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The New York Times assumes President Biden must surrender to Republican extortion [1]

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Date: 2023-04-27  

WASHINGTON — This week’s vote by House Republicans to couple deep spending cuts with an agreement to raise the debt limit for one year has put President Biden on the defensive, forcing him to confront a series of potentially painful choices at a perilous economic moment.

In the next paragraph, Tankersley allows the minor point that President Biden has already made his position on the issue quite clear, “[T]hat he would not negotiate spending cuts or other efforts to reduce the federal debt as part of discussions over raising the nation’s debt limit.”

Seems like a fairly straightforward position on the president’s part: the country will not bow to hostage-takers. Because Republicans’ conflation of their most rabid budgetary fantasies with the plain fact of the country’s duty to pay its already incurred bills does not merit or deserve serious consideration. End of story, or it should be.

Not according to the New York Times. The subhead to Tankersley’s story reads “After Republicans passed a bill that pairs spending cuts and fossil fuel support with raising the nation’s borrowing cap, the president must decide when and how to negotiate.”

Not whether to negotiate, but when and how. Why? Well, according to Tankersley there are evidently important considerations at stake:

[B]usiness groups, fiscal hawks and some congressional Democrats are calling on Mr. Biden to begin negotiating in earnest toward a deal that would avoid a default on the debt, which could come as soon as June or July.

“Business groups, fiscal hawks, and some congressional Democrats” are urging President Biden to “begin negotiating in earnest” in response to this baldfaced, cynical Republican extortion tactic. The same tactic that, once treated as legitimate, they will doubtlessly wield again and again, year after year.

But how exactly does one “negotiate in earnest” with a cabal of MAGA fanatics completely uninterested in governing, the majority of whom already voted to overturn a fair and lawful election? What sort of “earnest” effort might be made with Reps. Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene (just to pick a few examples) in those circumstances?

No answer? OK, then. Who might these “business groups” be? Why, it’s our friends, the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, two of the most powerful lobbying groups for the Republican Party. And they think the president should “engage.” How nice!

[O]n Wednesday, leading business lobby groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, lauded the House passage of the bill and called on Mr. Biden to engage.

Quelle surprise! The most anti-regulatory, anti-government paladins of free enterprise in this country want President Biden to “engage” with Republicans who just submitted a bill decimating Medicaid and gutting nearly the entirety of President Biden’s legislative accomplishments thus far.

Mr. Biden and his aides now must choose how quickly to engage with Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California...[.]

Not whether he should “engage,” but how quickly. Because of course, he must engage, right?

And just who are these “fiscal hawks” calling on President Biden to make nice with the Republican bomb-throwing caucus? We don’t know. Tankersley doesn’t enlighten us. They are mysteriously unnamed in his article.

OK, how about those “congressional democrats?” The ones who are “calling on” the President to negotiate with these extortionists? Who are they?

Again, none are named in Tankersley’s article.

But I digress. I noted at the outset that to appreciate articles like this, one has to internalize certain fixed principles about “fair play” and “good faith” commonly accepted by the traditional media. Helpfully, Tankersley incorporates several of them in a single paragraph:

The president faces a cascading set of decisions as the nation, which has already bumped up against its $31.4 trillion debt limit, barrels toward default. He will need to find what, if any, common ground on spending cuts he has with Republicans, who do not share his preference for reducing the nation’s debt path largely by raising taxes on corporations and the rich. He will need to determine if he is prepared to sign any debt limit increase that is attached to conditions demanded by House conservatives.

The “nation” is not “barreling” toward default. The nation’s already-incurred debts aren’t “bumping up” to anything they haven’t “bumped up” to in the past century. They’re deliberately being held hostage by a group of fanatical, MAGA-deluded Republican Congressmen who have collectively decided that imposing their unwanted ideology on the rest of the country is worth the price of inflicting an economic calamity on all Americans. So rather than do what Congresses have previously done 78 times, they’ve decided to dangle the terror of an unforced, unnecessary default over all of our heads, to try to impose their will, since they can’t rely on the normal legislative process to do it.

Ultimately, he may need to decide how aggressively to intervene in the delicate politics of House leadership.

Someone please enlighten me here. Why should President Biden care about “the delicate politics of House leadership,” when the entire economic future of the country is being held hostage by the Republican Party? Should he be afraid of negotiating with the wrong terrorists?

But we are told President Biden is forced to endure a “cascading set of decisions” in an effort to find “common ground” with Republicans who don’t “share his preference[s].” It all sounds so genteel, doesn’t it? Nothing about the decision by Republicans to subvert the entire purpose of the 14th Amendment, which declares that the credit of the United States “shall not be questioned.” Nothing about the fact that this is not normal.

All of this raises the question: Is this how the media will present itself when the economy tanks from collapsed foreign investment and consumer confidence, the stock market crashes, peoples’ retirement funds are shredded, and companies start to dry up and shed workers, leaving millions without health care to fend for themselves? Will they still be quoting unnamed business leaders who cluck their tongues while prattling on about “earnest” negotiations? Will they regard the default on our nation’s debts as some type of fait accompli, and “Gosh, Mr. President, you should have negotiated with those terrorists?”

Or will they blame the people actually responsible for the calamity?

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/27/2166246/-The-New-York-Times-assumes-President-Biden-must-surrender-to-Republican-extortion

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