Obama has served notice that he will provide a jobs bill next month. The Democrats on the Super Committee are also talking about a jobs stimulus as part of any deal. The focus would be to spend in the short term and the deficit cutting should wait till later. In my view it must be much later-till after we definitively-as opposed to might or could possibly be-out of the recession.
When Americans have gone back to work in large numbers but not before.
In any case this is a good sign. While many were critical of Obama's performance during the debt ceiling fiasco, I think Lawrence O'Donnell had it largely right. The President was negotiating which the firebaggers refused to understand shrieking like chicken little about cuts Obama had never advocated.
During this admittedly very frustrating episode-went on so long just to do what is normally a routine vote-O'Donnell was hated especially by the firebaggers yet his analysis remains on point. In a negotiations there is something called a bluff. The story that Obama had indicated that Medicare could be on the table was a brilliant bluff.
If it wasn't why didn't Boehner and Cantor take the deal? This they can never explain. What they fail to understand is that there were political realities Obama had to be mindful of. The fact is that at the time if he made no intimation of being concerned about the deficit it would have been political pain for him.
Yes, it is true that most Americans didn't want entitlement cuts, but is also try that most Americans at least said they were concerned over the deficit and indeed, even a majority said the ceiling shouldn't be raised period just like Bachman and Rush Limbaugh were saying. Now if you say the public was confused I agree but a confused voter's vote against you has the same effect.
Obama had to at least go through the process of discussing deficit reduction though it is the wrong time for it.
In truth this all goes back to the Bush tax cuts as we noted in a previous post. As Krugman points out in Fuzzy Math(pg 20), "an important reason why conservatives want to cut taxes is that they want to keep the federal government hungry: they don't want money available to fiance new programs; or even to maintain old ones."
Krugman wrote this 10 years ago and is is eerily prescient. Bush's tax cuts were meant to put a political and fiscal break on Obama.
Yet now that the kabuki is over, Obama is in a stronger position than before it with a deal that was not nearly as bad as it could have been. Assessing it will require hindsight, but it will largely depend on who is elected in 2012 as the "mandatory triggers" don't trigger till then and the President and Congress can choose to disallow the trigger then.
While the country was rightly disgusted by the debt ceiling chicken, the GOP has taken the lion's share of the political hit. A smaller number of Americans have a favorable view of the Republican party than at any time in the 21 years this has been-even lower than during the sham impeachment of Clinton.
Now Obama and the Democrats can push an ambitious jobs bill and if the GOP plays it's usual game of gumming up the works the voters will see whose the real problem. Hey Boehner where are he jobs as you have proposed not a single jobs bill in 10 months.
Even more encouraging, Obama has indicated if he can't get traction on his proposals he will use the executive order on some measures.
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