Newspapers across the country are taking up the cry: Save us from the fiscal cliff! Lawmakers from both parties are pushing for a "Grand Bargain" along the lines of the right-wing Simpson Bowles proposal. That proposal would cut Social Security, encourage caps to Medicare funding, and push tax increases that target the middle class while actually lowering tax rates for the highest earners and for corporations.
Politicians in both parties are following their lead. Many of them are citing a Congressional Budget Office report which says that the "fiscal cliff" will have a disastrous impact on our already wounded economy. They're arguing for deficit reduction, an issue that shouldn't be addressed until we get our economy moving.
House on Fire
(I've used this analogy before, but I'll use it again: Deficit reduction, like water conservation, is a good idea. But if your house is on fire, you douse the flames before you start worrying about the water bill. Our economic house is on fire.)
It's bad enough that Democrats aren't pushing back against this misguided focus on deficits. Worse, by using the Simpson Bowles framework they're all making the argument on right-wing terms, since that plan has far more in spending cuts than it does in tax increases (and those increases target the middle class).
Not that any of this is a surprise. Something like this became inevitable when top Democrats, following President Obama's lead, stopped talking about government's important role in the best of times -- and its critical role in times like these, which aren't so good at all. Democrats surrendered on the most important political fight of our time: the fight to defend government's role in building and preserving a humane, just, and economically healthy society for everyone.
First question: Since when has it become a faux pas in the nation's Capital to remind people about all the good things government does for them?
Trigger Happy
Everybody acts as if the "fiscal cliff" is an unavoidable emergency, like an asteroid heading toward the Earth. That's the kind of thing that always brings humanity together in the movies, as warring nations collaborate on eliminating their common threat.
But the fiscal cliff was created by the very people who are now using it as an excuse for pushing unwise and unpopular ideas. It's an outgrowth of the "trigger" idea that suddenly became popular in Washington a couple of years ago. "Triggers" are policy changes that are passed into law well in advance of when they're scheduled to take effect -- and only then if other, equally extravagant and unpopular policy goals aren't met.
Think of them as political IEDs, set to blow up after the perpetrators have left the scene. Or like that scene in Blazing Saddles (with inappropriate language, or I'd link to it) where Cleavon Little takes himself hostage and threatens to kill himself if his own demands aren't met.
The strategy seems to be working. Everybody's saying we have to pass these terrible bills or even more terrible things will happen. But nobody's arguing for right policies, the ones that would get our country back on track.
Cliffhanger
Somebody got what they paid for. Billions have been spent to convince Americans that austerity -- reductions in government's size and spending levels -- is good for the economy.
We're told that the "fiscal cliff" would provide dramatic deficit reduction. The CBO says that if the spending portion of the "cliff" takes effect, "the deficit will drop by $560 billion between fiscal years 2012 and 2013."
But then it hits the fan. "Under those fiscal conditions," says the CBO, '' ... growth in real (inflation-adjusted) GDP in calendar year 2013 will be just 0.5 percent, CBO expects -- with the economy projected to contract at an annual rate of 1.3 percent in the first half of the year and expand at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in the second half."
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