The difference could not have been more stark between Democratic and GOP reactions in the aftermath of yesterday’s passage of the debt ceiling deal. Boehner gloated Mon. evening that he got “98%” of what he wanted and claimed to be “very happy.” No question here that he dragged the ugly, singed, diminished and shapeless mass that is his speakership out of the Tee Party’s campfire. McConnell doubled down on using the debt ceiling as an extortion device. Most of the commentariat shook its head in dissatisfaction with the President’s negotiating performance. One fascinating round-table with lefty academics I read focused on the question of whether Obama is weak or a neo-conservative who is little better than Irving Kristol (a bit hyperbolic, but some solid points were made all around, especially by Adolf Reed – http://coreyrobin.com/2011/08/… ). Reid, Pelosi, and Obama, as well as other congressional leaders made cases ranging from “it could have been a lot worse,” “we protected entitlements,” “now we can focus hard core and tough on jobs,” to “we were the responsible ones” and “they gave up stuff too, the system worked and compromises were made on both sides.” But this doesn’t really seem to match Boehner’s “98%!!!” and McConnell’s “extortion is awesome.”
The fact is, the GOP held a match to our ability to function, to all our mortgages, to our ability to pay our military, our elderly, our teachers, and ultimately to Wall Street itself and extracted an economically harmful bill that will further burden the recovery. This is what they have called “fiscal responsibility.” It seems to me, given that the market tanked yesterday, that our credit rating is still in jeopardy, and that no economist believes that this will aid jobs and growth, that we would have been better off to declare defeat. This was their victory. We made mistakes that enabled them to victimize the American economy out of ideological zeal and with unethical tactics that can only be justified through ignorance or fanaticism or both. We will not blink again. They own this. They have shoved us deeper into a crisis. We knew they were extreme and that they fail to understand economics. But we believed that they would hold the nation and the welfare of American families as sacred, not as hostages to implement their facile slogans and flatter their own ideological self-righteousness. We will not make that mistake again. Neither should you.
Next summer, as the recovery continues to founder, we should run that clip of Boehner gloating that he got 98% of what he wanted and ask whether people believe that we could survive the other 2%.
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