For Democrats, Debt Debate and Familiar Ring of Disunity
By MATT BAI
NYT
WASHINGTON — In case you’ve been out of the country for the last 25 years and were afraid that nothing had stayed the same, here are some current events you may find comforting: Bon Jovi is touring. The Russians are spying on suburbia. And Democrats in Washington are squabbling over the direction of their party.
The latest flare-up of Democratic disunity has to do with how the party should respond to an explosion in government debt. This is a serious policy debate, obviously, and something of a political one, too, since both sides also have in mind November’s midterm elections. But in a more fundamental way, the argument over fiscal policy represents the churning of a cultural fault line that has defined and destabilized Democratic politics pretty much since the onset of the Great Society. And President Obama is only the latest Democratic Party leader to find himself tossed about in the tremors.
A minority of Congressional Democrats are already objecting to proposals supported by most of the party for billions more dollars in deficit spending this year on unemployment benefits and state aid, as a way of trying to avert a double-dip recession. But the bigger argument is over how quickly and aggressively Washington should act in the next few years to rein in government debt, which by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office tells us, could reach a staggering 90 percent of the gross domestic product.
A lot of Democrats maintain that deficits remain a distant concern at a moment of crisis, especially while interest rates are historically low. A growing faction, however, insists that if Washington doesn’t get serious now about scaling back entitlements and other government spending, then fiscal ruin might be just a decade away.
(More here.)
NYT
WASHINGTON — In case you’ve been out of the country for the last 25 years and were afraid that nothing had stayed the same, here are some current events you may find comforting: Bon Jovi is touring. The Russians are spying on suburbia. And Democrats in Washington are squabbling over the direction of their party.
The latest flare-up of Democratic disunity has to do with how the party should respond to an explosion in government debt. This is a serious policy debate, obviously, and something of a political one, too, since both sides also have in mind November’s midterm elections. But in a more fundamental way, the argument over fiscal policy represents the churning of a cultural fault line that has defined and destabilized Democratic politics pretty much since the onset of the Great Society. And President Obama is only the latest Democratic Party leader to find himself tossed about in the tremors.
A minority of Congressional Democrats are already objecting to proposals supported by most of the party for billions more dollars in deficit spending this year on unemployment benefits and state aid, as a way of trying to avert a double-dip recession. But the bigger argument is over how quickly and aggressively Washington should act in the next few years to rein in government debt, which by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office tells us, could reach a staggering 90 percent of the gross domestic product.
A lot of Democrats maintain that deficits remain a distant concern at a moment of crisis, especially while interest rates are historically low. A growing faction, however, insists that if Washington doesn’t get serious now about scaling back entitlements and other government spending, then fiscal ruin might be just a decade away.
(More here.)
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