"It is a true saying that "one falsehood leads easily to another"." - Cicero
Lately, the President and the White House have been touting an argument to Progressive and other Democrats that says
the following:
And the good news here is that by coming together to deal with the long-term debt challenge, we would have more room to implement key proposals that can get the economy to grow faster.
President Obama, The White House, August 8, 2011
Emphasis mine.
The president is talking about political room. He means a political environment more conducive to job creation measures.
In a Washington Post editorial, Tim Geithner, explained exactly what "more room" means in this context:
And by locking in long-term savings, Congress will have more room in the fall to pass additional short-term measures to strengthen the economy — such as extending the payroll tax cut, which provides an average of a thousand dollars to the after-tax incomes of working Americans; extending unemployment benefits; and financing infrastructure investments. After all, strengthening growth and putting more Americans back to work are among the most important things we can do to improve our fiscal situation today and over the long term.
The president's idea that putting a grand deficit reduction deal in place would create political space for jobs measures is sheer lunacy. A deficit deal will make the political environment more hostile to jobs measures.
Assume that the almost impossible happens and the President gets what he wants. After a huge and bruising political war,
1. The bipartisan super-committee agrees to a bill that raises taxes and cuts spending by both cutting major programs and increased taxes via "lower rates, broader base" (dynamic scoring) tax reform.
2. That bill passes both houses of Congress and the President signs it.
Does anyone here seriously believe that after the signage the topic of the day will be jobs? Seriously, does anyone believe that after passing a bill that has historic cuts in mandatory programs and historic reform of the tax code, that the political parties will want to talk jobs?
Isn't it far more likely that Democrats will want to talk about "draconian cuts" to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security? Or that Republicans want to talk about "job killing tax increases?" How, after agreeing to cap discretionary spending for the long term, will the President then convince Congress to pass a bill for more discretionary spending on infrastructure?
After a bruising battle it will take get such a bill passed and singed, does anyone really believe that Congress will then have no trouble at all turning its attention to measures that nobody believes will actually create jobs? Does anyone here seriously believe that both parties are going to simply ignore the political reality of their states and districts and will try to placate their constituents with trade deals and patent reform? Will the White House, after such a battle, be able to convince the public to ignore what was just signed into law and then turn the electorate's attention to a debate over trade with Panama? Intellectual property law? Seriously?
Somebody needs to tell the White House that a big deficit reduction deal isn't going to create "more room" for anything but more partisan division. Especially with Boehner gearing up to try and hold on to the house, Pelosi trying to retake it, McConnell going for the gold in the Senate and Reid looking to hold on to the job he loves more than any other. On top of all this, a Republican presidential primary will be in full swing.
There is a word for this sort of political strategy: malpractice.
(h/t to beeryblog for the Cicero quote)