|
The state legislatures, most of which are required by law or constitution to pass balanced budgets, must imagine that there are millions of voters with pitch forks about to attack them if they don't cut spending and avoid new taxes. The irony is that revenues going to most states are likely to be climbing upward as the country fights, pulls and crawls its way out of the recession. Texas, which to date lags the nation in many fields of service to its citizens, appears, with others, to be making a urgent dive for the very bottom. How many new corporations will want to move to a state like that?
As for the U.S. House, the utterly stupid, politically skewed and draconian cuts approved by the House are motivated by two factors: First, the cuts are negotiating positions, the reverse of a federal agency that proposes several billion dollars more for the near year, hoping it will wind up with a billion. The Republicans are playing a game of chicken with the nation's future and they hope they will be cheered for it all the way through the next election cycle. They think they have been dealt a winning hand, but, as often before, they seem to be reading too much into their presumed mandate.
The other major element is a screaming, thundering naivete on the part of the 87 new Republican fresh members of the House. Many are utterly inexperienced in politics beyond the elections they just won, which were handed to them, in part, by the massive campaign and extra-campaign contributions of the wealthy and those, inside corporations and out, opposed to the Health Care changes. The new members of the House are bound for their own defeat because they are voting to cut programs that are very popular in their home states and districts. When the full story of these cuts hit the fan, only a few of them are likely to be left standing after the next election, unless American voters have reversed their long standing hypocrisy of wanting cuts everywhere but where they live and work.
Getting new people, even naive ones, into Congress is actually a good thing, over the long term. Fresh eyes on old problems is an important part of the way the world renews itself and casts off the binds of the past. This group, the Tea Pot 87, seem to want to play the role of anti-politicians, as if they actually believe what they sold to the public in 2010. That role has been tested out many times before and it usually winds up in a governmental mess, followed by defeat at the next election.
Voters in 2010 were angry about a health reform plan they didn’t understand, upset over the long drawn out battle to get it past and deeply frustrated over a national economy that offered little hope. All of this came on top of carefully planted rumors designed to damage the start of the Obama administration and bailouts for the car companies and Wall Street that were set in motion under Bush. It was too much: too much to absorb and too much to handle.
LARGER QUESTIONS INVOLVED
What happened to America? Why can't we afford to take care of our population, provide basic needed services and prepare for the future? We are not in the middle of the great depression of the 1930s, last time I checked. We don't want to pay taxes, we don't believe the rich should pay a considerably larger share of taxes and we are acting as if we have no faith in our own future or even that the future will one day arrive. To the casual observer, this looks like a program for the end of greatness or any aspirations thereof.
Yes, some programs can be cut or even eliminated without great harm, but it takes great care and time plus considerable effort to make that happen. Seems like we have run out of those elements, too.
Every reduction, state and national, should be matched with a written explanation for it and with an explanation for what is likely to result. Then, parents can decide if they want their kids in classrooms with 59 others. Then, voters can decide if they want to make drastic changes in the way things are being run. When it comes down to it, cutting the Federal budget is a very difficult process and most people believe in cutting, but don’t want it to happen to services they need. Under the banner of such contradictions, our democracy lurches forward.
Doug Terry 3.1.11
|
|
