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Silver linings

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There’s no reasonable defense of the substance of the debt deal on even vaguely liberal, let alone progressive, grounds. (The extent to which the Democrats were stuck with that substance because of a combination of procedural perversity and GOP lunacy, as opposed to their own ideological bad intentions and political incompetence, is a separate topic).

A couple of notes:

(1) The claim that the deal doesn’t cut Medicare benefits gets those who make it an F in Econ 101. Cutting reimbursements to providers is a functional cut in benefits.

(2) It’s unfortunate that the increasingly desperate struggle to protect the most prominent features of what remains of the social safety net obscures the fact of how deep these budget cuts are in terms of the rest of the government’s functions. As Dean Baker points out, if you make the reasonable assumption that the cuts going forward will mostly exempt entitlement programs, the military, and unemployment insurance, that means that something close to a third of the rest of the federal budget is going to get cut. It would be nice to fantasize that this consists mostly of subsidies to Archer Daniels Midland and bridges to nowhere, but in point of fact the rest of the budget consists of essentially everything the federal government does that doesn’t involve direct transfer payments or killing foreigners. Given that we’re not living in 1890 any more that’s actually quite a few things that are pretty important: education, science, environmental protection, infrastructure, health and safety, the entire federal legal system, and so on.

Now on the bright side:

(1) There seems to have been a big shift in the mainstream political discourse toward the idea that the Pentagon’s budget shouldn’t continue to grow at 9% per year, as it has over the last decade. Even a lot of right wingers are making noises about cutting military spending, although who knows how long that will last the next time somebody with an Arab name kills a white person. In any case, we’re at least at a point where Bill Kristol and John Bolton are beginning to worry that we may no longer be quite as eager to invade whatever country annoys them next week.

(2) The complete ideological incoherence of the Tea Party wing of the GOP, i.e., we need a balanced budget amendment but don’t touch our Social Security or Medicare, has had no apparent effect on its political salience. I’m growing more optimistic that Bachmann has a real shot at the nomination, and that Obama will face an opponent whose platform consists of demanding extremely unpopular cuts in government spending while launching investigations into exactly what the queers are doing to the soil.

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