America's elected leaders have spent the past few weeks trashing their public standing on Main Street and abroad, and they don't seem to care.
President Barack Obama's approval rating is heading lower, but he won't be running for office again. The approval rating for Congress already is about as low as it can go. So what? The majority of lawmakers hold safe seats in gerrymandered districts. The president nor the lawmakers at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue may be hearing lots of noise from the American public, but given their collective job security, the folks we've sent to Washington aren't feeling real heat.
Americans are disgusted with the lack of leadership - from two parties in two branches of government - that's now on display: the impetuous brinkmanship, the unwillingness to negotiate, the arrogant sense that, Just as soon as you surrender, we can talk about our disagreements. This is no way to do business. Especially the people's business.
The president and Congress need a bigger incentive to salvage something substantial out of the mess they've made. The scorn of the electorate isn't doing it. This just might: another, more painful budget sequester. An amplification of the mandatory reductions in spending growth that are now in force. Call it Sequester 2.0.
Our idea would work like this: First, Congress has to head off a federal default by agreeing to raise the debt ceiling, the upper limit on federal borrowing. Failing to do so within the Treasury Department's deadline of Oct. 17 - a mere week from Thursday - would be reckless. It makes no sense to take a chance on killing off the economic recovery with a self-inflicted wound of such uncertain consequences.
But one more rise in the ceiling, followed by a signing ceremony and a nice lunch, would only perpetuate the growth of a national debt that has swollen to almost $17 trillion.
What's needed is certainty of consequences if Washington solves its short-term problem, the debt ceiling, but not the long-term problem, runaway borrowing that condemns future generations to pay for today's spending. Plus interest. For too long, the president and Congress have evaded any real consequences of failing to reduce the debt's fat share of our gross national product.
Enough of that. Any agreement now to extend the debt limit has to include a fixed timetable for action on curtailing total debt - and a measured consequence for inaction. If no progress is made in putting America on a sound fiscal footing, then something has to happen that isn't irresponsible, as a debt default would be, but that hurts enough so that no responsible lawmaker would want it.