Is This How Democracy Ends?
"I used to think it would take a great financial crisis to get both parties to the table, but we just had one," said G. William Hoagland, a former adviser to the Senate Republican leadership on fiscal policy.
"These days, I wonder if this country is even governable."
Quoted in The New York Times' lead story, "Party Gridlock Feeds New Fear of a Debt Crisis," Hoagland nailed it.
America faces a crisis of democracy.
At its heart is a fiscal crisis. After the 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion, we are running a 2010 deficit of $1.6 trillion. Trillion-dollar deficits are projected through the Obama years, be they four or eight.
Long before 2016, however, holders of U.S. public debt will stop buying Treasury bills or start demanding higher interest rates to cover the growing risk of a default.
This week, a smoke detector went off. China, in December, had unloaded $45 billion of its $790 billion in T-bills. Is Beijing is bailing out?
To assure the world we are not Greece writ large, the United States must soon adopt a visible plan for slashing the deficit.
There are three ways to do it. One is through growth that increases the tax revenue flowing into the Treasury and reduces the outflow for safety net programs like unemployment insurance.
But growth only comes slowly and can take us only so far.
Needed is a combination of big budget cuts and tax hikes. But the only place one can get budget cuts of the magnitude required is from the big entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And the only place to get revenue of that magnitude is by raising taxes on the American middle class.
And here is where Barack Obama hits the wall.
Republicans are not going to give him a single vote for a tax increase. Not only would this violate a commitment most made to the people who elected them, it would be politically suicidal. For behind the GOP today, and its best hope of recapturing Congress in 2010, are the Tea Party irregulars.
And Tea Partiers now play the role of Red Army commissars who sat at machine guns behind their own troops to shoot down any soldier who retreated or ran. Republicans who sign on to tax hikes cannot go home again.
Consider: Arlen Specter voted for the Obama stimulus and faced an immediate primary challenge from Pat Toomey, who took a 20-point lead, forcing Specter to quit the party to survive. Popular Gov. Charlie Crist embraced Obama on a Florida visit and got an immediate primary challenge from Marco Rubio, who now looks to be the next senator from Florida.
The Tea Party folks are not into the Gerald Ford politics of compromise and consensus. They have seen what it produces: the inexorable growth of Government.
Ex-Sen. Alan Simpson, a Republican and co-chair of Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, has challenged the patriotism of conservatives who plant their feet in concrete.
"There isn't a single sitting member of Congress—not one—that doesn't know exactly where we're headed. . . . And to use the politics of fear and hate and division on each other—we're at a point right now where it doesn't make a damn whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, if you've forgotten you're an American."
Simpson is right in his assertion that anti-tax Republicans went along with George W. Bush's spending spree—for two wars, prescription drug benefits under Medicare and No Child Left Behind.
Where he is mistaken is in suggesting "fear and hate" are behind the opposition to tax hikes. History, principle and honest politics explain much of that hostility.
Ronald Reagan, who consented to tax hikes in the 1982 TEFRA bill, told this writer he was swindled. Promised three dollars in spending cuts for each dollar in tax increases, he got the reverse.
George H.W. Bush won election by pledging: "Read my lips! No new taxes!" He broke his pledge, leaving many of the faithful with egg all over their faces. That may have cost him the presidency.
Principled conservatives are resisting tax hikes because they believe government has grown too huge for the good of the country. And if that means putting the beast on a starvation diet—no new tax revenue to batten on—so be it. Cold turkey time.
Anticipating gains in November, Republicans will not give Obama any new taxes before then. After November, their ranks swollen by Tea Party support, they will be even more intractable.
Where does that leave Obama—and us?
Later this year or early next, to avoid a debt crisis, Obama will ask Congress to raise taxes and pare back entitlement programs.
Republicans will fight the taxes to the last ditch. Democrats, having lost dozens of colleagues in the November massacre, will rebel against the cuts in social spending.
And a paralyzed government will drift closer toward the maelstrom.
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Entries(RSS)
All fired good ! Social Security---and entitlements in general---are, as presently constituted, an intergenerational act of war against GenXers and Millennials. Even the Boomers who are retiring today are only getting back roughly what they paid in. Anyone under the age of 55 is getting the financial equivalent of what used to be called "criminal assault with violence".
Medicare promises to be an even worse burden; there's still a lot of talk out there about expanding Medicare through allowing 55ers and older to "buy into" the program.
The sooner we take our eyes off our televisions and recognize how deep the hole we're in actually is, the sooner we can start dealing with the problem. Time is growing seriously short, since Medicare is technically insolvent now, and the so-called "Social Security trust fund" is simply an accounting fraud, save no one has the guts to say so aloud.
It's time to eradicate SocSec AND Medicare/Medicaid. Let people rely on those old-fashioned institutions called "families". That's what they're for. If one is going to be so excessively sentimental as to shed tears for the improvident current and soon-to-be-current beneficiaries of those programs, we could allow the provinces to enact Elder Support Laws, operating in the same way as child-support laws do now. Let me take care of my family---and you are more than welcome to take care of your own.
End the entitlement programs, and end the taxes. Now.
Eradication is the ONLY moral solution.
"At its heart is a fiscal crisis. After the 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion, we are running a 2010 deficit of $1.6 trillion. Trillion-dollar deficits are projected through the Obama years, be they four or eight."
With endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Republican wing of the duoploy, bestowing the current deficits we now suffer, with bailouts, buyouts and sellouts, surely no self respecting conservative is going to go all out for "Change You Can't Count On!" from this duopoly.
The Republicans learned a long time ago that you can't cut entitlements once established and stay in office. Their strategy has been to create huge deficits which then require cuts somewhere somehow.
"Principled conservatives are resisting tax hikes because they believe government has grown too huge for the good of the country. And the only place one can get budget cuts of the magnitude required is from the big entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid."
(Notice that Republicans never mention reducing the empire, the endless wars for its expansion and the huge military complex to sustain it. Or requiring huge pay backs from their Wall Street clients who were bailed out to "save America") So... "the only place to get revenue of that magnitude is by raising taxes on the American middle class." Heads they win, tails you lose!! We don't call it a duopoly for nothing!!
"But the only place one can get budget cuts of the magnitude required is from the big entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid."
Cuts in "defense" and the internal security state apparatus are a part of the solution as well.
Bingo fsd. I'm surprised a critic of empire like Buchanan is not touching on this here. He is excellent, not just on the wars but on closing up shop in places like Japan.
The country is just too big for one government. When the average congressional district is near 700,000 there is no representation from below, only rule from above.
Reagan may have been swindled, but he was a naive fool for trusting a crook like Tip O'Neill.
As well, he could have used the veto. He didn't.
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/4.html
"But the only place one can get budget cuts of the magnitude required is from the big entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid."
Hmmmm. I'm with fsd and Rob. Cut the military budget by abandoning empire and closing a few hundred (thousand?) overseas installations. Ax price supports for agribusiness and other corporate welfare programs. Reduce the federal work force and slash federal pay--at the top first. Replace income tax with a VAT of the kind Mr. David Hartman has proposed. Re-enact Glass-Steagall. Adopt term limits to curb political careerism. Criminalize all political contributions not made by citizens eligible to vote. Cut entitlements, to be sure, but take the money out of everyday government as we have come to know and loathe it.
"Later this year or early next, to avoid a debt crisis, Obama will ask Congress to raise taxes and pare back entitlement programs.
Republicans will fight the taxes to the last ditch. Democrats, having lost dozens of colleagues in the November massacre, will rebel against the cuts in social spending.
And a paralyzed government will drift closer toward the maelstrom."
What a lovely, hopeful prospect!
Dare we hope, that the frustrated congresspeople, seeing themselves about to get blamed for America's financial collapse, will come to blows? May we finally be treated to the sight of some of them actually feeling some of that pain they always say they feel, while never breaking a sweat nor getting a hair out of place? I may even turn on C-Span for that.
This economic downturn is very mild compared with the one of the 1930s. But the country did fall apart in the great depression.
The problems we have now are not primarily economic.
Today the government is transparently corrupt, cynical, and is in a power-grabbing mood.
Some people see it: there are several dozen organizations either hoping to secede from the US when it collapses or working to restore some of the powers promised by the Constitution to the states and to the people.
On top of that, another large segment of the population are ignorant and immoral. These are lazy, lack ambition, and think the world owes them a good life. They are willing to mindlessly vote for and pay allegiance to any government that offers them a handout.
Second sentence should be "But the country did not fall apart in the great depression."
@1 Wait a minute! Lumping Social Security in with other "entitlement" programs as "an act of war against the young" is a slander. That's my money they are returning. The two of us (incl company contributions) put $400,000 into SS and $60,000 into medicare. You can give that amount to me right now and I'll sign off, or you can stop payment in the future if I outlive the return on the investment, but don't talk about "means-testing" or anything else in regard to stealing my contribution.
I do agree that the horrific debt being piled up today can be termed generational warfare, but let's fix the real problem, starting with Mr. Olson's list.
I doubt any Democrat is going to put his foot on the third rail of handouts. Minorities might start rioting and looting liquor stores. Spivs who run old folks' homes will hire expensive spin doctors and attorneys. And all those wounded soldiers from foreign wars started by GOP presidents will need to "be taken care of."
Maybe Teleprompter Barry can simply announce, "we're broke. Deal with it."
There is not any politician within reach of national power who has the courage to point out the drastic changes that are needed in the govt.
The most drastic changes don't have to be Social Security. Ending our overseas empire would save at least 1/2 a trillion dollars a year. We could end all the useless departments like.
Transportation, just close it up and abolish the Federal excise taxes on fuel. The states can collect the taxes and they all have transportation depts. They would get away from all the Federal mandates and figure out their own best needs.
The department of Education could be abolished tommorow. It was just Carter's payoff to the teachers union.
The same with Carter's Dept Of Energy a total waste of money.
The Departments of Labor and Commerce just special intreat bureaus. that do no one any good. I could go on forever. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, The Department of the Interior, most of it's property and duties could be give back the states for management. AMTRACK, the arts council. The list of waste and stupidity is endless. Lets not forget the Department of housing which brought on this collapse. But most of all end the FED.
@ 14: "The most drastic changes don’t have to be Social Security."
That's precisely where the most drastic changes have to be made.
Recall, if you will, that the first conquest an Empire makes is of its own people. In the American case, we got the personal-benefit programs (beginning with pensions paid to Union soldiers as late as the 1890s), and then expanded to the general population through SocSec in the 1930s, then Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s. Then we got the actual attempts to reprogram ("nation-building") other countries into "democracies", from Japan in 1945 through Iraq in Bush-the-Younger's Imperium.
The reason why Mr. Marino's alternatives would be less effective is precisely because the programs he wishes to abolish first are smaller and "serve" fewer people. They are less likely to directly affect the lives of the Empire's subjects in any quantity, whereas SocSec and Medicare do. The employees of the Dept. of Energy and their families number in perhaps the hundreds of thousands. SocSec and Medicare beneficiaries number in the tens of millions, and their families---who might otherwise have to actually step up and impose sacrifices on themselves to take care of their parents and aging relatives, at the expense of their already tax- and advertising-stretched purses---number in the hundreds of millions. It might be easier to abolish DoE than HHS, but less effective---and simple arithmetic requires a focus on financial effectiveness.
Eventually we're going to get some form of reduction in those benefits, either through means-testing or an outright implosion of the economic-political system, along with the central-government apparatus that it supports. (The second, and within 10-12 years, is my guess.) The math doesn't dictate anything else. Even if the military was to be cut by 50 % tomorrow, there would be insufficient revenues remaining to deal with the growth of the entitlement programs still extant. Worse yet, the demand for those programs would still be there, but without the countervailing pressure that the real-world needs of the country would impose; there would be no competition remaining for those resources, either political or economic.
The only significant question that remains in my mind is what form that reduction will take, and whether the social order that has organized itself around this setup (proletarian Man as primarily worker/consumer/debtor-spender as opposed to bourgeois Man, primarily family-member/steward/Conservor) will survive.
As to that last item: I am making no cash bets, either way. But the domestic Empire has to go. Soon.
Mr Schaeber has got it right as far as I can tell. I also predict roughly ten years, give or take a few, but in my more confident moments I might say that five years is a possibility.
Collapse of the order and the end of the concept of proletarian man is most likely, since that concept cannot exist without a society organised around heavy industry and general bigness in industry and government, both of which are on their way out.