President Obama is holding a town hall at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland to discuss the his plans for raising the debt ceiling and reducing the deficit. Live feed and coverage below, and join the discussion in the comments.
8:48 AM PT: The next question is from a teacher who doesn't know what to tell her class about how government is supposed to work when she hears Republicans saying they refuse to compromise. She says she's always taught compromise is the nature of our system, but doesn't know what to say with GOP refusing to compromise. President Obama tells her to keep on teaching compromise, citing the Emancipation Proclamation's failure to free all slaves as an example of how compromise is part of the American tradition. Obama says gerrymandering has contributed to partisanship: Republicans are worried about getting challenged from the right with a primary challenge, he says. The media is splintered. He says Democrats only read NYT and MSNBC. Conservatives only read WSJ and watch Fox News.
8:55 AM PT: Next question is from a gentleman with a disability, making the case to President Obama that we cannot pull away support from people who need it. President Obama says if we reduce support for people with disabilities it will just cost more money down the line because they'll need more assistance in future years. (Of course, if Republicans are in power, they won't get that assistance even though they'll need it.) Obama concludes with a general defense of the idea of making investments that pay off in future years. We're moving to the last question now.
8:58 AM PT: Last question is on gentrification. And that is a great way to end this thing because the one thing that shined through in the questions that were posed to President Obama is this: people do not give a shit about the debt limit or deficit reduction. Especially people in his political base. And every day he spends totally focused on debt reduction is a day that he's not spending focusing on the things that people really want to see get done.
9:00 AM PT: To continue on the point I made in the previous update: Talking about deficit reduction is inherently pessimistic. Even if you are making the case that cutting spending will support economic growth in 10 or 20 years time, deficit reduction is a conversation about things we are not going to do. We're going to have one additional question here.
9:04 AM PT: The last question is great: "How do we avoid what happened to President Roosevelt in the 1930s?" Obama explains how in 1937 FDR cut spending after the launch of the new deal, leading to economic dip. "We've got to be careful that any efforts we have to reduce the deficit don't hamper the economic recovery," Obama says, indicating he at least understands the Keynesian position. He says he wants deficit reduction to focus on long-term spending, not short-term spending, and wants it to include things that will boost spending now, things like the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance as part of this process. This is great, can-do kind of stuff?the question is whether he'll agree to a package that doesn't deliver it. He says once the debt limit is done, we need to address patent reform and getting trade deals done. Obama critiques the GOP argument that all we need to do is cut taxes, comparing the Clinton economic record, which featured higher taxes, with the Bush economic record, which featured lower taxes.
9:10 AM PT: Obama's answer to that last question reassured me at least that he understands what the right thing to do is. His acknowledgment that FDR's austerity plan hurt the economy in 1937 underscores that fact. But whether or not he understands FDR's mistake is immaterial if the deal we get cuts too much spending without delivering any sort of economic boost, especially if it is not balanced. And I don't think we'll know the answer to that question until we actually see the deal.
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