Everybody talks about solving the deficit as if that’s the most important problem on the horizon. I guess it is if you have a job but there are plenty of people in this country who don’t have jobs and their lack of employment is seriously affecting enough other people that the deficit really has to take second place. Of course all the noise just clouds the issues but there are some problems that are particularly vexing.
The first is old news, the Congressional vote on a new budget.
Both Democrats and Republicans claimed victory by keeping the Government. from shutting down. I expected a puff of white smoke to rise from the White House to announce a new budget had been solved and letting us know that we can now go on to fight over the next.
Actually everyone looked like clowns, fighting over an insignificant amount of money for purely political reasons and embarrassing us all in front of the rest of the world. We looked like a bunch of fools from a Third World country, who can’t even keep their government functioning rather than the rulers of the free world we seem to think we are.
I don’t really know if all the Republicans would have let the country shut down but at least one, Mike Pence, the seriously impaired congressman from Indiana, stood in front of the Whitehouse, screaming “shut it down,” while some idiot in a red suit and a straw hat was jumping up and down behind him like a cheerleader at a Morons for America Steel Cage match. Is this how the debate over the budget should be held? Doesn’t Pence have even a modicum of an idea of how counterproductive of even his own party’s goals such a shut down would be? What fools voted for this clown? Even John Boehner sees what a disaster that would be. Maybe Mike should forget about Congress and consider modeling or being a porn star, he sure wasn’t elected because he was using the big head.
The last Federal shutdown cost the govt. $1.4B, that’s the way to help the deficit. Of course saving money wasn’t what the budget fight was about. It was about a Right Wing social and political agenda that had abortion and gay marriage as its target. We already voted on that one in 2004 and it cost us two wars and the loss of New Orleans.
Of course it never would have happened if the Democrats had gotten off their asses and passed a budget when they still had a majority in both houses, an unforgivable blunder that they should have learned how to solve in Government 101. If those Democratic congressmen had been in some kind of useful job like logging or construction they would have been fired immediately for incompetence.
The solution to this dilemma is to make the budget solving deadline at least two months before any possible government shutdown with the proviso that if no agreement is reached, the previous years budget automatically goes into effect.
The second problem of the same sort is the raising of the debt limit, which we are facing now. Interestingly enough, no one seems to know where this little piece of idiotic legislation came from. No other economically sophisticated country on the planet has it, mainly because it’s a cause of problems that no intelligent nation needs or wants. Why do we have it? Politics.
The only reason I can see for its existence is to give conservatives some traction in budget debates. It should be eliminated immediately mainly so that we don’t look like a bunch of incompetent clowns who don’t know how to manage our own debt. We actually are those clowns, but we should try our best to keep the rest of the world from knowing it.
Putting aside the above problems, which have no real effect on the debt or unemployment but just make solving those real problems more difficult, it’s time to look at what we can actually do to find those solutions.
The first attempt at a solution has come from the Right. Paul Ryan’s potential budget plan was widely hailed when it first appeared. Then people who knew something about economics and math took a look at it.
Mr. Ryan seems to be a nice, friendly guy. Unfortunately his budget doesn’t bear this out. He claims to have the answers on controlling our money and lowering the deficit but he is absolutely clueless on how to lower unemployment. His plan would, he says, cut $6.2T over 10 years. Unfortunately he doesn’t seem to know how this will happen and he certainly doesn’t give any cogent illustrations. Sorry Paul, I know it’s the Republican approach but but just saying so doesn’t make it true.
In 2022, eleven years from now he wants to change Medicare from an entitlement to a grant based structure where people will be given money, which they can use to buy insurance. Terrible idea.
We found out last week in NYS district #26 election what a non-starter that is, when a rock solid Republican district, a district that had been gerrymandered almost perfectly to assure the Republicans a secure vote forever, went to the Democrats in display by the voters on how they feel about Ryan’s stance on Medicare.
Ryan wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and lower the top rate from 35%, which is almost never paid to 25%, which will almost never be paid. The plan exempts defense spending from cuts & it would not apply any of the savings from eliminating or reducing tax expenditures to deficit reduction, so it relies on a much larger reduction in domestic discretionary spending. It is simply a non-starter.
Of course the Democrats, forever non-functional, haven’t managed to come up with even a flawed budget.
I’m reading a book on Wild Bill Donovan who, during WWII formed the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA. It turns out that he was a very political animal and from everything I have read about the period before the war, it appears that politics in the 30’s and 40’s were very much the way they are today. The big difference seems to be the level and volume of media coverage.
It turns out that Republicans were against taxes on the rich and for cutting government expenses and that they were, surprise, surprise, allied with the rich barons of industry. They believed strongly that the way to bring us out of the Great Depression was to cut taxes on the rich and to cut spending to match. It’s the same old refrain they have been humming ever since and it has yet to create job one.
The Democrats, led by Roosevelt, believed strongly that the way to bring us out of the depression was to create the jobs that industry was unable or unwilling to create itself, and from that belief came The WPA & The CCC. Of course the Democratic way worked, people went to work and infrastructure got built.
The Republicans claim that it wouldn’t have worked, if it had not been for the war. To some extent they are right, the recovery surely wouldn’t have happened so quickly without the needs of the war but every indication points to the fact that we were on the right track even before the bombs started dropping.
We have seen that both parties kept to their agendas through all the years that ensued and the results of those agendas, despite the lies and obfuscations have not changed one iota. During Republican administrations, when taxes on the rich are lowered and social programs are cut we lose jobs and the economy suffers. During Democratic administrations when taxes are raised & public programs receive a boost, the deficit goes down and the country prospers.
Unfortunately we currently have a Republican house that is determined to make the same mistakes that have historically hurt the economy and the country. They operate with no thought for their constituents but only for their financial benefactors. They are the toadies of big business and banking which usually does fine without them but never really seems to have enough of whatever they are trying to accumulate at the moment.