Republicans Don’t Really Care About Reducing America’s Debt
by Peter Beinart

Oct 21, 2013

They love deficit reduction in the abstract—they even risked a second financial crisis over the debt ceiling. But over the next two months, watch them avoid making tough debt choices to avert another shutdown, says Peter Beinart.

The press has spent the last few days tallying the reasons Congress probably won’t forge the big budget deal necessary to spare the country future brinkmanship of the kind we endured last week. The reasons are familiar: John Boehner is still weak. President Obama still won’t fold. Ted Cruz still exists.

But there’s another reason, which gets less attention. Most Republicans aren’t really interested in reducing America’s debt. I know that sounds strange. After all, conservatives have spent the Obama era screaming that unless America reduces its debt, we’ll become Greece or Detroit or ancient Rome. Last week, some congressional Republicans found the prospect of raising the debt limit so horrifying that they were willing to risk a second financial crisis instead.

But ignore the rhetoric and watch what the GOP does between now and December. Last week, as part of the deal to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling, Congress gave budget negotiators roughly two months to agree on a deficit-reduction deal. Basically, the negotiators have three options. First is to replace the “sequester”—the automatic cuts to discretionary spending that kicked in last March—with cuts to long-term “entitlement” programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Second is to replace the sequester with both entitlement cuts and tax hikes. Third is to do nothing and let the sequester continue.


more...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/21/republicans-don-t-really-care-about-reducing-america-s-debt.html