UPDATE: After the Debt Ceiling Deal, What's Next?

The debt ceiling deal was nailed down earlier this week, but the consequences of that deal still are being examined.

As a continuation of the Basking Ridge Patch's survey of what local officials, residents and others who spend time in our area think of how the situation was handled, we spoke by phone with Township Committeeman John Carpenter on Wednesday afternoon.

"This doesn't solve anything," Carpenter said of the 11th-hour agreement hammered out by politicians right before Tuesday's "deadline" for reaching the federal government's debt ceiling. "It just pushes the problem down the road."

Carpenter said he has no faith in a newly appointed debt commission and supposed triggers on mounting debt. "It's disappointing that Congress didn't lead in this case, and deal with the problem (now) that is facing us now." He added, "The debt commission is just something for Congress to hide behind."

He said he doesn't like the idea of 12 people taking on the responsibility for what 535 representatives should be charged with doing. The need is to balance the federal budget, he said.

Carpenter said he sees President Obama using the commission to push for raising taxes, while conservatives will trying to deal with curbing spending.

"Liberals see this as a revenue problem. We have a spending problem," said Carpenter, a Republican. "Every day, the government spends far more than it takes in."

But, unlike many others, Carpenter said he wasn't upset by the long, protracted political battle over what to do to deal with the issue of federal debt.

"It's a tough problem," Carpenter said. Democracy in action — with multiple points of view fighting it out _ isn't always pretty, he noted. "What we got to see a little more closely than usual is how the sausage is made," he said.

"I appreciate the difficulty of it," Carpenter said of the federal debt issue. "I liked seeing the process."

By the time J.P. Mahoney was asked on Monday for how he believed elected officials had handled the approaching debt ceiling crisis, a deal had basically been struck among Washington politicians. But that just spurred Mahoney, a Ridge High football and baseball coach, to offer advice for the path he believes the country must take in the aftermath of an economic situation that left many Americans feeling edgy for weeks.

It's time for government officials to approach budgeting with a plan to "live within their means," Mahoney said. "That's what we need to do as people," he said of the average American.

Even with the debt crisis averted and put on the back burner, resident Kim Dial said she believes that partisan fighting and the inability of representatives to come together earlier for a solution points to a bigger problem.

"I think what the problem is, is our reputation and our confidence in officials to do what is best for the American people," Dial said. "I think our reputation has been besmirched overseas as well."

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