The cherry blossoms may not have appeared yet but budgets are blooming all over The Capital. True the Republicans have been coming out with useless budgets regularly but for the Democrats this is the first in a long time. Of course neither of them stands a chance in hell of being passed, but who wants to be picky?
The biggest problem is, both parties and their budgets reflect the kind of government they are trying to impose on the country, and to hear both parties tell it, they’re doing it for the country’s ultimate good.
The Democrats want a budget that supports spending, that will encourage things like growth in jobs, infrastructure replacement, education, health, etc. The Republicans want a budget that supports cuts, that will encourage things like growth in jobs, infrastructure replacement, education, health, etc., so they both have the same ends, they just want to get there by different means. Or do they?
Of course, as always, there are a couple of small variances. The Right is firm on reducing the debt and the Left is even more firm on increasing jobs and this is where the great dichotomy exists. Obama says that there is no debt crisis right now and so we should really concentrate on jobs for an immediate jolt to the economy that will eventually pay off in both growth and a lowering of the debt.
But wait a minute. Both John Boehner and Paul Ryan say the same thing. Yeah, that’s right, all three agree that there is no immediate debt crisis. But there is an immediate jobs crisis, especially if you’re out of work. So why the hell are the Republican’s, whose two principle leaders in fiscal dealings agree that there is no immediate problem, so dead set on worrying about the debt which has actually gone down this year, as opposed to a lack of jobs, which is still a huge drag on the economy?
I’ll tell you why. It’s because the Republicans don’t dare tell you the real reasons for their intransience over the debt vs jobs argument. There are traditional positions here. The Democratic liberal position has always been to spend in order to make life more bearable for as many citizens as possible. The conservative Republican position has always been to cut spending in order to preserve capital and shrink the government. They somehow, think that shrinking the government is a good thing.
The overall problem in our current economic world is that the economic separation of the classes has expanded to a point where it is no longer possible to continue to maintain both positions on a moderate basis. The 2007 depression, made possible by the unregulated expansion of Wall Street investment houses, gambling banks and crooked mortgage companies and the subsequent near destruction of our industrial manufacturing capabilities, accelerated an already expanding gulf between those who work and those who manage. That gap has reached such enormous proportions that those not in the top 2% can no longer support a lifestyle equal to that which their parents had enjoyed over the forty years following WWII. Whereas they were once self-sufficient, they are now dependent on government help.
Families who once lived comfortably on a single income now need food stamps to survive on two incomes while middle management executives get million dollar bonuses and corporate officers get twenty million dollar yachts.
The dirty secret, to which the Republican’s dare not admit, is that they are firmly committed to keeping this status quo. Their every strategy is aimed at keeping their billionaire sponsors firmly on top of the heap and conversely keeping the working stiffs under the heel of management. The GOP leaders know that there is no immediate debt crisis so they contend that it is coming. So is the end of the world but only a fool or a con man with an angle sits around worrying about it on a daily basis.
We don’t have a debt crisis. We do have a jobs crisis. We do have an infrastructure crisis. We do have an education crisis. So why don’t we try to solve the problems that are in crisis now and worry about those that are not, later? One half of this year’s debt is due to unemployment. Solve unemployment and we are on our way to solving the debt and we will already have solved the problem of putting food on the table for our millions of unemployed.
Back to the big lie. The Republican’s can’t admit that they don’t favor investment in those crisis areas because if they do, they will have to admit that they don’t support the solution to how to fund them, even after they talked incessantly about it during the end of year Fiscal Cliff negotiations. Remember that? Remember when all the GOP could talk about was fixing the tax code instead of raising taxes on the rich. Sure, we all do, and what we remember most, if we have any memory left, is that when asked how they would fix the tax code, the answer was always the same; close loopholes. The only problem with that answer was that as soon as anyone asked what loopholes they seemed to have lost their ability to speak. Why? Because they never had any intention of closing any loopholes, that would ham their many corporate sponsors. Get rid of the multi-billion oil, or gas or coal or farm subsidies? Hell no. Get rid of the subsidies or rebates for companies sending jobs or profits overseas? Hell no.
Since the Right Wing legislators can’t address these loopholes for fear of injuring their corporate sponsors, they had to come up with something at least remotely plausible and thus the debt crisis was born. Look, debt is never good, paying interest on anything is like throwing money away, but in this situation, joblessness, the fate of the infrastructure and our educational failures are all more important than the interest we are paying on our debt. Eliminating loopholes in the tax code and using the revenues gained, to solve these monumentally important problems must be the goal that we all aspire to. But the Right can’t do that because they are more interested in protecting their rich sponsors than they are in helping the country or its citizens achieve their goals. Okay, they finally admit, we have no debt crisis right now but we will have one eventually. Sure we will, especially if we don’t solve joblessness now. But the GOP’s first problem is to take the heat off their unwillingness to target tax loopholes for the rich and that’s why the phony debt crisis was born.
The Boehner’s, the Ryan’s, the McCullough’s, the Cruz’s, all the men who want to screw what used to be the middle class for the benefit of the men who hold the purse strings, have been able, thus far, to keep their followers from realizing how effectively they are being screwed. I have asked many working class right wing friends about this and they are all terrified that somehow the debt is going to crash the economy again, and then both they and their wives will both be out of work instead of just one of them.
And what will happen to them if this occurs? Why, they’ll go on welfare or unemployment or food stamps, all the programs that they have voted all their lives to squash. It would create a great teaching moment but do we really need that kind of destruction just to prove that the GOP is dead wrong? We’ll see.