U.S. Capitol
Photo credit: U.S. Government
Posted 8/8/11
Given the high-intensity partisan wrangling and maneuvering that characterized the struggle in Washington to reach agreement on raising the federal debt ceiling, you’d expect that Democrats in Congress (including those from Connecticut) would dutifully line up with their Democratic President Barack Obama and vote for the agreed compromise to ease the crisis. That did not happen.
Four members of the Connecticut delegation: Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, and Democratic Congressman Jim Himes and Joe Courtney voted for the bill to raise the debt limit. Three Democratic members of Congress from the state: John Larson, Rosa DeLauro, and Chris Murphy voted against the bill.
It is likely the three “naysayers” knew the bill would pass without their votes, and chose to vote against it for their own political reasons. Still, if the debt ceiling bill crashed and burned at the deadline, what would those Democrats have told their constituents? For weeks, Democrats had accused Republicans of stalling and bickering when the President urged them to come together for the good of the Nation and the economy and pass a debt ceiling bill.
The departure on the vote by Larson and DeLauro is all the more interesting because these two lawmakers hold spots in the House Democratic leadership. Larson is Democratic Caucus Chairman and DeLauro is co-chair of the Democratic leadership steering and policy committee. Their superior officers House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California), Minority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland), and Assistant Minority Leader James Clyburn (D-South Carolina) all voted for the bill.
Explaining his decision to vote no, Larson said that while he felt that Obama was “the first president in our history to have the nation’s fiscal health held hostage by an ideological minority” he could not bring himself to vote for the final debt ceiling compromise because he “cannot explain in good conscience to senior, students, and working families why it is that the bond sellers always get paid while they—the heart of our nation—continue to be squeezed.”
DeLauro said while she was glad “we passed an agreement in time to avoid default—the consequences of which would have been disastrous for middle class families”, she decided not to vote for the bill because “the spending cuts specified in this deal will slash critical investments in education, infrastructure and research—critical to job creation and economic growth.”
Murphy called the deficit fight “a manufactured crisis” and said though he had hoped to vote for a compromise that “fairly shares the burden of deficit reduction”, he determined the final bill let billionaires and corporations off the hook from sacrifices, instead placing “almost the entire burden of deficit reduction on Medicare beneficiaries, middle class families, and the poor.”
Murphy is running for U.S. Senate now, while Larson and DeLauro come from heavily-Democratic urban districts, so it seems they voted in line with their political interests—though they readily acknowledge that defeat of the debt ceiling bill could have touched off a crisis.
The Democrats from Connecticut who voted for the bill (plus Lieberman) stressed that danger in explaining their decision to back the measure.
Lieberman said, in the end, “the positive outweighs the negative”, in the debt ceiling measure. “It’s a bipartisan agreement at a time when this chamber (the Senate) and this city (Washington) have become reflexively and destructively partisan, and it’s clear if you look at our history that we only make progress when we compromise.”
Blumenthal, a freshman in the Senate, said though the deal was “far from perfect” he chose to vote for it “because the economic consequences of default were too dire and devastating to risk.” Contrary to DeLauro’s view that the cuts stipulated in the bill will harm job growth and the economy, Blumenthal argues that default would “stifle job creation and economic growth.”
Congressman Himes, from Fairfield County, said “compromise is never pretty and this bill is no cause for celebration.” However, he voted for the measure because it “removed the calamitous specter of a default that would have devastated our economy and hurt every American family and business.” Himes said spending cuts ordered in the bill “will be painful” but serious damage to Medicare and Medicaid was avoided.
Eastern Connecticut Congressman Joe Courtney said he voted for the bill because, with the debt ceiling deadline approaching, it represented “the only viable path to avoiding economic catastrophe.” Like Himes, Courtney believes the deal “protects seniors” and their key programs Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Lieberman, who is retiring next year, tried to see the issue from above the fray. He said Democrats fought to “protect entitlement spending” while Republicans wanted “to not raise taxes.” The veteran senator concluded: “The reality is we have got to do some of both if we’re going to get our country back into balance.”