The Debt Deal–Who Wins, Who Loses?

So the deal has been made, and the President and Congress have agreed to a compromise package.

I’m seeing a lot of reactions to this online, and it seems like nearly all of them lack information and perspective.

Now I want to be clear on this up front – I have said myself that if President Obama sells out the poor and middle class by conceding to cuts in Medicare/Medicaid, food stamp and other poverty-assistance programs, Pell grants, Social Security, and unemployment, he would lose my support.  There are two main reasons for my position on this:

• Social Security and unemployment insurance are not entitlement programs.  We pay in to those programs with every check (at least those who are employed do),  Cuts to those programs constitute fraud against the people who have paid into them and they are not acceptable.
• I have often said, and I fully believe, that any society is only as strong as its weakest link.  We must work together to elevate the lower class.  The poorest people in our nation should be comfortable and healthy.  The narrative promoted by the hard-right and the Fox News idiots that poor people should stop bitching because they own televisions or refrigerators is ridiculous.  We should be working to lift the poor in other countries up to our standard of living, not lowering the poor in our country to theirs.  Cuts to poverty assistance and education are a far greater threat to the long-term health of our country than any nonsense about who owes the banks some money.

What’s the deal?

How does this deal measure up?  Well…I’m not jumping up and down and cheering about it, but it’s not as bad as some people think it is, either.  Here are some important points:

• Unemployment, Social Security, Medicaid, food stamps, Pell grants, are untouched.  This is, without question, A Good Thing
• Medicare is cut, but “only to providers.”  I am not entirely certain what this means in practical terms, and I don’t have a sense that it forces any meaningful reform on the health insurance or pharmaceutical industries.  Still, at least the appearance of not cutting user benefits has been given, so at the very least the message has been received:  we will not accept sacrificing the poor for the sake of enriching the already wealthy.  On the other hand, it is impossible to know at this time whether that appearance has any real substance, or whether these cuts will have a real effect on medical care for the elderly and disabled.  Only time will tell, and for that reason I cannot endorse or condemn this part of the package.
• Cuts to defense spending:  this is provisionally a good thing.  The US military and especially defense contractors are among the most entitled segments of our society.  The entire system is bloated and inefficient, and in far too many ways it has been broken and rearranged to mostly benefit giant defense contractors like ADM, Xe (formerly Blackwater), Boeing, Lockheed, and General Electric.  If the defense cuts are applied to those inefficiencies and exploitations, then okay.  If they are applied to stripping VA benefits that have been promised to our veterans, then not okay.  Note that I also have no problem with the idea of force reduction; the days of mano y mano combat are largely behind us, and should be more so.  We have been somewhat crippled in our military strategy by relying on old paradigms that technology should allow us to reject in favor of more efficient combat strategies that don’t rely so much on the idea of “boots on the ground.”
• No tax increases, at all.  This is not a good thing, not even a little bit.  Wealthy Americans and the largest corporations currently enjoy the lowest tax burdens seen in this country since we began collecting income tax, while much of the rest of the country is sinking under the weight of trying to support not only their own lives, but the lives of enormous corporations and fabulously wealthy individuals, some of whom (like General Electric) pay little to no income taxes at all, simply because they can afford to pay accountants and tax attorneys to exploit the loopholes created by lobbyists that they can also afford to pay.  That is not fair, it perpetuated economic disparity, and there is simply no excuse for it.  We should have historic tax increases on the upper wealth strata of individuals and corporations to correct the outrageous and destructive concessions they have been given over the last thirty years – talk about entitlement programs and redistributing wealth!  Instead, those very wealthy corporations and individuals continue to sail along paying little or nothing, and it looks as though it will continue that way at least until the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2012…and when those cuts do expire, the middle class will see their taxes increase as well.  This is terrible policy that caters to wealthy special interests, and it is bitterly disappointing.  That said, given the hostage situation that we’re under thanks to the idiots in the Tea Party and their antagonists like the Pauls, Bachmann, Palin, Jim DeMint, and Rush Limbaugh, it’s not surprising that the people are going to take this one on the chin.
• More Bureaucracy.  This bill creates a new bi-partisan committee whose job is to create another $1.5 trillion debt reduction, and has some pretty nasty “incentives” hitting the priorities of both sides if they fail to do so – massive cuts to defense (to prompt the right to action) and massive cuts to infrastructure and education (to prompt the left to action).  I don’t like this.  For one, it forces a rushed solution.  Second, it forces, period – anyone who has watched my videos or read my blog knows how I feel about pushing people around to get them to do things, it’s ineffective and usually results at best in grudging compliance.
• No clear stand against Tea Party terrorists.  This, I don’t like.  So far the only thing that the TP caucus has accomplished that isn’t disgusting, pathetic, hateful, and ignorant is standing up against the renewal of the Patriot Act.  They are a gang of ignorant, aggressive, bullying whiners who have little to no understanding of even the basics of reality, choosing only to advocate – in this case using the threat of collapsing the entire US government as a tool, just like Osama bin Laden – for their own narrow, selfish, and ignorant interests. 

But what does it mean?

Well, I’m going to have to take a position that doesn’t fully agree with anyone, including the pundits who are so busy trying to drive web traffic to their sites today.  On one hand, Obama did get some movement out of the Tea/Republican party on their more ridiculous positions.  On the other hand, there are two very serious issues with this. 

The first is that the narrative has move so far to the right that Obama, who is in many ways very conservative, ends up looking progressive by comparison and at the same time leaves little room for anyone to be more liberal.  This is dishonest manipulation of public opinion, the kind of thing I’ve been warning about for years, and we keep falling for it.  I don’t like that.

The second issue is that there is still a very strong possibility that programs to help the most needy in our country and programs that are already well-funded by direct contributions will be cut in the future – we’re talking about Social Security, Medicaid, and education here, primarily.  In my opinion it is still too early to broadly condemn the Obama administration; I am laying out what things look like from here so that it may be clearly understood that political shell games are not going unnoticed, and to serve notice on every elected official in this country that they need to stop playing children’s games with our future.

When it’s all said and done, I’m left feeling like pretty much everybody is rushing to judgment on this, regardless of whether they are left or right, and regardless of whether they support or oppose this bill.  Republican/Tea party members who are complaining seriously need to shut up and stop trying to drive this country to fascism.  Those on the left who are characterizing this as some sort of complete sell-out by the Obama administration also need to take a step back.  There is a time to be well and truly pissed, and I don’t think we’re there yet.  I think the fact that we’re even able to seriously wonder if we’re there is very bad news both for the administration and the country, but I’m willing to wait and see how this is actually implemented before I draw any conclusions.

Note – I originally wrote this a few days ago, before the most recent events with the S&P downgrade happened.  I stand by my assessment as originally written – I think it’s not what it should have been, but better than many on the left give it credit for, and a much greater defeat against the right than they yet realize.

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