Anyone who is secretly hoping against a deal in Congress or is urging their congress person against compromise should read this article. A failure to reach an agreement on raising the debt limit by our elected officials will kick the foundation of our economy out from under us. Don't believe me? Well consider this: almost every private institution in the country holds government bonds since they are seen as the safest possible investment. If those bonds become worthless, those companies will loose all that capital and many will undoubtedly fold as a result. And that is just the economic problem, there would also be a deeper political problem that a default would raise. How can our treasured democratic system which has served us for over 200 years commit fiscal suicide for no logical reason? I say no logical reason because though both democrats and republicans warn of economic consequences of their opponent's conditions to a deal on the debt limit, no agreement made between democrats and republicans could have anywhere close to the nuclear fallout of a default. That is the madness of this situation and it raises difficult questions for all of us.
The first question is perhaps the most troubling. Has our society become ungovernable? While it has always been popular to blame our politicians whenever they do something stupid, we have to remember that none of them would have their jobs if we hadn't elected them. Have we become so divided that compromise, the bedrock of our governmental system, is something we consider to be too distasteful to tolerate in our elected officials? Republicans as conservative as Robert Bennett from Utah have been ousted for failing to be as rabid a conservative as many Tea Partiers would like. If you are a democrat, you are probably thinking that hatred of compromise lies purely in the minds of frothing Tea Party demagogs. You'd be wrong. Democrats have been just as guilty as republicans of culling those few politicians who have flirted with the political center. Remember the primary challenges to Joe Lieberman, Arlen Specter and others? The dismissal of these more moderate democrats and republicans may win a few more votes for liberal causes or conservative causes, but it also removes from congress those congressmen and congresswomen who have alliances across parties. Without those alliances, bipartisanship will continue to be a campaign slogan rather than the common practice of our representatives. And so long as our representatives fail to compromise, our government will fail to function. The absence of our democratic and republican moderates is being felt now, and we have only ourselves to blame.
That raises the next question: why are we so polarized? I'll leave that question open and I'd love to hear what you have to say about that.
