The original working title for this post was, “Pardon me, have you seen my balls? I can’t seem to find them anywhere.” Too long though so I shortened it up. (I am of course referring to my fellow Democrats in DC. More on why I’m hanging this “sequestration fail” on them below.)
The subject matter is air traffic controllers. More specifically, the House and Senate voting to end sequester-imposed furloughs of air traffic controllers. Nobody likes flight delays. Nobody likes the thought of compromising air travel safety. It’s good that they’re back to work. It’s selective fixes to sequestration that should give us pause. Jared Bernstein sized the situation up last Friday:
You choose: is [the bipartisan vote to end sequester-imposed furloughs] support to mitigate one of the noxious effects of sequestration, which I and others have been tracking? Or is it papering over the high-visibility stuff that affects the affluent while lots of other budget bleeding goes on beneath the radar?
I choose the latter. While the annoyance of flight delays caught the attention of elected officials, businesspeople and other frequent flyers, lots of other, less advantaged Americans will continue to feel the pain of the sequester due to cuts in a variety of programs.
Exactly. There’s more than a little “So long as I get mine the rest of you can go to hell.” element to this. Charlie Pierce:
Did I miss a memo, or wasn’t the whole point of the sequester to give Congress the choice of acting like adults on the budget, or visiting enough inconvenience on ordinary citizens so that they demand that same thing? Now, it appears, the point was to visit inconvenience only on those ordinary citizens who have no lobby to inconvenience you in return. Airport delays were what was supposed to happen. My lord, this was a dumb idea.
Shit flows downhill. What else is there to say? Quite a bit actually. Here’s Ezra Klein on why this is a major fail by the Democrats and will end up costing the people who voted them into office:
Recall the Democrats’ original theory of the case: Sequestration was supposed to be so threatening that Republicans would agree to a budget deal that included tax increases rather than permit it to happen. That theory was wrong. The follow-up theory was that the actual pain caused by sequestration would be so great that it would, in a matter of months, push the two sides to agree to a deal. Democrats just proved that theory wrong, too.
In effect, what Democrats said Friday was that in any case where the political pain caused by sequestration becomes unbearable, they will agree to cancel that particular piece of the bill while leaving the rest of the law untouched. The result is that sequestration is no longer particularly politically threatening, but it’s even more unbalanced: Cuts to programs used by the politically powerful will be addressed, but cuts to programs that affects the politically powerless will persist. It’s worth saying this clearly: The pain of sequestration will be concentrated on those who lack political power.
Democrats had other choices, of course… President Obama could’ve vetoed the FAA bill while standing at a Head Start that’s about to throw needy children out of the program. He could’ve vetoed it from the home of an jobless worker who just saw her benefits cut. Democrats could simply have insisted that the powerful can’t get out of sequestration unless the powerless can, too. But they didn’t — and they show no signs that they’ll start.
So, whether they realize it or not, the Democrats have made the principal points of distinction between themselves and the Republicans that they’re pro-choice, pro-marriage-equality and pro-weed-medical marijuana whereas the GOP is not. That’s a little unfair perhaps but not as unfair as it should be. No job? No prospects? War in Afghanistan, global warming, sequestration and Wall Street’s plundering got you down? Then I suppose you may as well smoke up and take comfort in your same sex marriage because the Washington consensus is to do nothing substantive about any of those things. I expect that from the GOP. In fact, I expect them to attempt to exacerbate all of those problems. That’s who they are. Why give it second thought? However challenges to the status quo on economic policy, foreign policy, labor policy, environmental policy, financial regulation, etc. also appear to be off-limits to the Democrats. (By off-limits I mean that Democratic party leadership does not entertain substantive alternatives to the status quo. Not that a majority of Democrats are offering serious alternatives but serious alternatives which are put forward are quickly and quietly quashed.) That pisses me off. Perhaps I’m too cynical but I think that if social issues are the only substantive issues we’ve got to distinguish ourselves from the Republicans then we’re going to have a tough sell in 2014 and 2016. While Clinton happily enabled the export jobs to Mexico and beyond he at least had the presence of mind to paper over inconvenient facts with a catchy slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.” (And you wonder why I’m cynical about Democratic party leadership?) Enough of that digression. Back to Klein:
… Absent the willingness to accept the pain of sequestration and use it to overturn the whole policy, Democrats have no leverage to end it.
It is worth noting how different the Democrats’ approach to sequestration has been to the GOP’s approach to, well, everything. Over the past five years, Republicans have repeatedly accepted short-term political pain to win the leverage necessary for long-term policy gain. That’s the governing political principle behind their threats to shut down the government, breach the debt ceiling, and, for that matter, accept sequestration. Today, Democrats showed they’re not willing to accept even a bit of short-term pain for leverage on sequestration. They played a game of chicken with the Republicans, and they lost. Badly.
Top two rules of negotiating with adversaries:
- Seed the negotiation with a proposal ridiculously favorable to your side.
- Whoever can most easily afford to get up and walk away from the negotiating table has the superior negotiating position.
The leadership of the Democratic party either does not comprehend these simple rules or steadfastly refuses to apply them.