Debt ceiling “deal” is a victory for the Grand Old Party of Extortion

Last night, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma took to the James S. Brady Press Brief­ing Room to announce that he and Repub­li­can con­gres­sion­al lead­ers had reached an under­stand­ing on  leg­is­la­tion that would raise the debt ceil­ing in exchange for deep cuts to essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the fed­er­al government.

The White House is try­ing to frame the deal as a respon­si­ble bipar­ti­san agree­ment. They’re already dis­trib­ut­ing talk­ing points exhort­ing its sup­posed virtues.

From our per­spec­tive, this deal is no deal at all. It’s capitulation.

What real­ly just hap­pened is that the Grand Old Par­ty of Extor­tion has won anoth­er major vic­to­ry over the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic estab­lish­ment in our nation’s cap­i­tal, despite only hav­ing con­trol of one house of Con­gress. Repub­li­cans took our nation’s fis­cal health hostage by open­ly invit­ing a default. Instead of suf­fer­ing the reper­cus­sions of tak­ing such an irre­spon­si­ble posi­tion, they are being rewarded.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as the cliché goes, we’ve seen this movie before.

As Paul Krug­man writes:

Repub­li­cans will sure­ly be embold­ened by the way Mr. Oba­ma keeps fold­ing in the face of their threats. He sur­ren­dered last Decem­ber, extend­ing all the Bush tax cuts; he sur­ren­dered in the spring when they threat­ened to shut down the gov­ern­ment; and he has now sur­ren­dered on a grand scale to raw extor­tion over the debt ceiling.

Maybe it’s just me, but I see a pat­tern here.Did the pres­i­dent have any alter­na­tive this time around? Yes.

First of all, he could and should have demand­ed an increase in the debt ceil­ing back in Decem­ber. When asked why he didn’t, he replied that he was sure that Repub­li­cans would act respon­si­bly. Great call.

Robert Reich adds:

The bud­get deficit is not the biggest obsta­cle to our pros­per­i­ty. Lack of jobs and growth is. And the largest threat to our democ­ra­cy is the emer­gence of a rad­i­cal right capa­ble of get­ting most of the ran­som it demands.

The “deal” appears to include no rev­enue increas­es of any kind. It’s just cuts to ser­vices on top of more cuts to services.

The Pres­i­dent says he will con­tin­ue to advo­cate for a “bal­anced approach” to deal­ing with the deficit, but that’s an emp­ty promise. If he could­n’t get repeal of a sin­gle tax loop­hole into this pro­pos­al, why should any of us think that new or restored rev­enue will be on the table in the future?

We’re not the only pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tion that believes this deal is bad for Amer­i­ca, bad for fam­i­lies, and bad for prospects of eco­nom­ic recovery.

“This deal will kill our econ­o­my and is an attack on mid­dle-class fam­i­lies,” said Adam Green of the Pro­gres­sive Change Cam­paign Com­mit­tee. “It asks noth­ing of the rich, will reduce mid­dle-class jobs, and lines up Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare, and Med­ic­aid for cuts. Today, we’re putting in thou­sands of calls to Con­gress urg­ing Democ­rats to keep their promise and oppose this awful bill.”

“The 14th Amend­ment is unam­bigu­ous, and Pres­i­dent Oba­ma should invoke it to pay our nation’s debt. Then Democ­rats should focus on jobs — not cuts — in order to grow our economy.”

“We sur­veyed our 5 mil­lion mem­bers and the vast major­i­ty oppose the deal because it unfair­ly asks seniors and the mid­dle class to bear the bur­den of the debt deal,” MoveOn’s exec­u­tive direc­tor Justin Reuben announced in a state­ment. “Con­gress should do what it should have done long ago and what it has done dozens of times before – pass a clean debt ceil­ing bill.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that’s not going to happen.

Instead, Con­gress is putting pub­lic ser­vices and pub­lic invest­ments on the chop­ping block… with the Pres­i­den­t’s blessing.

Barack Oba­ma and his admin­is­tra­tion ought to win an award for jus­ti­fy­ing medi­oc­rity. They’re excep­tion­al­ly good at it. Notice how, every time they go into nego­ti­a­tions, they go in with a weak hand. They start with what should be their final offer (pre­sum­ably so they can appear rea­son­able), and as a result, they wind up embrac­ing right wing pol­i­cy directions.

It’s very depressing.

Does gov­ern­ing require com­pro­mise? Absolute­ly. Espe­cial­ly when there’s divid­ed gov­ern­ment. But capit­u­la­tion is not com­pro­mise. And com­pro­mise for the wrong rea­sons is destruc­tive, as George Lakoff explained in Think­ing Points:

The authen­tic prag­ma­tist real­izes you can’t get every­thing you think is right, but you can get much or most of it through nego­ti­a­tion. The authen­tic prag­ma­tist sticks to his or her val­ues and works to sat­is­fy them max­i­mal­ly. The inau­then­tic prag­ma­tist, on the oth­er hand, is will­ing to depart from his or her true val­ues for the sake of polit­i­can gain.

There is all the dif­fer­ence in the world between the two as polit­i­cal lead­ers, though they may vote the same way. The authen­tic prag­ma­tist is main­tain­ing a con­sis­tent moral vision, while the inau­then­tic prag­ma­tist is sur­ren­der­ing his or her moral vision.

As With­lin [Ronald Rea­gan’s poll­ster] dis­cov­ered, authen­tic­i­ty mat­ters in pol­i­tics. When you sur­ren­der authen­tic­i­ty, you sur­ren­der your val­ues, and you sur­ren­der trust.

Sad­ly, this is what Barack Oba­ma is doing at this moment: Sur­ren­der­ing his moral vision. He’s even try­ing to per­suade the rest of us to join him.

To Barack Oba­ma, we say: Sor­ry, Mr. President.

We believe authen­tic­i­ty mat­ters. As much as we like and respect you as a per­son, we believe you’re mak­ing a ter­ri­ble mis­take. We can­not sup­port you in this.

You cam­paigned on a plat­form of change. “Change we can believe in” — that was your cam­paign slo­gan. You promised the peo­ple of this coun­try that you would change pol­i­tics in our nation’s cap­i­tal. But instead, you’ve allowed it to change you. Your good inten­tions have been stymied by an oppo­si­tion par­ty that you don’t seem to under­stand. You obvi­ous­ly hear what they say about you, but the mean­ing of their words does­n’t seem to reg­is­ter, because you keep try­ing to rea­son with extrem­ists who don’t believe in tak­ing any prisoners.

You can­not do busi­ness with peo­ple who seek your destruc­tion and the destruc­tion of your friends and your allies. You can­not make con­ces­sions to a bul­ly. The only way to stop bul­ly­ing is to stand up to bullying.

You have to fight for what you believe in. Peo­ple respect a fight­er. If you would only fight, you would find peo­ple ral­ly­ing around you.

If you start­ed force­ful­ly refram­ing the debate, if you began going on the offen­sive, if you began unequiv­o­cal­ly defend­ing the val­ues of the peo­ple who elect­ed you, the response would be elec­tri­fy­ing. Overnight, there would be a change in this coun­try. Deject­ed, apa­thet­ic peo­ple would start ris­ing up.

You have the best bul­ly pul­pit a human can have. But you’re not using it to moti­vate your base or make the case for effec­tive gov­ern­ment based on pro­gres­sive val­ues. You are let­ting the right wing turn you into a 1970s-era Repub­li­can, when what this coun­try sore­ly needs is an unabashed Demo­c­ra­t­ic president.