An Urban's Rural View

As farmers know only too well, money for federal programs has been tight in recent years. Spending cuts and tax increases, budget deals and debt-ceiling increases -- these have dominated the political debate.

In the three years it took to pass a farm bill it was always understood that agriculture had to accept less. Some have referred to these years as the Age of Austerity.

Question: Is the Age of Austerity now over?

It's tempting to think so. In ways small and large Washington suddenly seems less preoccupied with the deficit and the debt.

-- For the first time in years, Republicans agreed to raise the government's debt ceiling without demanding spending concessions in return.

-- President Obama dropped his proposal to make a change in the calculation of Social Security benefits that would have saved $233 billion over ten years.

-- In a rare display of bipartisanship, Congress undid a spending cut on military pensions it had adopted as part of a budget deal two months earlier.

So is it over? Anything's possible, but this seems more like a lull in a storm than the end of an age, a bit of political regrouping in the run-up to the mid-term Congressional elections.

No one thinks the Democrats will take the House of Representatives this year, and as long as the Republicans have the House, austerity survives. If the GOP wins the Senate, which it might, austerity thrives. And if we get a Republican president in 2017, austerity reigns.

As conservatives point out, austerity is a relative term. During some of these austere years the U.S. has run trillion-dollar deficits, and even this year's $500 billion isn't small. Some austerity, the conservatives sniff.

Liberals retort that the recession called for far more stimulus than the government provided; fiscal policy was far tighter than it looked. Uncle Sam, in the liberals' view, was really Uncle Scrooge.

The conservatives may have a point but this has still been an era of austerity in one very important way: The terms of the debate revolved around austerity. Advocates of increased spending had to dodge and duck. The only fiscal questions that mattered were how to cut the deficit and trim the debt.

Has that changed? On the surface, maybe. The Republicans are talking about Obamacare, the Democrats about inequality. But no one is talking about ballooning the deficit. Yes, the president's budget proposes $56 billion in new spending, but it also proposes to close tax loopholes and reduce other spending to compensate.

If a Democrat campaigning on a platform of inequality sweeps into the White House next time and swings the House and Senate Democratic, the Age of Austerity will likely end. Until then, it's safest to assume we're still in it.

Urban Lehner

urbanity@hotmail.com

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