What No One Notices About The Debt Ceiling Deal

It's not binding.

A debt ceiling bill is not an appropriation, and it's not a budget. It's a lot of language behind a statement that the ceiling will be raised. The only thing binding about it is the number on the new debt ceiling.

While it's likely this Congress will go along with the provisions of the package, the bulk of the cuts are in the "out years" (as they say up in Washington). In other words, they have not happened yet.

And they won't have to, either. The expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2012 puts us on a glide path to a balanced budget in five years.

So what was all this about? It was about politics. It was about image. It was about setting both parties up for the next election, not about real spending, not about real tax policy. It was a platform, on behalf of the current Congress, for its re-election.

Since it is tasting like a shit sandwich to Democrats, that's a good thing. Democrats can overturn all this by simply getting more of their own party elected to Congress next year. All the threats of staging a primary against the President or (worse) staying home next year and giving the town to Republicans are empty. That's not going to happen. Know why? Because Democrats hate this deal, that's why.

Since it's tasting like a shit sandwich to Republicans, that's also a good thing. This is the Tea Party's high water mark. This is all it can do when it has power. They have revealed their priorities, and people don't like them. And none of this is binding, which is going to upset Tea Party members.

What the President did was get himself thrown into the Briar Patch. He virtually guaranteed his re-election, because Republicans are going to spend the next year arguing against this plan, saying it's not draconian enough, that the cuts should have been deeper and there should have been tax cuts included in it. Which is crazy, I know, but how else do you win with a bad economy except by unleashing the crazy?

The media and the punditocracy are going to claim the President and his party got rolled, and they were. But electorally, no. In terms of actual policy, no. Oh, and the Republicans have to come up with some severe Defense cuts, within a very few months, which probably will be enacted.

What's the problem?