A "bipartisan" group of House members is hard at work trying to get Congress to pivot back to the deficit by focusing on austerity. It's telling that the group is dominated by Republicans, with one utterly predictable Democrat taking a lead role.
The core House group of roughly 10 negotiators is derived from a larger Gang of 100 lawmakers led by Reps. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) and Health Shuler (D-N.C.), who urged the debt supercommittee to strike a grand bargain last year.
That larger group includes GOP centrists like Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio), who has said Republicans should abandon their no-new-tax-revenue pledge, as well as Tea Party-backed members like Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.).
Schuler is hoping to burnish his "legacy" as a deficit cutter in Congress as he retires there. Sadly for him, his congressional legacy isn't going to be any more impressive than his NFL legacy. Few of the other participants in this new gang of Republicans and one Blue Dog (which counts as "bipartisan" for D.C.) have real leadership roles.
But they do have a powerful enabler in Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, who has also been trying to change the subject back to austerity. Never mind that, as Paul Krugman points out, "one significant factor in our continuing economic weakness is the fact that government in America is doing exactly what both theory and history say it shouldn’t: slashing spending in the face of a depressed economy."
Hoyer's been feeling heat from the Left, and will be getting more. It's led his office to provide this rather tepid response to Greg Sargent:
A Hoyer spokesman also points out that his speech on the deficit included this: “Our number one priority must continue to be creating jobs and setting our economy back on a course toward sustainable growth that creates opportunities for our middle class.” He also said that growth should be prioritized over deficit reduction.
Deficit reduction doesn't need to be on the table
at all in the short, or really even medium, term. Putting it there when the political climate is all about forcing "shared sacrifice" by cutting Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid is nothing short of dangerous. Not to mention
unpopular.
Help keep the heat on Hoyer. Tell him to stop trying to make backroom deals that include cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits.