Yearly Archives: 2013

By Dan Kervick

The debt ceiling standoff is a massive national distraction, as is the rampaging blogospheric discussion of the standoff and its various possible resolutions.   I am convinced that both the White House and Congress are eager to keep the debt ceiling debate and conflict alive to distract the country from a much more important reality: that they are currently negotiating the final shape of an economically punishing and magnificently stupid austerity package that will be substituted in for sequestration cuts due to take effect in March.   The austerity package is Washington’s obsequious response to the disaster capitalism cattle stampede that has been urged on by Pete Peterson, Fix the Debt and affiliated groups of debt hysterics.  Whatever combination of tax increases and spending cuts are finally accepted, the result will be to tie a fiscal cement block amounting to about 1.5% of GDP to the legs of an economy that is barely treading water.

But on the odd chance that the White House is actually serious about bringing a quick end to this standoff, the President should make a curt and frank public statement that plainly calls on Republicans to discipline the incompetents in their increasingly ridiculous party before they humiliate the party even further.   The statement should go something like this.

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