What’s
Wrong Today:
We
are squandering our gifts.
America
used to be the global bastion of democracy. America used to be respected globally
as the land of opportunity. America used to be the indispensable power. America
used to have a “can-do” attitude that extended to any challenge facing us as a
people, and we could solve any problem, scale any obstacle and follow through
until we achieved success.
These
gifts are going fast, they are being squandered by America’s politicians. We
are becoming a “can’t do” nation.
Now,
when things are hard, we just kick the can down the road. We decide as little
as we can, and delay debate on the big issues to another day, another election,
another time when we hope to have more information that will make the right path
clear to the political overlords.
Depending
upon which report out of DC that you see today, no real plan has yet emerged that
will pass a budget or fully and finally resolve the debate about the debt
ceiling. We will just kick the can down the road a little bit, reopen the government,
pass a Continuing Resolution to fund the government for a while, and buy a
little more time to let the suits in DC work on yet another partial solution.
Our
gifts are being squandered by a government that is above the people, a
government above the people that was built on outside money. There is no longer
any pretense about trying to serve a greater good, or serving the people, Members
of Congress only serve themselves and their monied masters.
The big takeaway
is that the Tea Party will win this round.
They are currently
in charge. The House is nominally run by the Speaker, but Roll Call reported that Sen.
Ted Cruz (R-TX) met with privately with about 20 House GOP lawmakers Monday
night at a the Capitol Hill watering hole, Tortilla Coast. The outcome of that session was to derail the Speaker from bringing the bi-partisan
temporary deal worked out in the Senate, to a vote in the House,
despite GOP leaders signaling yesterday that they planned to do just that.
Now, Taco
Joint Putsch may not have the same ring to it as Beer Hall Putsch. Still, a Cruz-tested,
Tea Party approved deal was put forth by House Republicans this morning. But
wait! They walked
back from THAT as well. From the NYT:
walked back from a plan that had emerged this morning. Speaker John Boehner
told reporters there were “no decisions about what exactly we will do.”
It
looks once again like there is no middle ground in the House. Boehner’s again back
to square one, and we hit the wall on Thursday. For the past two years, we’ve
been hearing how the Republican leadership
was going to defang Tea Party gridlock, and it hasn’t happened. We’re still
waiting for the 30 or so Republicans we continually hear about to break with
party unity in the House.
Even
with a default, the Tea Party wins. They have absolutely no incentive to
bargain towards a real solution, since default means a de facto Second Sequester. That is a clear Tea Party win.
If
something gets agreed this week, it will be some kind of kick the can ahead
agreement. No structural change is on the table that would prevent the Tea
Party from winning the next round,
once the clock runs out on whatever shitty piece of legislation both Houses
decide to pass on Thursday. A Tea Party win!
With any
limited deal, all of the focus will be on the next patch to the budget and the
debt ceiling, so there will be no action on Immigration or tax reform, no
discussion about how to put America back to work, no plan to address our
deficit. A Tea Party win!
The
public may not want gridlock, but it can do little except by voting for their
Congressmen every other year. And the power of voting is diluted by
gerrymandered districts. Tea Party-heavy districts will elect Teahadists,
and those constituents seem quite happy
with gridlock. So we have a government that is unreachable by our historical methods. It is a government that
is above the people, not a government for, or by, the people.
The Tea
Party is not some fever that started in 2010. These are the same crazy ideas
that were around for Kennedy, FDR and even
earlier. See the Wrongologist’s columns here
and here.
The difference today is there are vast amounts of money backing their play, and
they have the bad demographic trends for older whites who feel threatened going
for them as well.
The Teahadists
surely see that they have multiple paths to a win. They will continue agitating
for any course that can go their way. The House looks paralyzed.
There
are only two ways out of this stalemate. First, it ends if the money men backing
the GOP actually launch an operation to marginalize the Teas. Are the monied
elites willing to suffer several years of inter-party bloodletting to take the
Tea Party sand out of the gears of government? Doubtful.
Second,
Obama could offer up a temporary delay in Obamacare in return for a permanent repeal
of the debt limit authorization requirement. Period. That’s what Obama needs to
jam through before midnight Thursday. A year’s delay in Obamacare might be worth
that.
Otherwise, governing will remain impossible, and we will continue to squander our gifts.
All they need is to trade a one year delay of the individual mandate. Not a great trade, but if to remove this debt ceiling bullshit, worth it.