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Thursday, October 17, 2013

The News Is Out, All Over Town: You Win Again

The Nation breaks with what it calls the Beltway "consensus" in declaring in an editorial that the GOP actually, on important levels, "won" the showdown, even if not in the polls.  Or as I tweeted: "Can kicked down road hits boy on way to Head Start this morning."
Surrender? Any more “victories” like this and Democrats will end up paying tribute into the GOP’s coffers.
This debate started in 2011 when the president accepted that he couldn’t get support for jobs programs and instead called for “balanced” deficit reduction that included tax increases on corporations and the wealthy and spending cuts. In response, Republicans threatened to default on America’s debts, forcing through the Budget Control Act, which cut nearly $1 trillion in spending over ten years with no tax increases and exacted another trillion in cuts either by agreement of a “supercommittee” or, failing that, automatic across-the-board cuts of $1.2 trillion over ten years. Now the Republicans’ “surrender” locks in that sequester while pushing for further reductions to basic safety net programs—all while tax increases remain off the table and the threat of default is still pointed at the country’s head. Tea Party zealots may have lost their bid to torpedo healthcare reform, but the right continues to set the terms of the debate.

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