Fight over raising the debt ceiling almost sure to lead to bad policy

[Hand_With_Eyes]

It's quite likely that any deal reached by lawmakers to stave off default is going to involve compromises that were unthinkable even a few short weeks ago.

By Michael Hiltzik
July 24, 2011

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20110724,0,1491026.column

...

The compromises being talked about recently involve spending cuts falling in the near term upon the shoulders of the elderly and the working class and tax increases falling heaviest on the wealthy class, to be negotiated sometime in the distant future.

Driving the resistance to tax increases is the huge bloc of congressional Republicans who have put their names to a pledge promulgated by Americans for Tax Reform, a rabidly anti-tax group headed by the inexplicably influential Grover Norquist.

...

Typical of the compromise proposals being bruited about is one developed by the so-called Gang of Six, three Democratic and three Republican U.S. senators. Their plan, according to their descriptive handout, purports to be a "comprehensive and balanced" approach to slashing deficits. Yet they slipped into their manifesto a number of partisan, mostly conservative, hobbyhorses.

For example, the plan would tie Social Security cost of living increases to the inflation index known as the chained consumer price index. As I observed recently, this is a way to cut benefits by as much as 10% over the coming decades.

This gradual shrinkage insidiously achieves one of the long-cherished goals of conservative enemies of Social Security, which is to make it less relevant to younger generations and thus easier to kill outright.

...

As long as decisions affecting the long-term health of the U.S. economy are made by lawmakers with their backs against the wall, the answers will be cloudy. Haste, panic and confusion always favor those already in control; in today's frenzy over the debt ceiling, who do you think will get trampled?

[Armstead]

1. They call that the Shock Docturne

Create a manufactured crisis to scare people so they accept whart would normally be considered unthinkable.

Republicans are experts at this...But its a shame to see Democrats getting better at it too.

[Hand_With_Eyes]

3. Yes, everytime there is some deadline, the GOP pulls this

...like they did with the unemployment benefits running out. Obama seems to buy into the urgency of their phony crisis'.

[Doctor_J]

2. It was a disaster

I can't think of a better word to describe it. Benefit cuts to SS and Medicare should never have been offered - not one penny, ever. Either the president is the worst negotiator in history, or he was let into the WH with the express purpose of killing those programs.