One of the talking points spouted by various Congressional Democrats concerning Congress' failure to appropriate dollars for operating the federal government has characterized the subsequent shut-down as a self-inflicted wound, implying that it was neither accidental nor inevitable. That's both true and false.
Wounds have been inflicted and they were inflicted by Congress, a body of which these Democrats are a part. However, unless we are to assume a sincere participation in the body politic by these agents of government, the injuries were inflicted on someone else. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of citizens were deprived of the income required to attain the necessities of life for the simple reason that some members of Congress had themselves a hissy fit and refused to do the work for which they were hired. And the contract under which they were employed keeps them from being fired for another year. Their pay hasn't even been temporarily docked.
Self-abuse is a rather common manifestation of psychiatric problems. Healthy people find it puzzling and irrational and that's the apparent similarity which has prompted the reference to self-inflicted wounds. Of course, it could also refer to the very real possibility that the electorate will remember this latest incident long enough to actually retire the miscreants at the next election. But that assumes the predatory creatures, who have been ensconced on Capitol Hill for quite some time, actually care about being selected by the electorate. After all, the reason they are in "safe" districts is because they have to intimidate potential challengers into retreating ahead of time. The electorate cannot pull candidates willing to promote the general welfare out of thin air. In other words, if a majority of the Congress critters are about eviscerating the social fabric, their Democratic colleagues have only themselves to blame.
Democrats bear blame and not just because seven of them--
Ron Barber AZ-2
John Barrow GA-12
Dan Maffei NY-24
Sean Patrick Maloney NY-18
Jim Matheson UT-4
Mike McIntyre NC-7
Collin Peterson MN-7
voted with the majority for a sudden change in the rules to keep anyone, but the majority leaders, from working around the intransigence of the Speaker in refusing to put relevant legislation to a vote. While this latest example (HR 368) of Congress deploying the law to deprive, in this case other members of the ability to promote and vote in favor of necessary legislation, instead of providing for the general welfare seems particularly blatant, it is entirely consistent with a long history of legislators deploying the law to subjugate and subordinate one segment of the body politic or another. That they are doing it to each other should not come as a surprise.
That it does come as a surprise is, no doubt, the result of a concerted effort to disguise the extent to which law has been subverted from the service of justice into an instrument of abuse via the ruse of the rule being immutable, inviolate and objective--all of which is currently being invoked on behalf of the ACA by Democrats. The truth is, and the newly elected members know it, that the laws are constantly changed and some are even rescinded in their entirety (DADT, DOMA) when it suits Congressional purposes. And, indeed, the current kerfuffle over the debt limit could be completely resolved by returning to the pre-1917 regimen, when there was no debt limit at all, a condition which likely did not satisfy the proponents of the Federal Reserve Banks, established in 1913 to effectively hand over the management of the currency and a guarantee of unearned income to the private financial industry.
Indeed, if Democrats were sincere in their consternation at the turn of events, they might look back no further than the rein of Dick Gephardt
In 1979, noting the potential problems of hitting a default, Dick Gephardt imposed the "Gephardt Rule," a parliamentary rule that deemed the debt ceiling raised when a budget was passed. This resolved the contradiction in voting for appropriations but not voting to fund them. The rule stood until it was repealed by Congress in 1995.[8]
and the subsequent crisis, whose consequences to the U.S. Treasury were
outlined by the GAO as follows:
GAO found that: (1) during the 1995-1996 debt ceiling crisis, Treasury followed normal investment and redemption procedures for 12 of the 15 major government trust funds; (2) Treasury suspended normal investments and redemptions for the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Trust, Government Securities Investment (G-fund), and Exchange Stabilization Funds and took other actions to stay within the debt ceiling; (3) these actions were proper and consistent with the Secretary of the Treasury's legal authority; (4) as required, the Secretary of the Treasury determined in November 1995 that a debt issuance suspension period existed prior to exercising his authority; (5) Treasury redeemed $46 billion in Civil Service fund securities in November 1995 and February 1996 and suspended investment of $14 billion in fund receipts in December 1995; (6) Treasury exchanged about $8.6 billion in Civil Service fund securities for Federal Financing Bank (FFB) securities, which FFB then used to repay borrowings from the Treasury; (7) Treasury suspended some investments and reinvestments of G-fund receipts and maturing securities during the crisis; (8) on several occasions, Treasury did not reinvest some of the maturing securities held by the Exchange Stabilization Fund; (9) in March 1996, Treasury issued some securities that were temporarily exempt from the debt ceiling, which allowed it to pay $29 billion in social security benefits and invest $58.2 billion in fund receipts and maturing securities; (10) although the Treasury did not technically exceed the debt ceiling during the crisis, the government incurred about $138.9 billion in additional debt that normally would have been subject to the ceiling; (11) several Treasury actions resulted in interest losses to certain government trust funds; and (12) Congress raised the debt ceiling to $5.5 billion at the end of March 1996, and Treasury fully restored the Civil Service fund's and the G-fund's interest losses by June 1996, but it could not restore the Stabilization fund's interest loss without special legislation.
The bottom line? The U.S. Treasury sustained interest losses. Which means that money went into someone else's pockets because the Treasury was looted legally. We, the people, were deprived of our money, the goods and services we had purchased and someone else stuffed his pockets with additional unearned income. Legal theft because our agents of government agreed to it, just like the Unjust Steward in the Biblical parable, who wrote down what his master was owed.
We, the people, have been wounded and deceived and then we are supposed to believe that the wounds are self-inflicted because we elected thieves? Give me a break. And, while you're at it, dear denizens of Capitol Hill, spare us the saga of the ballanced budget. While it seems, according to wickipedia, that there was a time when a budget submitted by the President was largely a "take it or leave it" exercise, and that may be the wishful impetus for President Obama's reference to a budget, however meaningless it now is,
Prior to the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the debt ceiling played an important role since Congress had few opportunities to hold hearings and debates on the budget.[6] James Surowiecki argued that the debt ceiling lost its usefulness after these reforms to the budget process.[7]
in 2013 what counts are appropriations bills or, if the status quo is to be maintained, a simple resolve to continue as is (Continuing Resolution). That is, the budget is a red herring to attract the attention of the press and the appropriations bills are where Congress critters dole out goodies to assure electoral success, even as threats of deprivation keep the competition away. No wonder the President is content with spending at a steady rate. The Tea Party folk have eliminated earmarks and the sequester gives him an excuse to eliminate fluff.
The issue is power, whether the Congress gets to decide not only how many dollars are spent, but what for. Which, increasingly, is not for the general welfare, but to insure the longevity of members of Congress.
How does R. Ted Cruz fit into this scenario? He and his sponsors see an opportunity to unseat even more incumbents, take control of the public purse and insure that unearned income continues to flow in a steady stream to make up, in a sense, for the fact that the supply of free goods from Mother Nature's cupboard is running out. The triumph of the virtual economy isn't so bad, as long as the majority of the population are properly incentivized to work cheap. An occasional brush with privation (homelessness and starvation) does that.
Those aren't self-inflicted wounds. The only good thing about that formulation is that it's not a euphemism. It's just a half-truth.