Edited For Clarity

I never said this deal was perfect. Nor cause for celebration. But there seems to be this assumption that of the President told the Republicans that they could stick their deal where the sun doesn’t shine, the Tea Party would suddenly cave.

And that’s the problem. As has been posited many times over, you can’t play chicken with people who don’t know how to swerve. The Tea Party faction of the Republican party wanted *no increase* in the debt ceiling whatsoever. They caved and voted for one that has few real restrictions. Had the President played “hard ball” as many on the left wanted him to, there would be no deal, and the Tea Party would have gotten their wish of default.

Governance is not about winning every argument. It’s about moving forward in the overall discussion. What I have tried to point out us that what people have been screaming about isn’t really what’s in the deal. They are screaming more about how the President reached the deal.

As for the RawStory/McClatchy article, it seems to miss one key point – It is based on a budget proposal from the President that hasn’t been passed. The 2012 budget isn’t in place, hasn’t been voted on. So it is a $50B increase from a budget that is on paper only. So it’s smoke and mirrors either way. But more importantly, it ignores the $4T Bush-era tax cut problem the Republicans face. As I mention in the post, when those expire, the only way to keep.restore them is with offsetting cuts in spending, and that would have to come with 50% of it in defense.

Adam, thanks for the comment…

The difference here is that this is not about their word. This is legislated. While there has been a lot of talk about the “Super Congress”, that proposition actually makes things MORE difficult for the Republicans, as it virtually guarantees a stand off. Which means, if they make no deals, defense gets cut automatically. They don’t want that. 

They truly have been painted into a corner that will get smaller the farther down the line we go.

You are semantically correct when it comes to what the President said about the tax cuts, but he’s bound by the same problem – he can’t extend the cuts *to anyone* without an offsetting reduction in spending. So unless he’s willing to push for more cuts to defense (50/50 ratio), he can’t extend them. But that really isn’t the point. Republicans don’t care about the middle class cuts. That was obvious the last time the cuts were extended. They’re willing to let them expire. They will be on the hook, however, for those higher level tax cuts, and they have no intention of extending one without the other. The President doesn’t have to make the case for extending any of the cuts. And he won’t have to veto because it is highly unlikely it will ever get to his desk. The military doesn’t want their budgets cut – and that’s where the fight will come.

As to the Pell re-funding: It actually is a compromise, as the right was furious about the Pell grants being included: 

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/174253-house-conservatives-angry-over-pell-grant-funding-in-boehner-debt-bill

They didn’t want any spending – period. But Boehner included it in his. Funding was restored to Pell Grants, yes, at some expense. But it is a compromise. 

I am by no means a loyalist. I don’t claim up is down. I don’t want extremists mad, I want them to go away. I don’t believe we should have voted twice, I believe people who didn’t get the pony they thought they were promised decided they would teach this President a lesson by not showing up to the polls and shooting themselves in the foot instead.

And when it comes to battles, yes, you will lose some on the way. But it’s the end game that we should look at, and build to that.

That’s my take on it. It’s a reversal on the party of no. Now, they have no way to just say no, as the result – due to the trigger – is bad for them. But saying yes will require them to go against their biggest supporters/financiers. 

Think of it as a divide and conquer. The wedge here isn’t abortion, gay rights, or immigration. It’s who is going to take the hit when it comes time to cut. The stuff the Democrats want protected are already sequestered. So where are they going to cut. Dems won’t have nearly as hard a time as the Republicans, who will be stick between the military that doesn’t want to be cut, the Draconian cuts that will need to be made to meet the trigger requirements, and the Tea Party that wants it all cut mo matter what. Good luck with that, I say…

As I pointed out – the GOP taking Congress and the presidency isn’t relevant. The cuts expire *before* they can take office. They can’t pass anything before that, as they haven’t got the votes. Look at it realistically. The chance of them passing an extension before the election is slim to none. That’s a fight neither side wants to have. If the Dems lose in the elections, they have *zero* incentive to vote with Repubs – they’re leaving anyway. They’re not worried about reelection, so they vote down any extension, and the cuts expire.

GOP may want to push back SS – but Dems have no desire to do so and no incentive to do so. And with cuts to SS sequestered legislatively, they’d have to jump through serious hoops to do so.

I keep hearing people say that cuts “like the Gang of Six” were possible. Except they weren’t. The Tea Party wouldn’t have voted for them. They came right out and said so. Boehner couldn’t get his first deal voted on because of their intransigence. So saying those cuts would have worked is a fantasy. They would have been a good plan, if it had any chance of passing. It didn’t.

This is not an economic win, nor have I said so. It is not, however, a political disaster, and in fact, has quite a number of positive elements in terms of how things play out legislatively.

Third possibility: Repubs needed a point to gloat on, to show they got the President to cave. My belief is that the expiration of the tax cuts was always counted on, and that by giving them the “cave” of revenue increases, R’s can say they “held the line”.

An important thing to remember is that ideas like “primarying” the President are foolish at best, disastrous at worst. There are far too many people who feel they should teach the “establishment” a lesson by not voting. All that does is reward those who push hardest, and the folks with the money are the winners. Given the Citizens United decision, anyone who thinks that money won’t change an election is deluding themselves.

Protests are also no longer as effective, as the media covers whomever gets them the best ratings. Unless you want to go into violent protest, it won’t matter.

So, how do we change things? We vote. We get our friends to vote. And we help them get their friends to vote.

Many years ago, a management mentor leaned in my ear and gave me some very good advice: If you have the opportunity to make a change for the better, and you don’t take it, quit complaining. You deserve what you get. Don’t *ever* pass up the opportunity to act.

Thanks for the kind words…

To be sure – this whole thing made us, as a country, look silly. To the rest of the world, we look like school kids fighting over who gets to go down the slide first.

I think the real test will come in about 3 months, when the committee has to come up with $1.3T more in cuts. Then we’ll see where the rubber meets the road.

The sequester returns some bargaining power to the Democrats. If deals cannot be reached – and with a 50/50 split between the parties on the committee, that’s very likely – the sequester kicks in. 

There has already been plenty of talk from Republicans that they do not intend to budge on anything. Democrats don’t have to give anything up, because the burden will be on defense budgets, and Republicans don’t want to lose that battle.

Now, as I mentioned today in reviewing Ezra Klein’s post about the deal - http://www.editedforclarity.com/2011/08/03/ezra-kleins-right-dems-have-their-chance/ – the Dems have all the chance they need. While this deal is far from perfect – or even good in many aspects – it puts the Republicans on a time clock. They can’t just say “no” anymore. But if they choose to, as they have stated publicly that they will, even the committee is restrained from touching the items that are sequestered. Dems need only let the Republicans block all deals to get to a point where everything they want to protect is protected, and the Repubs are forced to make cuts to defense.

McConnell is right in that once a strategy is introduced that appears to give leverage to one side or the other, it will return again and again. Note how the filibuster was rarely used before the last 20 years, yet now, it’s used almost as a default (by both sides of the aisle). It doesn’t matter whether it’s effective or not – it’s just another blunt weapon.

Of course he sees the dynamic at play. But remember, the game here is perception *right now*. The folks in Washington – again, both sides – always know they can try to change the rules of the game later.

How they will try to do that with this legislation remains to be seen.