Off the Debt Limit Hook for at Least the Next Four Months

By Joe Firestone

Provided that the Senate and House follow through on the scenario now on the table, it looks like the game of chicken worked for the Democrats this time. We’re off the hook on default and Government shutdown for now, and Washington village pundits are in full-throated cries of celebration.

Congress is off the hook too. They don’t have to offer any solutions to real, rather than manufactured, problems.

The President is also off the hook, he won’t, for now, need to exercise any of the options, like minting the coin, using consols, or premium bonds, or asset sales to the Fed, or others available to him to render the debt limit legislation impotent. So, he gets to preserve debt limit threats from the Republicans as a negotiating tool they can use to “force” him into entitlements cuts later on.

In fact, as I write Jay Carney is already talking about the President taking “a balanced approach” to future negotiations of fiscal policy so that the burdens of sacrifice will fall on everybody fairly. And, a bit later, there’s Nancy Pelosi echoing the Administration line on future negotiations. That, of course is also the Pete Peterson, Bowles-Simpson, catfood line for justifying further victimization of food stamp recipients, seniors, children, and the people who have paid the price for the Crash of 2008 and the neoliberal period in American fiscal policy beginning in 1977.

However, the deal that looks like it will happen isn’t a solution, but just kicking the can down the road including built-in pretty good possibilities for future Government shutdown and debt ceiling crises in just three – four months, if Congresspeople have the guts to subject the American people to this nonsense again in an election year. Here’s Annie Rose-Strasser’s outline and analysis of the deal at Think Progress:

— Government funded through January 15 at sequestration levels

— Debt limit extended until February 7, subject to vote of Congressional disapproval, which Obama can veto

— A budget conference established to come up with long-term spending plans by December 13

— Income verification for recipients of subsidies under Obamacare’s newly-established exchanges

— Backpay for furloughed workers

Also, notably, here are some of the demands that Republicans have made in the last few days, but that are NOT in the bill:

No repeal of the “extraordinary measures” provision that allows the Treasury to do accounting tricks to avoid default

No ‘Vitter Amendment‘ that would have taken away employer contributions from the health plans of Congressional staff

No provisions related to birth control access

No flexibility in how government agencies make budget cuts to their programs, as they are required to under sequestration

No repeal or delay of the medical device tax

No repeal or delay of the reinsurance tax

No repeal, replacement, or delay of any aspects of Obamacare’s exchanges or individual mandate

It might look like this is overall a good deal for Democrats given the number of things that Republicans aren’t getting. It is good: It reopens the government and lifts the debt ceiling without doing any major additional damage to existing programs.

The word “additional” is the key here, since enormous damage has already been done to people and programs due to the various compromises made to avoid shutdown and debt ceiling threats since August 2011. These deals have placed increasing fiscal drags on the American economy and, increasing Government austerity that is preventing full recovery from the Great Recession. The current “deal” already involved a pre-surrender by Democrats to Republican proposed CR spending levels. Annie Rose – Strasser recognizes this.

But it’s important to remember that the baseline for negotiations wasn’t exactly even: Democrats accepted the major budget cuts of sequestration (slated only to get worse on January 15, the same day their budget deal expires), and their only demand was actually the status quo: Keeping the government running and having the country fulfill its financial obligations. They didn’t request to restore the funding sequestration took away, they didn’t demand any new programs or initiatives that Democrats support. And if the previous budget conference is any indication, the one established under this deal has the potential to blow up in Democrats’ faces, leading to more cuts instead of an actual, long-term budget. In that sense, while it is the best, cleanest deal we can get, the Democratic party has been pulled slightly from center to right, not from left to center.

Meanwhile, Republicans threw everything but the kitchen sink into their negotiations. It’s no surprise they’re taking a lot of losses.

Yes, we will have the Government open and the debt ceiling temporarily raised to get us through a few months, and the President is saved from going outside his comfort zone and giving the teahadists an excuse to try to impeach him, but the fundamental problem of the gradual imposition of increasing levels of government austerity creating economic stagnation is not being addressed, and, in addition, the even more serious problem of having laws in place that give a small minority in Congress the possibility of holding both the US and world economies hostage to their ideology is also neither being addressed nor solved.

So this is no victory, and no cause for celebration. The conditions are still there supporting a Great Betrayal, and another slide into recession, along with the possibility of another Global Crash due to financial manipulations in the mortgage international derivative markets.

Meanwhile, what can we look forward to? A brief respite from budget battles and then a rush through a manipulated membership budget conference designed to produce a Bowles-Simpson austerity “solution” to be completed by December 13, to be voted up or down, and with a good likelihood that this Conference will either fail to come up with a result, or that its results will be rejected by teahadists or fellow travellers who will never accept tax increases, and by progressives who will be unwilling to vote for entitlement cuts in the face of upcoming elections.

Meanwhile, the drag on the economy and the unhappiness of the 99% will continue with no real relief in sight because no in either party has the courage to repudiate the dogma that a sovereign fiat currency nation like the United States can have a long-term debt problem requiring a long-term deficit reduction solution. Truly, everyone in Congress needs to be replaced by people who understand the Modern Money Theory (MMT) approach to economics and who are willing to explain it to their constituents and to advocate for fiscal policies based on it.

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