Pain is good for the little people
by digby
And Howard Kurtz delivers the Village vote of confidence:
After months of savaging each other as the country moved perilously close to defaulting on its debt, Democrats and Republicans are now moving toward a deal that would slash spending between $2 trillion and $4 trillion, raise taxes and stave off disaster.
How did that happen, exactly?
The answer is that while feeding red-meat rhetoric to their ideological bases, President Obama and the GOP reluctantly embraced the politics of adulthood behind the scenes, recognizing that they would pay a huge price—and shatter the fragile economic recovery--by failing to boost the debt ceiling by the Aug. 2 deadline.
Right because it's written in the constitution that you can't raise the debt ceiling without a gigantic negotiation. It happens every time.h wait, that's right, it's never happened before and the only reason it's happened this time is because these "adults" have decided to use it as an excuse to pass an historic budget cutting bill.
Never forget folks. They could have held a simple vote at any time to raise the debt ceiling. Just like they've always done in the past. But I suppose if you really believe that in order for the country to recover you need to cut huge amounts of spending, you might think this was necessary.
And that's what Howard Kurtz apparently believes:
No one on the political stage wanted to be seen as going wobbly, but in the end they need a mutual-survival pact. So they’ve carried out a rendition of Kabuki theater, where what one saw on the outside didn’t always reflect what was going on behind closed doors.
[...]
This time may be different as Americans, beaten down by a painful recession, are hungering for leaders who can rise above the media frenzies about financial Armageddon and get them on a common-sense road to recovery.
Even as each party stubbornly stuck to its talking points, strong signs of compromise emerged this week -- raising hopes for a $2 trillion-to-$4 trillion deficit-cutting package that would spread the pain around.
Because in order for the economy to recover we must hugely cut spending and "spread the pain around."
Not that I disagree about how this has unfolded. I've been calling this debt negotiation a kabuki dance since Cantor first spilled the beans in January. But I'd say that Boehner, Cantor and Obama are about to get a big, sloppy wet kiss from the Village for doing it.
After all these years of blogging I think I'm back at the beginning: nothing can change as long as the Village media exists.
* Oh, just a little reminder that wealthy people will feel exactly ZERO pain from any of this "spreading", no matter how much "revenue enhancement" gets into this deal. They have more than enough money to smooth their ruffled feathers. And that includes the wealthy media celebrities who are blessing this deal.
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