No Deal or Bad Deal

The House has voted for the avoid apocalypse deal, the Senate is expected to do the same tomorrow.  Default has been averted until at least 2013.

There are two operative metaphors in this situation, apart from the barely metaphorical extortion, hostage-taking, ransom, etc.  The first is Joe Biden's--it's Solomon's Choice.  Faced with the prospect of having the baby cut in two, the real mother saves its life by withdrawing her claim for its custody.  GOPers, led by their TPer masters, seemed all too willing to kill the world economy if they didn't get their way.  Democrats were not willing, and as Barney Franks notes, basic game theory tells you that the side that is willing to destroy everything usually gets to dictate terms.

So with this metaphor, President Obama and the Democrats got what seems to be not the worst deal, short of default.  It protects Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment insurance.  It cuts more towards the end of the ten year period, rather than now when large cuts would be catastrophic to the recovering economy (if that's what it's doing).  So maybe it's not as bad as it could have been. Or, another view is that it's no big deal--about as close to a clean debt ceiling bill as was possible.  

But apart from that, it seems like an ugly bad deal.  It looks bad for the country and bad politically.  Though revenue is supposedly on the table for consideration by the select committee, Speaker Banal has already announced that no GOPers will be appointed who will consider raising revenue.  Though there seems some out on the Bush tax cuts, it's not clear it's a meaningful possibility that even the top brackets will be raised, which seemed until now to be the only way out of a tanking economy.

And though this circus is over for now, there will be barely a pause before it starts up again: with the budget in September [update: this may be part of this deal, so maybe there won't be a budget fight after all] , with this committee from now until (literally) Christmas.  If it dominates with discussions of cuts and taxes, the lack of attention to the realities of the current economy, including and especially jobs, will remain unaddressed.  It's true that default or a drop in the U.S. credit rating would have hit the poor and middle class the hardest.  But there is reason to fear these cuts and this inattention will as well.  Most of all, if it cripples the future: both the resources to "win the future" and the ability to respond to the needs of the future--which aren't even in the future anymore.  They're here right now.  A significant chunk of the U.S. is in very bad drought!  Some of it is still underwater!  Meanwhile century's old water mains in Manhattan are breaking apart, bridges and roads are in disrepair--while millions are unemployed.

The truth is that cutting federal spending is directly cutting jobs--of people employed by the government or by companies with government contracts--and those cuts have a ripple effect on the economy.  It is precisely the cuts in government spending that was the direct cause of the weak GDP just reported.  It is the primary drag on economic recovery.

The other operative metaphor is The Shock Doctrine.  Of the book The Shock Doctrine, I wrote that it may have revealed "the master narrative of our time"--words that are quoted on the paperback book cover. Once again we have proof that it has been adopted as the main strategy of the Rabid Right and the Republican party in general, no longer in other countries but right here.  This is by far the most obvious, most outrageous and probably most successful example: a manufactured crisis of potentially huge proportions, extended by seemingly bizarre political maneuvers until major decisions are forced at the last possible moment to avert the imminent catastrophe that wasn't remotely necessary in the first place.

I look back on recent posts here, and see how consumed even this blog was with this invented crisis, that has gone away, leaving behind a deal that ensures even more ugliness that must be dealt with in the coming months, distracting attention from real issues and present dangers.  So in a sense I've been suckered too.  The difference is that people in Washington are employed to deal with all of that, and I am not.