The Deal Is Done - Until Next Time

The shouting will continue, of course, but the crucial voting is done. All that remains is the signing. After all the angst about default and holding the country hostage, our pathetic political system seems has done what it does all too often -pulled a last minute "deal" out of a hat. Is it any wonder voters hardly take this process seriously? (With calamitous consequences for the eventual day when the system finally fails!)

The predictable "sky is falling" run up to expected default seems all that much more weird in this instance, given how simple it actually was to negotiate the deal in the end - once the parties had decided that they were actually willing to do so - and then how modest the ingredients of the negotiated compromise actually are. Once again, our forever underestimated President Biden has shown himself adept at negotiating with a Congress controlled by the other party - one of his main campaign claims in both the last and presumably the next presidential election. And, for what it is worth, to give the Devil his due, Speaker McCarthy acted like a Speaker rather than as an agent of the misnamed "Freedom Caucus."

If excessive debt really were the problem that Republicans allege it to be, they have nonetheless kept off the table the most obvious solution to that problem - raising taxes. That leaves cuts in discretionary spending (a small slice of the total budget and not the main driver of the debt) as the only negotiable item in the Republicans' toolbox. For all the Republican posturing, however, the "cuts" in spending, while unjust and cruel in the case of food stamps work requirements for older adults and downright idiotic in the case of the IRS, were in the end rather modest. Most importantly, some of President Biden's major accomplishments, like the Inflation Reduction Act, remain.

But, as long as the Democrats stupidly keep failing to abolish the debt ceiling when they get the chance, the debt ceiling will remain as a ready weapon for Republican extortion. No president of either party should have to negotiate to avoid defaulting on the nation's financial obligations, but it will likely happen again and again as long as the debt ceiling remains in place as a ready-to-hand lethal weapon, further confirming once again how little sense the Biden Administration's adherence to antiquated notions of bipartisanship ultimately may be in the long term.

As historian Jacques Barzun is alleged to have said: "When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent."