The People's Budget and the perils of too much compromise
by David Atkins
Digby asks the right question:
While everyone coos and drools over Paul Ryan's Very, Very Serious plan to cut the deficit, the progressive caucus can't even get progressives to pay attention to their budget. This is a budget that preserves all the things we care about, even raises benefits for the elderly and cuts the deficit more than Paul Ryan does...Evidently anything that doesn't demand pain from ordinary people just doesn't interest the Villagers or anyone else. Why is that?
The easy answer, of course, is that public policy is designed by and conducted on behalf of the very wealthy. But there's another connected factor, too: the fact that at least a significant portion of one side is willing to compromise, and the other is not.
The reason the progressive budget doesn't get a second look by the media is that it has zero chance of passing. It would take a full 60 uncorrupted Democratic/Sanders Senators, a majority of Democratic representatives, and an unwavering Democratic President to pass the thing. That's extremely unlikely to happen anytime soon.
On the other hand, the Paul Ryan budget (or something close to it) is in significant danger of actually passing--which is one of the reasons the presidential election is so important. Whatever Romney's personal politics, he wouldn't hesitate to sign the Ryan budget, which makes him just as conservative as Ryan regardless of his past history as governor. If Republicans take the White House, hold the House of Representatives and seize five or more Senate seats, they can pass something close to the Ryan budget with only a few Democrats like Manchin crossing the aisle "for the good of the country."
Whereas no Republican would come close to touching the People's Budget with a 100-foot pole.
And that's the problem with being the willing compromiser and "adult in the room." Rather than broadening one's policy choices, it actually narrows them. It leads to a situation where only the Ryan budget can be taken seriously, because only the Ryan budget or something near it will get any votes from the other side of the aisle.
Without Democrats' morality of compromise and a few individual Democrats' compromised morals, the Ryan budget wouldn't be in any greater danger of passing than the People's Budget. The media would be free to summarily ignore both of them. Sadly, that's not the world in which we live.
In this case as in so many others, Democratic compromise doesn't beget centrist policy and an appreciation for the grown-up willingness of the left to cooperate with its adversaries for the good of the country (not that such a thing is desirable.) Rather, it begets a media fetish for extremist conservative policy because only the latter falls within the realm of the possible.
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