Debt-Ceiling Agreement: No Cause for Celebration

This week’s agreement to increase the U.S. debt ceiling is no cause for celebration.

Regardless of what the spin doctors tell us, there are no winners here. The political landscape is covered with the blood of all the politicians who were losers in this “no win” battle. Among the losers are:

• The President, who lost the leadership on U.S. deficits last December when he ignored the thoughtful recommendations of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson Commission, leaving deficit reduction up to the politicians in Congress.
• The Republican Party, which let itself be dominated by Tea Party extremists, ignoring the wishes of the majority of Americans, walking away from a sound agreement and demonstrating its willingness to let the country sink for political gain.
• The Democratic Party, which has rigidified into the party of more spending and higher taxes while ignoring the country’s mounting deficits. It even undermined its President as he attempted to negotiate an agreement with House Speaker John Boehner.
• The United States, which has lost credibility in the eyes of the world as a constructive democracy and sound fiscal system which other countries can look to for leadership of the global economy.

The last minute agreement to avoid an historic default did not solve anything. It merely postponed the disagreements and set up yet another committee to resolve these complex issues.

“Gridlock” has become the new order of U.S. politics. Politics as the art of compromise has been abandoned by the current group of politicians who are willing to jettison the country’s best interests in order to gain short-term political advantage.

This is the third time since the November elections that the country has been traumatized by political deadlock:

• In a single weekend last December, shortly after the Bowles-Simpson Commission proposed a bi-partisan $4 trillion deficit reduction plan, the President and Congressional leadership went in the opposite direction.  They lowered taxes and increased government spending by a combined $4 trillion, intensifying  the problems that lay ahead. 
• In April, unable to agree on a budget for this fiscal year, the politicians once again took the country to the brink of shutting down the government. The midnight agreement involved more compromises that kept the country running on an empty tank.
• For the past month the country has been paralyzed by the artificially-created debt ceiling duel. While mounting deficits are a growing concern, the politicians on both sides of the aisle were far less concerned about reducing them than they were in gaining political advantage through an historic game of “chicken.”

The biggest loser in all this is the United States and its citizens. Why? Because we are losing confidence in our elected leaders to put the interests of the country ahead of their political ideology and to reach sound agreements that enable the country to grow and produce jobs while putting the country on a sound fiscal footing.

Meanwhile, this debt ceiling tug of war distracted our leaders from the real issue: the sagging U.S. economy and jobs crisis. The U.S. continues to slip into a “no growth, no jobs” malaise, as recent GDP growth figures prove and twenty-six million Americans (16.2% of the work force) are unable to find full-time jobs. Until people get back to work and the economy starts growing, we will just continue to fight over a shrinking pie, as deficits continue to mount. The only solution to this dilemma is to get the private sector growing once again in the U.S.

However, the CEOs of companies, both large and small, that I have talked to in recent weeks are completely fed up by the political struggles in Washington.  They are turned off and tuned out. They want to have no part of the debate, unless they feel that they have to weigh in to protect their best interests.

These CEOs are pragmatists, not political idealists. In the absence of domestic growth opportunities, they are looking overseas where great growth potential exists. Meanwhile, they are shedding U.S. jobs in favor of productivity gains, which are substantial. Privately, they don’t believe that the President or either party in Congress is committed to building the private sector and removing the myriad barriers that are preventing growth in the U.S.

How can this dilemma be resolved? By presidential leadership, in which President Obama puts himself and his re-election on the line by taking a series of actions to restore private sector jobs and growth while cutting the deficits. President Obama is an extremely smart, savvy leader who knows what to do. Now he must take the political risk to do it because the risks to the country of inaction are far greater.