Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.
On New Year's Eve we will be ushering in not only a new year, but another new decade. The twenty-teens will be upon us and looking both backwards and forwards one can only wonder if it would be possible for the next decade to be nearly as bad as the last. From the promise of the 1990s, we took so many steps backwards in so many regards one would hope that the new decade can only bring improvements.
I ran across this article at the Washington Post by Ruth Marcus that did a pretty good job of summing up the situation. The decade started on a strong note, but one event would prove to be a disaster for indeed our country and the world. The appointment to the Presidency by the Supreme Court of George W. Bush. This led to many problems we now face, including the dire fiscal picture for our country:
The ominous fiscal picture. The last decade dawned with the dazzling vision of trillions in surpluses and the unaccustomed worry of paying down the debt too fast. Those surpluses were always a mirage. But President George W. Bush plowed ahead with massive tax cuts, an unfunded new entitlement program for prescription drugs -- and more tax cuts in the face of two costly wars.
The result is a staggering national debt that has ballooned from $3.4 trillion in 2000 to $7.6 trillion now. When the economic crisis hit, the country enjoyed the fiscal flexibility to respond with massive spending to counter the downturn. Next time, our capacity to whip out the national checkbook may be constrained by foreign creditors. Chiseling away at this mountain of debt -- at the very time that the aging population puts more strain on the budget -- is simultaneously necessary and unimaginably difficult.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
While I am no Obama or Clinton apolegist one thing that rings true is that the country was in good shape until the Presidency of George W. Bush and six years of a Republican, rubber-stamp Congress. From lying to get us into costly, failed wars, to running up the debt and putting it all on the national credit card, to massive deregulation that let crooks on Wall St. and in Corporate America pick our economy clean crashing it while being bailed out, the huge failures of the last decade were facilitated by these narrow-minded, visionless, clueless liars.
Although Obama has been disappointing to me on Progressive vision, I must admit to some point his administration has seemed to at least somewhat stop the bleeding.
Another point noted by Ms. Marcus is one that Progressives have felt painfully with each new stab in the back by the President and Congress we were instrumental in electing. The fact that our Congress is completely disfunctional because of greed and the lack of competition in districts around the country:
The dysfunctional political system. Congress is "the broken branch," as Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann have said. Lawmakers seem incapable of rising above political self-interest for the common good. The atmosphere of partisanship has become toxic. The House is divided into extremes reinforced by the decennial drawing of increasingly safe districts. The Senate is captive to the filibuster. The health-care debate, with its ugly rhetoric about death panels and unnecessary Christmas Eve votes, underscores the failure of "regular order" to deal with the most intractable problems.
No matter which party you are in if any one must admit that the healthcare debate has shown our government for what it is. Bought and paid for. As long as America allows Corporations to buy the legislation they want, and allow media to frame the debate anyway they see fit without rebuttal I fear no matter which party controls Congress we are quite simply screwed. The fact of the matter is the average working American, while they have the power of their vote (when it is actually counted) have increasingly less power because our elections and politicians are for sale to the highest bidder. The filibuster is a joke in the Senate and no matter what it is called if 51 Senators vote for a bill it should pass. That is the way our Congress was meant by our forefathers to run. If the Executive Branch oversteps its bounds the check given the Congress was to override with two-thirds vote, not 41 votes in the Senate that can stop anything from becoming law.
I do not share the concerns about a dangerous world. I think that many mistakes were made in the last decade because our politicians and the ones in power wanted us to be sniveling cowards, afraid of our shadows and constantly fearful of what might happen tomorrow. Competent leadership could have prevented 9-11. I am not that worried about N. Korea, or Iran. I think that threat has been way overblown from both countries. I worry more about China owning more of our country and taking more of our manufacturing jobs with their slave labor than any threat in the world right now.
With competent, sane leadership many of the problems in the world can be dealt with rationally with courage and strength instead of fear, and sanity instead of war. I think President Obama and Sec. of State Clinton offer a huge improvement from the last decade in that regard, but I really wish they would just admit it is time to bring our troops home to protect our country here, because all they are doing is wasting lives and hundreds of billions of dollars a month under the current insanity.
On that point, Ms. Marcus did find hope for the next decade somewhere:
At some point, America will no longer be mired in two costly and divisive wars. Troops will remain in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in far fewer numbers.
I've never believed that Obama's election ushered in a magical era of national harmony. But the president is thoughtful and pragmatic. He may have too many priorities, but they are the right ones. His first year in office has demonstrated a useful combination of steadiness and flexibility -- steadiness in pursuit of a goal and flexibility in the means to achieve it.
The sooner the better that we have as few troops as possible in the middle-east. I never thought Obama's election would usher in a magical era either, in fact his centrist rhetoric turned me off to the point that I could not support him in the primary. While he has some of the right priorities, I think he is using a flawed approach. He seems too willing to concede to powerful special interests in crafting baby-steps that really do not solve any problems completely.
If President Obama and this Congress while they are in a majority will start fighting with Progressives instead of against them and enact real reforms we have a real chance this decade to improve our country. We have a chance to be safer, healthier, and start rebuilding our own country and middle-class. However, if the first year is any indication we may very well lose yet another golden opportunity to show the American people what Progressive vision can do for them.
Either way, the ball is in the court of Obama and the Democrats. They can go the way of the first year, of concession and complacency and accomplish little and be deemed failures for it. This will most likely lead to more Republican rule that will be a huge disaster to our country and the whole world. They have shown that.
Here is hoping that Obama and our Congress wake up and realize that the path they are on is the path to destruction and that they finally fight for the things this country desperately needs to recover.