After bargaining chaos, U.S. President Barack Obama negotiated a deal this week with Republicans to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for austerity measures. Liberal and progressive commentators are not celebrating. Below, seven deadly debt darts aimed squarely at the president.
Big deal but no new deal
“What precisely will Obama fight for now that the debt deal has tied his hands? He says he wants to extend tax cuts for middle-class families and make sure the jobless get unemployment benefits. Fine, but the new deal won’t let him. The deal he just signed makes it impossible for the president to launch any major jobs program – no [Roosevelt era] WPA or Civilian Conservation Corps, no lending program to cash-starved states, no new help for distressed homeowners. Nada. The radical right has not only captured the budget it has also captured the American mind.”
ROBERT REICH, secretary of labour under Bill Clinton
Bartering away options
“Don’t blame it all on the Republican ‘mad dogs’. It was President Obama who surrendered. He managed to give the Republicans more than they expected and leave the Democrats with less than the Republicans offered. Unlike presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush II, who routinely got debt ceilings raised without conditions. Mr. Obama has no cards left. Interest rates cannot be driven any lower by the Federal Reserve. He didn’t get even a renewal of the extension of unemployment benefits.”
RALPH NADER, attorney, activist, former presidential candidate
The rich fly free
“It is unconscionable that this agreement would place the entire burden on working families and the most vulnerable in our country. This extremely unfair agreement does not ask the wealthiest people or large profitable corporations to contribute one penny. This is not only grossly unfair, it is bad economic policy.”
BERNIE SANDERS, U.S. Senator, Independent, Vermont
Hello, austerity recession
“Cuts are forced on us by this misguided view that large deficits are a cause, rather than an effect, of the downturn. Almost one in five dollars in consumers’ wallets came from one government program or another. The public sector has already seen deep cuts, and that trend will worsen. The American economy is heading into dark waters, but the coming ‘austerity recession’ won’t only be a result of the tireless efforts of a small band of conservative ideologues it will also be a consequence of a crippling intellectual crisis among our elites.”
JOSHUA HOLLAND, Editor, AlterNet
Untouchable war
“Obama’s $400 billion in Pentagon ‘cuts’ are not cuts at all – unless you consider an obese person who continues eating at the same level but reduces his dreams of ever grander future repasts to be on a diet. The ‘cuts’ in the White House proposal will only be from projected future Pentagon growth rates. Our war-makers are carrying on as if trillion-dollar wars were an American birthright. Few have asked the obvious question: isn’t it time to lower America’s war ceiling?”
TOM ENGELHARDT, The Nation Institute
Defaulting on bold action
“Here is what we should do to avoid default: increase the debt ceiling with no strings attached. Here is how to get out of debt: End the war save $1 trillion over 10 years. Repeal tax cuts to the wealthy save another trillion. Medicare for all: end the $400 billion yearly subsidies for the health insurance industry. Why should our country go into debt, borrowing money from banks when we have the constitutional power to create money and invest in jobs? We can have another New Deal where we put millions to work. The Democratic party is running away from its traditional role of protecting the poor, the elderly and the working class. To whom do these groups now turn?”
DENNIS KUCINICH, U.S. Congressman, Ohio
Participating in delusion
“What we’ve witnessed throughout the Western world is a kind of inverse miracle of intellectual failure. Given a crisis that should have been relatively easy to solve, what we actually got was an obsession with problems we didn’t have. We’ve obsessed over the deficit in the face of near-record low interest rates, obsessed over inflation in the face of stagnant wages and counted on the confidence fairy to make job-destroying policies somehow job-creating. Got that 30s feeling, all the way.”
PAUL KRUGMAN, economist, Princeton University
DEAL DIGEST
• Raise the debt ceiling by $400 billion to avoid default
• $900 billion in cuts over 10 years
• No tax increases for the wealthy
• Two more debt-ceiling rises possible through 2013
• Special joint committee established to identify cuts and possible new revenue streams
• If consensus isn’t reached by end of December, an automatic across-the-board $1.5 trillion in spending cuts begins
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