How journalists have botched the debt-ceiling story
The last few years, I’ve written occasionally about the trials, triumphs and reinventions of America’s conservative moment. It is a dramatic story, in many ways far more dynamic and dramatic than Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008.
The GOP stumbled into an electoral abyss three years ago.
Rather than seek the middle or try to find a moderate message that would give them new traction — the strategy adopted by conservatives in Britain and Canada — Republicans pivoted hard to the right.
This transformation of one of America’s two great parties has once again redefined our national politics and it is the single key factor shaping the current debt-ceiling debate in Washington.
To their credit, Republicans are no longer particularly shy about trumpeting the triumph of their right wing.
Once upon a time, the GOP found it necessary to talk about “fringe” ideas such as re-adopting the gold standard, ending Social Security, or defaulting on our national debt in code language.
They spoke with some ambiguity about their desire to roll back reforms in American society — from the existence of a sturdy social safety net to the creation of an Environmental Protection Agency — that were once bipartisan accomplishments, considered mainstream for decades.
Indeed, not since the days of Barry Goldwater has the right felt so comfortable trumpeting their clear, unambiguous message, even when polls clearly show that voters want something different.
Eighty percent of Americans want tax hikes to be part of a budget balancing effort? It doesn’t matter. Revenue increases are off the table, period.
Whatever you think of the GOP’s ideas, you have to admire the fact that this is a party driven by faction with a clear message, a distinct vision.
Which is why it’s so troubling that so many reporters and editorial writers have taken such pains to suggest otherwise.
Article after article frames this conflict as if it were playing out between a traditional center-left Democratic Party and a traditional center-right Republican Party.
That simply isn’t factually true any more.
For proof, one need only look to the statements of Republican leaders themselves.
Sen. John McCain was the GOP’s presidential standard bearer just three years ago. He felt called upon this week to describe the conservative movement’s ideological stance as “worse than foolish” and “deceiving.”
“It’s unfair,” McCain said on the Senate floor. “It’s bizarro.”
On an interview program Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner said that a lot of conservatives in his own ranks are refusing to compromise on budget talks because they “believe that if we get past August the second and we have enough chaos, we could force the Senate and the White House to accept a balanced budget amendment.”
The old GOP, which generally drifted in an ideological range between Dwight Eisenhower on the left and and Ronald Reagan on the right, would never have used the threat of economic chaos as a lever to advance their agenda.
The idea is unthinkable.
This acknowledgment that the new Republican Party is a very different animal from the old Republican Party isn’t new within the GOP.
A couple of months ago, no less perceptive a political observer than Newt Gingrich blasted conservatives for rallying around budget proposals that represent “right wing social engineering.”
“I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate,” Gingrich said, during an appearance on Meet the Press.
In the end it was Gingrich, not the right-wing faction of his party, who was forced to recant and apologize. A man who defined the Republican Revolution a generation ago, has now been left behind as the party trends more and more conservative.
It’s time for journalists to simply accept this version Republican Party at face value and quite trying to shoehorn it into a suit of clothes that hasn’t fit for a very long time.
That doesn’t require them to be biased, or ideological in their coverage. It simply requires them to report factually, accurately and straight-forwardly about the GOP’s agenda.
Tags: economy
How much of that 4.1 billion dollars a day in Obama spending is due to unpaid and off budget Bush wars, unpaid and off budget medicare drug plan, and tax cuts for the rich that are now being included in the budget and actually being payed for?
How much of that 4.1 billion dollars a day in Obama spending is due to unpaid and off budget Bush wars, unpaid and off budget medicare drug plan, and tax cuts for the rich that are now being included in the budget and actually being payed for?
Also, lest we forget, Clinton (with the help of actual republicans) left Bush with a budget surplus that could have paid off the national debt by now.
Sorry for the double post – that upload was acting really slow.
well, the tax cuts don’t constitute spending, but it’s always helpful to have a look at cbpp’s chart of what’s driving our budget deficits right now. and the answer is that hand-me-downs from bush — the wars, the tax cuts, and the recession — are behind an awful lot of it. and as of 2013 or so, they’ll be almost the sole drivers behind the deficit, at least for the next decade. (cbpp’s chart doesn’t show it, but once you go out beyond the next decade health care costs are projected to start increasing the deficit again, which is why passing the affordable care act was so important as a means to start getting them under control.)
bonus chart at the cbpp link: repeal of the bush tax cuts (all of them, including the “middle class” ones) is projected to stabilize our debt as a percentage of gdp over the next decade, all by itself. of course that’s not going to happen, since there’s zero political impetus to repeal the “middle tax” cuts. but it does undercut those who insist over and over that our problems are purely ones of spending.
here’s another excellent chart showing the impact on the federal debt arising from policy changes made by bush and obama respectively. the tally is $5.07 trillion of debt for bush (accumulated in the years 2002-9) to $1.44 trillion for obama (projected to accumulate in the years 2009-17; obviously this assumes no new spending initiatives).
in other words, most of the debt that’s being accumulated under obama is due to the perpetuation of bush policies.
now, for people like me that’s hardly any excuse. when you inherit crappy policies, your job is to get rid of them. and obama doesn’t deserve full blame on that count either. he has tried to end the upper class bush tax cuts, but he’s been opposed by republicans. and he has made progress towards ending the war in iraq.
but to those who want to claim that obama is much worse than bush on fiscal matters, i do hope you realize that you’re implicitly repudiating the real essence of what bush did with his presidency.
It seems to me just on a strategic level the Democrats and the President were caught totally off guard on this. Increasing the debt ceiling limit has been a normal thing to do for the past 30 years. Combining the normal lifting of our borrowing limit with long term restructuring of our whole fiscal situation has certainly been planned since the 2010. Why would we all of a sudden now, decide that we have to undue 50 years of decisions about spending? I remember a year ago people were all saying well this is an issue but of course no one will be crazy enough not to raise the debt limit.
But this is not random it couldn’t be this was a concerted plan. If anyone needs a new leader it is not the Republicans. Harry Reid seems out of it to me.
i don’t think the dems were caught off guard by this, exactly. engaging in armchair psychoanalysis is a good way to make mistakes, but i think the dems just expected the republicans to be much more reasonable. just like mervel said, raising the debt ceiling has been a normal thing to do for decades now. the consequences of not raising it are so dire that failing to act is unthinkable — or at least it’s unthinkable to any reasonable person. there was talk of raising the debt ceiling as part of the package that passed during the lame-duck session after the midterms, but that was scuttled. so the dems at least knew this issue was coming. but i think they badly miscalculated on how intransigent the republicans would be. indeed that’s been one of obama’s greatest failings: he continues to treat republicans, to negotiate with them, as though they’re very reasonable people interested in compromise. they’re not.
Unless you define compromise as getting everything you want.
I think there are two issues though. The technical issue of the debt ceiling which I think in the end will be done one way or the other, the other issue is that we indeed may not have the political ability to ever handle or reduce our debt.
I am already seeing the advertisements about not hurting our seniors. The fact is austerity means austerity. Every person in this country is going to have to spend more on health care take less in Social Security and pay more on all money they borrow and pay higher taxes, that is the only way out of this. None of it is going to be good news and no politician has the will or ability to honestly tell our country that fact. Some may weasel out of the pain, usually those with the most influence on government and this makes people even more upset about sacrifice.
But given that fact the austerity will have to be imposed from the outside by our creditors. Throw in a world wide slow down at the same time and possible depression and you know Glenn Beck does not look that crazy, he was saying this stuff would happen a couple of years ago.
We are a great and prosperous nation. We do not have a terrible debt problem. We have a short term economic slowdown that has led to temporary shortfall in revenue. This is not a crisis, it is a manageable problem. But there is a contingent in this country who want to create a crisis because they believe it will help them seize power.
I don’t think most Americans are afraid of a little hard work. We can pay down our debt and still have good schools, good infrastructure, a high standard of living for everyone including decent health care throughout our lives AND reduce our debt. It can be achieved in a dozen years or less with only modest adjustments to our national budget, tax structure, military, and healthcare system.
Fear is ruining our nation. Open your eyes, who is creating that fear?
I think 16% unemployment for the past 3 years is a little more than a temporary slowdown. We cannot pay down our debt we don’t have the political will to do it and our population when asked specifically about which program they are willing to cut; Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security or Defense say none of the above. They say save it other ways on other people.
So it won’t happen, it has never happened so why would we expect us to be able to do it now?
For me I would like to see a 50% cut in our total defense budget, this would be doable and put us with a military about the relative size that we had in 1950. But it won’t happen it is a pipe dream, once the power structure that makes money from our government is entrenched it is very hard if not impossible to politically cut. The same holds for Medicare and Medicaid.
We will see, I agree about not having fear I don’t think anyone wants to seize control that sounds kind of fear based also frankly, I hope you are correct.
“JDM – I don’t know enough about that quote “Hezbollah” to really comment on its appropriateness ”
Peter Hahn:
Were you aware of the controversy over the cross-hair issue with Gabby Gifford? Brian Mann even made a whole thread dedicated to the need for “polite-speak” right about that time.
Brian: Aren’t you a little disappointed with the Hezbollah comment? Or is it just cross-hairs by conservatives that needs censoring?
Mervel, I am not attempting to sow fear. But it is true that there are some people who are working very hard to divide us, because it is a way to gain political power — that is worrisome.
I agree that the unemployment situation is very bad. We have been and are in a very difficult economic situation. But it is, or should be, a temporary situation if we hold a steady course and work on the problem and not compound the problem by hamstringing ourselves with foolish ideas like a balanced budget amendment. As more people get back to work revenues will increase. Sharp cuts to the federal budget could cause the economy to stagnate further causing a loss of revenue and we may fall into a downward spiral where our credit rating drops and we are forced to pay higher interest on our debt which will lead to further cuts in the budget which will lead to lower employment…
I think that a 50% cut in Defense spending is too large, and I’m the Liberal. Defense spending should be cut over perhaps a decade substantially (I don’t know what the number should be) and maintained at a more constant lower level. Simultaneously the Department of State must be counted on to work with other nations to find ways to prevent conflict. Wars are very expensive.
Social Security can be fixed through a combination of increasing the cap, slightly increasing the age of eligibility over time, and offering more graduated payout options.
Medicare and Medicaid are a tough nut. My instinct would be to roll all government health care, including Veterans benefits, into a single universal program that would eliminate duplication and a lot of waste and inefficiency.
I think I could sit down at a table and work it out with you, Mervel. But then we aren’t trying to get campaign donations.
You make good points, particularly about a massive decline in government spending right now, which would be insane in the middle of a depression. The same goes with this stupid balanced budget amendment. First it is probably a three to five year process to even get the thing passed as each state has to ratify it meaning years of campaigning on both sides, blaah nightmare. Second it does not make good economic sense, we should be running surpluses some years and deficits others depending on the business cycle.
I don’t think we can solve medicare and medicaid without fundamental changes in the costs of health care. I was reading that Germany is actually closer to what we do now than other countries. Right now the US government buys 55% of all health care in the US, in Germany it is closer to 70% but both have a mix of public and private with government leading the way. Germany steps up to the the health care industry and negotiates them down far below what we are paying for drugs and health care services in general. We could do the same right now without changing much of anything. The same holds for Tort reform which the Europeans also took care of. But we won’t because both parties have vested interests in these industries. Both Obama and Bush caved to the Drug companies and the malpractice law industry.
The vultures are bleeding the people there is not a solution because those in power benefit from the way things are now. Thus I honestly believe we will go through an economic crisis driven by the international credit markets and it will be worse before it gets better.
Peter Hahn:
Do you mean that you don’t know who Hezbullah is? or you haven’t been aware of the 20 or so news media quotes invoking the word “hostage” or “terrorism” or “Hezbullah” when referring to Republican House members?
Either is easily solved by a simple Google search.
So I guess it’s the ‘ol stick-your-head-in-the-sand routine when it comes to applying the same evil-speak to liberals. But if a conservative places a cross-hair over a map to “zero in ” in on a congressional district, then that’s violence.
Brian apparently didn’t get a fax from NPR headquarters on this, and therefore won’t make a big deal about it.
As happens much more often than you might guess, I am in close agreement with Mervel. But in fact I am often, in agreement–at least in part–with even Bret and JDM. But somebody, that nebulous multi-headed golem, wants us to believe we are very far apart.
They want us to fight among ourselves and they spend huge amounts of money to fund our squabbling because one, they have lots of money while we don’t, and two, they can rob us blind while we keep squabbling. They media is in on the game–after all they are controlled by people like Rupert Murdoch.
The heads of these media empires are not living like Brian Mann, as good as he’s got it getting paid to walk in the woods and record twittering birds. These guys, and it is mostly guys, have their Manhattan apartments, multi-million dollar camps on Upper Saranac or farms in Dutchess County or beach houses in Florida, yachts…you name it they’ve got it. And what do we get? A media that conveniently enough manages to keep the serfs fighting among themselves while They have a cocktail and the yacht races.
I think this has been referenced here previously:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/opinion/krugman-the-centrist-cop-out.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB
And check this out, from Kathleen Parker — not some fuzzy headed liberal:
“Take names. Remember them. The behavior of certain Republicans who call themselves Tea Party conservatives makes them the most destructive posse of misguided “patriots” we’ve seen in recent memory.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-tea-fragger-party/2011/07/29/gIQA23pAiI_story.html
JDM,
Your continued use of the Gifford’s tragedy to make sarcastic, strawman arguments every time an opinion you agree with is strongly criticized is more than a little distasteful.
The conversation in the wake of that tragedy was specifically about violent rhetoric. Telling people to arm themselves, hinting at violent solutions to political disagreements, etc etc.
I’m sure you can tell the difference.
maybe JDM can’t tell the difference.
JDM – you are basically wrong on this one.
I do think there is a concerted effort to divide people. The real divide in this country is between people who are remarkably wealthy and the rest of us. I am not saying this as a resentment toward the very wealthy either, many have just been very successful in fields that happen to have great monetary rewards, others have just been lucky and others won the birth lottery. The government deficit reductions will hurt these people the least.
I understand some of the tea party’s concerns, but I don’t understand people I have seen who are in the tea party who are getting government pensions or in the military or are getting social security or are over 65 and getting medicare. I saw some women on t.v. the other day who was a tea party protester who was a stay at home mom and her husband was in the Navy. Where do these people think our deficit spending is going?
If we balance the budget right now without a long term plan; her husband is out of a job, if we balance the budget those who are getting medicare will likely have to come up with another $1000-2000 per month out of their own pocket to pay for their own health care. This is just the start.
I don’t begrudge people’s wealth either. Often it IS due to a lot of hard work and some clever ideas. But as you say, there is a lot of luck involved and there is the infrastructure; physical, political and legal; built by those who came before them that made it possible for them to gain wealth and to keep it.
At some point, though, the degree of wealth just gets obscene when placed in counterpoint to other people who work just as hard but haven’t had the benefit of luck or the right timing or being raised in a stable environment or any number of things that can make such a huge difference in a person’s life. Working hard in a lab somewhere to find a cure for cancer simply will not reward you financially as well as being a stock trader on Wall Street.
As for the tea party people on SS or Medicare or government pensions seeming so out of touch, I think that for many it is just fear. They worked hard all their lives and invested in the stock market and did all the things they were told they should do then the market crashed and they lost most of it. And their property taxes are going up and they are paying a fortune for the drugs they are told they need to live well…they see it all slipping away and they are afraid.
I also think many of them are part of the Me Generation and that “me” is all they can think about. And there are thousands of other individual situations. I understand it. But I think they are wrong. I think most of us are happy to do our share to take care of them in their old age so they can lead a dignified and fulfilling life.
I think most people in this country are proud to pay their taxes, even though they gripe about it. We are proud to be Americans and of all the great achievements that being American represents. We are proud of what our combined wealth has done for all of us and for other nations as well.
There is personal responsibility to consider, though, and many of us live lifestyles beyond our means and really, beyond any reasonable expectation of what living a good life should be. We need to learn from the people who went through the Great Depression about how to live and how to take care of each other. Not just how to look out for #1.
paul krugman just up a snippet of the transcript from obama’s presser in december right after he cut his budget deal with republicans. marc ambinder asked him about the failure of the deal to raise the debt ceiling, and how republicans would have significant leverage when it came time raise the limit. from obama’s response:
makes me sick to my stomach.
So here’s a question, why does “the Media” give so much power to the Tea Party?
They have an even where 150 people show up and it gets 5 minutes of coverage on Morning Edition and All Things Considered. I’ve been to bigger Keg Parties.
Progressives and liberal thought gets very short shrift on NPR. When we hear a moderate to slightly left of bedrock dead-center we then get the “balance” opinion from someone on the political spectrum to the right of Richard Nixon, or Ronald Reagan or even Dick Cheney, God help us.
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What grassroots liberal movements are there on the scene today? Is there any Left wing movements that have traction outside of college campuses or some union organizers?
The Green Party–Howie Hawkins had some really good ideas in the governors race and polled over 50,000 votes.
Democracy for America, founded by Howard Dean, is still around and active.
There are a number of internet based groups like Moveon.org.
They certainly don’t have traction in the media like the Tea Party does.
I think that is a good point I wonder why not? I think moveon gets covered but the Green Party does not except when Nader ran his spoiler campaign.
Of course did they have enough impact to change the terms of the national debate on raising the debt ceiling? Something that the average American did not even know happened a couple of times each year?
Liberals need to get a real grass roots movement going that is also effective electorally.
You are absolutely correct, Mervel. I believe that the media does not give enough play to liberal points of view. So you don’t hear endless repetition of how liberals tried to lower government spending, create new jobs, provide for greater national security, balance the budget, and provide for citizens needs.
Liberals were overwhelmingly against the invasion of Iraq but mostly in favor of staying in Afghanistan to finish the job hunting down bin Laden, a position which turned out to be the correct one. Cost savings would have been somewhere around a trillion dollars.
Liberals were in favor of strengthening SEC oversight of banks, corporations, and Wall Street traders. Probable savings of probably about a trillion dollars.
Where were all the Tea Party people when liberals were working hard on those issues?
I have thought about this for some time just from a social context.
It seems to me that Liberals have a basic social/cultural problem with middle and lower middle class Americans. In the US you can’t run a real social change movement without a core of support in that group.
I think a lot of it has to do with style/culture/religion and not the issues that the country faces.
I remember when the Republicans held their primary in New York city, they media showed all of these young people in the Village and somewhere else holding signs that said F*** Bush. I said to myself well you just lost all of my relatives and for all practical purposes they should logically be more liberal.
Mervel,
You need to read Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone for what’s wrong with not so much liberals, but with the Democrats who claim to represent them. I linked to one story on Brian’s Ho-Hum America post.
Here’s another worth reading:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/the-new-let-them-eat-cake-20110713
Thanks for the link OA.
I agree with his thesis. The middle class in this country in general have no idea how the wealthy live. I think we get played all the way around frankly. I liked this passage:
“To most people, the undeserving rich guy is the ex-police lieutenant down the street who’s been collecting a six-figure pension for years after spending two decades writing traffic tickets before retiring at 43. Seeing that guy lounging in the dugout pool you paid for with your constantly rising property taxes is enough to piss anyone off, which is why it’s not hard to understand where a lot of that Tea Party anger is coming from.
But if you want to see a real asshole, you have to somehow get invited to things like the $5 million birthday party of another guy on Sirota’s list, private equity creep Steven Schwarzman. After throwing his elaborate fete for himself, Schwarzman — who is said to make $400 million a year, and made $600 million when his company went public — compared Barack Obama to Hitler for even considering rolling back his carried-interest exemption, which, again, allows him to pay 15% taxes while some of the rest of us pay twice that or more. “It’s a war,” he said.”