TURBULENCE ABROAD AND AT HOME

If you want to talk about turbulence and political disarray, it's difficult to know where to begin. In the Arab world and Iran we are witnessing revolution and/or violent street protests demanding political and economic reform. But we also have our own brand of political disarray in the form of trench warfare in Washington over cutting federal spending and, at the state level, efforts in some Republican controlled states to get even with strong public employee unions that have been traditionally strong backers of the Democratic party. First, disarray abroad.

The first thing to be said is that the outbreaks in the various countries of the Middle East and north Africa are not part of a pan-Islamic movement intent on installing fundamentalist Islamic law in countries now governed by secular leaders, many with pro-western attachments. From all reports, the revolutions/uprisings are home-grown efforts to deal with home-grown grievances against ruling regimes. In Libya the issue is somewhat akin to that of Egypt, corrupt, repressive regimes too long in power, and where there is a huge gap between a rich elite and a massive underclass of poor and near poor.

In Bahrain the same general problem exists with the added grievance of the exploitation of an impoverished Shia majority (70 percent) by a wealthy Sunni minority (30 percent) led by the king and his appointed prime minister who is also his uncle. The brutality of the royal response to the protesters is heightened by the fact that over the years the army and security forces have been manned by co-religionist Sunnis recruited from abroad, from countries such as Pakistan, Jordan, and Yemen. By contrast, the Egyptian army which eventually sided with the pro-democracy demonstrators is made up of conscripts.

If the various countries of the region are experiencing domestic upheaval, the uprisings, particularly in Bahrain, have created the same problem for President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton as occurred with the Egyptian revolution. Both Egypt and Bahrain play key roles in our policies in the Arab/Muslim world so any uprising forces the U.S. to walk a tight rope in choosing sides between the rulers whom we have supported for decades and the ruled. In Egypt, as indicated in a previous posting, we waffled on the issue. In Iran, it was easier when the anti-government protesters took to the streets last week; we came out strongly in their favor.

In Bahrain where our 5th fleet is headquartered our public pronouncements made a nod of sympathy toward the protesters, but we are avoiding giving any overt encouragement to them, unlike the support we gave to the pro-democracy demonstrators in Egypt. In Bahrain the U.S. emphasis is on urging the government to constrain the severity of its responses to the demonstrators. If constraint is needed anywhere, it is certainly in Libya where the government crackdown on protesters has been especially violent. If all of these problems aren't enough for U.S. policy in the Arab/Muslim world, we added to those woes last week by casting the only veto of a U.N. resolution aimed at halting the spread of Israeli settlements in occupied territory of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Now to the disarray at home.

First, it should be stated that Congress has again gone home. For President's Day they take a week off. Someone once said something like this, "Congress has adjourned, the Republic is "safe." After watching the House of Boehner finally go through a hard week of work of budget cutting, maybe there is some truth in the old saying. But the real issue is now upon us.

The historic budget cuts made by the House are now kicked over to the Senate which has also gone home. When it returns it has just five days to do something before March 4 when the continuing resolution (CR) under which the federal government has been funded runs out (see previous post). There are indications that House-Senate compromise talks may be going on during the recess. It seems right now that there are two possible outcomes -- pass another CR or let the government shut down on March 5. The Democratic-controlled Senate has made it clear it will not accept the House-passed cuts so if the government shuts down it's the fault of the Republicans, who now seem to be controlled by the Tea Party and spending hawks. Boehner, on the other hand, said he will not accept another short term CR which does not include a major cut in spending for the rest of this fiscal year which ends September 30. So it's eyeball to eyeball and we have to wait to see if anyone blinks. Meanwhile, there are also significant outbreaks of discontent at the state and local levels where they're also running out of money.

At the state and local levels the customary approach to big budget shortfalls is to go where the big money is. For these governments the big bucks are in education and public safety (police and fire), and medicaid (for the states). States have sought to trim medicaid costs but they are constrained by the federal government in how much they can do since the program is funded through federal matching grants. So to meet the budget needs, school programs such as music, art, and athletics are cut or eliminated, teachers are laid off and classrooms are more crowded, and there are fewer (sometimes far fewer) police and firemen on the job. Contrast that with the federal government where politics keeps the President and Congress from going where the money is--social security, medicare, and medicaid--and instead they scratch away to make a lot of big cuts in a lot of small programs.

Now state governments, at least those controlled by Republicans, are going for another pot of money, public employees, including teachers. In Wisconsin, the Republican controlled government says it will cut the budget by limiting collective bargaining with public employee unions while also increasing employee contributions to pension and health care funds. It is not difficult to interpret this as revenge upon those public employees unions that have been strong supporters of Democratic candidates over the years. It is interesting to note that police and firefighter unions are excluded from the proposed legislation; Milwaukee police and fire unions supported the Republican governor in the election. The Wisconsin confrontation has drawn the most attention, but other states have also embarked on similar efforts to weaken public employee unions.

So much for the turbulence abroad and at home -- for now.