Many seem to think debt\u002Dceiling debates are another example of American idiot\u002Dexceptionalism but since when is debate bad for democracy? Read on.
So Biden evidently concluded he needed McCarthy, who has developed a reputation for standing up to hard-liners in both parties. If Biden is to beat Trump, his preferred 2024 opponent, he needs to pick up centrist swing voters and his record to date has been too far left for their taste.
A debt deal that slows overall spending, takes back unspent COVID funds from the states — and if they haven’t been spent, who could possibly object? — slightly increases work requirements for recipients of federal income supports, re-schedules a little of Biden’s $80-billion increase in funding for the Internal Revenue Service, sets two-year limits on project evaluations and does a number of other small, generally sensible things, will help him with the centre.
No one I’ve heard discussing the debt-ceiling negotiations, whether in the media or not, has had a good word to say for them. The consensus seems to be that, along with the Second Amendment and private health care, they are another example of American idiot-exceptionalism. News readers can barely keep from rolling their eyes whenever the subject comes up.
Yes, it’s true that agreeing to a budget implies also agreeing to a value for the annual deficit and therefore the accumulated debt. But if the agreed budget is producing a debt higher than what was agreed to, it’s hardly unreasonable that further discussions should reconcile the two. Most families can recognize such a two-part budgetary dance. Moreover, a political minority is bound to try whatever institutional lever it can to control aggregate expenditure.
The U.S. system is famously decentralized and, when the parties are evenly balanced, gives undue power to people willing to wield whatever veto they may have over the process. But if the partiesevenly balanced, maybe gridlock of the sort the U.S. has experienced in recent years is actually what you want. Everybody laments that it prevents rapid progress in the direction they prefer. But when there is serious disagreement over which direction to take — and there is — stasis may be best.
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