Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) came up with a signature phrase to
describe the bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling. “This is a
Satan sandwich, no doubt about it,” the Congressional Black Caucus
chairman said. “With Satan fries on the side,” House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi added. Pelosi was a yes vote, perhaps
confirming conservative suspicions about her dietary
preferences.
Not everyone on the left was willing to have their Satan
sandwich and eat it too. The New York Times
editorialized that the debt deal was a “nearly complete
capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican
extremists.” “We have given much and received nothing in return,”
lamented Rep. Raul Grijalva. “The lesson today is that Republicans
can hold their breath long enough to get what they want.”
Arianna Huffington worried on MSNBC that the bill showed
political compromise was dead. “”I think this is a real breakdown
of our political system,” she said. In the Daily Beast,
Michael Tomasky
said simply, “Obama Gives It All Away.” Paul Krugman
concluded Obama had “thrown all that away,” like the old
Genesis song. Grijalva argued the agreement “trades people’s
livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing
radicals.”
Except the supposed “unappeasable right-wing radicals” were
mostly unappeased. Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and
Marco Rubio (R-FL), some of the legislators most associated with
the Tea Party, announced their opposition. Center-hugging
Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty
joined Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann in denouncing the deal. In the
House, Paul and Bachmann joined such Tea Party lawmakers as Reps.
Joe Walsh (R-IL), Paul Broun (R-GA), and Tim Scott (R-SC) in voting
against it.
The Club for Growth and Heritage Action joined MoveOn.org and
the Congressional Progressive Caucus in coming out swinging against
the plan. Even Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South
Carolina slammed its spending cuts as mostly illusory, except
insofar as they targeted the Pentagon. “This agreement adds
over $7 trillion in new debt over the next decade and only makes
small reductions in future spending,” Graham said in a statement.
“We hardly address the future growth of entitlements, a major
contributor of future budgetary problems.” But “the consequences to
our nation’s defense infrastructure would be severe.”
Rand Paul sounded similar themes. In an open letter spelling out
his opposition to the compromise, he said that the spending cuts
were too small, too slow, and too backloaded. He also noted the
increase in the national debt and the fact that it made it easier
to raise the debt ceiling in the future. “To paraphrase Jim DeMint:
When you’re speeding toward the edge of a cliff, you don’t set the
cruise control,” Paul said. “You stop the car.”
While liberals saw the measure as shredding the social safety
net, conservative skeptics disliked that it would leave Obamacare,
the failed stimulus, and the massive federal bailouts intact.
Liberals felt they gave away everything while conservatives
believed they got nothing. On Twitter and in the blogosphere, many
conservatives gleefully embraced Cleaver’s description of the debt
hike as a sugar-coated Satan sandwich. Both sides were insistent
that their leaders could have gotten a better deal.
In exchange for increasing the debt ceiling through the 2012
presidential election, the deal purports to contain $917 billion in
spending cuts with no tax increases. A joint committee will meet to
identify another $1.5 trillion in cuts, with at least the
theoretical possibility of tax increases, or triggers will kick in
some $1.2 trillion in cuts to discretionary spending, on both
security and non-security related expenditures. Toss in $156
billion in reduced interest payments on the debt and the
Congressional Budget Office believes it will result in $2.5
trillion in deficit reduction over ten years.
Needless to say, there remains a great deal of debate over the
hastily thrown together details. In the end, the strange
bedfellows’ left-and-right opposition couldn’t overcome the heroic
return of Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), the lobbying of both parties’
leadership teams, and Washington’s collective sense that something
must be done by midnight on August 2. The supposed non-compromise
split House Democrats right down the middle and won majority
Republican support. At press time, the Senate awaits its turn to
ratify the deal and then try to avoid hard budget votes in the
future.
So we have a debt deal that may lead to real spending cuts, even
if it leaves the main driver of the debt untouched. It may sharply
cut defense spending but not raise taxes. Or it may lead to tax
increases in the future. Or maybe it won’t do much of anything at
all, if the projections turn out to be even a little off. And it is
hard to imagine Democrats and Republicans agreeing to much
more.
However this turns out, it shows that both parties may have
gotten us into this mess. But except at the margins, don’t expect
them to join forces in getting us out.
