In the World

Better than a government default

It's official: Congress passed a debt-ceiling deal--concerns about a nail-biter in the House yesterday were
overblown--and the president signed it. This is certainly preferable to the
country defaulting on its obligations, and Obama never showed much interest in
running an end around Congress.

This is not, however, an
inspiring piece of legislation. It makes deep cuts to discretionary spending--a
relatively small slice of the budget pie but
one that includes many antipoverty programs--and establishes a process for more
such cuts later. (Defense cuts are included here as well.) The bill punts on
entitlement reform, tax expenditures and new revenues. And while some spending
cuts are delayed to reduce harm to the fragile economy and the Americans it's
left jobless, the bill does nothing to alleviate this situation in the
meantime.

It didn't have to be this way.
Tackling the deficit and tackling unemployment may be in conflict
conceptually and, more to the point, in terms of political rhetoric. But as a
long-term economic strategy, they work in tandem. Ezra Klein explains: