SANITY FAIR
The latest antics in Washington can be summed up in one word: crazy
By Ed Griffin-Nolan
The next Congress should pass a law saying that they will only subject us to these ridiculous and ugly spectacles when the weather is crummy. These past few weeks have been so lovely you want to bottle them and save them for a chilly, rainy October day or for a frosty February night between blizzards.
It seems so unfair that we have to go from sipping the nectar of sweet summertime by day to watching the Washington circus that, like a looming cloud, let loose on our TV newscasts by night During the week leading up to the congressional debt ceiling decision, I was out with one of my sons swinging off a piece of rope and taking turns flinging ourselves into Jamesville Reservoir, a mildly illegal form of summertime delight. Days earlier we were at a Syracuse Chiefs game and watched something I’d never seen before: the first base ump hit a home run. Actually he called a shot over the left field wall by visiting Columbus Clipper Shelly Duncan a home run after the home plate umpire had ruled it foul.
In short order the Chiefs manager and pitcher were both ejected, and the Clippers took the lead over the home team.
Fortunately our guys avenged this injustice late in the game and held on to win.
Another gorgeous summer night spoiled by watching the ticking clock on the latenight news.
Even the antics of the umps at Alliance Bank Stadium couldn’t hold a candle to what was happening in the halls of Congress during those weeks. So many words have been written, but there is one that keeps coming to mind: crazy.
While the nation’s economy is so bad that one out of five adults is either unemployed or underemployed, Congress took up its time, and the president’s time, debating whether we should pay our bills. Remember that the debt ceiling is not an issue that has to do with the budget: It is a question of whether we will pay the commitments we (through acts of Congress) have already made.
This game of chicken makes me think that the congressional Republicans, including our own hometown Tea Party wannabe Ann Marie Buerkle, are either crazy, or they are working for the Chinese. Actually Buerkle didn’t find the bill putting an end to the crisis crazy enough, so she voted against it anyway.
Truth is that no one in our history, not Newt Gingrich, not Ronald Reagan, not even John Boehner, has dared to risk the full faith and credit of the U.S. government as a bargaining device to push through their own policy prescriptions. Until now, even the most passionate members of Congress have considered that the best way to pass legislation is to propose legislation, not threaten to wreck our credit rating at a time when we sorely need it.
This whole pathetic episode has made us a laughingstock of a world that still cannot find any alternative to American leadership. If there were any country that had a currency worth holding, that nation would be wise to jump in and take over the role of the world’s leading economy. We hold our place in the world today by default, and the Tea Party uprising threatens to take us from recession to permanent decline.
Buerkle, Paul Ryan and others on their ideological crusade are gambling on a premise that has failed in the past—that cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations will revive our economy. (Buerkle’s other argument, that small businesses are holding back on investing due to uncertainty, holds no water after this most recent exercise in governmentinduced uncertainty.)
Democrats and sensible Republicans (did somebody say Richard Hanna?) must HOP stop splitting the difference between insanity and fear and return to realitybased budgeting and economic policy.
The economy is hurting due to a lack of demand. Demand is a function of jobs.
Jobs are a function of investment. Investment funds are being withheld from the market by the wealthy and corporations. If they IDLE won’t invest it, then we (yes, the government) need to tax it and invest it to create jobs and spur demand. To invest, we have to borrow, and, as every family and every business knows, the time to borrow SALT is when SHAKES money is cheap (like now). There you go. If the Tea Party has been willing to make previously unspeakable insanity central to its policy, the Democrats must get over their fear of speaking sanity, even politically unpopular sanity.
The congressional committee now tasked with taking on the issue of spending cuts is being asked to replicate the work of the Simpson-Bowles Commission, which concluded, as every sober analyst had, that the deficit will be resolved only with a combination of entitlement reforms and revenue increases.
Buerkle doesn’t like the commission, doesn’t like the Super Congress provision of the latest bill, doesn’t seem to like anything but the same simple slogans of cutting spending without naming specifics.
In her post-vote press conference she gave three excuses: the bill was rushed, she did not have enough information, and it would not protect the troops. I’m not sure which is more pathetic.
Wrapping herself in the flag and prattling about supporting the troops is the cheapest way to avoid responsibility for her actions. Ms. Buerkle, if you want to drive the economy over a cliff, please don’t hide behind the men and women fighting overseas.
Second—you didn’t have enough information? We make decisions every day based on the best information available, not perfect information. If you don’t know what’s in the bill, you’re not doing your job.
Buerkle’s final answer, that the bill was rushed, is the most revealing. Surely she knew that Aug. 2 was coming. Her party chose to make this debt ceiling limit into a crisis.
“Aug. 2,” she told a telephone press conference, “was a date set by the administration and {Treasury Secretary} Tim Geitner.”
This is the same type of denial that Buerkle brings to the issue of climate change, or any issue besides spending cuts. Denial is surely a symptom of something.
