The (high) road not taken by the White House
Obama’s Fault
By BILL KELLER, NYT
Our feckless leaders may be incapable of passing a budget, but, boy, can they pass the buck. The White House spent last week in full campaign hysteria, blitzing online followers with the message that heartless Republicans are prepared to transform America into “Les Misérables” in order to protect “millionaires and billionaires, oil companies, vacation homes, and private jet owners.” Republicans retort that the budget-cutting Doomsday device called sequester was actually invented by the White House.
In fact, the conceptual paternity of sequester was bipartisan. Both sides agreed that Congress should set in motion an automatic deficit-cutting scheme so draconian that it would force a divided Washington to come together around some sane compromise. The scandal is that Washington is so incapable of adult behavior that it can do the right thing only if it is staring down the barrel of a shotgun — and, it turns out, not even then.
Some of this is the fault of a budget-making system that is a mess of special favors, stopgap measures, side deals, promissory notes and flimflam. And, of course, it is true that much of the responsibility for our perpetual crisis can be laid at the feet of a pigheaded Republican Party, cowed by its angry, antispending, antitaxing, anti-Obama base. When it comes to distributing blame for the consequences of sequester — jobs lost, investments put on hold, downgraded credit ratings and withering G.D.P., not to mention the longer lines at airport security — the polls show a plurality of voters are likely to take it out on the Republicans. If all you care about is winning more Democratic seats in the 2014 midterms, then you can sit back and enjoy the show.
But if you care about the long-term health of the country, the president has more to answer for than just inventing a particular type of fiscal time bomb. The large mess we are in is in no small part the result of missed opportunities and political miscalculation at 1600 Pennsylvania. So, while we await the fate of Yellowstone Park and food safety, let’s contemplate the road not taken by the White House — that is, the high road.
(More here.)
Our feckless leaders may be incapable of passing a budget, but, boy, can they pass the buck. The White House spent last week in full campaign hysteria, blitzing online followers with the message that heartless Republicans are prepared to transform America into “Les Misérables” in order to protect “millionaires and billionaires, oil companies, vacation homes, and private jet owners.” Republicans retort that the budget-cutting Doomsday device called sequester was actually invented by the White House.
In fact, the conceptual paternity of sequester was bipartisan. Both sides agreed that Congress should set in motion an automatic deficit-cutting scheme so draconian that it would force a divided Washington to come together around some sane compromise. The scandal is that Washington is so incapable of adult behavior that it can do the right thing only if it is staring down the barrel of a shotgun — and, it turns out, not even then.
Some of this is the fault of a budget-making system that is a mess of special favors, stopgap measures, side deals, promissory notes and flimflam. And, of course, it is true that much of the responsibility for our perpetual crisis can be laid at the feet of a pigheaded Republican Party, cowed by its angry, antispending, antitaxing, anti-Obama base. When it comes to distributing blame for the consequences of sequester — jobs lost, investments put on hold, downgraded credit ratings and withering G.D.P., not to mention the longer lines at airport security — the polls show a plurality of voters are likely to take it out on the Republicans. If all you care about is winning more Democratic seats in the 2014 midterms, then you can sit back and enjoy the show.
But if you care about the long-term health of the country, the president has more to answer for than just inventing a particular type of fiscal time bomb. The large mess we are in is in no small part the result of missed opportunities and political miscalculation at 1600 Pennsylvania. So, while we await the fate of Yellowstone Park and food safety, let’s contemplate the road not taken by the White House — that is, the high road.
(More here.)
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