Double dip recession: Obama says nation's good must supersede self-interest Close-9 Aug, 2011

9 Aug, 2011, 10.45AM IST, New York Times

Double dip recession: Obama says nation's good must supersede self-interest
Close

WASHINGTON: If ever there was a time for contrition in this town, it might be after the events of the last few days: A deeply embarrassing downgrading of the nation's credit rating and poll numbers showing public support for Congress at record lows were topped on Monday with a bracing plunge in the stock market.

But it was not to be. Even as the Dow Jones industrial average fell 5.6 percent on the heels of a 5.75 percent drop last week, congressional Republicans and Democrats retreated to their now-familiar positions, each accusing the other side of sparking the economic turmoil as President Barack Obama continued to preach compromise.

Even as he tried to calm an increasingly nervous country, there were few reassurances that any consensus on debt-reduction or remedies to spur the stalling economy were on the way.

"It's not a lack of plans or policies that is the problem here," Obama said Monday in his first public comments on the economy since Standard & Poor's downgraded the country's credit rating last Friday. "It's a lack of political will in Washington. It's the insistence on drawing lines in the sand, a refusal to put what's best for the country ahead of self-interest or party or ideology. And that's what we need to change."

Obama then offered, with no modification or expansion, that he would be presenting recommendations to a congressional committee charged with creating a deficit-reduction plan, but hewed to the same central points that he had made during the debt-ceiling negotiations, principally that spending cuts must be accompanied by tax increases.

Gene Sperling, the director of the National Economic Council, said: "You've got a president who has pushed his own supporters to accept politically painful choices, today encouraging a coalition of the willing from both sides to opt for compromise on deficit reduction on entitlement and tax reform at a time where we have seen the real economic harm that comes from drawing hard and fast lines in the sand. That is exactly what a president should be doing at a moment like now."

Congressional Republicans too, stuck to their talking points, offering up few fresh proposals. Repairing to their districts, they told voters that the reason for the downgrade of American debt and the precipitous slide in the stock market was not gridlock but a final budget deal that did not cut enough spending.

Democrats coined a new tagline - the "Tea Party downgrade"_ which they trotted out to anyone who would listen with the hopes that voters would blame Republicans for the nation's problems.

"This is the Tea Party downgrade because a minority of people in the House of Representatives countered even the will of many Republicans in the United States Senate who were prepared to do a bigger deal," said Sen. John Kerry on Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

While the tag may or may not stick, the political dynamics of the debt-ceiling vote were more complicated. Of the 60 members of the House Tea Party caucus, 32 voted in favor of the final debt deal and 28 voted against it.