After I wrote this last night, I came across Chait making basically the same point, but a bit more coherently:
Pete Peterson, an investor and longtime fiscal hawk, has devoted more than a half-billion dollars to lobby for a bipartisan debt-reduction agreement, funding a vast network of centrist anti-deficit activists, like the Concord Coalition, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and an organization called “the Campaign to Fix the Debt,” all of which have pounded a national drumbeat warning against the perils of the fiscal cliff. “Rhetoric won’t fix the debt, action will,” warns a statement by Fix the Debt. A “solution to the nation’s fiscal crisis,” scolded the Washington Post editorial page, which closely echoes the views of the Peterson network, “can be implemented only if Republicans and Democrats hold hands and jump together.” This is all utterly wrong. Bipartisan agreement is not necessary to fix the debt. Nothing is necessary to fix the debt. It is as if the network of activists, wonks, business leaders, and Beltway elder statesmen who have devoted themselves to building cross-party support for a deficit deal have grown more attached to the means of bipartisanship than to the ends for which it was intended. The budget deficit is a legislatively solved problem. It is, indeed, an oversolved problem.
Exactly. People are far more interested in seeming responsible and bipartisany than in actually doing anything. It should also be noted that the last time we had a balanced budget, conservatives screamed bloody murder that we were being grossly overtaxed and blew massive holes in the federal budget via huge tax cuts. Obsessing over the deficit ignores past experience, present reality, and future needs. It’s an entirely manufactured crisis and it has paralyzed us for years. It would all be kinda funny in its absurdity, if it weren’t so tragic.
edit: added link
520 Chestnut 
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