The stakes escalated with the Standard wholesale feather hair extensions & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating on Friday. Clearly a blow to the president, it could boomerang on Republicans if they are seen as the impediment to rectifying the situation.
Whatever the merits of the downgrade decision, it was made easier by the phoniness of the deficit deal approved by Congress, which calls for $900 billion of spending cuts, one-third from defense. The agreement doesn’t touch the two drivers of chronic deficits: out-of-control spending on entitlements, especially health care, and insufficient revenue.
The supercommittee is being created to cut at least $1.2 trillion from the budget over the next decade or, if it fails, automatically trigger feathers in hair extensions reductions from both defense and nondefense expenses. It is likely this bipartisan panel will split over whether to include revenue increases and cutbacks in entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security.
The battle this year was fought on Republican terrain, essentially focusing on how much spending to cut. Despite polls showing surging public support for a deficit-reduction package that included higher taxes, congressional Republicans successfully stiffed all such efforts.
Still, the outcome wasn’t one-sided. Democrats kept entitlements off the table, so Republican threats to slash Medicare remain a golden campaign issue. And Republicans are already squirming over the possibility of huge defense cuts.
The biggest damage may be establishing the precedent of holding the debt ceiling hostage to major changes in policy, a tactic that is now embraced by some of the most sensible Republicans.
If one party controls the House or 41 members of cheap feather hair extensions the Senate, it can force drastic changes under the threat of the default gun; what pleases some Republicans today may later be used by Democrats to undo tax cuts or end wars. If often repeated, the politicians will inevitably drive off the cliff and create a cataclysm.
This state of affairs was enabled in part by one of the most incoherent communications strategies displayed by a modern president. One hundred days ago, President Barack Obama seemed in a decent position. The House Republican budget, written by Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, was wildly unpopular, with its deep cutbacks in Medicare and its failure to raise taxes for more affluent Americans.
The president gave a compelling speech about his economic priorities at George Washington University on April 13. He signaled willingness for a grand bargain in which he would agree to entitlement cuts in return for higher taxes, principally on the wealthy, or by closing loopholes, to produce significant deficit reduction.
That message resurfaced only sporadically — Mr. Obama seemed to recoil when accused of playing “class warfare.” On July 25, the White House trotted out the president to insist on a “balanced package.” At the same time, the Democratic majority leader was pushing a plan that didn’t include higher revenues.
A little earlier, Mr. Obama was trying to negotiate a deal with the House speaker, John A. Boehner, at the same time the Senate’s so-called Gang of Six, which included three very conservative Republicans, proposed a more sweeping proposal that came closer to the vision outlined by the president in April.
