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<DIV class=timestamp>August 1, 2011</DIV>
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<H1><NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">Tea Party’s War on
America</NYT_HEADLINE></H1><NYT_BYLINE>
<H6 class=byline>By <A class=meta-per title="More Articles by Joe Nocera"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/columns/josephnocera/?inline=nyt-per"
rel=author>JOE NOCERA</A></H6></NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>
<DIV id=articleBody><NYT_CORRECTION_TOP></NYT_CORRECTION_TOP>
<P>You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages
them. </P>
<P>These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea
Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent
demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to
destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were
incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was
worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took. </P>
<P>Like ideologues everywhere, they scorned compromise. When John Boehner, the
House speaker, <A
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/us/politics/26deal.html?_r=1">tried to
cut a deal</A> with President Obama that included some modest revenue increases,
they humiliated him. After this latest agreement <A
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/us/politics/01FISCAL.html">was finally
struck</A> on Sunday night — amounting to a near-complete capitulation by Obama
— Tea Party members went on Fox News to complain that it only called for $2.4
trillion in cuts, instead of $4 trillion. It was head-spinning. </P>
<P>All day Monday, the blogosphere and the talk shows mused about which party
would come out ahead politically. Honestly, who cares? What ought to matter is
not how these spending cuts will affect our politicians, but how they’ll affect
the country. And I’m not even talking about the terrible toll $2.4 trillion in
cuts will take on the poor and the middle class. I am talking about their effect
on America’s still-ailing economy. </P>
<P>America’s real crisis is not a debt crisis. It’s an unemployment crisis. Yet
this agreement not only doesn’t address unemployment, it’s guaranteed to make it
worse. (Incredibly, the Democrats even abandoned their demand for extended
unemployment benefits as part of the deal.) As Mohamed El-Erian, the chief
executive of the bond investment firm Pimco, told me, fiscal policy includes
both a numerator and a denominator. “The numerator is debt,” he said. “But the
denominator is growth.” He added, “What we have done is accelerate forward, in a
self-inflicted manner, the numerator. And, in the process, we have undermined
the denominator.” Economic growth could have gone a long way toward shrinking
the deficit, while helping put people to work. The spending cuts will shrink
growth and raise the likelihood of pushing the country back into recession. </P>
<P>Inflicting more pain on their countrymen doesn’t much bother the Tea Party
Republicans, as they’ve repeatedly proved. What is astonishing is that both the
president and House speaker are claiming that the deal will help the economy. Do
they really expect us to buy that? We’ve all heard what happened in 1937 when
Franklin Roosevelt, believing the Depression was over, <A
href="http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/are-we-about-to-repeat-the-mistakes-of-1937/">tried
to rein in federal spending</A>. Cutting spending spiraled the country right
back into the Great Depression, where it stayed until the arrival of the
stimulus package known as World War II. That’s the path we’re now on. Our
enemies could not have designed a better plan to weaken the American economy
than this debt-ceiling deal. </P>
<P>One thing Roosevelt did right during the Depression was legislate into being
a social safety net to soften the blows that a free-market economy can mete out
in tough times. During this recession, it’s as if the government is going out of
its way to make sure the blows are even more severe than they have to be. The
debt-ceiling debate reflects a harsher, less empathetic America. It’s sad to
see. </P>
<P>My own view is that Obama should have played <A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/debt-limit-standoff-top-democrats-revive-14th-amendment-option-to-raise-ceiling/2011/07/29/gIQAnsr2hI_story.html">the
14th Amendment card</A>, using its language about “the validity of the public
debt” to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. Yes, he would have infuriated the
Republicans, but so what? They already view him as the Antichrist. Legal
scholars believe that Congress would not have been able to sue to overturn his
decision. Inexplicably, he chose instead a course of action that maximized the
leverage of the Republican extremists. </P>
<P>Assuming the Senate passes the bill on Tuesday, the debt ceiling will be a
nonissue until after the next election. But the debilitating deficit battles are
by no means over. Thanks to this deal, a newly formed super committee of
Congress is supposed to target another $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in cuts by
late November. If those cuts don’t become law by Dec. 23, automatic
across-the-board cuts will be imposed, including deep reductions in defense
spending. </P>
<P>As has been explained ad nauseam, the threat of defense cuts is supposed to
give the Republicans an incentive to play fair with the Democrats in the
negotiations. But with our soldiers still fighting in Afghanistan, which side is
going to blink if the proposed cuts threaten to damage national security? Just
as they did with the much-loathed bank bailout, which most Republicans spurned
even though financial calamity loomed, the Democrats will do the responsible
thing. Apparently, that’s their problem. </P>
<P>For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But
rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough. After all, they’ve gotten
so much encouragement. </P><NYT_CORRECTION_BOTTOM>
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<DIV class="wrapper opposingFloatControl"><FONT size=2
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>Wayne A. Fox<BR><A
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