Weigel: Boehner Wins, Austerity Wins, & the Social Conservatives Go Home With A "Participant" Trophy

[highplainsdem]

http://www.slate.com/BLOGS/blogs/weigel/archive/2011/04/09/the-shutdown-wrap-boehner-wins-austerity-wins-and-the-social-conservatives-go-home-with-a-participant-trophy.aspx

The No-Shutdown Wrap: Boehner Wins, Austerity Wins, and the Social Conservatives Go Home With A "Participant" Trophy
Posted Saturday, April 09, 2011 12:04 AM | By David Weigel



Shortly after 10:50 p.m., Speaker of the House John Boehner was the first budget negotiator to announce that there’d been a deal, and a government shutdown would be averted. Shortly after that President Barack Obama announced that he’d sign “the biggest annual spending cut in our history.”

You’d have to be asleep not to see who won tonight.

Am I about to engage in that hideous Washington parlor game of declaring “winners and losers,” as if billions of dollars that would affect real lives were just Monopoly papers being moved across a board? I hope not. What I mean is that most economists agree – sorry, Austrians, you’re still outnumbered – that when a country is pulling out of a recession, it’s not a good idea to slash spending. It didn’t work in 1937, it’s not working too well in the UK. It was a few short weeks ago when Mark Zandi was suggesting that $61 billion of cuts could cost 700,000 jobs by 2012, and Ben Bernanke suggested they could knock a little bit off of our GDP.

And yet. For the second time in five months, the White House has faced a political crisis, looked at an opposition that completely disagreed with liberal economics, and blinked. Five months ago, automatic tax increases were stopped, and the GOP got a validation of supply-side economics. Tonight, in a battle over a much smaller amount of money, the Democrats signed on to austerity economics. They didn’t have much of a choice, but they didn’t challenge the premise, either. We’re a long way from the “Sputnik moment.”

-snip-

[ProSense]

1. "Tonight, Democrats got the rider stripped, handing a massive victory to the pro-choice movement."

What a strange piece.

Conservatives from Big Government to Hot Air are already attacking Boehner.

He got nothing.

[earthside]

4. Oh really.

Budget deal includes D.C. abortion rider, money for school vouchers

And ...

Pres. Obama: "...the biggest annual spending cut in history".

He got nothing?

[ProSense]

5. Yes

Really!

The GOP had dozens of EPA riders.

They were all dropped.

"Pres. Obama: '...the biggest annual spending cut in history.'"

Why exactly is that a problem? Every Democrat was saying the same thing today.

Given all the media complicity and Dem pundits who have no clue calling for the President and Democrats to match Ryan's budget, why shouldn't Democrats frame this cut as the biggest ever?

It's smart.

[LSparkle]

2. Bless you, DWeigel ... and Ezra Klein said the same thing ,.,. shivers up my spine

I felt like perhaps the nail was hammered into the
coffin of my moribund country tonight.

And it happened under a Dem president ... who seemed
to care more about politics than people.

We need a rich man -- and NOT DONALD TRUMP -- to have
the guts to stand up to these bastards (the same way only
FDR could in the '30s).

CALLING RICH PROGRESSIVES!!!!! WE NEED YOU!!!!

[tularetom]

3. Jesus I hate it when I have to agree with an idiot

And that guy Weigel is definitely an idiot.

But he is right on the money here.

Obama believes he is doing the right thing for the country in the long term by acting like the adult in the room but what he is doing is lending credibility to insane republican economic proposals by agreeing to them without a fight. And this is definitely NOT the right thing for the country.

[nashville_brook]

6. k and r