Whenever I sit down to write a posting, I look for a glass half-full item. Unfortunately, and maybe its my own Cassandra view of the world, all I found were glasses half empty or almost entirely empty. This posting is about an empty glass.
Congress reconvenes this week after a month plus of unearned vacation. It would be difficult to read more depressing "news" than the story and granular media analysis of the Obama-Boehner spitting contest over what night, Wednesday or Thursday, the President could use the House chamber for a speech on the need for new job-creation programs. The inner details are really inconsequential and, except for the media's eagnerness to latch on to time- and space-filling "news", the bickering might have received little attention in bygone days when time and space were so important that only real news was used.
Guess the real news is how this dust up between a President and House Speaker of the opposite party signals bad days ahead on issues of real substance, such as creating new jobs which both parties keep talking about but doing nothing about. Before Congress went home in early August the nation was treated to some very ugly partisan, posturing politics over the linked issues of reduced spending and raising the national debt limit. Partisan politics has always been with us. Raising the debt ceiling has occurred many times in the past during both Democratic and Republican administrations and was dealt with with little or no political fanfare.
Sadly, what was different this time was the election last year of tea party (TP) fiscal hawks, joined by very conservative Republican freshmen fellow travelers who hold the spending/debt issue as a fundamental piece of their ideology. Such ideological fundamentalism, mixed with cultural and social values, is not unique to our politics. Remember civil rights and southern resistence to racial equality from the Civil War to the mid-l960s. But the crippling ingredient brought to the spending/debt bargaining table was the TP belief there should be no bargaining; the TP view was "our way or the highway". The second unfortunate ingredient was that during the 2009-10 election campaign, the TP, although a patched-together collection of dissident groups funded by well-heeled arch conservatives, emerged as the voice of the disgruntled center and right and was able to shift much of the Republican Party to the extreme right.
A spending/debt settlement was reached before the vacation but it was a short term arrangment to head off what even some influential GOP leaders feared would be a collapse of our fiscal structure at home with dire consequences also for the international fiscal markets.
So now, given the Obama-Boehner spitting contest over the timing of the job-creation speech, how can we be anything but depressed about the prospects for both job creation and the next round of the spending/debt issue. The return of the latter issue is set legislatively for Thanksgiving when the Super Committee, Super Congress, or Super Whatever is required to come forth with a bipartisan plan that will mandate spending cuts and possibly new revenues to clear the way for another needed increase in the debt ceiling. The preliminary politics to the bipartisan plan is certain to be a replay of the GOP mantra that the problem is excessive spending by a government that's too big and Republican intransigence on any new revenues which to them is synonomous with tax increases. For the Democrats it will be a replay of demands for new revenues and defense of entitlement programs, particularly health care.
The really scarey thing is that whatever is decided and ultimately clears Congress will still be just another short term band-aid solution to fix the immediate partisan political problem of both sides, the 2012 presidential/congressional elections.
In sum, Congress, the broken branch of government, will remain broken. The politics and political posturing this fall and through early November 2012, will be very ugly and get even uglier over the next 14 months. Politics will be alive and well; the many national problems will be rhetorically addressed but likely remain unresolved. That's the real significance of the petty bickering over when the House chamber could be reserved for the Obama speech.
The whole issue of whether the speech would be Wednesday or Thursday is negated in my book by the fact that the country had to wait until after Martha's Vineyard in the first place. For a President that claims job creation is his number one priority that seemed a little strange in the first place. I understand that all President's take vacation and am not commenting on his having taken one, but for appearances sake at least I don't understand why he pre-announced his plans to discuss yet a new job creation plan until after a vacation. To me it says it is not a number one priority.
ReplyDeleteSomehow I have a feeling this Super whatever is not going to have any super powers and we will be right back where we started embroiled in bipartisan politics on the whole budget/deficit issue.
Well it will not be long before we hear what the new job creation plan is but previews show just more of the same in increased taxes and more spending. The money needs to be spent on more sustainable forms of job creation though not like a repeat of the cash for clunkers. I heard a commentator use that old phrase "give someone a fish and they eat for a day, teach someone to fish and you feed them for a liftime. It seems a lot of the stimulus money is just given out but that is not sustainable. Eventually the money runs out. I do not see how anything is going to be resolved at this point.
ReplyDeleteCarole
ReplyDeleteSorry to be long in getting back. We were on the road for a few days and got behind.
Guess I feel about the same way on Congress. They go away for a month and go home and tell their constituents how Obama is not getting the economy moving. And true to form, it sounds like there may be some bipartisan agreement on the easy stuff but when it comes to harder choices which to the GOP means spending, things will not get done.
I agree on the Super Whatever. They seem to think that putting together some kind of new process will somehow also solve the basic problems of partisanship and political posturing for next year's elections.
Jeffrey
ReplyDeleteLike I told Carole above, response to comments fell behind because we were out touring.
I doubt your comment on increased taxes will occur; neither side wants to say that. But I have to say, I'm not a fan of again cutting the payroll tax for social security. I'm skeptical that the extra money in the pocket will be enough to make any difference. At the same time, another temporary reduction means less money flowing into the trust fund for the future. But I'm also an unreconstructed believer in pump priming and believe that spending on public works does create jobs, although it take a bit longer. This time it looks like a public works program on the cheap with his asking for just $10 billion for some kind of bank from which the private sector can borrow, with interest, to build infrastructure.