This Execrable Budget Deal is Only the Another Skirmish in a Long War

Debt ceiling fan, spinning in the wrong direction.

It's warm at my house, (I was going to say hot, but we live in San Diego, CA not San Diego, TX). My son's room seemed especially warm, so I turned on his overhead fan. A while later, I went back in his room and it was still uncomfortable. The fan was spinning fast, but in the wrong direction, sucking air up from the floor and blowing it towards the ceiling. This fan has a remote control, with way too many buttons; but I managed to hit the button to reverse the flow. (I know I am probably not supposed to do that, but quit interrupting.) As soon as I hit the button, nothing seemed to happen, the fan was still sucking air from the floor. But after a while, I noticed that it had started to slow. Sure enough, it continued to slow and slow, eventually coming to a complete stop and reversing direction.

So here is the deal with this execrable debt ceiling deal; we've got a fan spinning at high speed in the wrong direction and threatening to fly apart. But the only reasonable thing to do is apply a countervailing torque that will eventually reverse the flow. Sticking a pitchfork between the blades to get it stop instantly isn't going to be good for the fan or the pitchfork. But that means that we have to keep the torque constantly applied, because this fan has a lot of mass and momentum built up over decades.

This particular skirmish is yet another inconclusive battle in a long war on the growth of government. More fighting will come when the gang of 12 proposes further spending cuts, or perhaps tax increases. This gives another chance to light up this issue, because there the fundamental political calculus remains unchanged. Politico says this about Obama's calculus.

But the president appears to be betting that time is on his side as voters come to grips with the Republicans’ spending-cuts-only approach to the deficit. And the next six months could be a giant civics class in the consequences of the anti-government backlash that fueled the GOP’s gains in the 2010 elections.

I think that Obama doesn't get why this turned so ugly in the first place. He is amazingly tone deaf to actual politics, thinking Obamacare would be more popular after it passed, for instance.
The more the public understands how the growth of debt was only reduced a smidgen, and in fact continues to rise, there will be a backlash against the failure to do more. This is in our interests. This is part of the reason I supported the deal, exactly because it doesn't go far enough, and assures us of more such fights.

There are other reasons to think that the issue will continue to trend in our direction. First, with the economy not recovering, we might not make it past the 2012 election with this deal, especially if we tip into another recession. Second, there are still more cuts to be voted upon, so we need to gird up for the next fight. Keeping the issue of rising debt in the public's mind up until the 2012 elections will only work in our favor. The Democrats are loathed by ordinary voters over this issue, please see liberal pollster Stanley B. Greenberg's article Why Voters Tune Out the Democrats.

This distrust of government and politicians is unfolding as a full-blown crisis of legitimacy sidelines Democrats and liberalism. Just a quarter of the country is optimistic about our system of government — the lowest since polls by ABC and others began asking this question in 1974. But a crisis of government legitimacy is a crisis of liberalism. It doesn’t hurt Republicans. If government is seen as useless, what is the point of electing Democrats who aim to use government to advance some public end?
. . .
The deficit matters to people and has real meaning and consequences. A government that spends and borrows without the kind of limits that would govern an ordinary family is going to have big troubles. Voters I’ve studied say things like, if “we keep spending like this, we’re going to be bankrupt and there won’t be anything for anybody,” especially “our children.” The final straw is the government’s decision to continue spending and to put the country deeper into debt and more dependent on China.

Please keep in mind, this is a self identified left of center pollster saying this. So take heart, we have a lot of work to do. Making out of control government spending the central issue puts the left on perpetual defense. We need the voters to make the tough call in 2012, to elect tea party aligned candidates to tackle this issue once and for all.