John Nichols : The Debt Deal and Democratic Conscience

By John Nichols / The Nation / August 2, 2011

“I will have no part of a deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to appease the farthest reaches of the right wing of the Republican Party.” — Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi reportedly told members of the House Democratic Caucus to vote their “individual consciences” when they were asked to approve the debt-celing deal cobbled together by the Obama White House and congressional Republicans.

Consciences divided evenly, with 95 Democrats opposed to the compromise agreement while 95 supported it in a Monday evening vote that saw the measure pass primarily on the basis of Republican backing — despite the fact that this was a deal promoted aggressively by a Democratic White House.

The final tally was 269 in favor, 161 opposed [1].

Republicans generally backed the deal, with 174 voting “yes” while 66 voted “no.”

Democrats were far more closely divided, with widespread opposition to what Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, described as a violation of “core Democratic ideals.”

While Pelosi cast her own vote in favor of the agreement, she did not “whip” her fellow Democrats to back the deal during a marathon caucus meeting Monday. The former speaker outlined the consequences of a default by the federal government if an agreement to raise the debt ceiling is not reached.

But North Carolina Congressman G.K. Butterfield, who attended the caucus session said Pelosi avoided pressuring House Democrats to fall in line with the Democrats in the White House. “She told us to leave it to our individual consciences,” Butterfield told reporters.

With the House vote done, the Senate will be vote Tuesday on the deal, which proposes radical cuts in federal programs — cuts that some fear will ultimately threaten Medicare and other Democratic “legacy” programs — in return for raising the nation’s debt ceiling.

The Senate is likely to back the deal that was cut between the Obama White House and Republican leaders; Senate majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, is already on board, as are key Republicans.

The general sense from the start was that the real test would come in the House, where Republican leaders had to scramble to keep Tea Party conservatives on board, and the White House faced a revolt by progressives.

Even as Pelosi and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer indicated personal support for the measure, a striking number of Democrats spoke out in opposition to Obama’s position before the hastily-scheduled Monday evening vote.

Congressman Pete DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat who frequently breaks with the White House when he feels the president is not doing enough to address unemployment, went to the House floor Monday to declare that this is a “no jobs” deal.

Ohio Congressman Marcy Kaptur was opposed. Veteran New York Congressmen Jerry Nadler and Eliot Engle indicated early on that they are firmly opposed, as did former House Ways and Means Committee chair Charles Rangel, D-New York. Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. was another “no.”

California Congresswoman Maxine Waters announced her “no” vote with a declaration that the deal was “one of the worst pieces of public policy” she had ever seen.

The progressive opposition to the deal grew, as grassroots groups stepped up their lobbying against the package. Progressive Change Campaign Committee [2] co-founder Adam Green said:

This deal will kill our economy and is an attack on middle-class families. It asks nothing of the rich, will reduce middle-class jobs, and lines up Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for cuts. Today, we’re putting in thousands of calls to Congress urging Democrats to keep their promise and oppose this awful bill. The 14th Amendment is unambiguous, and President Obama should invoke it to pay our nation’s debt. Then Democrats should focus on jobs — not cuts — in order to grow our economy.

Progressive Democrats of America launched a national “No Deal!” push. “The corporatists in Congress recognize that the United States cannot go into default for the first time in its 235-year history,” said PDA director Tim Carpenter.

Yet, they are claiming that we can only increase the debt ceiling by cutting vital social programs designed to protect working class and poor people across this country. Don’t drink the Kool-Aid! [3] We can block this “deal” and demand a clean debt ceiling increase.

At least 20 members of National People’s Action, a group that seeks to hold banks and financial institutions to account for the damage their speculation has done to the U.S. economy, were arrested when they disrupted debate in the Capitol. Decrying the debt-ceiling agreement as “a raw deal,” the NPA members chanted: “Hey, Boehner, get a clue, it’s about revenue!”

Congressional Progressive Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus members expressed the most serious skepticism regarding the measure.

That skepticism was rooted in a sense that this was a bad deal for both the economy and a Democratic Party that has historically positioned itself as the defender of working families.

Harry Truman used to say: “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.”

If the 33rd president was right, then Barack Obama did himself and his party a world of hurt by cutting the deal with the GOP leadership.

Faced with the threat that Tea Party-pressured Republicans in the House really would steer the United States toward default, and in so doing steer the U.S. economy over the cliff, Obama had to do something. But instead of bold action — borrowing a page from Ronald Reagan to demand a straight up-or-down vote on raising the debt ceiling; borrowing a page from Franklin Roosevelt to pledge to use the authority afforded him by the Constitution to defend the full faith and credit of the United States — the president engaged in inside-the-Beltway bargaining of the most dysfunctional sort.

In cutting a deal with Congressional Republicans [4] that places Democratic legacy programs — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — at risk while cutting essential programs for working families and the poor, Obama has positioned himself and his administration to the right of where mainstream Republicans such as Howard Baker, Bob Dole, and George H.W. Bush used to stand in fights with the fringe elements of their party.

Now, the fringe is in charge of the GOP. And Obama is agreeing to policies that are designed to satisfy Republicans that Britain’s banking minister describes as “right-wing nutters [5].’”

Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders claimed they have done everything in their power to avert deep cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. And it is true that they have given the Republicans (and their paymasters) less than House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan was demanding with a budget proposal that turned Medicare into a voucher program and began the process of privatizing Social Security.

But a compromise with total destruction can still do a lot of damage.

The president’s bow to the political extremism — and the economic irrationality [6] — of a tiny circle of “right-wing nutters” in Congress and their dwindling Tea Party “base” will, according to reports based on briefings by White House and GOP aides,

…raise the debt limit by about $2.7 trillion and reduce the deficit by the same amount in two steps. It would cut about $1 trillion in spending up front and set up a select bicameral committee to put together a future deficit-reduction package worth $1.7 trillion to $1.8 trillion. Failure of Congress to pass the future deficit-reduction package would automatically trigger cuts to defense spending and Medicare.

An aide familiar with the deal told The Hill newspaper that the Medicare cut would not affect beneficiaries. “Instead,” the aide indicated, “healthcare providers and insurance companies would see lower payments.”

But that’s still a squeezing of Medicare in order to meet the demands of Congressional Republicans who have spent the past six months trying to put the program on the chopping block.

Congressional Black Caucus chairman Emanuel Cleaver, D-Missouri, responded to initial reports regarding the deal by describing it as “a sugar-coated Satan sandwich [7].”

Congressional Progressive Caucus [8] co-chair Raul Grijalva said Obama and his negotiators bent too far to the extremists. Like many progressives, Grijalva favored the straight up-or-down vote on debt ceiling. “Had that vote failed,” he argued, “the president should have exercised his Fourteenth Amendment responsibilities and ended this manufactured crisis.”

Grijalva joined members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus at a Monday press conference, where they called on Obama to sidestep Congress and raise the debt limit by invoking the Fourteenth Amendment [9].

Obama rejected this option.

Instead of taking a tough stance, the president blinked in the face of Republican recalcitrance. And in so doing Obama agreed to what the Progressive Caucus co-chair described as “a cure as bad as the disease.”

“This deal trades people’s livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it,” Grijalva declared Sunday afternoon. [10]

Progressives have been organizing for months to oppose any scheme that cuts Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security, and it now seems clear that even these bedrock pillars of the American success story are on the chopping block. Even if this deal were not as bad as it is, this would be enough for me to fight against its passage.

Grijalva expressed immediate opposition to the deal. And he was not alone.

Congresswoman Donna Edwards, D-Maryland, slammed the deal. [11]

“Nada from million/billionaires; corp tax loopholes aplenty; only sacrifice from the poor/middle class? Shared sacrifice, balance? Really?” she complained, via Twitter, on Sunday.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee, D-California, complained that she was “not sure how Social Security and Medicare” will be preserved by the bargain the president has cut with the Republicans. “We have to make sure that within this deal… Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and the most vulnerable are protected,” she said, while withholding an endorsement of the measure. “I worry about these triggers [for more cuts],” Lee concluded.

Grijalva objected, in particular, to the lack of shared sacrifice in the deal.

“This deal does not even attempt to strike a balance between more cuts for the working people of America and a fairer contribution from millionaires and corporations. The very wealthy will continue to receive taxpayer handouts, and corporations will keep their expensive federal giveaways. Meanwhile, millions of families unfairly lose more in this deal than they have already lost. I will not be a part of it,” the Arizona congressman explained.

Republicans have succeeded in imposing their vision of a country without real economic hope. Their message has no public appeal, and Democrats have had every opportunity to stand firm in the face of their irrational demands. Progressives have been rallying support for the successful government programs that have meant health and economic security to generations of our people.

Today we, and everyone we have worked to speak for and fight for, were thrown under the bus. We have made our bottom line clear for months: a final deal must strike a balance between cuts and revenue, and must not put all the burden on the working people of this country. This deal fails those tests and many more.

But Grijalva’s gripe was not merely a moral or economic one.

It was political, as well.

“The Democratic Party, no less than the Republican Party, is at a very serious crossroads at this moment. For decades Democrats have stood for a capable, meaningful government—a government that works for the people, not just the powerful, and that represents everyone fairly and equally. This deal weakens the Democratic Party as badly as it weakens the country,” explained Grijalva.

“We have given much and received nothing in return. The lesson today is that Republicans can hold their breath long enough to get what they want. While I believe the country will not reward them for this in the long run, the damage has already been done.”

The question that remains is: How much damage? How much damage to vulnerable Americans? How much damage to the global reputation of the United States as a functional state? How much damage to a U.S. economy that is threatened by rising unemployment? How much damage to the image of the Democratic Party as a defender of working families?

This deal cannot be defended as a sound or necessary response to a manufactured debt-ceiling debate and the mess that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has made of it.

That is why the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said: “I will not support the emerging debt deal.”

“I will have no part of a deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to appease the farthest reaches of the right wing of the Republican Party,” argued Grijalva. “It is unconscionable to put these programs on the chopping block and ignore the voices and beliefs of the millions of Americans who trust us to lead while continuing to give handouts to the ultra wealthy and the largest corporations. There is no human decency in that.”

Links:
[1] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60443.html
[2] http://www.boldprogressives.org
[3] http://www.pdamerica.org/
[4] http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/174595-reid-signs-off-on-bipartisan-debt-deal
[5] http://www.thenation.com/../../../../../../blog/162258/right-wing-nutters-threaten-global-economy-imf-warns-disastrous-consequences
[6] http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/174571-compromise-deal-could-include-broad-spending-cuts-as-a-trigger
[7] http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_17/Debt-Deal-Emerging-With-Rightward-Tilt-207893-1.html
[8] http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/
[9] http://thehill.com/homenews/house/174601-house-liberals-urge-14th-amendment-fix-in-lieu-of-bipartisan-debt-deal
[10] http://grijalva.house.gov /index.cfm?sectionid=13&sectiontree=5,13&itemid=1063
[11] http://thehill.com/homenews/house/174599-pelosi-dem-leaders-withholding-judgment
[12] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nationnow/id399704758?mt=8

[John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. This article was first published at The Nation and was distributed by Progressive America Rising.]

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