by Susie
David Dayen on the coming Grand Bargain:
Democrats and Republicans in Washington are going to look for a substitute deficit package in the lame duck session, the point of the lowest ebb of political accountability, with members of Congress who will never face voters again participating, after America has elected a new Congress and possibly a new President. We know that deficit hawks of both parties are already making their plans on this substitute. It could include slashes to entitlement programs when they actually need to be increased to be adequate. It could include a raft of tax cuts even though they have done the brunt of the work on exploding the deficit, without the value of helping the economy. And what it will most surely not include, unless the work gets done today, is the perspective of those ordinary Americans who would rather not see their futures sacrificed for the betterment of the well-off in society.
And remember, “White House officials said this week that the offer is still on the table.”
Well, we the voters deserve to know how a sitting Congressperson will vote of such a thing — Who has the clout to demand and get a solemn promise on what that person will do?
We the voters in the lower income ranges tend to not get honesty of commitment from our politicians.
So, what do we do?
As Dave points out, the danger zone is the lame duck session. That’s when the politicians who lost will be auditioning for K Street.
Yes, indeed — but we need to get any sitting Congress people to make a declaration prior to the election. We need to pin them to say what they will do during that lame duck session.
So, how do we do that? They tend to not pay much attention to we the non-One Percenters….