Sequestration and the GOP's Double Bind -a self inflicted wound


Taxes, Debt and the GOPs Double Bind.

No matter what they do regarding the Sequestration process, the Republican Party is screwed.  Their dilemma represents a form of double-bind.  In fact, theirs may even be a triple-bind.   And it never had to happen.

The binds:  1) if they give in and raise taxes, their voters will be angry; 2) if they cut expenses, the economy will only get worse, so most of their voters will still end up dissatisfied (the rich ones will not be).  The possible third bind is with the voters who don’t vote for the GOP.  These voters are now in the majority – and demographic trends suggest things will only get worse.  The GOP’s bad behavior, both in 2011 and now is only turning off voters even more.

Do you think I am wrong when I suggest that Republicans brought about this crisis?  Sorry, Sequestration was not an Obama plan - even if the plan came from the White House.   Remember, the Republican House held a virtual gun to Obama’s head in 2011 over the debt ceiling, so Sequestration came about not as good policy, but only as a Hail Mary pass thrown in desperation. 

The three Dilemmas

We can all agree that #1 is true, that, yes, Republican voters would be angry (to differing degrees) if Republicans agreed to raise taxes either directly, or by reducing deductions.

How about #2, isn’t that just my opinion?  No, many economists (including Paul Krugman) suggest that now is not the time for spending cuts – even if needed, they ought to wait for a fuller recovery.  But even more interesting is that since 2008, Europe has run an experiment with austerity.  And lo and behold, cutting government spending does not improve a stagnant economy.  The strongest states have remained stagnant, but the weaker ones (Ireland, Portugal, Spain) have gotten worse.

Then there is the third problem – that Republicans’ actions only make things worse with the average voter – especially the voters who do not regularly vote Republican. The smart thing to do would be to try to sway voters in the middle,  but the GOP’s  actions are only driving the rest of us farther away. 

It didn’t have to be this way. 

As late as the Reagan era, moderate Republicans were an important subset of the Republican caucus.  Even Ronald Reagan was able to respond honestly when confronted with facts.  For example, though he initially cut taxes, he raised them a but when the budget deficit began to spiral upward (primarily on defense spending).  And by the end of Reagan’s two terms, only a few extremists accepted the notion that tax cuts by themselves were “pro-growth.”  Sadly, by 1996, the Dole campaign accepted the nonsensical flat tax, since then it’s been madness. 

What about the debt

In the old days conservatives always wanted us to spend less; in essence, theirs was a plea for thrift, and such pleas were worth hearing.  At some point in the early 1960s Republican Senator Everett Dirksen said at a news conference, “a billion here, a billion then and pretty soon you are talking about real money.”  The quote may be apocryphal, but I swear I heard it on the evening news.  Yet by the 1980s, Republicans were far less worried about the debt than they should have been – and debt exploded under Reagan.  Then under Bush II they manufactured deficits* and then ignored them.  As soon as Obama took office, right wing groups (funded partly with money from folks like the Koch brothers) immediately complained about the debt.  Oh, the watermelon jokes also began to appear.

Perhaps if Republican acknowledged their disingenuousness on deficits and debt, the rest of us could consider their arguments.

So what now? 

On a host of issues, from Climate Change, to Gay Marriage, to Immigration and Gun Control, to Taxes and Debt, Republicans crafted a positions designed much more for securing voters and campaign cash, and less to improve life for America and Americans.  Om top of that, allied with Fox News (not an independent arbiter) and right wing radio, they have managed to convince white working class voters that their positions on taxes and debt will help all of us.  These won’t, but their base of  mediocre minds believe this will.

So for the rest of us, we need to wait it out – see if sense returns to the Republican fantasy land.  If not, we will continue to vote for Democrats, even as we pine for better alternatives. 

*Yes, the Bush tax cuts did create deficits.  The problem they were meant to solve was a growing surplus, so they were designed to reduce revenue – and they worked.  Right wing economist have crafted a counter narrative that suggests that the tax cuts increased revenues.  Not being an expert, nor having the time to go over the data, I am at very least skeptical.  And bottom line, we start with a potential surplus, lower tax rates and end with debt.  Seems pretty clear. 

PS:  the watermelon jokes.  Maybe the tea partiers are not racist.  But if not, then why do we continue to see the following:


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Twins

Image
The Twins  When I was a child, I was known as one of “the twins.”    I am a twin.  This was the most important fact of my childhood. My brother Jerry and I were same sex twins and we looked identical to everyone.  Still being identical was fraught.   The party line was that we were not identical. My mother explained this by explaining the when we were born, there were two placenta.  This fact was huge in the world of my child raising; it reflected my mother’s status as a nurse.  So despite the many signs of our being identical, we accepted the statements of my mother, that held doubt about our status.   Still we were very much alike.  More so than any other fraternal twins that I knew or that I learned about.  We appeared alike to everyone, even a dachshund that lived next door to my wife and I when we lived in Dayton, Ohio - we lived there from 1978-1981.   This annoying dog would bark incessantly at all strangers, yet when my brother visited us from New Jersey, he was quiet.  At the
Read more
Image
I was leaving church after singing at a special mass where the bishop officiated.  Satisfied that the choir performed well, it was time for me to zone out. As my car left the parking lot a man’s  voice boomed, “What the bleep was that?” The voice came from the empty passenger’s seat, about where a man’s head would be.  Slowly a man appeared filling the seat  He was dressed in robes and had long hair and a beard.  It was Jesus! Me: So are you really Jesus?  JC:  Yes, neat trick to materialize out of nothing.  But let’s talk about what we just witnessed.   They treated the statue of Our Lady of Fatima as an idol. I thought you Catholics were sensitive to accusations that you put too much importance on statues and pictures.   Well that went out the window today! And then there is Fatima itself.  You know that Fatima was meant to be a joke.  A few guardian angels were bored so they thought they would play a trick on the kids.  But the joke got out of hand.  There is no “the Angel of Peace.
Read more

Are Catholics Idolators?

Image
Raised a Catholic, I attended Catholic school through high school.   When I started high school, the Catholic Church was just emerging from the tumult of Vatican II.   We considered our Church modern and enlightened.   So the Mass was now in English.   Science was ok, as was liberal democracy.   The old superstitions that came to the US from Europe were supposedly left behind.   When the council ended, there was a real hope that the Church was soon allow birth control.   This was before birth control and abortion galvanized conservatives so much so that many bishops support a pussy grabbing twice divorced thug for president.     In my day, we Catholics were sensitive to criticisms from Jews and Protestants that we were idolaters, with our statues and holy pictures.   Fortunately the post Vatican II suburban Church had mostly left this behind, to be encountered only when we visited grandma in the old neighborhood.   For me the older generation began to die off when my mother’s mother di
Read more