In the Next Budget Fight: Hope for a Tie
Washington’s been obsessed with weighing the winners and losers from last Friday’s budget deal. But in the larger spending fight to come there’s more at stake than political points.
“Ties”, athletes learn, “are like kissing your sister.” So to avoid stalemates at the end of regular play and thereby satisfy players and fans alike, we have created extra innings, overtime, shootouts and playoff holes.
Not all of human endeavors, however, lend themselves to such tidy conclusions. That is certainly true when it comes to crafting public policy and passing legislation. Unfortunately, we Americans have difficulty grappling with nuance and ambiguity; we want things to be easily and quickly assessed---it’s more comfortable that way.
We’ve seen this dynamic at work in the aftermath of Friday night’s 11th hour agreement to appropriate funds for the remaining months of the 2011 fiscal year, and thereby avert a shutdown of the federal government. The words at the bottom of ABC’s Sunday edition of This Week alerted us to the outcome’s “Winners and Losers”. All of the day’s talk shows were similarly consumed, as were the weekend opinion pages and most political blogs.
Early in my career, I was an organizer for the teachers’ union in California. In that job I led a number of strikes and bargained contracts. One of the lessons I learned in the process is that every agreement thus arrived at is, at some basic level, mutually unsatisfactory. Both sides have to give up on things they really, really want in order to strike a deal. Both sides also have to accept things they don’t like. All of this is a necessary part of the bargaining process.
The same thing holds true in governing a pluralistic and representative democracy. No side gets everything it wants, and every side has to give in on issues it cares about. There are no “winners and losers” in the either/or, two dimensional sense. In most cases people win some and lose some, they get a little and give a little---or a lot, depending on the issue and the power of the respective and competing sides.
This week a new and far more consequential policy battle will be joined when President Obama announces his plan for a long-term budget policy. The President’s approach will contrast sharply with that put forward last week by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan. Other plans are being readied by the bipartisan Senate “Gang of Six”, and by House Democrats. The ensuing fight will be as intense as anything we have witnessed in many years, more so--I suspect--than what occurred over health care reform a couple of years ago.
The rhetoric will be heated and at times ugly; if recent history is any guide “the end justifies the means” zealots at both ends of the political spectrum will employ tactics that cause the rest of us to recoil in disgust or alarm. Politicians on the left and right will, we can assume, routinely play to the cheap seats.
But, if the Republic is to endure, and if we are to have a reasonably effective fiscal policy in the future, at the end of the day Americans are going to have to settle for a tie game. Will the Tea Partiers accept such a result? How about the Move On.org folks? Ultimately, they will have no choice.
We can expect that in his speech Wednesday the President will, in addition to offering specific policy options, also set the proper tone for the coming debate. Will the Republican leadership respond in kind? Those of us in the vast political middle will be watching and listening and hoping.
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