Obama

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Big Little Deal

It is hard to get excited over a deal being struck to avert a crisis that was entirely artificial. The Senate passed a ‘fiscal-cliff’ averting piece of legislation by a surprisingly wide 89 – 8 margin and so has managed to pass the buck to the House where, as yet, not vote has been scheduled.

It is vital we all keep a hard headed perspective on what’s going on in Washington. This deal is not at all about a budget crisis, nor is it about the amount of debt we have – those fights are still in the future. This deal was simply another battle on the long war to defend America’s already threadbare welfare state.

The US has by far the stingiest safety net of all industrialized nations. It also has increasingly lopsided growth with an ever increasing share of our annual income going to a very few people. Combine these two facts and we get the context in which every policy proposal must be considered.

The Republicans have for decades been anxious to gut or dismantle the safety net. Their position is based on longstanding conservative principles. The idea is that people should look after themselves and that the state has no role to play in protecting anyone from misfortune, ill health, or any other form of adversity. It is an profoundly anti-social perspective made moral by the simple device of denying the existence of anything social to be ignored or opposed.  There can be no anti-social if there is no social to begin with. This position was famously summed up by Margaret Thatcher’s extraordinary  claim that there is no such thing as society, just a bunch of individuals. By the same token there is no such thing as an army, just a bunch of soldiers. Nor is there such a thing as a business firm, just a bunch of workers. Nor a team, just a bunch of players. These claims are all plainly foolish, yet the right wing’s similar claim about society – equally inane – stands at the core of current Republican orthodoxy. Indeed, given the steady rightward drift in contemporary Republicanism it is reasonable to argue that this claim is the only thing at the core of right wing orthodoxy. Nothing else much matters. Certainly not old fashioned fiscal responsibility.

Given this core belief the Republicans have two courses of action open to them if they are to achieve their goal of eliminating the safety net.

They can legislate it out of existence, or they can cut off the funding necessary to keep it thriving. They can kill it, or they can starve it.

Given that Americans have grown increasingly fond of the government programs that help them – Social Security and Medicare are consistently given massive amounts of voter approval – the first course is neither open, nor politically attractive. It would take an huge act of political courage for the GOP to campaign openly on a platform of entitlement elimination. Even Reagan with his seething hatred of social programs and enormous popularity had the sense to avoid taking the open route to their elimination.

So, for decades, the Republicans have taken the second course. They have set out to starve government of the money needed to keep the safety net thriving. And they have come near to succeeding.

As we all know the most recent triumphs in this covert battle were the Bush tax cuts. Those cuts were passed through Congress by using legislative trickery which is why they were subject to a ten year time elapse. Not only did those tax cuts plunge the federal government into permanent deficits, but they accomplished the long term strategic goal of ‘starving the beast’. So every subsequent budget discussion has taken place within a context created by George Bush.

His greatest legacy to his party was that the terms of debate were altered by his fiscal recklessness. Even ardent progressive analysts and supporters have caved in to the notion that we cannot afford our entitlement programs. They join, perhaps reluctantly, the discussion about spending cuts as if that were the only option. They act as if we are revenue constrained for ever, not by choice, but by some mysterious background law that we cannot transgress. It is as if the US economy has been hobbled and can no longer generate sufficient wealth to pay for even a meager safety net.

This is wrong.

It is horribly wrong.

It is cruelly wrong.

Our economy can well afford its social programs. What it cannot afford is its awful health care system – neither public nor private. About a decade from now we will be faced with true crisis in health care spending. But we have a full decade to engage in a debate about what to do. Eventually we will be forced into a single payer government run system because of its massive efficiency when compared with any hodge-podge private sector alternative. That argument, though, is yet to be had.

What we do not need is to make hasty ill thought through changes to social spending because we have been forced into a false debate.

Which brings me to the ‘deal’.

We managed to miss such changes.

This stands as a big win for most Americans. The social programs are untouched. For now. But that victory is diminished by the lack of resolution on other issues.

For instance, with respect to the undoing of the damage wrought by George Bush, the score is a lot more even. Obama caved in on his campaign promise to push up tax rates on incomes over $250,000. He edged his way up to $450,000. So he surrendered some of the revenue needed to be recaptured. Instead of getting a revenue boost of $800 billion, he is getting $620 billion. In the context of the US economy the difference is insubstantial. But the difference is politically significant: he gave ground where he need not.

From his perspective, he bartered this cash away to buy some continued relief for the poor and unemployed. Any reasonable nation would have extended unemployment assistance anyway. In the US getting anything to help the unemployed is a hard long fight. Worse: the temporary reduction in payroll taxes has been given up, meaning that workers will face an immediate tax increase of 2% no matter what the politicians say or do about the income tax.

The deal tinkers with estate taxes – the rate goes up on larger estates, but the exemption from tax is set at $5 million. And the rate of tax on capital gains and dividends is raised to 20% from 15% for those people with incomes over $400,000. Both these will have a very modest impact on inequality, but fall way short of a true liberal victory.

Indeed the details of the deal are sparse given the enormity of the brouhaha associated with getting it done.

The so-called sequester spending cuts are not eliminated but postponed for two months, and the debt ceiling is not addressed at all.

This last two are the true telltale from this deal.

It was about window dressing and avoiding a tax increase. It had nothing to do with the substantive issues. The Republicans can get behind the deal because it looks as if it saves a tax hike – one that, we must remember, they engineered a decade ago. Yes, they have voted to raise income tax rates on the wealthy. This is, I suppose, a big break from their recent past, but they gave no more ground. We will not be spared a constant and bitter fight over the budget and debt levels. The right has managed to keep its long term goal alive.

The true oddity about all this is that we just had an election in which the choices were clear. The result was a resounding vote to sustain the social programs and to raise taxes on the wealthy.  Inside Washington that result has been ignored both by the winners and the losers. The negotiation carried on as if the bulwark of the people’s will mattered very little. Exit polls showed that voters do not care about the debt until they are scared by media and political talk. What voters care about most is jobs, wages, and getting the economy humming.

Despite all the chatter in Washington this morning, this deal does little in that regard. All it does, which is big, is to avoid a tax increase that could have crippled the economy for a quarter or two. Little and big. Big and little.

It is a big little deal.

 

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Oh Boy: Over the Cliff We Go?

No one knows exactly what went on, but this evening’s extraordinary melt down within the House Republican caucus is surely a historical moment.

Here’s the story:

Speaker Boehner has been negotiating a deal to resolve the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ with President Obama. Set aside whether we think the economy has a debt or budget problem. It certainly has a manufactured fiscal policy problem. The reason the cliff is a rotten thing is that unless it dealt with it will induce a severe contraction in policy staring January 1st. The CBO forecasts a recession if we go over the cliff with GDP dropping by nearly 4.0% in the first quarter.

Obama made an initial offer.

Boehner responded with a different package.

Obama counter-offered.

Thus far so good. A typical negotiation. Nothing odd.

But.

Then Boehner suddenly decided to go to the now infamous plan ‘B’. This was when things start to get weird. No one quite knows why he had to use plan ‘B’. It was radically different from anything in his negotiation with Obama. Indeed it was a major step backwards. The generally accepted explanation of Boehner’s somewhat strange maneuvering is that he was trying to test the extent of support for a deal – any deal – within his own caucus.

The problem with this is that plan ‘B’ is so far from a potential deal – it is basically a wish list of far right policies and represents a tax reduction for millionaires – that it will never be taken up by the Senate, let alone be signed into law. It was a sham from the get go.

And.

It failed to get sufficient support. The far right stood firm and blocked it. The consequence is that the Republican leadership decided not even to try to have it voted on. The Republican caucus has splintered. Recrimination is already in the air. As they left their private meeting Republicans muttered grimly, but avoided saying the obvious. As of this evening there is no coherent leadership in the GOP caucus. There is no possibility of a deal before year end. The Republicans have all gone home for the holidays. Quite whom Obama negotiates with now is anyone’s guess. Disarray. Chaos. And a historic public melt down.

Our political dysfunction has reached an epic level.

Our economy is about to take a massive self inflicted wound because of the intransigence of the far right.

Looks like we are headed over the cliff.

Oh boy.

Ah. But wait.

The obvious solution is for Obama to go back to square one. All he has to do is wait for January 1st. and then offer up his original deal: keep the Bush tax cuts for everyone with incomes under $250,000. This offer will fly through Congress. No one will be able to resist voting for what will be a tax cut. Of course this means that everything else the Republicans have been looking for will have to be negotiated later on with a president basking in the glow of a major tax cut.

It looks like they blew their negotiating position.

Oh boy.

 

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On Second Thought

That was yesterday. Today, well everything looks so different.

Whereas a deal to prevent us going over the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ appeared well in the works over the weekend and into this week, it now seems that we might all be mistaken. The Republicans have hardened their stance. We are almost back to the black days of 2011.

The problem always seems to start with Obama’s negotiating technique. He says tough things initially, but all too soon he begins a retreat. In his mind this is a process of making concessions in order to arrive at a compromise – his willingness to lift the base income for his tax increase from $250,000 to $400,000 is an example. The problem is that the Republicans are so dogmatic and committed to an all-or-nothing process that each Obama concession is seen as a sign of weakness. So far from being encouraged to move towards compromise they withdraw further to the right. They take back stuff previously given. They toughen their position.

This is what you get when you try to deal with extremists. They have no intention of reaching compromise. They are fighting a do-or-die battle. They are not concerned at all with the ramifications of failure to reach a deal. They don’t want a deal. They want to destroy the current system. So, to them, if it suffers in the absence of a deal there is no problem. That our economy will be forced into recession is not an issue. After all, through  the perverted lens of contemporary Republicanism, a recession is simply a cleansing process, a purging of the weak. That dead weight of the infamous 47% will suffer because they deserve to suffer.

And since there are enough hard liners in the Republican caucus in Congress they can dictate the terms of debate. In this case they appear to have stalled discussions.

Their principal objection to Obama’s most recent offer is that it fails to cut enough government spending and relies too much on revenue increases. In other words, Obama is not sufficiently committed to right wing extremism.

I have said it so many times I am sure that you are all tired of reading this: the so-called crisis we are facing is entirely manufactured. It is not a property of the economy’s functioning. We are not trying to remedy an imbalance in the economy’s workings. This is an ideologically driven attack on the core functioning of government. The Republican drive to cut spending is not a function of fiscal need – cutting the deficit or trimming the debt – it is a function of their long held political aim to defund all social programs. They hate the poor, the elderly, the sick, and the very young of our country so much that they want, with an unprecedented fervor, to stop state assistance to those groups. They have successfully nurtured the circumstances for their attack. They have altered the public perception of reality to the extent that many voters seem to think spending cuts are unavoidable. They have managed to bamboozle the media into thinking Obama unreasonable were he not to make concessions to their agenda. This entire discussion is never called unnecessary, instead we have been forced to march to a right wing drumbeat where cuts are needed, taxes must never be raised, and our government must not act as an agent in the economy’s workings. That this is extreme has been masked by the four decade long right wing framing of all our political discussion.

So it is no surprise at all that they are now demanding even more. This is after Obama has already gone too far.

There are times in history when reasonable people have to realize that they are in the company of intolerance and unreason. When that moment arrives the consequences are dire whichever course is chosen. Appease the extremists and they simply ask for more. Confront them and conflict is inevitable. Either way reasonable people must suffer. The comfort and harmony of normal political process, of disagreement, argument, and debate must be left behind. In times like these, when the nation is being held to ransom by a few hardliners – whose agenda, we must remember, was just decisively rejected – the only course for reasonable people is to suspend the conversation. It is a time to fight for principal.

That takes spine. It takes a willingness to suffer for the long term good. And it takes leadership.

The question is whether we have the stomach for the fight. Does Obama?

I fear more concessions are in the wind. Appeasement proceeds.

Addendum:

OK, the action is thick and fast.

First, the Republicans switch gears and say they will pass in the House a bill that maintains the Bush tax regime for everyone below an income of $1 million a year. That’s it. There is nothing else in their bill. Not a thing. No spending cuts. No mention of the debt ceiling. Nada. The only purpose of the proposal is that it removes Obama’s complaint that the Republicans are holding everything up to prevent a tax increase for millionaires. This gambit is called Plan ‘B’. Actually, if you think about it, even millionaires get a tax break in Plan’B’ since all their income at the lower tax brackets is protected from a tax increase.

Second, Obama threatens to veto Plan ‘B’, saying it isn’t a serious effort to deal with the budget issues, it sin’t balanced, and is a move away from the near deal that he thought existed over the weekend.

Third, the Republicans say go ahead. Veto it. But it’s all we are prepared to do.

This looks like an impasse. There have been no negotiations for two days. The back and forth has increased in rancor. Communication is now more via press conference than around the negotiating table.

We could be going over the cliff.

The question is: why would the Republicans be so intransigent? The public has the perception that if we go over the cliff the Republicans are to blame. Plus going over the cliff strengthens Obama – he could then call for a retroactive reduction in taxes for whatever group he likes and then dare the GOP to vote against such a tax cut. Plus the sequester at the heart of the cliff includes stinging reductions in defense spending amongst other things. This is hardly the stuff the GOP constantly tries to stand for.

Who knows?

The really big issue seems to be that the extremists have such a hold on the Republican party that they have effectively shot down everything Speaker Boehner has negotiated with Obama. He no longer controls his own caucus, and is thus ineffective. Basically Plan ‘B’ was a very public message to the White House: this is all there is in the House. Take it or leave it. If the White House leaves it, then there doesn’t seem to be much else to do but wait. I assume some conversations are still possible, but with Boehner so hamstrung there doesn’t appear to be any room for further compromise.

Stay tuned.

 

 

 

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Bad Dealing

Well the rumors are swirling with enough detail mixed in that the consensus is probably right: there is a deal in the works. A deal, that is, to prevent us going over the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’. Is this good or bad?

If you’re like me an subscribe to the view that we don’t have a deficit or a debt problem, then assessing any deal is a little surrealistic. You’re discussing a deal to a problem that doesn’t exist.

And, just for the record, the reason we don’t have a problem is that the vast majority of our annual deficit is due to the crisis. The economy dropped like stone taking with it Federal tax revenues. Then, as the recession grew in scale and scope, Federal spending ballooned as the safety net, such as it is, kicked in. These twin features of the budget, both entirely normal and entirely temporary, account for almost all the sudden surge in the annual deficit. The remaining lump was bequeathed us by George Bush and his ill advised tax cuts. The Bush factor is significant, but is manageable for a healthy growing economy. The problem is that since those tax cuts we haven’t had a healthy growing economy, we have been stuck  either in stagnation or in recession and tepid recovery.

Get the economy growing again and our deficit melts like the snow in spring, and the debt gets to be a smaller percentage of GDP even if it continues to grow slightly each year.

Having this realistic assessment in mind is essential when looking at any deal for the ‘fiscal cliff’, since it is an invented phenomenon and not a real feature of the economy. So the discussion is not at all one of resolving a fiscal crisis, but is a more ideological debate about the size and role of government.

For us on the left of center in politics the measuring stick of acceptability with respect to any deal is thus its defense of our expansive vision of that size and role. Plus, at a tactical level, does the deal contain anything that could not have been gained or lost had we simply gone over the cliff?

So. How does the deal measure up?

I give it a resounding ‘C’, bordering on ‘C-‘.

Why?

It gives up two pieces of treasure that I think could have been kept.

First, it allows the temporary payroll tax cut to elapse. This is especially annoying since our payroll taxes are not very progressive. Indeed since we do not collect tax on any incomes over about $110,000, any changes in its levels and rates tend to fall disproportionately on middle and working class incomes. So giving up the cut constitutes a tax increase for the majority of workers. I realize the cut was planned to be temporary, but keeping it another year to bolster demand would have been preferable. Looking on the bright side: since the elimination of the cut will boost revenues into the Social Security system, albeit on the backs of the least wealthy, it will help defeat any talk of imminent bankruptcy or failure of the system.

Second, and this one is more important, it looks as if Obama is about to cave in on changing the indexing for the annual increases in Social Security payments. It is well known that this will reduce those annual increases and thus, potentially, expose our elderly to more inflationary pressure. I realize that we have virtually no inflation at the moment due to the depressed nature of the economy, but we cannot expect that to be permanent. This shift in indexing is a definitive cut in benefits, which is a shocking thing for a Democrat to offer up. Presumably Obama sees it as a vital lure that wins him something that he could not get in any other way.

What would that be?

It cannot be the reported $50 billion in infrastructure spending. In a nation whose infrastructure is rapidly becoming the laughingstock of the western world, the amount is insultingly trivial.

Perhaps it’s the reported increase in revenues. This needs some explanation.

The revenue increase being rumored amounts to about $1.4 trillion. Most of this comes from a rate increase on incomes over $400,000. This, in itself is an Obama concession, since he had previously been holding out for an increase on incomes over $250,000. But by lifting the base of the tax rate increase, it looks as if Obama won two other additional revenue battles. The deal includes an increase in tax on capital gains – putting it back at its pre-Bush 20% – and the re-inclusion of dividends into ordinary income for tax purposes. Plus it seems as if the deal includes a cap of 28% on deductions like mortgage interest and property taxes. By setting that cap at 28% Obama avoids too much damage to the middle class and gets plenty of new revenue from the wealthy.

On balance these revenue increases are slightly more than what would have occurred had we simply gone over the cliff, but not so much more as to offset the damage done on the cuts side.

Another feature of the deal, a minor positive in fiscal terms, but huge in humanitarian terms, is that it extends unemployment assistance. Don’t forget that the Republicans have ben insisting that the emergency extension of those benefits be dropped.

Finally, there are promises from Obama to ante up a further $400 or so billion in more entitlement cuts, but that has to be thrashed out in Congress and so is highly uncertain, especially with the slight shift to the left in the Democratic caucus in the Senate. Besides most of it can come through an Obama favorite – allowing the Medicare system to negotiate for low prices. This would cut spending without harming benefits at all.

Oh, one last thing: the deal seems to include a two year moratorium on the fanatical Republican urge to destroy our national credit rating. They will forbear arguing over the debt ceiling. Oh boy. Never has threatening to be juvenile and irresponsible been taken more seriously in Congress.

That’s about it. That’s the deal.

Is it worth it?

I don’t think so. My point being that any concession during an artificial debate is unnecessary. Our deficit and debt issues, to the extent they exist at all, would have been better dealt with by expansionary policies. This entire discussion about cuts is a major victory for the right. What Obama appears to be doing is conceding the need for a fight over the size of government and then trying to limit the damage.

But his very election last month was premised on the notion that entitlement cuts were not necessary. In the argument about the 47% and his year long advocacy of tax increases on the wealthy Obama rallied support around the notion that the major economic issue we face is job generation and more equal wealth distribution. Two things that, in my opinion, go hand in hand. The country appeared, decisively, to reject the Republican agenda of entitlement cuts. Indeed, exit polls showed that voters didn’t care much about the deficit at all.

Yet here we are, a month or so later, and a newly empowered Obama is giving away entitlement cuts. I don’t think he should. Then again all the furor kicked up about the cliff has dampened confidence. Perhaps getting a deal, even a bad one like this, will be sufficient to get the economy going at a faster rate. Then, with growth higher and unemployment falling, Obama can turn to other parts of his agenda with more confidence.

And that slender hope is why I give a mildly passing grade to what, otherwise, is a both an unnecessary and bad deal.

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Cliff Walking

This is really irksome.

For most of this phony war, as the key players strut their stuff for public eyes but not for serious negotiation, the Republicans have been oddly coy about what their plan would be. They released no details, gave no hints, and merely repeated their continuing objection to the horror of a tax rate increase for the wealthy.

As a result no one, including most Republicans, had a clue about where the starting lines were being drawn in what was supposed to be a fairly short and intense negotiation. For those of us familiar with Obama’s history, particularly that from 2009 and 2010, the GOP silence was easily explained: he has a tendency to do all the negotiation with himself. Thus his starting position is already heavily leaning towards a Republican viewpoint, which makes him vulnerable to being bullied even further. This is why so much of the early legislation of the Obama administration was so lame from a left of center perspective.

Apparently, somewhere along the road since then, Obama has been given a copy of  basic negotiation handbook. So, while he is still prone to being far too centrist from the beginning of a debate, at least the total give-aways are now being avoided.

This flummoxed the Republicans and produced a great deal of confusion: they had to put something in writing.

That they have now done. And it’s rubbish.

This was predictable. The entire discussion about our so-called Federal deficit and debt crises hinges on the hope that the public don’t realize that there is no crisis. After all panic and doomsaying become a tad vacuous in the absence of anything to panic or predict doom about.

I have said this a myriad times – I too am allowed hyperbole in these circumstances – there is no crisis. None. This talk of a fiscal cliff is simply a neat trick cooked up by the right to force a discussion about entitlement cuts. Such a discussion is not needed and would not be happening without the neat trickery.

That Obama continues to play along with the right in their long term attempts to eviscerate our safety net is a tragedy. True leadership right now would not simply be to stiffen your spine and resist the Republican attacks before coming to some compromise. It would be to sing to the rafters that the entire debate is hollow. It is an outcome of a long playing and persistent attack on the poor, the elderly, the sick, and the very young by the hardcore of our ever more rightward right wing.

Our so-called deficit problem stems exactly from the defunding of government undertaken by the Republicans. The centerpiece of that defunding, as we all know, was the Bush tax cutting program. The first swathe of cuts, in 2001, was designed to eliminate the then surplus running on the Federal government’s books. The second swathe, in 2003, was positioned as a quasi-Keynesian stimulus. The first swathe was a stunning success. It certainly eliminated the Federal surplus. The second swathe was an abysmal failure. It failed to provide any substantial stimulus. The economy continued its rotten ways in the aftermath of 2003, meaning that the promised uptick in revenues provided by faster growth never arrived.

So we entered the crisis of 2008/2009 without any ammunition courtesy of Bush’s extraordinarily negligent fiscal policies.

From the nation’s point of view Bush was an unmitigated failure. From the hardcore right’s perspective he was a hero, albeit unsung because of his toxic public image. He had successfully, if,like a lot of his actions, unwittingly, accomplished the longed for defunding of government.

From then on it became an easy sell to a gullible media that we had some sort of national budgetary crisis and that we could no longer afford all those expensive entitlement programs. They had to be slashed. Such pronouncements of the need for cuts were always accompanied by a suitable amount of regret to indicate that no one actually wanted to cut anything, it was that we had to in order to be responsible. Apparently – and I need to mention this – we were all supposed not to notice that the right assumed we could continue, nay augment, our defense spending. We can afford to pay for generals and their toys. Just not for schools. That the homeland being defended by all those glittery hi-tech weapons is both ignorant and hollowed out never entered the discussion.

Toss in a few frightening articles about the upcoming tsunami of baby-boomer retirements and the stage was set for a right wing victory and the long hoped for roll back of the welfare state.

The fiscal cliff, and all the discussions surrounding it, is simply a veil covering this attack on entitlements. The Republicans have never, ever, been interested in the deficit or the debt. Except where those things are useful in undermining centrist and left wing objections to entitlement reform. This explains all the extraordinary flip flopping the Republicans have done on the deficit throughout the years. It was Reagan’s henchman who barked out that “deficits don’t matter” not a crazy leftist. Reagan and Bush remain the only two American presidents to add to the deficit without a war or economic cause. And all the current leadership of the Congressional Republicans supported Bush’s multiplication of our debt back in 2001 and 2003.

That they all plead fiscal rectitude now is both a hypocritical and a sick joke.

That the Obama administration is complicit in the game being played is even worse.

There needs to be no change in Social Security. The tax code surely needs cleaning up, but that will be a long, arduous, and most likely lobbyist undermined project. Raising tax rates is more simple, clean, and resistant to tampering. Our defense spending needs to be cut to conform with a less imperial foreign policy. And health care spending needs to be controlled.

This is simple stuff.

Obama’s plan, which alters the fiscal balance by around $1.6 trillion, contains details that match fairly well to my list above ex, of course, any serious defense spending cuts. It actually has details, which is important to note. Because the much hyped Republican plan has no details. It is just a rehashing of the Ryan plan without any explicit reference to Medicare vouchers. It is full of hot air and vapor. It promises things such reform of tax deductions – which are alleged to provide an additional $800 million in revenues – without actually saying what those reforms are. And so it goes on. The Republican plan is no plan. It is a wish list. It’s only details are those aimed squarely at the elderly and poor. Medicare gets a revision of its age eligibility, and Social Security gets a change in its annual inflation indexing. Together these changes to the entitlement programs net about $300 million in cold hard cash. Those fixes for the tax code linger in the warm and fuzzy world of pipe dreams.

Given that the fiscal cliff isn’t a cliff, but a contrivance aimed at engendering a debate about entitlement reform, it ought not surprise us that the Republican budget plan isn’t a plan, but a proposal to reduce entitlements.

At least we could all be clear about that.

Then we could all get on with the task of defending those entitlements, and avoid unnecessary chatter about the dangers of walking too close to cliffs.

But that wouldn’t be centrist enough for our media. So the cliff walking continues.

Addendum:

All the evidence suggests that the Republicans will find it tough to keep a coherent negotiating position in place. Hence the vagueness of their supposed plan. It is already under attack from right wing groups. Some of those groups even acknowledge it as unacceptable. Of course, they don’t seem to offer up anything better. Then again with their anti-debt credentials being tattered and their anti-entitlement colors flying strongly it must be difficult to develop a plan that isn’t toxic to the electorate.

Still, it’s worth reading what they say. Here’s a quote from the Heritage Foundation, a hard right think tank:

“[T]he Republican counteroffer, to the extent it can be interpreted from the hazy details now available, is a dud. It is utterly unacceptable. It is bad policy, bad economics, and, if we may say so, highly questionable as a negotiating tactic.”

Ouch.

 

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