As she was still digesting details of the proposed debt-ceiling deal at noon Monday, Rep. Nan Hayworth liked what she had seen so far: an agreement that forces Washington to cut spending and shrink its deficit without immediate tax increases, just as Republicans had wanted.
"We have made a historic beginning here in how we approach the debt ceiling," said Hayworth, R-Mount Kisco, who later supported the agreement when it passed the House of Representatives. "We have put some real mechanisms in place to achieve real savings now and real savings into the future."
Hayworth called the terms reached by congressional leaders and President Barack Obama a "victory for the people of America," not a partisan victory for Republicans. But enthusiasm was hard to find Monday as local political figures on the left and the right voiced disgust with the process and outcome of the marathon debt-ceiling fight.
Pat O'Dwyer, a self-described progressive Democrat who ran for Orange County executive in 2009, fumed about elected officials "behaving like really bad children" and Obama caving to Republicans by not pushing harder to close tax loopholes or raise taxes on the wealthy.
"You couldn't be totally cerebral in this game," she said. "You had to be a bit of a street fighter."
Sheryl Thomas, a Bloomingburg resident and organizer of a tea party group with members in Orange and Sullivan counties, disliked the deal for opposite reasons, arguing it cut too little spending and postponed much of that work by leaving it to a congressional committee.
"When all the smoke settles, I don't think that this deal will be good for the American taxpayers," she said.
Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley, one of 75 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, denounced the deal as "fundamentally unbalanced" and said that leaving the second round of deficit reduction to a committee leaves open the possibility of cuts in Social Security or Medicare. Hinchey was not in Washington Monday as he continued recovering from colon cancer surgery at home.
"We've already seen how these Washington games of chicken can turn out, and it is reckless and irresponsible to voluntarily subject our country to more of these shenanigans," he said.
Judging the political fallout from the deal was tricky because it was merely one skirmish in a continuing battle over the role of the federal government, said Lee Miringoff, a Marist College political science professor and director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion.
Assessing winners and losers, Miringoff said "the tea party Republicans were able to shift the agenda."
Obama "has some wounds to heal" with progressive members of his party, he said. "I don't think there is a long list of winners at this point, if any."
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