Racing to an Austerity Catastrophe

I've had Al Jazeera English livestreaming in the background for days now, but never have I experienced such a disconnect as I did upon hearing the announcement that Mubarak has indeed left Cairo and the jubiliant cheers of more than a million Egyptians at the same time I was reading that President Obama and Senate Democrats have lit the fuse on a budget-cut bomb to destroy what's left of the economy.

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

The Senate leadership, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer, just paved the way for major spending cuts in this budget year in a conference call with reporters. Saying that “we have to start living within our means to invest in our future,” Reid tried to make a distinction with Republicans only on the idea that Democratic cuts are more responsible and reasonable. This implicitly agrees that spending cuts will be made.

When asked if the new Republican demand for up to $58 billion in cuts from current levels was a nonstarter, Reid only said, “We’re not making statements like that.” He seeks a negotiation with Mitch McConnell, to whom he has reached out, and Republicans to cooperate on a spending deal in the Senate to send to the House.

And the White House is doing worse than just enabling the austerity catastrophe. Dayen again:

Responding to the Obama Administration’s apparent decision to cut Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) funding, Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute says that progressives “are losing the argument at a higher level” about the budget in general, putting all programs and services at risk.

The fundamental problem, Mishel says, is a spending freeze on the discretionary non-security budget, while calling for certain investments within that budget, and giving up on moving the needle on taxes to any degree. “Spending has to be maintained as a share of GDP just to keep up these programs,” Mishel said, noting that inflation, wage increases and population growth all enter into that equation. “If you freeze spending, the population and economy has grown, that’s a net cut.” Mishel surmises that Obama is set to shrink the discretionary budget, through this freeze, by 32% over the next 9 years.

“If you want to increase spending in some areas, it has to come out of other areas,” Mishel continued. “The specifics are going to make people angry. But what I don’t think progressives understand, they’re not going to fare well on their issue because they’re being beat at a higher level.” Like I said, it’s a simple math equation. Budget reductions will have to come from somewhere, especially combined with an unwillingness to increase taxes.

Mishel takes issue with the Obama Administration’s messaging on the subject, being practically boastful about budget cuts. “He’s bragging to the Chamber of Congress about his discretionary budget being at the lowest level since Eisenhower. This is not the country we want to live in. It’s awful.” He related the Administration’s plan for investment in certain areas as akin to the “cut and invest” approach of the DLC in the 1990s. “And they never meant invest,” he added.

The entire notion of acknowledging fiscal responsibility before anything else amounts to operating on the ideological turf of the conservative movement, according to Mishel. “You try to pre-empt very awful things by doing awful things,” he said. You can see this in the approach of Congressional Democrats, not arguing about the need for budget cuts, but trying to direct those cuts more appropriately.

Steve M sees these cuts dragging the Overton window over a rightwing cliff and beyond retrieval.

Among 60 programs in line for elimination were the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AmeriCorps and a $298 million Clinton-era program for hiring local police officers. Other planned cutbacks included nearly $900 million in energy conservation and efficiency programs; $1.8 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency; and $75 million from legal-aid programs. In a swipe at the administration, the bill would eliminate $5 billion in high-speed rail money.

I'm surprised they didn't put in funding for ACORN, just so they could have the exquisite satisfaction of liminating it again.

Is this "disarray"? Or is it just the Ultras quite successfully dragging their party -- and the rest of D.C. -- even further rightward? Because this doesn't take us to a point beyond the pale. This redefines what's within the pale.

Mainstream Republicans will now get on board with this. Progressive opposition will, as usual, be utterly invisible outside the progressive ghetto. The definition of "leftism" and "socialism" will now be "anything to the left of this."

All of which would be fine if the inevitable failure of this (as a result of a lost vote in the Senate or a presidential veto) would be followed by economic recovery and job growth, thus signaling that Democrats were right to oppose the cuts. But you know that there isn't going to be much job growth anytime soon. This isn't the second coming of the Clinton presidency.

So this will now be the new baseline for "common sense" -- the approach Obama mulishly refused to take.

Unless, by some miracle, Democrats and progressives actually get the general public upset about the GOP's proposals. But that ain't gonna happen. At this point, I'm not even sure a government shutdown will be blamed primarily on the Republicans.

In her very last column, on Jan. 11, 2007, Molly Ivins wrote this about what it would take to stop the Iraq clusterfuck:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"

The "budget cuts" planned by both republicans and democrats in D.C. are nothing less than the rape and murder of a civilized society.

The suffering and deaths of "civilians" in this war on liberal democracy will be as devastating as that in any military attack.

We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"