"Pound of Flesh"

Right-wing debt deal exacts its budget cuts from those least able to afford them.

Well, I am hardly the only person breathing an enormous sigh of relief right now, as we see the final vote tally come in for the debt ceiling package in the House. This means we are one step closer to averting global economic meltdown (fingers crossed for no further grandstanding in the Senate—where the deal awaits its final vote—that might nudge the needle back again toward financial doomsday). Even as we breathe easier, though—knowing that the worst case scenario is probably behind us—it’s worth pausing to recall that the relief we feel now is of the sort we might experience at the end of a stickup, when the outlaw walks away carrying only bags of money, and we realize we still at least possess our lives (some of us at any rate). For the fact remains that this whole ordeal was completely unnecessary in the first place—and viciously cruel.

Of course, it’s not absurd to worry about the size of the national debt—nor to look for reasonable ways to pull the reins on federal spending at a time when the economy has shown surprising resilience, the labor market is still quite hot, and the Federal Reserve is actively trying to temper inflation. But the way this debate unfolded showed that the true purpose of this economic hostage-taking was anything but a sincere effort to balance the budget. One of the few programs that actually ended up taking serious cuts is, paradoxically, one of the few federal line items that actually generates more revenue the more it is funded—namely, IRS enforcement efforts against tax evasion. Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised: the same politicians denouncing deficits now are those who backed massive tax cuts during the Trump presidency.

Most sadly of all, we have seen where right-wing politicians’ priorities lie, and whom our elected leaders will ultimately protect. Their calls for spending cuts were framed as a broader belt-tightening for the country; but the costs of the new austerity, as they often do, will fall almost exclusively on those who can least afford them. Middle class entitlement programs will not be affected by the budget cuts. Neither will the Pentagon; and negotiators were even trying to boost defense spending throughout the talks. Only nutrition assistance for the needy, then, is at last seen as expendable. It would seem that the first and only people who are expected to make sacrifices for the national debt are the poor living on food stamps. The epigraph to this bill might well have been Matthew 25:29: “to those who have much, more will be given—but from those who have little, even that little which they have will be taken away.”

In short, our politicians may not have succeeded in actually saving any money—but they have made sure to seize this opportunity, nonetheless, as a chance to grind the faces of the poor; that is, to once again inflict needless suffering on those with the least political power to defend themselves. Indeed, latest estimates indicate that three-quarters of a million people could lose benefits under this deal—small potatoes compared to the overall federal budget, but a matter of life-or-death for many of those families, at a time when costs are rising. Plus the new “work requirements” are coming while economic policymakers are still deliberately trying to reduce job openings in order to curb inflation and cool the labor market (how’s that for a Catch-22?: politicians seek to increase unemployment with one hand, then turn around and demand of the most impoverished: hey, why aren’t you working?!)

Rep. Gwen Moore was among the few elected officials to give the hypocrisy and brutality of these measures the scorn they deserve. Earlier this evening, the New York Times quoted her speaking from the House floor, saying of her colleagues: “It seems like the pound of flesh you get is more delicious than having savings.” The paper noted the overtones of metaphorical “cannibalism” in Moore’s Shakespearean denunciation of the proposed right-wing budget cuts, and indeed, there is more than a little of Swift’s “Modest Proposal” in a debt ceiling plan that purports to balance the federal budget on the backs of families on TANF and infants on WIC. It is hard to know what else to make of a right-wing negotiating posture so grimly Malthusian that it actively fights for more money for guns and bombs at the very moment it is pushing to cut the survival rations of the poor, in the name of fiscal austerity.

But perhaps the most fitting way to characterize the debt ceiling deal in literary terms remains the verse from Matthew cited above. There is a line echoing this passage in Joseph Conrad’s political novel Under Western Eyes that likewise seems relevant in this moment, and that came to mind for me in watching the final debt deal pass the House. Conrad’s parentless Russian protagonist Razumov has just found himself entangled in a political plot that he fears will expose him to retaliation and suspicion from the Czarist authorities. He reflects on the injustice of the fact that he seemed to be targeted for these ordeals precisely because of his vulnerable position, as an impoverished orphan. “Because I haven’t that,” Razumov reflects, referring to his “lack of parentage”—“must everything else be taken away from me?”

We can only be left asking the same question, of the budget deal railroaded through Congress on the backs of the poor. Just because people lack political power, influence, or money—is that any reason to take away what little they have? Just because people are poor, does that mean they should be the first and only to suffer? Or would a decent society ask those with the most, among its members, to shoulder the lion’s share?