Democrats' Notions of Dealmaking

As appalling as was the discourse surrounding the efforts to raise the debt ceiling, I am far more appalled by the dialogue that I’ve been witnessing since the bill passed the House. It disgusts me when I see this measure referred to as a “deal,” and I’m positively sickened when it’s referred to as a “compromise.” I know by now that to expect Democrats to stand up for a cause, to be proactive and take an aggressive lead in lawmaking would be asking too much, but is it really unrealistic to imagine that they might come away from one of their terrific capitulations and express a little outrage, a little anger, or even just a little definite opposition?

Instead of any of that, virtually all of the Democrats I’ve seen commenting on this 100% Republican plan talk about it as if it’s a good thing. They use those words, like “compromise,” implying that both sides gave up a little something for the greater good. But the reality is an increasingly familiar story, in which the legislators who present themselves as being a little bit closer to sharing my views give up the very essence of their position, and all of the preceding debate and rancor comes to look like nothing more than an elaborate show designed to maintain the illusion that there is an opposition party. Why doesn’t that illusion instantly fall apart when we consider that that would-be opposition party still holds control over the majority of the government, but none of the policy discussions?

Only six Democratic senators voted against a debt ceiling increase that includes trillions in spending cuts and absolutely no revenue increase. How can that be explained other than by supposing that they either tacitly accept the positions of the Republican party or that they just don’t care enough about their contrary views to fight for them or even to register them publicly. Republicans have no qualms whatsoever about casting purely symbolic votes. Why do Democrats refuse to do the same, opting instead to demonstrate complete support for legislation crafted entirely by their so-called opponents? Twenty-eight Tea Party Republicans voted against this bill, and that suggests that there are nearly five times as many senators in the minority party who are in opposition because the completely conservative measure is not conservative enough than there are Democratic senators against it because no aspect of it is liberal in any way, shape, or form. Does the Democratic Party stand for anything whatsoever?

My representative in the House voted in favor of the bill, and his subsequent remarks reflect an unwillingness to so much as discuss what went wrong, or to acknowledge that this was anything less than the best thing for the country. Representative Brian Higgins has said that what is important now is moving forward and addressing job creation. I wonder if he believes that the two issues are unrelated. I agree that job creation is of paramount importance, but I think it was important before this fiasco was completed. As a matter of fact, that’s a significant part of the reason why the means by which we raised the debt ceiling was so important in the first place. If legislators continue to push for cuts without revenue, the support apparatus for the unemployed and impoverished can’t escape the chopping block forever, and the government will have no means by which to institute genuine job creation measures. Now that a lack of compromise has been turned into a bipartisan congressional act, it’s not appropriate for Democrats with an active conscience to leave it at their backs and call the issue settled. It’s not appropriate to forget that this is a terrible deal, and to suppress anger and avoid blame. And it’s not appropriate to describe this as a compromise, as even the President has been doing.

I’m pleased that one of the senators from my home state of New York, Kirsten E. Gillibrand, voted against the Budget Control Act, but given the fact that her voice is such a small, ineffectual minority in the party that controls her chamber of Congress, she is one of the very few major party candidates who retains my support after the passage of this act. This is a breaking point for me. I never considered myself a Democrat, but naturally I voted that way more often than not. From this point on, however, I will vote for neither Democrat nor Republican unless I have a damn good reason to believe that that label does not fit the particular candidate. The very best thing that can be said of Democrats in recent years is that they’ve attached such high value to compromise that they’ve made an ideology of capitulation. I’m not interested in voting for congressional representatives whose primary legislative goals are to present an image of bipartisan agreement at all costs. I want representatives who will fight tooth and nail to pass laws that they, and hopefully by extension I, think are best for the country. Is that too much to ask?

Lower Outlooks

The S&P's decision to lower it's outlook on U.S. debt is being variously described as a "threat," a "wake-up call," and a "warning shot across our bows." Perhaps without intending to, all of these phrasings suggest an element of power and deliberate manipulation on the part of the S&P. And what I find fascinating, and fairly shocking, is that no such well-intentioned warning was deemed necessary for private banking institutions when, no long ago, the S&P revised their rating methodology to include the assumption that banks will always be bailed out by the government.

I think the tension between those two judgments ought to be given a great deal of attention. Isn't there something seriously wrong when private investment banks can be considered essentially immune to default, but national treasuries cannot? Placing these two pronouncements by the S&P in context with each other, can there be any doubt as to where the greater share of the power in this country resides? Who's in charge when it is explicitly assumed that the government will bail out financial institutions, while it is accepted that the government must stand or fall on its own, with no expectation of the financial sector to float it the cash to keep running?

I'm looking for one of two breaking points from this. Either we fully acknowledge the injustices of the economic imbalance of which this is a part, and move to change the structure of a system that demands that governments take a back seat to financial systems, or we sit back and watch as a decreased rating for the government undermines the bailout assumption and drags down the ratings of the banks until both institutions are fractured and depleted.

Those are just the breaking points, though. The more likely outcome, as always, is the preservation of the status quo, which in this case means that the government will agree to raise its debt ceiling again, and Congress will ram through some dubious budget compromise to capitulate to the "threat" that has been issued by the S&P, which is, apparently, powerful enough to easily push around the entire federal government.

But Balance is Hard!

I was rather pleased with President Obama’s speech about the budget. What he laid out seemed to be exactly what he claimed it to be, and exactly what constitutes the only reasonable response to our current budget problems: a balanced approach. Yet there is a hefty proportion of the population that does not seem to recognize the need for balance, or the simple ethics of sharing the burden. And I think that fact is underscored by some of the introductory language of the speech that the president seemed to think necessary to include.

I am eager to see a breaking point in the volume of basic civic engagement and common sense whereby it will never again be necessary for a public figure to begin a speech such as this with an explanation of the very purpose of government and the social programs that it runs. Obama pointed out the listening audience that most people really hate government spending in the abstract, but love the things it pays for. I thought that was kind of a cleverly amusing comment, despite its obviousness and the frustration that comes of thinking that it shouldn’t, but does, have to be explained to people.

Why is the public filled with people who are not self-reflective enough to realize that that’s essentially the way they think? There must be many such people, because it’s only by virtue of their soft support that a proposal to simply hack health care and other important spending out of the budget can gain any traction.

Obama’s opening remarks also contained something of a soft reminder that the individual problems that government pays for, such as unemployment and getting old, might in fact happen to you at some point. This, too, is apparently something that people do not understand when they decry as “wasteful” the kind of spending that keeps people alive.

It is tragic that these considerations would be anything less than obvious to anyone, and all those people whose conservative ideologies reside in a basic failure to reflect on the nature of human life and human society need to be actively pushed towards a breaking point. We shouldn’t need to remind them of these things in policy speeches, and they do need reminding, it should come before that, and often. There are too many people in this country who have never been asked to confront certain kinds of human misery first hand. I’d like to see all the soft supporters of proposals like representative Ryan’s placed face-to-face with an ailing elderly person, a laid-off worker, or a financially struggling college student and see if they can look them in the eye and still say that refusing to alleviate their suffering is okay as long as it provides the nation with a quick fix.