Odenton Reacts to Debt Deal

Local residents and members of the business community said they are pleased that Congress is on the verge of a deal to address the national debt. But they expressed disappointment in how the process played out, and said there is still a lot of work to be done.

Jonathan Williams, a real estate consultant from Severn who has worked on projects in Odenton, said he was still trying to learn “what this all means in reality,” but said on the surface, it appears that a lot of the tough decisions about program cuts and tax revenue have yet to be made.

The deal struck by Congress would raise the current debt ceiling to keep the country from avoiding default, and would cut spending by about $900 million, according to the Huffington Post and other media outlets. A new joint congressional committee would be charged with coming up with $1.5 trillion in additional cuts and present its plan to Congress by Thanksgiving. If the committee fails to enact savings, the measure requires $1.2 million of automatic cuts, split equally between military and domestic programs.

“It doesn’t sound like they are actually solving anything,” Williams said. “There are really tough decisions that have to be made, and nobody wants to bear the responsibility or the bragging rights of resolving anything.”

Area residents said that regardless of the outcome, members of Congress and the White House showed an inability to work well together.

Jay Winer, the owner of Odenton-based , said he believed “politics has hijacked good judgement,” and said he favored term limits for all politicians.

“In this case, regardless of our political persuasions, we all got to see just how ineffectual our representatives in Congress and the White House really are,” said Jay Winer, the owner of AJ Properties, a prominent developer in Odenton. “We went to the brink in order to once again put off reasonable fiscal management for our country.”

Williams said he believes the August 2 "deadline" to complete a deal was overblown by lawmakers and the media, but he said he was repeatedly dismayed by the lack of cooperation by lawmakers during the debt deal negotiations.

“I’m completely disappointed in Congress, no matter what party they’re in,” Williams said. “They’re just not working together to solve stuff. There’s too many publicity stunts and people are just try to save face when I don’t think they have a face to save.”

Local Democrats said they were content with the deal, but blame the most conservative members of the Republican Party for making negotiations difficult. 

“You can’t look at the details without looking at the alternative,” said Rusty Vaughan of the District 33 Democratic Club, which meets at Perry's Restaurant in Odenton. "The minority of the Republican Party–the Tea Party Conservatives–weren’t acknowledging that there was an alternative. They were apparently willing to walk away from the table if they couldn’t get their deal.”

Vaughan said there is still much work to be done, but credited Congressional leaders with striking a deal. 

"They’re willing to cut a deal, move it down the road and come back another day to fight the battle,” he said.