Possible Silver Lining for GOP in Lame Debt Ceiling Deal
The scenario has changed, with the Republicans possibly having failed up.
In the runup to the debt ceiling deal, I was a bit concerned that a fiscally and economically positive resolution—Republicans getting all or nearly all of what they were asking for in the Limit, Save, Grow Act—could turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory.
That was a plausible scenario: the debt ceiling deal results in some mild curbs on federal spending and regulation per GOP insistence, followed by a recession that was going to happen anyway, and the Republicans get blamed for the economic downturn and the Great Immiseration that ensues.
The Biden administration, the congressional Democrats, and the media would surely claim that the Republicans’ spending cuts damaged the economy and threw millions of people into desperate circumstances. Plenty of video of awful conditions that have already existed for years in California and other Democrat-run places would be provided as visible proof of damage done by the Republicans’ perfidy. The public, not trained in economics and hence unable to spot the fundamental flaws in Keynesian thinking, would, upon continual urging by the press, think post hoc ergo propter hoc and blame the Republicans for the recession.
The biggest issue for the public would thus have turned against the fiscally less-irresponsible party in the 2024 elections. Economic policies would consequently become even more disastrous in 2025.
The Republicans’ feebleness and President Joe Biden’s crowing about his great success in the deal averts that scenario. Biden and his party own the deal.
The scenario is now very different: the debt ceiling deal, with Democrats getting pretty much everything they want, is followed by a recession that was going to happen anyway. The Democrats and the press (but I repeat myself) blame it on the Republicans according to the natural order of things, but it is less plausible because they all bragged so much about having got what they wanted.
Perhaps this time the Republicans have reversed their customary practice of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and have stumbled into a less-ruinous outcome than usual.
Not that they deserve any credit for it.