Budget Crisis Averted! Are We Supposed to Grateful?

Oh it’s only a $15.5 trillion economy I suppose and fortunately for the US and the world on Friday the partisan politics that has been plaguing budget negotiations over the past weeks and months has resulted in an agreed federal budget…kind of. With literally minutes to go until the midnight deadline that would have forced the first shutdown of the federal government in 15 years an agreement was reached, so the question that I and no doubt others will pose is, are we supposed to be impressed?

The bitterness and political vitriol espoused by both sides of the debate over recent weeks has seen political and fiscal discourse in one of the world’s great democracies reduced to a soap drama.

On the table for negotiation had been military spending, the subsidisation of pap smears, good old social welfare, agricultural subsidies etc. The end result is a $78 billion budgetary reduction that both sides admit will hurt sections of the community.

In reality the $78 billion in cuts is small fry when compared to the $14 trillion debt ceiling, equivalent to annual GDP, that the federal government has to address sooner rather than later. The prospect of this pending an immovable fiscal challenge generates a series of depressing thoughts.

The main thought that is circulating my brain like a great white circling a stricken life raft is, if America’s political leadership nearly shut down the government over disagreements over some loose change that had fallen down the back of the sofa, then how the hell are they going to agree on cutting $14 trillion in debt?

Undoubtedly both sides will claim victory and the partisan politics will continue as the pundit community analyse, in forensic detail, the carcases of abandoned or severely cut programs and how the those cuts bolster their personal and political philosophies. Some may even use chalkboards to highlight their point, while they still can.

Republican’s in theory achieved 78% of the spending cuts they had hoped for they wanted $100 million in cuts. The result is likely to rally the republican base and give the tea party movement the whiff of blood that they have been thirsting.

With the 2012 Presidential election campaign under way with Obama already announcing is candidacy, the pressure cooker political environment more likely to successfully steam a brussel sprout than address the greatest debt crisis ever faced by the world’s largest economy.

The only prediction that any pundit can credibly make is that as we head towards an election year, the political climate is going to continue to be stormy and in many instances down right ugly.

That brussel sprout better taste good, but how many of us like their sprouts?