Why Are Liberals So Pissed?

Nader Voter - By David ShankboneI am really mystified about the left's level of anger at Obama over this debt deal. Not only do liberals believe the debt deal was an unmitigated disaster (Why? What are the concrete consequences of this deal? I haven't seen anyone explain what specific program, policy, or vulnerable community has been harmed by this deal), but they believe that Obama is actually a closet Conservative!  A sampling of the vitriol from Corey Robin's facebook chat with notable liberals (in all cases they are referring to the President):

Rick Perlstein‎: ”The fellow’s not quite well."

Jay Driskell: "I’d like to think he’s in the thrall of capital, but more and more of me think that he is naive and clueless and out of his depth. That is, if he were in the thrall of capital, that would at least be comprehensible (and reprehensible) to me."

Doug Henwood: "Plus, he needs Wall Street money for a billion-dollar re-election campaign. ... Jay, “If he were in the thrall of capital”? In who else’s thrall is he?"

Jodi Dean: "I’m not sure moderate right fits someone to the right of Nixon and Reagan."

Katha Pollitt: "IMO, he’s weak. I don’t exactly disagree with Doug — clearly, he is Wall St’s man –but I think a more skillful politician, one less in love with being above the fray, could have handled this a lot better and gotten more on the other side."

Adolph Reed: "He’s a one-trick pony, always has been, and that trick is performing judiciousness, reasonableness, performing the guy who shows his seriousness by being able to agree with those with whom he supposedly disagrees and to disagree with those with whom he supposedly agrees. He has never — not at any moment in his political career — stood for anything more concrete than a platitude."

Corey Robin: "I tend to think people like Obama really don’t believe the bullshit they preach; what they do believe is that moderation is the mark of maturity and that Wall Street types are smarter than the rest of us."

Doug: "Corey, the personal angle with O, I think, is the fact that he was nurtured from an early age by elites – fancy universities and foundations and then the Dem leadership. He’s in awe of them, and grateful for all they did. Cf. FDR, who emerged from the elite and had the confidence to challenge them. ... I also wouldn’t go too far with the contentlessness of his reasonableness: it’s always about loyal service to power. Not to belabor the obvious, but it’s extremely useful to the bourgeoisie to have a mixed race, cerebral Democrat imposing the austerity program. I’m reminded of Dinkins telling Wall Street skeptics, who thought he didn’t have the balls to impose austerity after the 80s went poof, back during his first campaign: “They’ll take it from me.”"

On and on, further down the rabbit hole. Beyond confusion that anyone could think these are the simpliest explanations for Obama's performance as President (here's my simple version of Obama: he wants to get liberal stuff done but he's very risk adverse about his election prospects), I just think this is an incredibly disproportionate response. 

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Not Doing the Wrong Thing Isn't Doing the Right Thing

Ruined Church in Detroit - by Angela Anderson-CobbThe otherwise tedious debt ceiling drama concluded with a wonderful moment when Gabbie Giffords, to many a symbol of reconciliation and hope amidst bitter acrimony, participated in the vote. It was a lovely reminder that life is more than the constant tug-of-war of politics. Some things are transcendent, universal, and meaningful, rather than another helping of momentary, tendentious, and instrumental.  

I feel a great sense of relief at the prospect of business as usual. Supposedly business as usual is terrible and dysfunctional here in the nation's capital, but it certainly seemed more interesting around here before this endless debate started. A couple of times it seemed like someone had an actual policy idea (the first Boehner-Obama deal and the Gang of Six proposal), but those melted away before the heat of ideological purity. So instead there were endless stories about meetings, ratios, triggers, gimmicks, whether or not Boehner or Obama are fit leaders, the sanity of the Tea Party. All that national energy focused like a white-hot laser beam on a process that everyone knew would go down to the wire and leave everyone unhappy.

That's the sign of a good compromise! Liberals think Obama sold them out and resent the focus on the debt when the economy is still in such bad shape.  Conservatives think the bill won't really accomplish anything for a really monumental long-term problem. And everyone's right!

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On August 2nd

You don't want this baby seal to be clubbed to death, do you?The brouhaha over August 2nd as a firm deadline to raise the nation's debt ceiling has at least some element of Washington Monument Syndrome.  From Wikipedia:

Washington Monument Syndrome, also called the "Mount Rushmore Syndrome", is the name of a political tactic allegedly used by government agencies when faced with reductions in the rate of projected increases in budget or actual budget cuts. The most visible and most appreciated service that is provided by that entity is the first to be put on the chopping block.  The name derives from the National Park Service's alleged habit of saying that any cuts would lead to an immediate closure of the wildly popular Washington Monument.  The Washington Monument Syndrome emerged as a euphemism for cutting the most visible services after George Hartzog, the seventh National Parks Director, closed popular national parks like the Washington Monument and the Grand Canyon for two days a week in 1969. The intent of the closures may not have been to get people to complain to Congress, but the effect was that Congress received complaints, Hartzog was fired, and the funding was restored.

Here are some more examples of the phenomenon in ascending order of ridiculousness:

The Zakim Bridge from Cambridge to Boston is one of the Boston's most popular landmarks.  In April 2009, the MBTA faced budget cuts and billions in debt still lingering from the Big Dig and decided to turn off the bridge's famous lights, which would save a whopping 1/30,000 of the organization's debt.  The ignorant public responded to this stunt by demanding that the MBTA's budget be raised so the lights could be turned back on.

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Against the Ceiling

Debt crisis does look like Mad Max! - from the NY TimesThe parallels between the debt problems U.S. and Greece are generally overstated, in large part because  the workings of sovereign debt are not intuitive (here's a hint: it is not like your credit card).  There are many differences between us and them, but fundamentally they have an actual debt crisis, while our crisis only political.  They can't pay their debts, we are just blustering about refusing to pay ours.

The U.S. does not have a debt crisis, it has a debt problem.  Here is an example of the distinction. I have a weight problem: I would like to lose 10 pounds, so I should eat less and go to the gym. It would be insane to treat that like a crisis and insist that I need immediate liposuction, or perhaps to cut off one of my limbs to get to my target weight.  The U.S. has a debt problem, it should spend less and collect more revenue. Nothing to see here, no need to panic.

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Posture not Policy

I consider myself a deficit hawk.  It's really unconscionable to me that we allow our government to run a permanent budget deficit.  It's a sign of the feverish illness in our politics that we rarely agree on something as basic as only spending the money you have.  Now, my proposed solution to the budget deficit- dramatically increased government revenues- isn't broadly popular.  Nonetheless, I feel that I and my conservative fellow policy travelers at least share a common concern for the importance of balancing the budget.  What I hope everyone can understand is that balancing the budget is a long term goal.  For now it's a truly fantastic proposal akin to curing cancer by fiat.  So when I hear that Rand Paul is threatening to filibuster any budget that isn't balanced I am disgusted.  That's the talking point of a liar or a mad man, not the "intellectually honest" politician Dr. Paul is made out to be.

Chris commented that "at least considers [Dr. Paul] not stealing from future generations important."  I'm not impressed.  The budget deficit and national debt is a huge problem that has accumulated over many years, for many reasons.  It's going to take a long time and a lot of painful tradeoffs to even get within spitting distance of a balanced budget- let alone Clinton era surpluses.  Since Dr. Paul obviously doesn't have tax increases in mind, what he is proposing would be nothing less than immediately firing thousands of federal employee, including a huge part of the military, drastically and immediately cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits and probably shutting down government for awhile.  That's the only way to balance the budget immediately without tax increases.  Now, I bet Dr. Paul probably wouldn't that much of a problem with any of that.  I do have a problem with him pretending that balancing the budget can be done by stubborn theatrical tricks without mentioning that you want to perform budget surgery with a chainsaw. 

Dr. Paul offers a ridiculous way to govern, but a fine way to play to the cheap seats.  The complete unravelling of whatever broad appeal he might have had continues apace.

Muddling Through

Unlike cocktails, the best economies aren't made by muddling. Image by TheogeoWe have grown accustomed to rival constituencies focusing on economic issues with special relevance to them: conservatives want lower taxes, libertarians want smaller government and liberals want better services.  The relative merits of each position wax and wane in the public eye and everyone wins or loses at the margin.  However, our current departure from "normal economic conditions" should remind everyone that these partisan concerns are of secondary importance: allowing greater human flourishing and the prevention of extreme human deprivation are the ultimate ends of all policy preferences.  Conservatives and libertarians favor lower taxes because they believe that low taxes spur growth and allow more people to better their lives.  That low taxes might be a good thing in and of themselves has eventually become ideological dogma, but only because we lacked a sufficiently compelling reason to raise taxes.  While it generally isn't expressed in such utilitarian terms, we all believe we have the best policies to create the most happiness.

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Deficit Reform as a Hostage Situation

Matt Yglesias points out a startling chart released by the CBO: if Congress and the President just do nothing then the debt and deficit never become a problem.  The big debt problem the U.S. faces- contrary to popular opinion- isn't that we fail to tackle the problem but that everyone expects us to add to it through a series of "fixes" to existing legislation.   Ezra Klein explains:

So the Congressional Budget Office also publishes an alternative scenario. In this world, we fix the Medicare doctor payment system so that our budget forecasts show how much we're actually paying doctors (the one-year increases in pay we've been doing lately leave the long-term forecasts artificially low), the cost-control elements of the Affordable Care Act aren't implemented, and, well, I'll let CBO explain the big gun: "More important, CBO assumed for this scenario that most of the provisions of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts would be extended, that the reach of the alternative minimum tax would be kept close to its historical extent, and that over the longer run, tax law would evolve further so that revenues would remain at about 19 percent of GDP." 

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A (Too?) Simple Solution to Financial Illiteracy

image courtesy of the New YorkerIn an editorial for the New Yorker, James Surowiecki suggests that the new consumer-protection agency's plans to "review and streamline" financial education initiatives is not enough:

We really need something more like a financial equivalent of drivers’ ed. There’s evidence that just improving basic calculation skills and inculcating a few key concepts could make a significant difference. One study of the few states that have mandated financial education in schools found that it had a surprisingly large impact on savings rates. And the Center for American Progress has found that, across the country, education and counselling by nonprofit organizations, like the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, have helped low-income families buy and hold onto homes, even during the housing bubble. The point isn’t to turn the average American into Warren Buffett but to help people avoid disasters and day-to-day choices that eat away at their bank accounts. The difference between knowing a little about your finances and knowing nothing can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime. And, as the past ten years have shown us, the cost to society can be far greater than that.

I agree with Mr. Surowiecki's premise, but "reviewing and streamlining financial education initiatives" sounds to me like hopeless wonkery, as though awareness of the existence of idiots is enough to end all our financial woes.  The simple solution I would offer is tough love in conjunction with access for the "worthy": contrary to the Bush Administration's noble goal to make everyone a home-owner, I suggest three things: (1) a focus on policy making it easier for more people to rent, because renting rules; (2) no home loans for morons; and (3) no more bank bailouts.

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Symptoms versus the Disease

The Patient is Cured! - by GastevMy grandfather, a epidemiologist and medical doctor, was suspicious of medicine that addressed the symptom rather than the underlying malady.  He didn't appreciate a treatment that made you feel better, even if it didn't cure you.  I don't share his fealty to purity in treatment.  If the symptoms are what makes life unbearable, then minimizing the symptoms is real progress, even if a magical cure would be the best of all worlds.  Unfortunately, it seems many commentators want to cure the economy rather than deal with its symptoms.  Unemployment is the excruciating pain of a bad economy and right now we've got two years of agony with no end in sight.  Yet, many focus on cutting the deficit- which would certainly have the effect of prolonging high unemployment since reduced government spending would come out of already reduced economic demand.

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Our Spendthrift Uncle, Sam

We have focused on debt and deficits quite a lot around here lately, and it's not hard to see why: the U.S. deficit is at a record level even as Europe struggles with the consequences of excess deficits in the Greek debt crisis.  Deficits are not intrisinctly bad, pretty clearly some situations demand deficit spending: the choice between running a deficit and say, being conquered by Nazis and Imperial Japan, or a decade long economic collapse accompanied by death from famine and deprivation, isn't difficult to make.  However, the existence of persistent deficits, through good times and bad, indicates a political failure in this country.  To illustrate the problem, let's consider a thought experiment: imagine the U.S. government as a person- someone you know, your wacky, rich Uncle Sam.

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