Debt ceiling crisis is political theater

 

Gordon L. Weil

America, hope you enjoyed the political theater.

Because that’s what all the anguish over the debt ceiling amounted to.  In the real world, relatively little has happened.

Congress had voted for public spending, but the outlays could only be covered by new borrowing, because tax revenues wouldn’t be sufficient.  That would boost the national debt.  But there is also a ceiling on public debt that Congress mostly ignored.

Then, last November, the Republicans won a slim majority in the House of Representatives.  The GOP right-wing hoped to use the debt ceiling as a way of reversing spending they had opposed and even some they had supported.

The GOP would take control of the House in January.  Before then, President Biden and the lame-duck Democrats could have put through a bill increasing the ceiling.  He might have been forced to make some concessions to conservative Democrats, but that would have been easier than dealing later with the Republican House majority.  He did not take the opportunity.

Or he could have ignored the debt ceiling on the grounds that it is banned by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.  But Biden was worried that the matter would end up being resolved by the courts.  Then, the House GOP passed their own budget-slashing version of a debt limit bill, and forced him to negotiate.

Failure to raise the debt limit supposedly meant that the federal government would not have enough money from taxes for its debt payments.  It would default, the pundits warned.  Interest rates would rise, their effect rippling through the economy.  Government spending cutbacks would kill growth.  Jobs would be lost and the stock market would fall sharply.

Possibly the greatest harm would be to the role of the American dollar, the reserve currency widely used to finance world trade and investment.  As other counties lost confidence in it, U.S. influence would decline.

The Treasury Department said federal income would no longer cover all the bills on June 5.    Panic, hyped by the media, gradually appeared.  Default loomed.

Only it didn’t.  The Treasury receives enough tax money to pay debt service, though some government spending would have to be cut or even halted.  Social Security and Medicare have sufficient reserves to cover many more months of outlays.

Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy engaged in desperate negotiations to avoid default.  Each tried to attach blame for a possible default on the other.  That was the essence of the negotiations.  If there were a deal, each would need to declare victory.

They reached a deal to send to Congress, so both must have won.  McCarthy got mostly symbolic caps and reductions from slightly lowering planned spending over the next two years, and Biden saved his major initiatives.  Sensibly, unspent Covid relief dollars were recovered.  The debt ceiling was lifted until after the 2024 elections. 

Here’s an example of why not much happened.  Biden and the Democratic Congress had passed $80 billion for the IRS over an eight-year period to collect unpaid taxes from the wealthiest taxpayers.  The GOP falsely claimed that taxes would be raised on average people. 

The two-year debt ceiling deal appears to cut this amount by $10 billion.  The IRS has its plans in place.  If necessary, it can shift money forward from future years and keep pursuing improved collection limited to people with incomes over $400,000.  Nothing in the deal prevents Congress from restoring the full spending three or more years from now.

As for the dollar’s world role, it’s already waning and with it American prestige.  “America First” policies, previous debt ceiling crises and the rise of China’s yuan have been reducing U.S. economic power.

Strong House GOP conservatives and many progressive Democrats dislike the deal.  The conservatives think McCarthy got too little and oppose it, knowing that passage does not need their votes. The progressives think Biden should have made no concessions.  Few want responsibility for a default.  In the end, both sides will enjoy the illusion of a political victory.

Can this situation be avoided in the future?  The House once had a rule that whenever it passed a bill requiring debt to pay the cost, the debt ceiling would be automatically increased.  The losers would not get a second bite of the apple through a later battle over the debt ceiling.  That rule should be revived.

Congress should never spend money without deciding where it will come from. That principle is rarely observed, because it’s a lot easier simply to spend, while shielding voters from the cost.

Not all future spending has to come from driving the country deeper into debt, making new debt ceiling clashes and default a real possibility.  When Congress increases spending, from adding military hardware to boosting renewable energy, it should exercise greater leadership and cover the costs by combining debt increases with tax increases. 

Otherwise, it’s political theater.

‘No Labels’ party could be conservative plot

Gordon L. Weil

Voters seem to be worried about the leading presidential candidates.

They worry about how far Donald Trump would go in departing from political norms. They worry simply about how far Joe Biden would go.

Because both the former president and his successor appear highly likely to be the major party nominees, the election might not do much to close the nearly even political divide.

Along comes the “No Labels” party, its name designed to show that it is not affiliated with either the Democrats or the Republicans.  It may propose an “independent” candidate, who could appeal to “the center” that is ignored by the two major parties.

No Labels should be a nonstarter.  It is both misleading and misguided.

It relies on polling to show both the lack of enthusiasm for Biden and Trump and the presence of a large number of moderates who might prefer a middle-of-the-road candidate.  To build a third party relying on polls may be a mistake.  Many people refuse to participate, and it’s possible that those who reply do not provide complete or wholly honest answers.

The word “moderate” itself may not mean neutral between the parties as much as “pragmatic” in wanting government to work, through compromise if necessary.  But what would be an acceptable compromise?

Maine Democratic Rep. Jared Golden tried.  He proposed a compromise to the debt ceiling deadlock.  It was hailed in the Washington Post.  It was completely ignored even by so-called moderates in Congress.  The partisan war continued.

The No Labels group takes credit for helping create the bi-partisan House “problem solvers” caucus, supposedly bringing together moderates from both parties. But, does it work?  It has been silent on the debt ceiling, except for Golden, a member.

Third party presidential candidates, no matter how well intentioned, may serve as “spoilers,” potentially depriving a major party of enough votes to tip the election to the other side.  It’s impossible to know how the third-party backers might otherwise have voted, so spoiler status is a possibility not a certainty.

Yet it may have happened when Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush in 1992. Independent Ross Perot could have taken GOP votes away from Bush.  Maybe Ralph Nader caused Al Gore’s loss to the younger Bush in 2000.

The presumed answer is that No Labels will put together a president-vice president ticket with a representative of each party.  That would be meant to deal with the spoiler issue.  But the presidential nominee would be the only candidate that mattered.

Who is backing No Labels?  Knowing that would tell us a lot about the kinds of “moderate” policies it would support.  For example, how would it balance Medicaid spending with tax cuts? People with enough money to fund No Labels are likely to have strong opinions on such a choice.

The organization is using a tax law that allows it to keep its donors secret until it becomes a political party.  At the same time, it is trying to qualify as a party.  Maine’s Secretary of State questioned if it was trying to mislead people.  Voters are asked to give it a political blank check.

Here’s a way to test its politically neutral intentions, taking it at its word that it backs moderates.

It should support a moderate challenger in the presidential primaries in each party.  The appeal of both Biden and Trump would be tested.  If both of its preferred candidates won, its work would be done.  If only one of them was victorious, No Labels should throw all of its support to that candidate.  If both lost, it would have been proved wrong.

If No Labels participated in this way, it could still keep its financial backers secret.  But that secret would discredit a group trying to promote good government. 

To counter the sizeable, hard-core support for Trump, No Labels looks like a crypto plot by traditional GOP business backers to produce a conservative ticket without Trump. The first step would be to nominate a traditional GOP conservative or a right-leaning Democrat. 

The second step would be to peel away Democrats who think Biden has caved in to the progressives.  If No Labels ran a renegade Democrat, it could re-elect Trump.

The weakness of this ploy is the reluctance among all but a few Republicans to take on Trump. They still worry about the ability of his troops to unseat them.  Just look at the silent Republican “problem solvers.”

At the same time, they ignore the new-found unity of the Democrats.  Across the spectrum, they like Biden, even if some grumble.  Almost all accept him as their leader and understand they must remain unified to have a realistic chance of governing.

In the end, the presidential election could well be all about Trump, and No Labels can do little about that. 

Trump remains faithful to the 'Big Lie' strategy

Gordon L. Weil

Because Adolf Hitler operated so far below civilized bounds, it may seem unfair to say anybody else is like him. But some people continue to use his strategies.

In Germany, when Hitler came to power after his Nazi Party won a minority election victory in 1933, some believed he would fade at the next elections.  They did not imagine that he would acquire dictatorial power to ensure there would be no more elections, but he did.

Hitler is considered as the inventor of the Big Lie. It amounts to stating an untruth so enormous that people accept it because they think nobody would assert anything so completely unbelievable unless it were true.  Strange as that seems, it works.

Former President Donald Trump uses the Big Lie. Most of his public speaking consists of a flow of outright falsehoods with a sprinkling of half-truths.

The American political system, with a right of free speech that is the standard of the world, willingly tolerates anybody saying just about anything.  That’s both amazing and good. But it invites abuse and sometimes that abuse might threaten the very system that allows it.

While the situation is far less dire in this country than it was in Nazi Germany, the U.S. faces a political leader who willingly exploits the rights from which he benefits to undermine and potentially destroy them.  Because many people believe that the system is stronger than he is and can protect itself from extreme threats, they accept his extravagant abuse of it.

The time has come to accept that such an act of faith is no longer justified.  It is time to confront this threat, not by adopting the same tactics, but by fighting the abuse.  It’s time to stop treating Trump as either a truth-teller who must be cheered or as a destroyer who must be bitterly tolerated.  He deserves to be treated as a danger to the U.S.

Some Trump supporters agree with his distrust of government, his claims about widespread election fraud in 2020 and his warnings about the impending doom facing the country if the Democrats control the government.   

His opponents deplore his increasing the federal debt by a tax cut for the wealthy, his attempt to bribe a foreign leader, his false election claims and provoking the Capitol insurrection, and his cruel policy of splitting immigrant families.

Policy conflicts are a normal part of democracy.  Out of these differences may come sound policy.  But using the system that brought you to power to undermine it, even to the point of persistently promoting dangerous falsehoods, is divisive and destructive. Yet that’s what he does, apparently believing that is what enough people want to give him an election win.

Recently, Trump appeared on a televised town hall meeting with New Hampshire voters, produced by CNN.  The cable channel allowed an audience composed almost entirely of his supporters.  He consistently denied or distorted the truth throughout it.

CNN has been sharply criticized for providing Trump a platform for continuing to make false claims about the 2020 election and other events.  The channel defends itself by saying that as a responsible news organization it should provide a forum for a former president who is again seeking the office. It has no legal requirement to do so.

Media leaders argue that the press should report independently and as objectively as possible, leaving it to the people to reach their own conclusions. They are right in emphasizing the value of a news organization in a free society; it should provide access to all political views.

But there comes a time to recognize that by providing a platform to a person who seriously threatens that free society, a media outlet can be dangerously naïve. The Big Lie is not entitled to big coverage.

The Washington Post hosts the best journalistic fact checker, and it refuted Trump’s “fire hose” of false claims on the CNN show.  But it is impossible to keep up with his flow of falsehoods while he is speaking.  When the moderator tried, he talked over her and assigned to her his favorite anti-woman label, calling her “nasty.”

The media should stop treating Trump as if he is entitled to a level playing field and must continually demonstrate its innocence of his charges that it broadcasts “fake news.”  He has forfeited such consideration, and for the media, it verges on being suicidal.

In the same vein, the Democrats, while avoiding his destructive tactics, must be willing to confront him and to counter him as vigorously as he attacks them.  Simply believing you are better at governing and that moderates will someday recognize your merit is not enough.

The media and the Dems appear to worry about offending Trump’s supporters.  If they don’t oppose the Big Lie, they aid its promoter.