GOVERNING AT GUNPOINT
Governing at gunpoint no way to run country
Fairfield Daily Republic August 4, 2011By Kelvin Wade
This is no way to govern a superpower.
Many Democrats referred to the debt ceiling negotiations as Republican hostage taking and terrorism. I likened it to suicide bombers. But I was mistaken. Destroying the full faith and credit of the United States would be far more devastating to the nation and the global economy than a terrorist act.
But what else do you call it when a minority of politicians has a temper tantrum and threatens to take the ball and go home? Last week, 51 local tea party groups in Ohio wrote Speaker John Boehner a letter warning him not to cave in on the debt limit negotiations. Some groups are ready to run a primary opponent against their own leader.
Californians shouldn’t be surprised. We’ve dealt with this tyranny of the minority for years, where a handful of Republican politicians in Sacramento hold up the budget every year. It was only a matter of time before Washington began operating the same way.
Sometimes to deal with crazy you have to go a little crazy yourself. Remember the beginning of “Lethal Weapon” when a man was threatening to jump off a building? Detective John Riggs (Mel Gibson) went up to the roof, handcuffed himself to the suicidal man and jumped off the building with him. That’s what the Democrats have decided to do.
The two sides have fashioned a deal that requires more than $900 billion in cuts. Then Congress must make additional cuts by Thanksgiving and vote on them by Dec. 23. If they don’t, then truly draconian cuts kick in.
Our leaders can only govern at gunpoint. They’re like the sheriff in “Blazing Saddles” who holds himself hostage with a gun to his own head.
They’ve set up a doomed-to-fail super committee with six Democrats and six Republicans who must come up with a package of spending cuts Congress will pass.
Why is it doomed to fail? Republican leaders are openly saying they aren’t going to appoint Republicans to the committee that would raise taxes on the wealthy. And Democrats are sure to stack their side with liberals who won’t allow cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
C’mon. Casey Anthony has a better chance of winning Mother of the Year than Congress does of passing a balanced deficit reduction package. That’s when the trigger kicks in. If the committee can’t agree on additional cuts, in addition to billions slashed in discretionary spending that’s going to hurt everyone, an additional $600 billion is sliced from the defense budget during the next decade. That $600 billion will come on top of $400 billion in defense cuts in the first round. That’s a trillion dollars cut out of defense if the Dems and Reps can’t agree on taxes for the well-to-do.
That would mean shrinking the Army and Marines, delaying weapons systems, cutting veterans benefits, cutting back on Homeland Security and maybe base closings. That means defense contractors shedding jobs.
But are members who were willing to see the U.S.’s credit rating downgraded and risked pushing the nation toward default going to be frightened by massive defense cuts? And there are plenty of Democratic politicians and many Americans who want to see the defense budget so gutted we can’t wage these endless wars.
So now the battle has truly been joined. Our leaders can either compromise or we watch the hammer fall on the Pentagon.
This is no way to govern a country. Peace.
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ADDITIONAL NOTES: It's pretty pathetic that we have this big fight in Washington (the fallout of which appears to have cratered an already anemic economy) to remove a Sword of Damocles from above our heads. Then, as soon as we're done, we hang another sword above our heads in the form of these triggers. If the super Congress (Have you seen anything in the Constitution about Congress' ability to make super Congresses? But I digress...) fails to agree, then we suffer huge, draconian cuts in defense and programs that help millions. Washington thinks this will prod legislators to negotiate. HA!
The most interesting thing I heard during all of this fuss was a column by the Washington Post's Ezra Klein. The Bush/Obama tax cuts are due to expire at the end of next year. If Congress does nothing, they will expire and rates will go back to where they were during the Clinton years, generating $3.6 trillion in revenue and thus solving our revenue problem. All Congress has to do is what they do best....nothing.
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