Deficit mania has officially taken over Washington—again. Both Republicans and Democrats, while they have different preferred approaches, are heavily focused on cutting budget deficits and relieving the long-term debt situation of the country. Yet unemployment remains at an unhealthy 7.6 percent, with declining labor force participation, and the modest economic recovery that’s underway has shown signs of sputtering — witness the latest jobs report which indicated only an anemic 88,000 jobs were created in March.

The simplest explanation for Washington’s monomaniacal focus on the deficit would be that politicians are responding to a shift in priorities among voters. The electorate, in other words, is now more worried about the budget deficit than the economy, so politicians have shifted their focus accordingly. But that explanation is simply not borne out by the facts.  The public’s concern for the deficit still lags far, far behind their concern for the economy and jobs: In a late March CBS poll, 41 percent of people in an open-ended question thought the economy/jobs was the most important issue facing the country, compared to just 9 percent who thought the deficit/debt was the top issue.  And in a late March Marist/Morning Joe poll, 62 percent chose creating jobs as the top priority for Congress and Obama, compared to just 35 percent who chose deficit reduction.

Another possibility that fits the “responsive politicians” explanation for current deficit mania is that voters, while perhaps not prioritizing deficit reduction, are particularly likely to punish politicians who do not take action on the issue. That is, even though deficit reduction is not the top concern for voters, voters will nonetheless turn against politicians who fail to make progress in this area. But this appears to get things backwards, especially when it comes to the incentives facing incumbent politicians. In reality, countless historical examples and empirical studies suggest that the surest route to getting booted out of office is poor economic performance — and this is the case regardless of whether politicians make progress on the deficit. Conversely, if the economy performs well, but little progress is made on the deficit, the incumbent party is still likely to benefit.

But if Washington’s deficit obsession is not simply a product of politicians responding to a shift in the public’s mood, where does it come from? The likeliest alternative is that, as political scientists Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Shapiro argue in their influential book, Politicians Don’t Pander, elected officials don’t so much seek to know public opinion in order to follow it, but rather so they can manipulate it to support their agenda and minimize any electoral damage that might result. This clearly fits the way Republicans are handling the deficit issue: Cutting spending on government programs is at the top of their policy agenda, so it follows that they wish to keep the political and media conversation focused as much as possible on deficits. Over time, they hope the incessant hysteria will move public opinion to their side, allowing them to pass more and more of their preferred legislation. Moreover, they are betting that their unresponsiveness to the jobs issue will not hurt them because the media will mostly cover the endless battles over deficits and spending, creating a news vacuum where the public is likely, lacking other information, to blame the party that holds the presidency for inaction on jobs.

Democratic complicity in today’s deficit-obsessed political climate is less easy to understand. Democrats, one might think, would place the jobs issue at the top of their agenda and exploit the clear public opinion preference for jobs to move their policies. But the assumption that jobs tops the agenda of all Democratic politicians is likely not warranted. There is a very significant section of the Democratic Party, including many moderates but also some liberals, that is not convinced by the standard Keynesian argument that deficits, even at their current levels or higher, are not a problem in the short run, while weak demand and slow job growth definitely are. These Democrats appear to be more impressed by arguments, retailed by the Bowles-Simpson Commission, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and a veritable army of editorial writers and pundits, that the country’s deficit and long-term debt problem is so severe that an immediate agreement to tackle the problem is necessary. Lacking an agreement on the debt, the argument runs, the U.S. will lose the confidence of its creditors and soon become an unstable, impoverished country. By this hysterical logic, an agreement on debt becomes far more urgent than dealing with the jobs situation.

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Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR)

Walden told CNN:

I’ll tell you, when you’re going after seniors the way he’s already done on Obamacare, taking $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare and now coming back at seniors again, I think you’re crossing that line very quickly here, in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine certainly and around the country. I think he’s going to have a lot of pushback from some of the major senior organizations on this and Republicans as well.

Watch the video:

Though prominent conservatives were quick to pounce on Walden, his spokesman stood by the comments. He told Politico that even though the rest of the GOP leadership disgagrees, Walden “believes it’s wrong to cut benefits for seniors to pay for more wasteful spending.”

Though outside groups spent millions in the 2012 campaign repeating the false claim, the accusation that Obamacare somehow stole $716 billion from Medicare has been widely debunked. What’s more, the Paul Ryan House Republican budget — which Walden supports — relies on the same savings.

While there are legitimate reasons to worry about the chained CPI proposals, Walden’s desire to protect Social Security seems new-found. In 2005, when President George W. Bush proposed a risky privatization scheme in his State of the Union address, Walden raised no objections and praised speech as a “bold agenda, proposing solutions to some of American’s most difficult problems.” Seven years before, Walden told Project Vote Smart he supported a plan to “invest Social Security’s assets collectively in stocks and bonds instead of U.S. Treasury securities.”

Since the 2012 election, Republicans have consistently blamed President Obama for ignoring the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission he created shortly after taking office in 2009. Republican leaders have said they’d be “willing to say yes to” a Simpson-Bowles-style plan, which balanced revenue with spending cuts and changes to entitlements.

Those overtures have of course been disingenuous, since the Simpson-Bowles plan includes more revenue than any recent plan Obama has put forth. Today, Obama released his 2014 budget proposal, a moderate plan aimed at fostering a long-term compromise with the GOP. And yet again the Obama plan, which this time also includes unpopular entitlement cuts aimed at placating Republicans, calls for both lower revenue and spending levels than Simpson-Bowles did, as Center for American Progress Managing Director of Economic Policy Michael Linden shows:

When added to the deficit reduction already accomplished, the president’s offer includes more than $3 trillion in spending cuts and just $1.3 trillion in revenue. In addition to the enacted deficit reduction, projections of federal spending have been reduced for a variety of other reasons, primarily the recent slowdown in health care costs. Put it all together, and the president is willing to accept overall federal spending levels that are an average of about 0.5 percentage points of gross domestic product less than those in Simpson-Bowles, and revenue levels that are a full percentage point below those in Simpson-Bowles.

The GOP will continue arguing that Obama’s proposals are little different than those he has put forth before, and that he has refused to come to the table for serious negotiations. But while Republican budgets keep moving to the right to satisfy conservatives, Obama’s budget is now even more moderate than the deficit commission Republicans said they wanted to follow just six months ago.

Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN)

Coats falsely suggested that balanced approaches to budgeting that include new revenue never lead to growth or job creation, asking his colleagues:

Has anyone ever seen an increase in the economy through an increase in taxes? Would taking [more] money in of people’s paychecks, does this result in more consumer spending which helps our economy? Adding a new tax burden to the American economy – when has that ever created a job?

Watch it:

Twenty years ago, Coats opposed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, the Clinton Deficit Reduction Act, because it too included additional revenue from the richest Americans. His prognostication at that time was that it would “cost Hoosier jobs,” arguing that because of the tax provisions, “we are not going to see an increase in jobs; we are going to see a decrease.”

After the passage of 1993 bill, which Coats and every congressional Republican voted against, the economy blossomed and job creation skyrocketed. In all, more than 20 million jobs were created during the Clinton administration. The economy grew faster under the Clinton-era tax rates, in fact, that it did under the lower Bush rates, and higher tax rates have corresponded with more growth over the last 60 years.

This President shouldn't be for turning either.

Progressives are thus rightly grumbling over President Obama’s budget proposing benefit reductions for Social Security and Medicare recipients in the hopes of enticing recalcitrant Republicans to accept new tax revenues.  Paul Krugman sees this budget not as a statement of progressive values but rather as a transparently political move to court favor of the “Serious People” who want to slash social insurance programs regardless of the wisdom of these cuts and their relationship to growth and deficits.  Ezra Klein wonders what values lines are being crossed with a deal making approach that assumes $1.2 trillion in new tax revenues, well below President Obama’s stated desire in earlier talks with the GOP.  ”Obama’s third offer from December is, in this set of negotiations, his first offer. The question is what his final offer will be.”

From a political perspective, this budget framework is a bit of head-scratcher.  What are the exact values that the President is trying to promote? Who exactly is President Obama trying to appeal to with this vision?  Does the President really believe in the premises contained in the budget including social insurance reductions and further austerity?  Why doesn’t the budget outline a vision for growth and investment consistent with his first term goals for “a new foundation” for the American economy rather than an ideologically incoherent attempt to find the elusive grand bargain?

Given the lack of explanation of what is driving these decisions, it seems unlikely that the President’s base will rally to support his budget. Cutting social insurance programs to placate Republicans does not reflect their values and directly affects their day-to-day lives in negative ways.

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