Paul Krugman says:
Think about it. There’s a significant chance that failing to raise the debt limit could provoke a renewed financial crisis — and Republicans would rather take that chance than allow a reduction in tax breaks on corporate jets.
The rationale is that one of the issues being debated by Republicans and Democrats is whether to alter the tax treatment of corporate jets in the bill that raises the debt limit – Republicans are presumably threatening to not vote for a bill that does contain such an alteration, while Democrats are presumably threatening to not vote for a bill that does not contain such an alteration.
I’ll just point out the symmetry that Krugman is failing to see (or at least mention). He could just as well have written:
Think about it. There’s a significant chance that failing to raise the debt limit could provoke a renewed financial crisis — and Democrats would rather take that chance than allow there to continue to be tax breaks on corporate jets.
Krugman then accuses Republicans of blackmail. Before I says who I think is blackmailing whom (if anyone), I’m going to finish Leo Katz’s book.
One quick point, though: unlike the last time Krugman accused Republicans of being hostage-takers because they demanded tax cuts for the wealthy in order to extend tax cuts for the middle-class, in this case, it is the Republicans who are advocating for the status quo (i.e. no change to the tax code as it relates to corporate jets), and the Democrats who are demanding a change. So if the critical determinant of which party is the hostage-taker / blackmailer is which side is demanding a change (i.e. if that party which demands a change to the status quo in order to vote for something that both sides agree is necessary should be deemed the hostage-taker / blackmailer), it was Republicans last time and Democrats this time. Thus Krugman would be 1 for 2.
I take your point that hostage-taking is often a meaningless metaphor to explain negotiations. However, your post ignores the forest and focuses on one tiny little tree.
If you take a step back, you can’t plausibly say the GOP is just “advocating for the status quo.” Quite the opposite–they are threatening to default on the United States’ EXISTING liabilities, i.e., they will not pay the bills, unless they get their way regarding FUTURE liabilities.
So, if the critical determinant really is which side is demanding a change, then the GOP would also be a hostage-taker. But I don’t think you believe this is the critical determinant, nor do I think you believe the “hostage-taker” rhetoric really sheds any light on the situation.
Second, your reversal of the Krugman quote ignores the reality of the two sides’ bargaining positions.
The original Krugman quote is really saying:
The GOP would rather refuse to pay EXISTING liabilities unless the Democrats agree to all of the GOP demands about which FUTURE liabilities the U.S. will incur. Even though deficit reduction is the stated goal, they will not even consider eliminating tax breaks on corporate jets (an example of an unjustifiable tax break) because Cantor, et al. believe removing any tax break (no matter how unjustified) is a tax increase, and tax increases will not be allowed.
Your “symmetrical” Krugman quote inaccurately portrays the Dems’ position:
Democrats are not threatening to stop paying EXISTING liabilities, they are refusing to allow the GOP to CONDITION the payment of EXISTING liabilities on the Democrats’ accepting every one of their demands about which FUTURE liabilities the U.S. will incur. Furthermore, the last part of your symmetrical quote is too clever by half. Democrats are not dogmatically insisting that a NECESSARY PRECONDITION of the debt ceiling vote is the removal of some obscure tax break for corporate jets. Rather, the Dems are saying that if the GOP is going to insist on deficit reduction, then it shouldn’t all come out of Medicare, etc. The Dems are offering increased revenues as part of the proposal, so that the deficit can be reduced by the same amount without having to cut as much spending.
So, yeah, the use of the hostage-taker metaphor probably doesn’t help any of us understand the negotiations that are currently taking place. But I think your post clouds the waters too.
Maybe another over-used metaphor would be appropriate here: Both sides have their opinions about how to reduce the deficit going forward, but only one is willing to cut off the country’s nose to spite its face.
MD,
It seems to me that the only reason you see any asymmetry is that you think the concessions the Republicans are demanding in order to vote on a debt increase are more distasteful to you than the concessions the Democrats are demanding.
Republicans are saying “We will only vote for the debt ceiling bill if, in addition to raising the ceiling, it cuts spending and does not raise taxes.”
Democrats are saying “We will only vote for the debt ceiling bill if, in addition to raising the ceiling, it either does nothing at all to address the debt crisis, or both raises taxes and lowers spending.”
(When I said the Republicans are advocating for the status quo, that was on the corporate jet issue specifically, which Krugman singled out.)
How is there a fundamental asymmetry between these two statements, other than any asymmetry you get from much preferring the stance of advocating for “doing nothing at all to address the debt crisis, or both rais[ing] taxes and lower[ing] spending” to the stance of advocating for cutting taxes and not raising spending?
I do understand that the Democrats are advocating for the status quo in the broader sense of being more willing, probably, to raise the debt ceiling with no strings attached at all (“doing nothing at all to address the debt crisis”), yet, given what has been happening in the last few days, and reelection fears, I’m actually not sure they do still want to do that.
On your last paragraph: “Maybe another over-used metaphor would be appropriate here: Both sides have their opinions about how to reduce the deficit going forward, but only one is willing to cut off the country’s nose to spite its face.”
That’s not true, Krugman has advocated for blowing through the debt limit if a deal cannot be reached (the below is a quote from his blog, and I’ve seen him be even more explicit about it on TV):
“”And failing to raise the debt limit could be widely read as a signal that we are, in fact, a banana republic.
In that case, however, what should Obama do? My answer is that despite all that, he must not let himself be blackmailed….
This is going to be very ugly. But I don’t think there’s any way to avoid taking it all the way to the edge, and possibly over it.”
That is the thing with these negotiations: if one side suggests they aren’t willing to “cut off the country’s nose to spit its face,” that side ceded power to the other side. Thus both sides at least pretend to be willing to cut off the nose.
1) There is an asymmetry there, and it is crucial to understand that the GOP was the party that decided to tie drastic spending cuts to the raising of the debt ceiling (which would be more appropriately called “paying for previously-appropriated expenditures” or simply “paying our bills”). These two issues– a budget that lays out the level of FUTURE appropriations and the paying of our bills –do not need to be decided at the same time.
The GOP decided to tie these two issues together in an attempt to extract concessions from a Democratic Senate and President. In essence, they are threatening to destroy the country’s credit by refusing to pay our bills unless the Democrats agree to all of the GOP demands on future expenditures.
The Democrats no doubt have different ideas about how to address the long-term deficit problem. But they have not threatened to destroy the country’s credit in order to get the GOP to accede to all of their demands. In other words, they did not begin this battle of demanding concessions before they would vote for the debt ceiling increase. That was the GOP.
2) You missed the point of why Krugman singled out the corporate jet issue. Again, you are being too clever by half. As I said in my last post: “Democrats are not dogmatically insisting that a NECESSARY PRECONDITION of the debt ceiling vote is the removal of some obscure tax break for corporate jets.” They are saying that IF the GOP insists on reducing the deficit as a necessary precondition for paying our bills (which, by the way, most Dems think is dumb and reckless) THEN the deficit reduction should not be comprised exclusively of spending cuts. However, the GOP will not budge an inch on this point. The corporate jet tax break is only an ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE of the kinds of tax breaks that the GOP is defending rather than allow a “tax increase”–even if that increase is just the closing of tax loopholes and/or the removal of an unjustified tax break. Krugman uses this merely as a device to reveal the insanity of the GOP intransigence. The Dems have not said this is a necessary precondition of paying our bills.
3) The last part of your reply is again a false equivalence, and ignores the environment that has been created by the House majority, through which any debt ceiling increase must pass. Neither Krugman nor the Dems are insisting that their vision for FUTURE budgets needs to be accepted in order for the debt ceiling to be increased, i.e., for the Congress to agree to pay our bills. It is the GOP that is CONDITIONING the paying of our bills on the Dems giving in to their demands on spending cuts, Medicare, Social Security, etc.
This is irresponsible brinkmanship on the part of the GOP.
So again, I agree with the point of your first two posts that hostage-taking is not the most helpful metaphor. But your post then delves into false equivalencies that focus on one small tree in a much larger forest.
Lastly, you acknowledge but understate the importance of the fact that the Dems are “more willing, probably, to raise the debt ceiling with no strings attached at all.” The Dems were willing to do this and–if not for GOP insanely threatening to not pay our bills in order to enhance their negotiating position–they would continue to be willing to decouple the debt ceiling vote from future budget debates. But the GOP has signaled that it will make an issue of this every time. So yes, rather then face this problem at every debt ceiling vote, Obama has made the strategic decision to push for a grand bargain so that the country is not mired in this debate every few months. That seems pretty sane in these insane times.
So it seems that the alleged asymmetry boils down to the fact that the Republicans were the first ones to propose entangling the debt ceiling bill to the deficit issue. I.e. Democrats were happy to vote for a “clean” debt ceiling increase, while Republicans wanted to vote only on a contingent basis.
To that argument, I reply that in fact it is not uncommon for the party out of power to be the one that resists debt ceiling increases. For a historical example, consider this speech given by a Senator before voting “no” to a previous debt ceiling increase:
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”
Guess who? A nasty tea party Republican? No: Barack Obama.
http://rpc.senate.gov/public/_files/alternativestothedebtlimitincreasev20.pdf
I knew you would cite this speech at some point. This is one of the GOP’s favorite talking points. Let’s see if it has any merit, shall we?
In 2006, Senator Obama undeniably used the debt ceiling vote for purely political purposes because he wanted to, in his words, highlight the “debt problem” and President Bush’s “failure of leadership.”
But again, you are being two clever by half. Perhaps you should just call your blog “False Equivalences”?
There is one obvious and distinguishing factor: The GOP House is IN POWER right now. They aren’t in the White House, but they have a MAJORITY in the House. In 2006, Obama was a Democratic Senator at a time when the Dems were the MINORITY PARTY in the Senate. Look at the 52-48 roll call vote, to which the Senate RPC helpfully linked:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00054
All 52 Yeas were GOP Senators. The No votes were all the Dems + 3 GOP Senators. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that means the Senate had 55 GOP Senators, 44 Dem Senators, and one Independent Senator.
Therefore, this 2006 vote by Obama (and the other Democrats) was MEANINGLESS. The debt ceiling was going to be raised, regardless of whether the Dems voted Yea or Nea. The Dems probably wanted to hammer the GOP in the 2006 elections for being fiscally irresponsible (and they had a point: see, e.g., the Bush tax cuts, unfunded wars, and the unfunded Medicare Prescription Drug plan). Rather than dilute that election year message, they used this MEANINGLESS vote as a VEHICLE for making a POLITICAL POINT.
As a side note, there were 3 GOP members who also voted against raising the debt ceiling. I’m guessing that they voted no because they too were using the vote as a vehicle to make a statement. But if one of these 3 had been the decisive vote, they would likely have relented rather than force our country to destroy our credit rating. So I’m not bothered by these 3 GOP votes either. It is exceedingly common for the party leadership to allow members to make these kind of votes (whether they be politically motivated, votes of conscience, etc.) once the leadership has enough Yea votes for passage.
Do you really not see the distinction here?
As a fun aside, what do you think changed between 2006 and 2011?
In 2006, the majority GOP in the House seemed unconcerned with deficits and the debt ceiling:
2006 House Budget (H. Con. Res. 95) raised the debt ceiling:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d109:1:./temp/~bdLkwU:@@@L&summ2=m&|/home/LegislativeData.php?n=BSS;c=109|#major actions
2006 House Roll call vote (218-214) on the budget that raised the debt ceiling. The 218 Yeas were all GOP. The 214 Neas were 201 Dems, 12 GOP, and 1 Independent:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll088.xml
, but in 2011 they are now threatening to destroy the credit of the United States unless the Dems in the Senate and the
Joint Resolution (H.J.RES.47) that incorporated House Budget (H. Con. Res. 95):
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:HJ00047:@@@L&summ2=m&
Now that it is 2011, the House GOP are suddenly concerned with deficits? They weren’t when they passed the Bush tax cuts, or passed the Medicare Prescription Drug bill.
Why are they emphasizing it now?
And why are they threatening to destroy the United States’ credit just to make their point?
Curious, no?
A lot of things changes:
-The tea party movement, which tried to refocus the GOP on responsible spending.
-The deficit in 2006 was about one sixth of the deficit in 2011, in inflation-adjusted dollars.
-(I’m sure this is what you’re getting at) The same thing that caused Obama to switch from emphatically voting against the debt ceiling increase to emphatically encouraging us to vote for it: the Presidency switched from R do D.
– Agreed. The Tea Party has pressured the GOP to attack the deficit.
– True. But the GOP was responsible for a lot of this increase in the deficit, despite their insistence that they are fiscal conservatives:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24editorial_graph2.html?ref=sunday
– Yes. That’s exactly what I’m getting at. But again, Obama’s vote in the minority was a mere protest vote. The GOP is actually threatening to not pay our bills–and they have the power to do it.
-And you can’t accuse the Tea Party of hypocrisy on the deficit, now that they are directing their fire at republicans. So its not just a partisan thing.
-2 questions on that chart: is the afghanistan surge included? how is obama’s extension of bush tax cuts accounted for?
– Yes. yes, I can. There was no Tea Party before Obama was elected. They never rallied to stop the Bush tax cuts, nor the unfunded wars, nor the Medicare prescription drug bill. They emerged once we got a so-called commie, socialist, liberation theologist born-in-Kenya President. There was no marching in the streets for fiscal sanity before that. That they now direct their fiscal insanity at both parties does not discount that they didn’t care about any of this before.
– I don’t know about the Afghanistan surge. If it’s not on the Obama side, it should be. But the “Obama extension of the Bush tax cuts”? Are you kidding me? Do you think Obama was the one insisting on those tax cuts? (for the wealthiest Americans, at least) What planet do you live on?
You’re being too easily fooled by Republican congressmen. They, like Obama, also do not plan to actually put the country into default. They just enjoy playing chicken. And if you disagree, I’d be happy to give you 5 to 1 odds that the U.S. will not default on $1 worth of debt in the next year.
But also, I’m glad we’ve gotten to the asymmetry, which boils down to “they started it.” In the govt. system we have, you cannot say Republicans are “in power” — it is a split government, that’s why playing chicken is possible. Sure, Republicans started it. That makes things much simpler – you think that the party who first proposes a game of chicken is 100% at fault, and the other party is not at fault.
Thanks for the blog name suggestion. I am looking for a new blog name, and I have been kicking around ideas, but I fear that I am really boxing myself in by choosing the name “false equivalences.” Plus, the whole point of a false equivalence is that its falsity is masked. Any other ideas?
Haha. Fair enough on the blog name. I withdraw my suggestion. It came across as harsher than I intended. (Relatedly, the all caps words just mean I am too lazy to use the html tags, not that I am screaming)
But you have again mischaracterized the asymmetry. Here’s why:
First, regarding your point that the GOP House is not “in power” – it is true that there is currently a divided government. But they have a VETO POINT in the divided government because they have a House majority. Obama and the Dems did NOT have such a veto point when they voted against it the debt ceiling increase in 2006. That was my only point. The Obama speech, which accompanied a MEANINGLESS vote, is simply not equivalent to the current GOP position.
Second, the GOP is not just playing chicken. They are playing chicken with the credit rating of the United States! This recklessness actually helps reveals what might be the best way to define what people mean by “hostage-taking” in negotiations. [We’ve already discussed why advocating for a change to the status quo isn’t a particularly good metric for determining who is the “hostage-taker.”]
So perhaps a good working definition of hostage-taker would be the side/party that escalates the stakes of the negotiation way out of proportion with the stakes of the original negotiation, by threatening something which BOTH sides value. Here, the GOP and Dems disagree on how to tackle the deficit, and are negotiating those differences. But BOTH sides agree the United States should not default and fail to pay its bills.
Therefore, the asymmetry cannot be boiled down to merely “they started it.” And I was not purporting to say that any party who first decides to play chicken is 100% at fault, and the other side isn’t.
The GOP is arguably a hostage-taker here not because they “started it”, but because they are threatening to TORPEDO the credit of the United States unless all of their demands are met. That is a reckless escalation of a negotiation between the parties about FUTURE budgets. And it threatens to have consequences that are completely disproportionate to the negotiations at hand.
Perhaps you might try to flip the previous paragraph around, as seems to be a theme in this thread, and say : The Dems are recklessly escalating the negotiations about the DEBT CEILING INCREASE, by not acceding to the GOP’s demands about FUTURE budgets, the consequences of which are disproportionately smaller than the United States defaulting on its debt. But this again would be too clever by half. The GOP AGREES that we need to raise the debt ceiling (i.e. pay our bills). But they are trying to leverage the VETO POINT they have in this divided government to get the Dems to agree to demands that they would never agree to if the GOP wasn’t threatening to torpedo the United States’ credit.
That recklessly endangers the credit of the Untied States, which both sides value. So I would argue that that is hostage-taking.
Lastly, to return to your very first paragraph of your reply, I am not being fooled by the Republicans. We haven’t been discussing the likelihood of whether the GOP will, in the end, put the country into default. Rather, the discussion has been about whether the GOP and the Dems are really playing the same kind of game, as you asserted in your original post. They aren’t. The GOP enjoys playing chicken by threatening the credit of the United States–something which they themselves value.
And while you are (hopefully) right that the GOP will ultimately vote to increase the debt ceiling, that doesn’t change any of what I have written. Just because they don’t kill the hostage in the end doesn’t mean they didn’t take the hostage and threaten him for the past several months.
If the Democrats had simply said “we should not let the debt ceiling debate become entangled with a bill about spending and the deficit” then I’d agree with you, this would have essentially meant the Democrats were refusing to play chicken. Instead, they are pushing through a rival plan (the Reid plan), and conditioning a vote on the debt ceiling on this rival plan.
I think that is how they started this debate. (I can’t say with 100% certainty, but I bet that was their message earlier in the year).
But the GOP-majority House decided to tie the two together, and wanted to use this as leverage in an election year. So even if the Dems had initially wanted to, the GOP would never have passed a clean debt ceiling bill that extended past November 2012. Whatever one thinks of the merits of the GOP vs. Dem budget priorities, the GOP majority created this debt ceiling situation. And it is not equivalent to the Dems protest votes about the debt ceiling when they were in the minority.
Just because the Dems are trying to meet them halfway (and the Reid bill is a BIG accommodation to GOP priorities) does not mean they too are holding the debt ceiling hostage. They recognize who took the hostage, and they are offering them all sorts of nice things to get the hostage-taker to stop the standoff.
(As you can see, I’ve changed my mind. Hostage-taking is a pretty apt metaphor in this context)
At this point, I think the irony is that mainstream fiscal conservatives like me are getting a “taste of their own medicine” by now feeling they are being dealt with recklessly (if not “held hostage”) by the tea party faction. It is hard to avoid hyperbolic analogies for all of us now.
I think the Republicans are screwing this up, it seems clear that the bill that eventually passes the house will get a lot of democratic rather than tea party votes. So I predict a political loss for the republicans.
(responding to your latest)
-There was also no tea party during Clinton years, or Jimmy Carter years, etc. It is a new political movement. Sometimes new political movements develop. Calling them hypocritical for the reason that they have not existed for all of eternity seems quite harsh, and a misuse of the term “hypocritical.”
-Obama did want to extend the bulk of the bush tax cuts (the < $250k portion), and that's what he did. And yes, this is the bulk both in terms of # of people affected and contribution to deficit.
– I’m not accusing the movement of being hypocritical. I’m accusing the people of being hypocritical. They didn’t give a shit about deficits when it was the GOP racking them up.
– I’m guessing that is probably true about the breakdown of the Bush tax cuts. But Bush is not absolved from that number post-2010. He authored tax cuts that were set to expire in 2010 because it allowed for rosier long-term deficit projections. But he knew that it would create a situation in which it was very politically difficult to allow a tax increase on the middle class. Given the history of the tax cuts, I don’t know how you would apportion the responsibility for the post-2010 deficits. But it’s not 100% to either side.
-I never meant to suggest you were accusing inanimate things of being hypocritical. Obviously we are talking about the people. Being later than desired in forming and contributing to a political movement does not make you a hypocrite.
-If we are going to get into “Bush would have done it anyway” arguments, why don’t we also charge Obama for the Afghanistan war? I highly doubt you want to take the position he would have left the Taliban alone.