It’s one of the more comical aspects of the deadly serious game of chicken that House Republicans are playing on the debt limit, but it’s worth pointing out, as I did at New York:
As the United States lurches toward a possible debt default thanks to House Republican hostage-taking on legislation needed to extend or suspend the debt limit, it’s increasingly evident that (as my colleague Jonathan Chait observed) the hostage-taker is strangely reluctant to name a ransom. Indeed, the initial Democratic strategy in this complicated chess game was simply to force House Republicans to say exactly what kind of spending cuts they propose to make in exchange for allowing a debt-limit measure to wobble its way to Joe Biden’s desk.
It’s easy to mock GOP lawmakers for the brainlessness, or maybe cowardice, of their effort to make Democrats identify the spending cuts their opponents want. The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell tans the elephant’s hide with considerable panache:
“Republicans have Very Serious budget demands. Unfortunately, they can’t identify what any of those demands are.
“They say they want to reduce deficits — but meanwhile have ruled out virtually every path for doing so (cuts to defense, cuts to entitlements, wiping out nondefense discretionary spending, or raising taxes). …
“Republicans say they want lower deficits — in fact, they have pledged to balance the budget (that is, no deficit at all) within seven or 10 years. But they have not laid out any plausible mathematical path for arriving at that destination. They promise to cut ‘wasteful spending’ … but can’t agree on what counts as ‘waste.’”
In so quickly reaching this predictable dead end in answering the world’s easiest math problem, Republicans have one plausible line of defense: It’s how much of the public feels about fiscal matters as well. They really don’t like deficits and (especially) debt. But they really don’t like the kind of spending cuts that Republicans are talking about either (tax increases, of course, are categorically off the table for the GOP and have been since the George H.W. Bush “Read my lips: No new taxes” debacle).
A September 2022 poll from the deficit scolds of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation found that Americans are up in arms about all the borrowing:
“A 31-month high of 83% of voters are urging the president and Congress to spend more time addressing the national debt, with the biggest jump among those under age 35 (8 points to 85%).
“More than eight-in-ten voters (81%) also said that their concern about the national debt has increased. Nearly three-in-four voters (74%) feel the national debt should be a top-three priority for the president and Congress, including 65% of Democrats, 74% of independents, and 86% of Republicans.”
From 40,000 feet, all that red ink looks pretty alarming, it seems. More recently, this very week, the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal found a majority of Americans stamping their feet about it:
“Most Americans oppose raising the federal debt ceiling without accompanying cuts to federal spending, a new RMG Research poll finds.
“Sixty-one percent of 1,000 registered voters in the survey said Congress should either raise the debt ceiling with spending cuts (45%) or refuse to raise the ceiling at all (16%). Only about a quarter (24%) said Congress should raise the ceiling without accompanying spending cuts.”
To House Republicans, the great symbol of runaway spending is the “monstrous” $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill passed by Congress in December. Many of them claimed during the fight over Kevin McCarthy’s Speakership bid that “the American people” were outraged by the measure despite the fact that it cleared the Senate, House, and White House. Perhaps they were thinking of a Twitter poll conducted by Elon Musk that showed that 75 percent of respondents opposed the omnibus bill.
The sad truth is, however, that the more specific you are in identifying items in one of those “monstrous” bills, the more support they command from the public. In 2021, Gallup published a summary of public-opinion research on what was then a $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Democratic budget-reconciliation proposal (soon whittled way down to $2.2 trillion and then to a net-negative figure in the ultimately enacted Inflation Reduction Act) and found that its provisions were very popular despite the debt they required:
“[S]everal recent polls … ask about the bill in a broad, umbrella fashion, and all find majority support. A Quinnipiac poll conducted July 27-Aug. 2 asked, ‘Do you support or oppose a $3.5 trillion spending bill on social programs such as child care, education, family tax breaks and expanding Medicare for seniors?’ and found 62% support, 32% opposition. A Monmouth University poll conducted July 21-26 asked about both the initial infrastructure bill and the new $3.5 trillion bill, describing the latter this way: ‘A plan to expand access to healthcare and child care, and provide paid leave and college tuition support.’ The results were similar to the Quinnipiac poll, with 63% in favor and 35% opposed …
“A progressive think tank, Data for Progress, conducted an online poll among likely voters July 30-Aug. 2, with a much more detailed 130-word description of the bill, including in the question wording a bulleted list of six specific proposals in the plan, the $3.5 trillion price tag and even a description of the ‘reconciliation’ procedure necessary to pass it. All of this (and the online mode, and the sample of likely voters as opposed to national adults) also didn’t seem to make much difference; 66% of likely voters in their sample supported the plan as described, while 26% opposed it — similar to the Quinnipiac and Monmouth results.”
So the minute you get into the particulars of Democratic-proposed spending bills, public concerns about debts and deficits tend to fade. And oh — there’s another problem for Republicans on the fiscal front: voters like the idea of higher taxes on the wealthy and on corporations to pay for popular spending measures.
The lesson for Republicans is clear: Their crusade for fiscal discipline is popular, so long as it is very general and you exclude higher taxes on the rich as a possible solution. No wonder politicians like McCarthy want Democrats to be the ones who name the GOP’s price for letting the U.S. economy get through the year without calamity.
Thank you for the welcome. I actually converted back in 2000, when the bush campaign demonstrated that the impeachment nonsense was not a mere anomoly.
As the republicans have abandoned fiscal ‘conservatism’ and the Democrats have openly embraced fiscal responsibility, I think there may be yet more converts on the way soon.
As to the social aspect or ‘conservatism’ – I couldn’t care less about what people do in their personal lives or their bedrooms.
– A ‘somewhat’ liberal who believes in fiscal responsibility.
I find it incomprehensible that anyone who claims to be a Democrat, let alone seven percent, can actually intend to vote for Bush! Actually I can not understand anyone who is not rich having ever done so, or intending to do so.
rt,
Just a quick followup on your first point. I agree that Kerry has profited by the implicit comparison to Dean’s anger and criticism, which clearly struck most voters, even Dems, as just too much.
What’s striking about Kerry’s criticisms of Bush is that they are, word for word, probably every bit as harsh as Dean’s ever were, yet they do not have the effect of turning voters off.
Here’s the near paradox: the very thing most criticized in Kerry, his too measured, too unemotional, manner and speech, here work as his greatest advantage: he can utter the most severe of criticisms WITHOUT seeming in any way out-of-control or over the top. This is a pretty remarkable quality, and can be used to great effect — as indeed Kerry already has.
A take on frankly0’s well-taken point:
It’s helped Kerry that:
*Dean took a lot of arrows for being the angriest Dem of them all. Kerry has come off as controlled in contrast.
*his last surviving challenger’s “attacks” on him were indirect and extremely mild by campaign standards. At the same time Edwards offered praise for Kerry which was remarkable by campaign standards. On balance, the combination of Edwards’ negative and positive comments on Kerry may well have helped Kerry more than hurt him. In the LA debate I thought Edwards at times looked at Kerry like an admiring and aspiring younger brother.
*The Republicans have been demoralized after an awful last 8 weeks or so that has seen them uncharacteristically passive in the face of the daily drubbing they’ve been taking from the Dem candidates and precipitous drops in their approval ratings. Even one R governor said Bush looks overwhelmed these days.
*It can’t help them that the gay marriage issue from the standpoint of their base demanded dramatic action at a time when Bush’s numbers among independents are abysmal. The gay marriage amendment has not been well received by independents and may make him look opportunistic, reactive, divisive, backwards, chained to his base, and all manner of other bad things just at a point where they are beginning to engage the campaign.
*They’re just now starting to crank up the attack machine. It won’t be long before we get a better sense of how much success they’re going to have driving Kerry’s negatives up.
I say let’s keep them on the mat.
I think Kerry is smart to be reaching out to responsible, moderate Republicans the way he seems to be. I think about 10% of Republicans are Americans first, Party dittohead zombies second.
Closet Liberals, i love it
Here in Califas, we saw millions of SF 49er fans come out of the closet in 1981, and the gays just keep popping out. maybe the hidden liberals can now stand up and be proud
Hi, my name is _____, and i care about my fellow man, i’ve been a closet liberal for my entire life. i can’t help myself, i just get this sudden urge to be a decent human being. i am glad to find a place where people like myself are not ridiculed for their belief in compassion and concern for their brothers
One point about Kerry that I haven’t seen noted is that his negatives, at this stage, are quite low. This is remarkable, because he has been criticizing Bush harshly and relentlessly as the most basic staple of his stump speech. (“George Bush has run the most reckless, inept, arrogant, and ideological foreign policy in modern history” is one pleasing example).
It has been regarded as a truism that negative campaigning, particularly coming out of the mouth of the candidate himself, will push up the negatives of the attacker as well his opponent. And yet there is precisely NO evidence that Kerry’s criticisms have had this effect.
I conclude from this that most of the public thinks that these criticisms, and this level of negativity coming from Kerry, are quite fair under the circumstances. Otherwise, I’d certainly think that the public would punish Kerry with some pretty high unfavorables.
And among other things, it would also suggest that Kerry will do himself no harm to remain very negative on Bush — though he must certainly also provide a positive vision to provide voters with a reason to feel hope under a Kerry Presidency.
Can you please analyze (and hopefully obliterate) the latest AP/IPSOS poll showing Nader with 6%.
Getting nervous here. Thanks.
Psalm 133
A song of ascents. Of David.
1 How good and pleasant it is
when brothers live together in unity!
2 It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down upon the collar of his robes.
3 It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the LORD bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore