Once again, the debt ceiling drama ends in a lousy deal, with cuts in all the wrong places.

Once more, the bizarre Washington debt ceiling ritual ends in a bad deal. The mainstream media and establishment pundits hail it as a revival of the “vital center” over what the New York Times called a “far right and hard left revolt.” While relief about avoiding debt default is understandable, celebration is preposterous.

The deal reflects the poisonous priorities of the Republican right. The debt ceiling is not repealed; it is simply kicked down the road to after the 2024 election.

What cuts there are come in all the wrong places. Our bloated military budget – still higher than those of the next nine nations combined – will continue to rise. At a time of obscene inequality, nothing is done to reverse the perverse tax cuts handed out to the rich and corporations over the past decades. Instead, a symbolic cut in funding for the Internal Revenue Service assures wealthy tax scofflaws continued impunity while avoiding the taxes they owe. Nothing is done to curb the blatant looting of Medicare by private insurance companies through so-called Medicare Advantage schemes.

Instead, the target for cuts is, of course, domestic discretionary spending – the small portion of the budget that covers everything the government does outside of war, the military, Social Security and Medicare and other guaranteed programs. Yet nothing is more apparent than after a conservative era spanning nearly half a century, the U.S. has badly starved investments in everything from basic infrastructure, clean water and to diplomacy and efficient governance. The U.S. has more military bases than embassies abroad. It has smart missiles yet makes raising a child virtually unaffordable for all but the affluent. This deal won’t do much – but what it does heads in the wrong direction.

The U.S. faces staggering challenges: catastrophic climate change, pandemics coupled with a debilitated public health system, declining life expectancy and a broken health care system – and more. To the extent this deal addresses any of these, it makes them a bit worse.

It is also a deep distortion to paint the dissent on the right and the left as somehow equivalent. The zealots on the right oppose the deal because it is not ruinous enough. They demand deeper cuts in domestic investment, higher spending on the bloated military, more tax breaks and regulatory rollback for the rich and corporations. Some made it clear they were ready to have the U.S. default on its obligations to get their way.

Democrats would have been wise to follow the leadership of Representative Pramila Jayapal, D-Washington, who is the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, making their opposition clear and forcing Republicans to provide the bulk of the votes for the measure. That at least would have made it clear that the deal’s misplaced priorities represent the ruinous views of today’s Republican Party, not those of the Democrats. The substance of this deal is indefensible.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL is editorial director and publisher of The Nation.