Here we go again.
It's time for the American public to line up to be held hostage by the Republican Party. It's time to be insulted, spat on, threatened and otherwise terrorized by our captors, a small group of mostly dull-witted Southern males who've been elected again and again by equally dull-witted constituents in permanently gerrymandered Congressional Districts, courtesy of their bought-and-paid for Republican State Legislators and their bought-and-paid-for Republican governors. With an assist from a cabal of radical reactionaries permanently installed on the Supreme Court. And for those eyes studying the history of the U.S.A. a couple hundred years down the line, yes, this was all "Constitutional."
The hundreds of millions of American citizens who don't live in these Congressional Districts must sit and take it, must smile sweetly at their extortioners, all the while holding our breath and hoping that gun they keep waving in our face doesn't go off. While we all desperately try to think of a way to escape this recurring nightmare.
The fiscal year is about to end, so the annual awakening of Tea Party Republicans in the House and Senate is about to begin. Most of the time they sit around and do virtually nothing but gripe (they have made the current Congress the least productive ever), but a new fiscal year finally gives them a chance to govern the only way they know how: by creating a false crisis in order to tear down a piece of the government.
As the lead editorial in today's
New York Times, linked above, points out, this year the Terrorists are demanding the elimination of the Affordable Health Care Act as the price for releasing the hostage American public.
That would be the Act of Congress, fairly passed by the Democratic Party, for the purpose of at least extending some guaranteed health care to American citizens. It also provides for free preventative care and it is specifically written and designed to to stop people from being denied health care for pre-existing medical conditions.
The Republican Party claims the ACA will "balloon" the deficit. Of course, the truth is the exact opposite. The reality is the Republican Party wants to stop health care reform at all cost, because they fear if it succeeds, people may be more inclined to vote Democratic. So as a last-ditch effort to stop that from happening they threaten to refuse to allow an increase to the "debt ceiling," a near-automatic, built-in function allowing the country to satisfy its debts already incurred, an accepted and universally recognized function that has kept the U.S. economy operating as a going concern for the past 90 years.
This is what the Republican Party of the United States of America has come to. Threatening America with a self-inflicted financial meltdown just to keep themselves in power.
They are no longer interested in symbolic blows against the health law; there have already been scores of those votes. They actually think they can get the Senate, and ultimately the president, to approve the defunding of the health law — Mr. Obama’s most important achievement — by threatening to harm the nation and the economy.
This is pure delusion. Democrats are never going to undo the law, especially knowing the size of the self-inflicted wound Republicans would suffer if they really did force a shutdown or, far worse, a default. But the powerful forces on the right don’t care about reality. The Club for Growth, a conservative group, announced it would use its dreaded ratings system against any Republican who supported a continuing resolution that did not “defund Obamacare.
These are the same people who routinely vote to ban all access to abortion while at the same time voting to defund family planning measures, who vehemently oppose raising the minimum wage, who have opposed and stymied all efforts to push the U.S. economy towards job creation, who routinely ridicule the notion of climate change (even as their Districts are inundated with unheard of droughts, extreme tornadoes and ruinous floods), and who rely on corporate ghostwritten measures to prevent African-Americans, Hispanics, and Americans of other races they don't like from voting.
In other words, they are people whose views and actions the great majority of Americans have rejected and whom the same majority of Americans have nothing whatsoever in common. They are rejects. As are the people in their Districts who voted them into office.
And yet, here they are again, waving the gun in our face, and smirking at us.
If the debt ceiling isn’t lifted again this fall, some serious financial decisions will have to be made. Perhaps the government can skimp on its foreign aid or furlough all of NASA, but eventually the big-ticket items, like Social Security and Medicare, will have to be cut. At some point, the government won’t be able to pay interest on its bonds and will enter what’s known as sovereign default, the ultimate national financial disaster achieved by countries like Zimbabwe, Ecuador and Argentina (and now Greece). In the case of the United States, though, it won’t be an isolated national crisis. If the American government can’t stand behind the dollar, the world’s benchmark currency, then the global financial system will very likely enter a new era in which there is much less trade and much less economic growth. It would be, by most accounts, the largest self-imposed financial disaster in history.
The cost in human misery that would go with a default-- not just the short term degradation to everyone's retirement savings and 401k's as markets tanked, but the shock to the entire economy as other nations judged ours as unfit to pay its debts--is really so severe as to be incalculable. The effect on children and young Americans growing up to such an economic situation is a pure obscenity. But long-term, complicated thinking is not the Republican "Tea Party's" strong suit. So if you wanted to be charitable, you could suppose, I guess, that the long-term, catastrophic consequences of what they're doing may never cross their minds. Or you could consider the possibility that they and their constituents are simply either too callous or short-sighted to care. After all, that is why they are rejects in the first place.
Here is what they are playing with--our lives, and the lives of our children, in fact:
The U.S. benefits enormously from its status as global reserve currency and safe haven. Our interest and mortgage rates are lower; companies are able to borrow money to finance their new products more cheaply. As a result, there is much more economic activity and more wealth in America than there would be otherwise. If that status erodes, the U.S. economy’s peaks will be lower and recessions deeper; future generations will have fewer job opportunities and suffer more when the economy falters.
High interest rates, higher mortgage rates, less corporate investment, fewer jobs, more suffering. The
New York Times Magazine, also linked above, must be growing tired--as is everyone else--of pointing out that no wealthy country has ever voluntarily defaulted--least of all in the middle of an economic recovery. But we can hardly expect the 20 or so "Tea Party" Republicans who think it might be a good idea to "see what happens" if a default occurs to listen to the
New York Times Magazine. These are mostly gleeful about the prospect, as are their constituents. The sense of power and control they get at this time of year must be exhilarating, like a dose of Viagra to an impotent man.
And that's the big problem. They don't care what we think. They don't care what Americans outside their District think. They don't care what the media thinks, or says, or does. People like this can't be "shamed" or cajoled into action. The "mainstream" Republican Party has tried to tame the monster it created, to no avail, and has suffered the consequences for it. Were it not for the "Tea Party" and its noxious views, the Republican Party might now control the Senate, if not the Presidency.
So how do we deal with the Tea Party Terrorists who are deaf to reason and heedless of the consequences of their behavior? Given the reality of gerrymandering we--as Democrats, and as American citizens--really have only one option--to paint them and all that goes with them--including the fallout from this and every other self-inflicted debacle--all over the Republican Party until the stench grows so awful--and the Republican Brand so rotten--that the people who hold the purse strings that keep the Republican Party operating as a going concern finally decide to drop the hammer down on the Jim DeMints, the Dick Armeys, the Louis Gohmerts, the Ted Cruzes. Until someone in that Party with enough clout and power realizes that they can no longer win at the national level following the Tea Party siren song, having alienated the rest of the country with their boundless and mean-spirited ignorance.
That's our job--to show Americans again and again who is responsible. And when the American people find out who is responsible, to hold those responsible to account:
This isn’t the first time Congress has tried to hold the economy hostage. In the 1890s, many representatives dithered over a now-obscure law governing the relative price of silver and gold. Global investors reacted in panic, and the ensuing recession ensured that Congress never did anything like that again. It may turn out, however, that the lingering debt-ceiling debate is actually far worse than such a one-time disaster. Waging this argument for a few months won’t lead to a sudden financial panic. But if the debate becomes an annual affair, the world’s largest investors probably will one day move toward a mix of other financial reserves. Decades from now, the world would probably be poorer on account of about only 20 people.