Another day, another fiscal blueprint. With the August 2 deadline for raising the US debt ceiling days away, Democrats and Republicans continue to talk past each other. New plans are flying thick and fast. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives just passed a bill to “cut, cap, and balance” the budget – a scheme that the Democratic-controlled Senate is certain to reject, as everybody knows. And the so-called Gang of Six senators, three from each party, sprang back to life with another “grand bargain” to cut public borrowing by about $4,000bn over 10 years.
This furious activity disguises an underlying drift towards an acceptable, though hardly impressive, solution to the immediate problem – that of avoiding default.
The House apparently had to get “cut, cap, and balance” out of its system. Even advocates of shredding US public services, capping future public spending at levels not seen for half a century, and outlawing counter-cyclical fiscal policy by constitutional amendment do not expect this bill to become law. But they wanted to make their point, and they have.