He seemed to want to tie deficit reduction to the debt ceiling. He seemed to want to cut spending during a deep recession. He didn't choose other options even when they were offered, and he didn't fight for other options because he apparently didn't want other options. He only wanted to argue over the details. There are choices, and he made some.
If you want to talk pragmatism and reality, many of us saw this coming last winter when the president signed off on the extension of the Bush tax cuts that he previously had argued against. The Republicans held firm and the White House backed down. Just as the Republicans held firm on the budget deal and the White House backed down. Or maybe the White House got mostly what it wanted. It's hard to tell. Because there is a pattern here.
The president himself appointed the first Catfood Commission, at a time when we really needed to be talking about a second stimulus, and he himself appointed a conservative corporatist Democrat and a hard right fossil Republican to chair it. It was the wrong move at the wrong time with the wrong people at the helm. The president doesn't get to appoint the membership of Catfood Commission 2.0, but it's hard to believe that he is anything but pleased that it will be established. And it's also hard to believe that he is anything but pleased that unlike his own earlier version, Catfood Commission 2.0 will have teeth. If the Republicans don't like what it proposes, they can walk away and allow the slashing and burning to begin. If the Democrats don't want the slashing and burning to begin, they will have to accept whatever the Republicans propose. If you want to talk pragmatism and reality, this is a certain loser for Keynesianism, progressive policy, the traditions and political future of the Democratic Party, and oh, by the way, the economy.
If you want to talk pragmatism and reality, the outcome of next year's elections will be as were the elections last year— largely dependent on the economy. And the economy is in bad shape. And we need another stimulus. But the president instead bought into deficit fever. If you want to talk pragmatism and reality, a lot of people have been warning about 1937, and how cutting spending during the recovery from the Great Depression sent the economy back into a spiral that only was reversed when spending again was ramped up. There are precedents. There is theory. There is the Keyensian economic paradigm that has defined the Democratic Party since that economic paradigm brought the country out of the Great Depression and made the Democratic Party politically dominant for half a century. If you want to talk pragmatism and reality, when a Democratic president sends an important bill to Congress and gets only half the Democratic vote in the House, and loses the Progressive Caucus and the majority of the Black Caucus while winning almost three-quarters of the Republican Caucus, we have a serious political problem.
If you want to talk pragmatism and reality, there still will need to be extensions of unemployment benefits, particularly given that there was nothing in the debt ceiling bill that will create jobs, while there will be a trade bill that will cost jobs. If you want to talk pragmatism and reality, there still will be budget fights. If you want to talk pragmatism and reality, the Republicans know that they can take more hostages and get even more of what they want.
As Paul Krugman wrote last December, after the Republicans got their ransom on the tax cut deal while the Democrats left more political hostages ripe for the taking:
Now we have unemployment insurance and payroll tax cuts for 2011, going away in 2012 — just in time to put the administration in big trouble as the election looms.
This only makes sense if you believe we’ll be in a self-sustaining, strong recovery by late 2011. Stranger things have happened, but …
And remember, mistaken forecasts of self-sustaining recovery taking hold were a big part of the original stimulus mistake.
We now know that there is no recovery. Not strong, not self-sustaining, and certainly not strangely defying all that has been so obvious for so long. And the next expiration of unemployment benefits will be yet another opportunity for the Republicans to extract ransom. On policy and politics, the Republicans are toying with this administration. Unless the administration really doesn't object to policies that long have been Republican boilerplate.
This country needs jobs. Lot of jobs. It needs them quickly, but there is nothing on any perceptible horizon to suggest jobs will be coming. But more budget cuts will be coming. The very opposite of stimulus will continue coming right as we enter an election year.
This will get worse. If you want to talk pragmatism and reality.