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Yesterday's breakdown of the debt limit talks, followed by Obama's hastily organized press conference, helped ratchet up the pressure on the debt limit negotiations even further. Some say Boehner and Co. are being held hostage by the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. Others insist that a Republican willingness to raise the debt limit at all is compromise enough. To hear the "Don't Budge on Revenue" crowd tell it, now (as opposed to all of the preceding decades) really is the absolute-end-of-the-line-have-to-rein-in-spending-or-we're-all-doomed moment.
In looking further into the debt limit backstory I was most surprised to find out how many times this particular brand of political theater has been performed in the past. Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture presents a summary of past debt ceiling limit occurrences as well as snippets from the corresponding debates. As Table 7.3 from the Office of Management and Budget's list of Historic Tables indicates, the debt limit has been raised dozens of times since 1940, often with the same level of political acrimony.
Beyond that, the Grover Norquist Taxpayer Protection Pledge that so many Republicans seem beholden to (or at least willing to sign) strikes me as somewhat bizarre. Norquist is not an elected official after all, yet somehow he and his organization (Americans for Tax Reform) have positioned themselves in such a way that their ideological beliefs hold tremendous sway in the current debate.
I guess I shouldn't really be surprised though. It's not all that different from health insurance companies dictating health care reform, Disney influencing copyright law, or pharmaceutical companies having a say in the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Plan. At least in those instances the relationship between lobbyists and legislators was only implied; legislators never had to actually sign anything ahead of time.
That's the thing really. From a policy perspective the pledge itself is a very restrictive document. It's unqualified, unequivocal, and premised on the ideological belief that all tax increases are bad and all tax credits (and deductions) are good; now, forever, and in perpetuity, no matter what happens. It's a document that assumes the answer even before it knows what the question is. Obviously there's great political pressure to sign it, but unless I had a really good crystal ball, I'm not sure I'd want to put my signature to something that limiting.
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