Independent Caucus

Change Afoot?..Just Not Obama's Foot

Did anyone quietly notice what quietly happened the other day in the U.S. Senate?  The same Senate where Democrats have nearly a super-majority in numbers?

They voted down a spending bill.  An unpaid-for, 100% borrowed spending bill.  And not some Senator's pet bridge to certain reelection. Nope. A bill that extended soon to expire tax cuts and unemployment benefits.

In an election year.

That bill should have been safe as Derek Jeter making the All-Star game.

It went down. Decisively. Because something like 10 or so centrist Dems were opposed to the fact that it was going to add something like another $80 billion to the debt or so.

That was money in voters' pockets, as I said, no public works project of some local and questionable value. It was cash. Borrowed from the Chinese to be sure, but cash.

If that vote occurred expressly because this is an election year, then maybe there is hope that the great and broad public concern about all our governmental red ink is finally beginning to resonate, and sink in, and affect the voting of our elected representatives.

Obama, for all his Harvard Law smarts, doesn't get it still - that some of the greatest dissatisfaction with George W. Bush was not his flouting of the rule of law or the Constitution, though flout he did, but his determination to not pay for anything while cutting taxes to the bone, especially for those who are in the higher income brackets, or make a lot of their money from investments.

It's true enough that we hated things like "Black sites" and "rendition", and firings of U.S. Attorneys for what looked suspiciously like political reasons. We didn't like the many outtakes and malappropisms. There was a feeling like we were collectively less smart with W in charge. But what galled so many in the all-important political center was George W. Bush taking us from a total national debt of $3.5 trillion at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency - the last 2 budgets of which actually paid down the principle of our debt with budget surpluses of around $200 billion per year - to a whopping $11 trillion, with annual deficits as far as the eye could see.

Well, the Obama White House projections are for about $1 trillion dollar deficits for each of the next 10 years. If he does that, he easily eclipses W and becomes the greatest debtor president of all time. Right now it's W. In percentage terms, it's Reagan (he tripled the debt). The thought that this White House is actually prepared to leave $22 trillion in debt to future presidents and generations is mindboggling.

And he made it clear he was ready and waiting to sign the legislation once it passed. But, alas, he did not get the opportunity.

There may finally be a groundwell in America to pay for things and stop borrowing. It's plain to see that while that's some of the change Obama campaigned on, that the source of that change will be coming from elsewhere, maybe, even from our elected representatives, through us, the way it's supposed to work.

What I Don't Want: More Of Same

Here's what I don't want, and that is another iteration of same.

I'm already starting to hear it, and starting to see what the playbook will be, and the hypocrisy of it all turns my stomach.

The "iteration" has gone this way.  The party in power runs the House and Senate like their own fiefdom, with stacked committee votes and a "suspension of the rules".  This makes for starkly partisan bills which 50% of Americans not just oppose, but hate, and I'm talking about the 50%, since we are divided about 50/50, who are from or favor the minority party.  If it's the Republicans in control, then inevitably there is the fiscal irresponsibility of tax cuts which are not offset by any budget cuts, i.e. any shrinking of the size of government, meaning that every dollar of "cut" is a dollar of additional "borrowing".  You might even hear Republicans revive, "Read my lips - no new taxes," but you will never hear them say, "Read my lips - no new borrowing."

If it's the Dems who are in control, then inevitably there are more governmentally invasive solutions to national problems, some which require such invasion - arguably, something like the rules surrounding banks, investment banks, and derivatives following the financial crisis - and others which do not require such invasion, but where such invasion is simply the Dems preferred way of dealing with things (some would argue the healthcare bill meets this description).  The Dems will vote to increase the benefits to - or at least not cut the benefits to - various entitlement programs, and yet they will not otherwise cut government to pay for the increases, or cut entitlement programs in order to make them more actuarily sound, favoring instead increases in entitlement taxes, which, of course, are transfers.

Dems will try to still beat their chest about being more fiscally responsible, and they will cite Bill Clinton.  But following George W. Bush's presidency, and his runaway deficits, the Dems and Obama had an opportunity to become the party of fiscal discipline in the eyes of the American people for the next generation.  And they blew it with the bailouts, the TARP, and their own lack of courage to cut government, seriously cut it, while putting the tax rates back where Bill Clinton had them, which was still lower than they had been for much of the nation's fiscally-sound history.

Basically, they have lost that claim with budget deficits which are now at levels George W. Bush never even contemplated (though a long way from exceeding George in total).  And they are not going down.  The Dems, further, are doing nothing to push them down, except initiate a commission to study the debt.  Just WAIT till its recommendations come out.  See if Pelosi and Reid (if they are still in charge) stick to their pledge to give whatever recommendations come out of that commission an up or down vote in the House and Senate.  I bet they balk, and don't allow it.  Or the Republicans balk, and try to stop it.  Because those recommendations - I promise you - will recommend cuts EVERYWHERE to stem all the red ink.  They will recommend an increase (and a significant one) in the qualifying age for Social Security.  They will recommend an increase in the tax rate for Medicare, and a tightening of the qualifications for Medicaid.  They will recommend significant weapons systems scrapped which the Pentagon has said for years they don't need, but whose congressmen and senators make sure continue to get their appropriation since made in their district.  They will recommend a stark contraction of our military-base footprint around the globe, and just overall a defense budget which is no longer larger than all the other major military powers combined.

See if THAT gets an up-or-down-no-amendments-allowed vote in EITHER the House or Senate.  If it does, I will buy you all dinner.  Those of you who read and comment (haha..a shameless grab for commentors), the quality and actual delivery of such claim will come down to a certain geographical convenience and the size of my own deeply in-question budget.  Ok, so there's probably no dinner.  But, anyway, I don't have to worry, because it's not happenin'!  Honestly, though, I hope it does.  And I hope I'll be shelling out some dinner somewhere.

But I digress.  And now I'm hungry.

My point is that the "iteration" is for the minority party to overblow the missteps and bad luck (Katrina, the oil spill) of the present time, claim that the majority is "out of touch" with the American people, and lastly, claim that "the majority is running this country into the ground with debt, and asking our grandchildren to foot the bill."  Blech!  I've heard that bullcrap SO many times.  It alternates back and forth coming out of the mouths of either minority Republicans or minority Democrats.  It's all bluster.  It's all crap.  And with each iteration, but for Bill Clinton, our debt gets worse, the bills which come out of Congress and get signed into law are to the liking of no more than 50% of the U.S. rather than 80% or more.  And the majority treats our political institutions like their own little fiefdoms, while all along, centrists and reasonable thinkers retire and leave public life out of disgust and disenchantment.

I don't want the Republicans again in November.  Are they going to fix anything?  Why in God's name should I believe they will?  I should much more likely believe that they will tax-cut us into deficits raging as furiously as are Obama's if not worse!

Both parties think borrowing is their own little perfect outlet!  For Republicans, it means they can keep government humming and spending pretty much as it is without reforming anything and more importantly pissing anyone off with big cuts, while at the same time cutting taxes!  It's their outlet for actually making that work while no checks bounce.  Actually, fiscally, the Dems are still better than the Republicans, because they actually don't increase the size of government much more if any more than Republicans (Republicans expand government with defense spending, and Dems with social spending), but they also don't cut taxes, or not as deeply, so they thereby guarantee more of the federal government's spending is paid for, yet nowhere near enough.

Anyway, correct me if I am off-base on any of that.  But I have seen this predictable cycle for so long...it goes all the way back to Reagan in '80.  That's 30 years of this!  It should look predictable by now!

The only fix for this is a constitutional amendment, a federal balanced-budget amendment.  It would resemble balance-budget amendments for all the states which mandate that government be paid for with collected tax revenues except for a state of emergency declared by the governor.  In this case, it would be a national emergency declared by the President.  Well, needless to say, in the Supreme Court, very few things for which the federal government borrows currently would meet that test.

It's the only solution for both parties.  Both need it.  Both have shown they need it.  America's fiscal future will look so much like Greece's or like Brazil's used to if we don't pass such an amendment.  I am for whichever candidate or candidates campaign for such an amendment, for whichever party champions it.  That will be my party, right there.