Debt on Arrival

Well people, we didn’t blow it. Our economy is still crappy, our jobs are still scarce, our manufacturing is still gone, but at least we didn’t blow it. Never fear; the road ahead promises to be just as gut-wrenching as the one we concluded. Read on for six thoughts on last weekend’s thrilling debt deal.

Two Things That Will Change:

The way real legislation will be written: supercommittees. A supercommittee is a representation of a representative body, a small group in which compromise is easier than in a larger group. Supercommittees have been created and tasked by the big recent laws—the health care bill, the budget deal, and this debt deal—with hammering out the compromises that Congress is woefully unwilling to entertain. Delegating such groups minimizes the presence of fanaticism in the creation of a law. Powerbrokers don’t like dealing with crazy ideologues, so the process to determine the most important part of a bill—the details—will simply go higher up. Look for more supercommittees to come. Obstinacy may play well in rabid home districts, but Washington will respond by simply sending the job of legislation above the heads of those who proclaim a total disinterest in taking it seriously. This isn’t a good thing; it centralizes power into a shadowy backroom controlled by party bosses.

Negotiation. Brinkmanship rewarded, insanity prized. Wingnuts could not be hotter right now, and they get things done by taking their one-half of one-third of the government and going home. Unfortunately, there’s still the most powerful country in world history to run, so legislative work will be done, just not, you know, well. With inflexibility rewarded as it was in the debt deal, why not make a stand on every single issue?

Two Things That Won’t Change a Goddamn Bit:

The debt. The agreement doesn’t even reduce spending, let alone the debt. It shares at least two qualities with the health-care bill: a mind-numbing debate that explored the most avant-garde limits of functional governance and a total failure to address health care spending. You can cut all the food stamps you want, but until the entitlements are addressed, the debt trajectory isn’t anywhere near sustainable. However, our debt load feels especially heavy due to anemic growth, so that needs to be our primary concern before we arbitrarily reject the cheap cash that has financed our economic supremacy for seventy years. Intelligent investment will help much more than indiscriminate cuts, but either way, the debt is not going anywhere soon.

Obama’s spine. The debt crisis confirmed that we know exactly how Obama will deal with political battles for the next five years: he’ll avoid them. His main priority on this debt deal was nothing policy-wise, nothing that he could defend with reason or numbers or passion. What he wanted most was to avoid having this fight again. Considering he had the benefit of all logic, popularity, and all that is good and holy on his side, he has poor chances on more debatable issues. Remember, the contention wasn’t what to do with the debt; it was whether to throw the U.S. Treasury in default or not. His earlier pliancy also assisted the fabrication of the debt ceiling debate: if he hadn’t let April’s budget deal anchor so far to the right, most Republicans wouldn’t have even considered picking this fight. But again, why wouldn’t they? He hasn’t meant business yet, and he may never start.

Two Things that Should Change:

The two-party system. We need to add more parties to our political system. To the extent that they aid the political process, parties are supposed to represent groups of common interest, and the GOP and Democrats do not internally have common interests. The “split in the Republican Party,” for example, is due to the fact that the main goals of its corporate base and the populist base essentially oppose. Having more parties allows the free flotation of alliance, so that the issues are debated more for their own sake than as part of a strategy between manichean polar blocs. It also allows for voters’ voices to resonate more in the legislative process, because they could vote to be represented by parties with interests more closely aligned to their own.

The debt ceiling. The truth is, the bond market is going to decide when the United States reigns in our debt, not an arbitrary number like 14.3 and not vague threats on entitlements. Furthermore, the debt ceiling is legally inconsistent. Congress tells the Executive branch how much federal money to spend on what, yet a debt limit simultaneously deprives it of the ability to do so. In such a scenario, one law will be ignored in the name of the other. This probably won’t be abolished, however, because it’s an easy soapbox for politicians to stand on while not actually risking the economy.