The Casualties of the “Beltway Bubble”

For what it’s worth, the Republicans don’t seem to be in favor of much of anything these days that actually makes sense.  On the one hand, I can understand their fixation on reducing the deficit; that is something this country needs to tackle before it gets much worse.  Then they say they are in favor of extending the Bush tax cuts; if they really wanted to cut the deficit, they’d let the tax cuts expire.  But of course, that doesn’t fit the “lower taxes for everybody and to hell with the consequences!” plank of their policies.  We’ve seen time and again this session that great ideas, (see: the public option, the climate bill),  go to the Senate to die.  Now, another program has fallen to the Senate obstructionism.  This time is a bit different, and a bit more worrisome too.

UPDATED: The Benefits Are Restored, But At What Cost?

Update is below

Ladies and gentlemen, the wait is finally over.  Today, unemployment benefits are on the verge of finally being reauthorized after nearly two months of the nation’s unemployed having nothing to rely on other than whatever savings they might have had left.  Technically, the benefits have not been restored, but with today’s successful cloture vote in the Senate, passage is essentially guaranteed.  Once again, the vote split along party lines, with the exception of Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) joining the attempt to maintain the filibuster, and Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins siding with the Democrats.  We know tonight the cost of the legislation, and other important specifics, so the “cost” in my title is of course beyond the actual dollar amount.

A Viable Deficit-Reduction Compromise?

Ah, the deficit.  No single issue has caused as much consternation in Congress and around the country as the deficit has in recent weeks.  Sure, health care reform tied up Congress for just about a full year, but now everything is getting held up because of the blasted deficit.  Unemployment benefits, the coming energy bill, “the Doc fix”, Finreg, or the Wall Street Reform bill, all of these and more have been delayed, weakened, or outright allowed to expire because of the deficit concerns.  It’s not enough to simply promise that the bill will be deficit-neutral as was done with the health care bill, but rather each piece of legislation in theory needs to go toward reducing the deficit.  (In theory, everything should already be deficit-neutral if we’re actually following the “Pay-as-you-go” rules that Congress readopted in a joint resolution, but that’s another story.)

So what to do?  Lately, the hot thing is an austerity program, as in severe spending cuts and their accompanying cutbacks in services.  Seriously, they’re all the rage in Europe following the Greek economic crisis a couple of months ago, and at least it does do something for the deficit.  Oh, except for one minor detail: such a package is a bad idea and exactly what we don’t need now.  According to a New York Times editorial, there is a very real risk that an austerity measure would cause, in effect, the dreaded double-dip recession.  Yes, that’s right; the combination of reduced spending and the still-weak credit ecosystem in this country coupled with projected decrease in corporate profits and personal incomes might just cause the nascent recovery to fall flat, leaving us to slide back into recession.

Unfortunately, we’ve already tried the alternative; massive government spending from the stimulus program has proven unconvincing at best.  I’m sure you’ve seen at least one of the projects funded by the $787 billion stimulus from last year.  For example, the most common ones I’ve seen are highway repairs and major road projects; nobody knows for sure exactly how many jobs were created or saved by the program, but estimates abound.  In addition to the still-unproven effectiveness of the stimulus, it also costs a ton of money, and in this climate, anything that, again, isn’t fully paid for and helps the deficit situation at the same time is dead on arrival in Congress.

A First Step Toward Fiscal Responsibility

Sometimes, things just have to get done in Washington, regardless of political gridlock.  This is exactly why the President has the power of issuing executive orders; he can enact certain things that Congress cannot seem to agree on, which will prove to be very valuable in this polarized political climate.  Today, we saw a great example of its use when President Obama used one to create the bipartisan commission on the national debt.  As you may recall, he and people on both sides of the aisle in Congress have been trying to figure out how to tackle the debt problem, however for various reasons they were deadlocked over the idea of forcing an up-or-down vote on spending cuts and tax increases proposed by a bipartisan commission.  Now, they do not have to worry about creating the thing; President Obama has done it for them.  Of course, there are still questions surrounding it, and the actual proposals it will suggest are actually the last thing on the minds of Congress right now.  More importantly, will Congress even vote on the proposals?  Will the Republicans even participate?