|
The Republicans hold control of one house of Congress. They don’t control the Senate and, in case you hadn’t noticed, they don’t have someone in the White House. The people of the United States elected Obama just over two years and five months ago and, last I checked, he claims to be a Democrat. So, what the heck is Congressman Paul Ryan doing suggesting that he set the agenda for the country for the next ten years, give new big tax cuts to wealthier earners and chop the heck out of the rest of the Federal budget?
One purpose goes under the heading called “re-framing the debate”. This means turning the national dialog away from what the government can do to serve its citizens and toward how little it can afford to do in the future. The Republicans see, excuse me, an historic opportunity brought about by the recession, the over spending on wars during the Bush years and the public’s prior concerns with the Bush/Obama bailouts and loans to banks and the auto companies. They want to turn anger against all of that, plus the health care changes, into a mandate to strip the Federal government, something the Republicans have wanted for decades. They seem to think if they don’t do it now, it will never get done.
They very well might have made a massive miscalculation of the public mood and the voter’s intentions in 2010. Cutting the Federal budget is a wonderful thing! Ah, except when those cuts hit home. If you have an elderly or near elderly parent, do you want to suddenly have to worry that you might be driven into bankruptcy to provide medical care in the future? What will all of those voters over the age of 55 have to say about huge changes in the Medicare system?
This budget cutting effort represents one of the greatest overreaches in the last one hundred years of American government and politics. You say you want a revolution? Well, here’s a way to get the opposition fired up and ready to fight back. One can only imagine what they would have proposed if they had won both houses of Congress last year.
That all of the proposed changes are coupled with a proposed reduction in the top tax rate from 35 to 25 percent is yet another clever effort to see that the Federal government can never do it again. What is “it”? Take a major role in improving the lives of Americans, that’s what. The Republicans want all of the power over our lives to be in the hands of corporations and in whatever meager jobs we can find.
All of this is possible to even suggest largely because so called progressive voices in America have gone silent. Talk radio is right wing, morning till night. The major media outlets are largely intimidated after a forty year long campaign claiming bias by the right. Obama, so good in making speeches before large crowds in 2008, seems unable to frame his own arguments in terms that most citizens can understand and support.
Ryan, the Congressman behind all of this, has shattered one of the biggest, unwritten rules of the modern Republican party: don’t say what you are actually in favor of in the government. The Republicans have prospered by constant criticism and outright attacks against the Dems and by saying they are for generalities, not specifics. They are for “values” and “letting the American people keep more of their own money”, and recently they have been for “freedom” instead of health care changes. Now, Ryan has given a point-by-point blue print of what it would mean if the Republicans were 100% in charge of the Federal government. The so called safety net would be shredded, the wealthy would get tax cut that haven’t even asked for and the deficit spending would remain high. Before long, Ryan could find himself persona non grata among his fellow Republicans or, if his gambit were to work, a hero to the right.
Oh, here is one of the unkindest cuts of all contained in these proposals: they want to change procedures in Congress to an undemocratic system that would require a 2/3s majority vote for all future tax increases. This might sound like a good idea, until you realize that this is the kind of stalemate producing effort that has virtually shutdown California for the last couple of decades. Further, it bares the teeth of the whole right wing, Tea Pot movement as one aligned against democracy itself. Requiring a vote like that would give the minority, any minority, a virtual veto over any future tax increases. We would go from majority rule to minority rule in a single step.
With no chance of passing such measures, the obvious goal of the Republicans is to use these proposals, first, as negotiating points and, second, to try to win the White House and the Senate in 2012. The whole thing could backfire like a missile shot in the wrong direction. How many people are willing to vote to cut their own benefits and remove the so called safety net underneath the elderly and the very poor? It seems we shall soon find out.
Doug Terry, 4.6.11
|
|
