One of the things I've said, only half-jokingly, to a bunch of radio stations and in numerous posts (including just a couple of days ago) is that I am not a religious person but I get down on my hands and knees every day and pray, pray, pray that the Catfood Commission II fails miserably and we can drive a stake in the heart--for now--of this new phony version of "bi-partisanship". When you sing from the same song sheet of AUSTERITY FOR THE MASSES it isn't bi-partisan. It's a unified voice of "let's screw the people who had nothing to do with the sorry mess of our nation's economy".
And it's also very dumb economics--unless, of course, you could not give a rat's ass about the 99 percent. Paul Krugman has something to say about that today, part of which I agree with, part of which I don't agree with.
Here is where I agree about how we should feel about the Congressional diddling:
If this news surprises you, you haven’t been paying attention. If it depresses you, cheer up: In this case, failure is good.[emphasis added]
But, here is where I disagree:
Mainly because the gulf between our two major political parties is so wide. Republicans and Democrats don’t just have different priorities; they live in different intellectual and moral universes.
....
So the supercommittee brought together legislators who disagree completely both about how the world works and about the proper role of government. Why did anyone think this would work?
Unfortunately, I do not think Krugman is right. True, as he says, about Republicans:
They may soft-pedal that view in public — in last year’s elections, they even managed to pose as defenders of Medicare — but, in private, they view the welfare state as immoral, a matter of forcing citizens at gunpoint to hand their money over to other people.
But, the problem is that the whole debate about the deficit and debt is phony. The Democratic Party--or at least the one Krugman yearns for and the one that has some strands of a semblance of a belief in principles that I would call Wellstoneian--engaged this idiotic exercise rather than say: go fuck yourselves. We are not going to cut a dime from this budget and we should be spending MORE MONEY NOW to give every American a job.
And, no, the president hasn't done that. The opposite: he fueled this dangerous and economically foolish obsession with the deficit by creating the Catfood Commission I--to which he appointed as the two chairs not opposite opposing views but two corporate hacks--Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles--who stroked each others knees, day after day, with their gleeful little good-buddy routine and finger-wagging warnings to everyone else about the disaster the nation would face if we didn't embrace austerity for the people.
How else to explain what the Stupendously Stupid Sixty Democrats did when they signed one of the most monumentally dumb letters ever--Ok, maybe the most monumentally dumb letter in 2011 since they would have a lot of competition looking back historically--that "everything" should be on the table.
Basic economics tells you the opposite. Why the Stupendously Stupid Sixty Democrats don't follow Krugman's advice--or, for that matter, Dean Baker's advice--is really the story here:
Slashing spending while the economy is depressed destroys jobs, and it’s probably even counterproductive in terms of deficit reduction, since it leads to lower revenue both now and in the future. And current projections, like those of the Federal Reserve, suggest that the economy will remain depressed at least through 2014. Better to have no deal than a deal that imposes spending cuts in the next few years.[emphasis added]
As Jerry Brown learned over in that tiny, non-important state called California, if people actually earn more--as opposed to cutting their wages, laying them off, making them pay more for their health care and cutting their pensions--they pay more in taxes. Really. Wow. Such brilliant economics--economics that seem to have escaped Republicans, and too many deficit-obsessed Democrats.
Krugman ends with a point I agree with--and we should all be promoting:
Until then, attempts to strike a Grand Bargain are fundamentally destructive. If the supercommittee fails, as expected, it will be time to celebrate.
Though he neglects to point out one important point--if the Catfood Commission II fails, the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy automatically expire, by law, at the end of the year--and that is the greatest outcome we can hope for in the next two months.
So, I believe that OWS, or any of us, should organize nationwide parties to celebrate the failure of Catfood Commission II. We should not mourn. We should organize. Celebrate the failure of this moronic push for austerity.