As the dust settles, perspective emerges. From a Fallows reader:
When one looks at the immediate impact of the debt ceiling agreement, it appears that the GOP got roughly $25 billion in immediate cuts in exchange for a $2 trillion extension of the debt ceiling through the next election. Everything else, the $2.4975 trillion remainder of their "victory" will have to take place after 2012 AND it will have to include, if no Grand Bargain is reached, equal cuts from the Defense budget for every dime of Discretionary cuts, while leaving out SS and Medicare. In between, we can have an election and the GOP will have to run on continuing the Bush tax cuts which, when they run out under a Democratically controlled Congress (ie: Senate vetoing House belligerence) will add $4 trillion over ten years in increased revenue.
I have to say I'm not that unhappy with this result, as I explained last night. But that's because I want serious budget cuts and don't regard our current debt as benign. I guess that is what makes me not-a-liberal. But I also want shared sacrifice in the age of austerity and think major tax reform and means-testing of entitlements can get us much of the way there. I also think that a large part of our debt is due to an overweening military machine whose use in Iraq and Afghanistan has been, by any measure, one of the least cost-effective uses of $4 trillion around.
When I ask myself: has this stop-gap deal made these long-term objectives – cutting entitlement and military spending, and tax reform – easier to get? My answer is: probably.
The Dish 