Address the Jobs Crisis First

As unemployment keeps rising and the economy faces a period of prolonged stagnation, political elites of both parties can only yammer about debts and deficits. But reducing the deficit before we get a recovery going will only worsen joblessness, cut back essential public services, and deny government the needed tools to produce an economic recovery.

With Republicans increasingly intransigent on any budget bargain that raises revenues, a deal would depend heavily on Democratic votes. But the Democratic caucuses in both houses, which have been largely ignored by the White House in Obama's evidently futile courting of Republican House Speaker John Boehner, are now refusing to vote for cuts in Social Security or Medicare.

The Republican stance is such bad economics and so irresponsible as budget politics that a president with strong convictions and a feel for how you use the bully pulpit to move public opinion would be eating their lunch. But we have long since realized that this is not the president we have.

Even commentators who have been willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt are now out of patience. "I've been stunned, both in the spring during the government shutdown negotiations and now, that Obama has hardly ever gone to the American people to insist firmly that there are some things he would never abide," writes my former colleague Michael Tomasky in Daily Beast/Newsweek. Though Republicans are practically inviting Obama to define a new progressive center, he just won't deliver.

There are two ways progressives can prevent this economic calamity from turning into a deeper political catastrophe -- an inside game and an outside game. Progressives in Congress can refuse to cave in. That part of the fight is going better than one might have feared. Democrats in the House and Senate are resisting the capitulation impulses of a Democratic president. The other way is to build a movement. Better yet, we need to do both, and it is encouraging to see the two labor federations coming together and working with the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

There are far worse fates for this Republic than to miss the nominal deadline of August 2 for raising the debt ceiling. One would be to capitulate to Republican blackmail and give away the fruits of 40 years of struggle. The other would be to fail to seize this moment to build a movement of our own.