James Carville, Bill Clinton’s political svengali, recently wrote a column for the New York Times, in which he argued that the best things that Democrats can do right now is nothing. I’ve been saying this ever since the election. Especially when it comes to the budget. The Republicans are — and have been for a very long time — much better at throwing spitballs from the peanut gallery than they are at actually governing. And this time, we’re going to have to let them govern.
The first “governing” thing that the Republicans will have to do is deal with the budget and the debt ceiling. There are currently two proposals afoot: one by the Republicans in the House and one by the Republicans in the Senate. They are quite similar, as they both extend the 2017 tax cuts and cut deeply into Medicaid and the social safety net. The difference is primarily that the House bill deals with everything at once, whereas the Senate bill mostly deals with spending cuts first and leaves the tax cuts for later. The House also includes the debt ceiling increase whereas the Senate does not.
The 2017 tax cuts are complicated, and if you’re interested in the details I encourage you to look it up on Wikipedia. But they mostly helped corporations, many of which (as we know) already pay nothing in federal taxes. The Medicaid cuts should not be confused with Medicare — which primarily pays for the health care of those already on Social Security — but would significantly impact the payment of nursing homes and the cost of prescription drugs. So, Trump voters, if Grandma is in a nursing home and you have a lot of prescription drugs, you can kiss those benefits goodbye.
Republicans have (if you remember) used the debt ceiling increases as a cudgel to beat concessions out of Democratic presidents in recent years, but now they’ll have to use it as a cudgel on themselves. Many of them believe that the United States going into default would not be such a terrible thing.
Well, let’s find out.
The “experts” say that having the United States default could lead to substantially increase the cost of borrowing for consumers and businesses (including mortgages, credit cards, and car loan rates), it would increase the national debt, create recessions in a lot of world markets that rely on the dollar, tank the stock market, and substantially increase unemployment. In other words, a major recession if not flat out depression.
Well, let’s find out.
But whatever happens, it will clearly be on the Republicans.
Then we can establish whether it’s more important to argue over pronouns or where a transgender person goes to the bathroom, or to counter every effort made in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion, or more important to stabilize the economy for the middle class.
Let’s finally, finally, finally get real.
