Republicans have stumbled on a brilliant long-term stagnation strategy, and Democrats, it seems, are all too content to play along, step by stagnating step.
From CNN:
The second-ranking Senate Democrat [Dick Durbin] said Sunday [on ABC's "This Week"] that extending unemployment benefits won't necessarily be a sticking point for his party in budget negotiations....
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio who sits on the House and Senate negotiating panel, also appearing on ABC, said he ... was glad Durbin indicated that Democrats wouldn’t tie the budget deal to extending jobless benefits.
Glad? Downright ecstatic, I should think.
Republicans have realized that they can inflict absolutely insane assaults on macroeconomic sanity--and therefore sustained economic recovery--not by shutting down the government themselves, but by threatening Democrats with blame for such a shutdown, should the latter be so sensible as to insist that further impoverishing the already economically wounded is a non-negotiable barbarity.
Krugman, this morning, for the umpteenth time, takes note of just how preposterous Republicans' miserly myopia is:
Businesses aren’t failing to hire because they can’t find willing workers; they’re failing to hire because they can’t find enough customers. And slashing unemployment benefits--which would have the side effect of reducing incomes and hence consumer spending--would just make the situation worse.
Yet I doubt it's Republican myopia in principal play here. In blocking a discrete piece of macroeconomic sanity in budget after budget the GOP can successfully chip away at the very foundations of America's civilizing welfare state.
Surely the Dems can see this. And surely--right?--at some point they'll draw a line, blame or no blame.
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