Did Biden *want* to lose the debt negotiations?
Yes — and his Oval Office address was a big F you to the American people
Biden gave his first-ever address fro the Oval Office on Friday — to brag about giving in to Republicans on a debt ceiling crisis that he and Democrats purposely helped create. As The Lever’s David Sirota very clearly explained on Democracy Now yesterday (video below), the Democrats didn’t begrudgingly agree to Republican demands.
Biden and the corporate wing of the party *wanted* to have an excuse to make cuts to social programs and increase defense spending.
“Wait!” you may be saying! “I thought the nasty Republicans were the ones who wanted this debt ceiling crisis! They were risking a worldwide economic meltdown, but President Biden was the one who skillfully fought back against their unreasonable demands to reach a fair compromise and avoid default. Thank God we have Biden to stand up to those Republicans and avoid a financial crash!”
If you watch or read mainstream media, that’s what your take-away probably is. But what if I told you that all of this was a bunch of theater? Biden never intended to find a way to avoid this so-called crisis. He never planned to use the 14th Amendment. He never seriously meant he wouldn’t negotiate with Republicans.
Biden has been on the record repeatedly as wanting to cut social programs. This is what Joe “FDR 2.0” Biden (as some in the media have dubbed Biden) said in 1995 (quote via The Intercept)
“When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well,” he told the Senate in 1995. “I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans’ benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the government. And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice, I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time.” (A freeze would have reduced the amount that would be paid out, cutting the program’s benefit.)
But maybe he’s changed? The lead-up to this manufactured crisis suggests that’s not the case. As David Sirota explained yesterday on Democracy Now, the debt ceiling emergency was several months in the making, when Democrats — who still controlled both houses of Congress — decided not to raise the ceiling. You read that right: they could have raised the ceiling in December when they were in the majority. They chose not to, and couldn’t even come up with a good excuse not to.
As It’s no shocker to anyone who knows anything about politics that the GOP would make demands once they got control of the House in January, just like they’ve done several times in the past (against Clinton and Obama). By not raising the debt ceiling limit last year, it gave Biden and Democrats the perfect excuse to get cuts to social programs like Biden’s always wanted to.
Here are some clips from Sirota’s appearance on Democracy Now, where he breaks down who the winners were, who the losers were, and why this deal which had NO benefits whatsoever for the American people (shouldn’t a compromise involve some take and give?) was actually exactly what the Democratic Party wanted.
If these were difficult compromises that were necessary, why would he give an address from the Oval Office to brag about the deal?
If you were forced to cut food stamp benefits for hundreds of thousands of families, forced to make millions of students pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars each, forced to apply PAYGO to executive actions, forced to give more money to the Pentagon — it would not be a cause for celebration.
But if that was the plan all along though, and you just got away with it with the helpful compliance of the mainstream media, then taking a victory lap makes sense. The Republicans won, the Democrats won, the establishment won, and we’re the ones who lost. The American people will be stuck with the bill, as usual.
Good piece, you totally get it. But then, David and Democracy Now will still turn around and tell you to vote for Democrats, though...