What Democrats did wrong on the debt ceiling in 2010

[slipslidingaway]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-democrats-did-wrong-on-the-debt-ceiling-in-2010/2011/07/11/gIQA3uWFbI_blog.html

Felix Salmon writes that since Republicans could never have agreed to a grand bargain that included taxes, “there was no point even trying to construct one.” The cost of that mistake, Salmon says, “is going to be enormous ... I can’t help but draw some kind of causal connection between Treasury’s oversized ambitions and the current mess.” Brad DeLong agrees. He calls it the White House’s “greatest unforced error.”

...But there was a moment when Democrats did have the leverage: December 2010. The election was over. Nancy Pelosi was still speaker of the House. Harry Reid still had 59 Democrats in the Senate. The Bush tax cuts were expiring. And Democrats had a perfectly popular and intuitive position: Extend the cuts for the middle class but, in a time of deficits and sacrifice, sunset the cuts for the rich.

...But there was one thing the deal didn’t include, that many observers -- myself included -- said should have been there: an increase in the debt ceiling.

It seemed to fit. The deal was going to increase the deficit by almost a trillion dollars, so it was going to accelerate our collision with the debt ceiling. It was passed by an outgoing Congress, and it’s always easier for retiring legislators to take tough votes than it is for newly elected legislators to take them. And it would have headed off the awful choice that Democrats face this year: deep, sharp cuts that will slow the recovery, or a debt crisis that could plunge us back into recession..."

[FLAprogressive]

1. Another leadership failure from the so-called "leaders" Pelosi, Reid, and Obama.

[slipslidingaway]

4. Yes, adding hundreds of billions to the debt, one would think raising the ceiling ...

should have been a part of the deal.

:crazy:

[RobertSeattle]

2. But the Republicans would have been Mean to them!

/Sarcasm

[slipslidingaway]

5. Yeah that would have been hard, poor Dems. nt

[Recovered Repug]

3. No budget should be passed that isn't fully financed.

If a budget requires an increase in the debt ceiling, that should be part of the process.

[slipslidingaway]

6. Especially when giving tax cuts to the wealthiest and funding wars of aggression...

strange that the Dems never made the debt ceiling an issue when they simultaneously voted for war funding which included raising the debt ceiling.

[Llewlladdwr]

14. That's no problem.

Congress hasn't passed a budget in over two years now.

[JDPriestly]

7. I have wondered why they did not take care of this then.

It was really foolish of them to leave it for the Republicans to deal with.

Of course, the more the Republicans hold to their ideological bar against higher taxes for the rich, the better the chances of a Democratic victory in 2012.

Americans want the rich to pay a higher share of the cost of paying the debt.

Republicans are really miscalculating the impact that their lack of cooperation with regard to the debt will have in the 2012 elections.

Taxing the rich will be the central issue in 2012 unless a lot of things change between now and then.

[slipslidingaway]

10. Yes, several people have wondered why the Dems did not use the extention of ...

tax cuts to raise the debt ceiling.

[Warren DeMontague]

8. Yeah

That was a major fuckup. Gotta agree there.

[slipslidingaway]

11. Would like to believe they screwed up, but have to wonder why they ...

would take this chance unless they wanted to put entitlements on the table.

[Warren DeMontague]

13. I'm not seeing any grand design or plan, here

the idea that this was some sort of pre-arranged plan between the two parties; it doesn't look that way to me. I think this is what it appears; a train wreck between one party's bad strategizing and the other party's total insanity.

[slipslidingaway]

16. Neither am I, but that is not to say that sometimes a portion of both sides of the aisle ...

want basically the same thing.

[divvy]

9. What they refuse to aknowlege is that the Republican declared actual war on us.

They have and they did. They have nothing but malise for us and our country. These jack-asses would have invited the Japanese military to come and live among us during WWII. They need to be more REALIST and less Cerebralist. The fucking tweed hats are killing us.

[slipslidingaway]

12. Yes, but it should not have a surprise :( n/t

[WI_DEM]

15. In many ways we blew the two years we had control of congress.

[slipslidingaway]

17. Yes I agree especially when it comes to advancing a national HC plan funded...

by taxes and this could have been done without endorsing the plan.