Congressional Republicans have written new rules for dealing with Barack Obama. And perversely, he continues to comply with them.
Consider the rule the Republican leadership has imposed on a vote to increase the debt ceiling, which has to occur before August 2 to prevent the Treasury from defaulting on the public debt.
Congressional Republicans have written new rules for dealing with Barack Obama. And perversely, he continues to comply with them.
Consider the rule the Republican leadership has imposed on a vote to increase the debt ceiling, which has to occur before August 2 to prevent the Treasury from defaulting on the public debt.
The Rule: There will be no vote to increase the debt ceiling without spending cuts.
I go into this in detail in the July 15 issue of the Spectator, but Congress voted to increase the debt ceiling every time George W. Bush or his treasury secretary requested it to do so. There were some protest votes, notably one by a Democratic Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. But there was never doubt or protracted debate regarding the debt ceiling.
The Congress, in fact, routinely voted to increase the debt ceiling to pay for George W. Bush's deficit-funded tax cuts. The chart I'm posting accompanied an article written by Michael Linden and Michael Ettlinger at the Center for American Progress (in June on the tenth anniversary of the first Bush tax cuts).
The Republicans are currently using negotiations with Obama to compel spending cuts that will slow the increase of a public debt, which if unchecked will impose a burden on future generations of Americans and impede the Treasury's ability to borrow.
Linden and Ettlinger (among others) have solved that problem. Using Congressional Budget Office numbers, they cut the Gordian Knot of public debt. The upper line on the graph tracks public debt as a share of gross domestic product if the Bush tax cuts remain in place. The lower line tracks public debt as a share of GDP if the Bush tax cuts expire — as they will in 2012 if the Congress does not vote to extend them.
At the time they were passed, George Bush's tax-cut bills included automatic sunset provisions, because they were not sustainable in the long term. The long term has arrived. And with it, the solution to the debt crisis. As the chart demonstrates, if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to lapse, public debt quickly returns to sustainable levels.
Yet the president is negotiating cuts to Medicare, cuts to Medicaid, and perhaps reduced Social Security benefits — on terms defined by Congressional Republicans. And he is negotiating in the context of a dispute over the debt ceiling, which was never subject to serious dispute in the past.
Obama is speaking at a press conference as I write. More later on some of the cuts he is considering.
