First let me say that the debt ceiling bill, despite being completed lopsided toward the right, is about to treated by the main-stream media as some moderate compromise where both sides had to give up something. The most radical tea partiers are going to vote no, and many progressive Democrats are going to vote no, but the votes will be there and tah-dah you have a "bipartisan, moderate, compromise bill" (with draconian cuts to the safety net).
But if initial reports are correct, I believe Obama and the Democrats are setting themselves up for another trap with this Super Congress and automatic trigger cuts. The cuts are to come in effect if the deficit commission cannot reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion. The automatic cuts will affect defense and entitlement programs about evenly. The theory being that the cuts will be unpalatable to both sides.
To see why this is completely false and a trap for Democrats and the president you have to recognize two things:
* Republicans and the tea party's number one goal is to defeat Obama
* Republicans and the tea party do not really care about America
More below fold...
The first has been obvious since the stimulus debate in 2009 and has even been said explicitly by Mitch McConnell. The second has become obvious recently as the tea party was clearly willing to let the country default if their demands were not met (and even when they were met).
Now back to the automatic cuts. The Democrats will not want these automatic cuts to entitlements. The Republicans do. The logic behind this part of the bill seems straightforward and so I'll move on.
Now to the Defense cuts: supposedly they are unpalatable to Republicans, but not as much to the Democrats. I disagree. Obama is commander-in-chief. The Republicans will no doubt try to pin these defense cuts on him. "The first president to cut the military's budget." they will say. No matter that this has no basis in reality...nothing the tea party stands for does. Furthermore, any adverse results due to the cuts will be blamed on Obama, because as Harry Truman said, "the buck stops here." If any military operations are affected all public outrage will flow to Obama. Obama and the Democrats arguably have more to lose from defense cuts than the Republicans do. I'm sure the Military-Industrial lobby won't be happy, but Republicans can appease them by promising increases later. Its always easy to increase military spending.
Protecting the social safety net has been a long-term core principle of the Democratic Party. Destroying this safety net has been a long-term core principle of the Republican party. I believe Republicans will gladly sacrifice some military spending for a chance to realize the dream that the Heritage Foundation and other conservative think tanks have been working on since Goldwater was defeated.
Therefore, just as Teahadists were willing to bring down the whole American economy if their demands were not met, they will be willing to let all of these cuts go into effect if their demands are not met. And those demands will no doubt include more entitlement cuts.
And Democrats will once again be in a weakened bargaining position, because they actually DO care about America and the middle class.