What's next after the US Debt Ceiling?

With less than an hour to go before the debt ceiling deadline, President Obama signed legislation that basically kicks the debt can briefly down the road.  It brought an end to the government shutdown, reopening it until January 15th.  It also suspended the debt ceiling until February 7th*, and set up a committee to come up with a bipartisan budget deal.

If this seems like deja vu to some of you, it does look very similar to the deal we had following the crisis two years ago.  But there are a couple of critical differences here, which are worth looking into.

But first, let's take a look at what happened.  After both Barack Obama and John Boehner both failed to show leadership, and with just a few days to go before the deadline, the two Senate leaders agreed to sit down and work tirelessly towards a deal.  When it finally came to a vote last night, the result went like this:

	House		Senate
	Yea	Nay	Yea	Nay
Democrats	198	0	52	0
Republicans	87	144	27	18
Independents	0	0	2	0
TOTAL	285	144	81	18

Despite all of the nays in the Senate being Republicans, I'd still say that the vote there was a bipartisan one.  In the House, a majority of Republicans voted against the deal.  Fear of a primary challenge seemed to usurp fear of a default on government's legal obligations.

Now onto the deal.  In addition to kicking the can down the road, it sets up a committee to come up with a budget proposal by December 13th.  This sounds very similar to the deal struck in 2011, with one exception: I can't see any consequences for failure.  Last time, the "supercommittee" met knowing that across-the-board cuts, which later became known as the fiscal cliff, would be the consequences of failure.  We know that this is off the table this time; members of Congress have said leading up to the fiscal cliff that it was a mistake.  So if history is any guide, a deal by December - or by February, for that matter - is as likely as me landing on Mars.

But why is this?  Much of it comes down to gerrymandering, the optimization problem of redrawing the district boundaries to give your party the greatest number of seats with the same number of votes.  Once that's done, we're left with around 90% of seats which are, one way or the other, foregone conclusions, meaning that the primary elections in the House become more about ideological purity than attracting the middle ground that's not really needed.

Essentially, the US electoral system has evolved in such a way that, particularly in the House of Representatives, incompetence is incentivised and rewarded.  After all, if you're seen to be negotiating with the enemy, you risk losing your seat in a primary election by someone who's more ideologically pure.

So what do we do about it?  Americans are clearly loathing of Congress - a recent poll suggests that Americans prefer lice to Congress by a margin of 67-19, used car salesmen over Congress by 57-32, and traffic jams over Congress by 56-34.  (At least they're more popular than the Kardashians - that would just be beyond low.)  We need to find a way to bring personal accountability to members of Congress, and punish them when they demonstrate this level of incompetence.  Sadly, because of how the primaries work, simply saying "vote the bums out" is not going to be enough.  I think Americans need to take four actions:

• Ban politicians from drawing congressional boundaries. In each of the 43 states with more than one representative, the boundaries must be drawn by independent public servants, with guidelines to make the boundaries more about basic geographic areas (such as counties) than party registration.
• Ban taxpayer-funded primary elections.  In most states, if not all, the primaries are funded by taxpayers, including those whose political beliefs make them ineligible to vote in them. That's not something the founding fathers would approve of.  Parties can hold primaries if they want,  and they can get the state's help with logistics, but they have to pay for it.
• Punish Congress when they fail to pass a budget.  Whatever your opinion of what the role of government should be, the bare minimum should be to decide how tax money is to be spent. If Congress can't pass a full-year budget by the start of the fiscal year, they should automatically become ineligible for reelection.
• Find a party that aims for the center ground, and fund it. There is practically no center ground in Congress, particularly in the House.  If we want to see it there, not only does there need to be a third party in the center, it needs strong financial backing to get it into Congress.  It will be interesting to see if any emerge in the coming days.

Sadly, the first three items require Congress to vote against their self-interest, so none of them are going to happen.  The fourth is also unlikely, though non-zero, so the best hope America has of ending the Congressional incompetence.

*Though the debt ceiling has been suspended until February 7th, the "extraordinary measures" that the Treasury takes to extend its borrowing authority have been reset. Citigroup estimates that these measures will last until mid-March, CNBC reported.