How messed up has political discourse become now that John Boehner is seen as 'reasonable?' He certainly isn't, but for some reason everyone is accepting the farce that the Tea Party deserves a seat at the table. It is because the Republican leadership is scared of that extreme wing of their party. A big part of that is the media acting as though the teabaggers are equal to the two political parties. Therefore, their bat-shit insane ideas are given equal opportunity even if their numbers are small.
They're loud and they have an unreasonable pull on the early primaries for the Republicans, so the Republican leadership is hesitant to just cut them out of the deal. The early Republican primaries are largely white-bred and have an uber-conservative electorate. So their pull is exaggerated by the media because their message is insane and loud and they have a pull thanks to the unfortunate scheduling of primaries.
There wouldn't have been a near government shutdown last night had Boehner been willing to lose some of the self-proclaimed Tea Party votes. House Democrats and the non-extremist Republicans could have easily passed the budget, but the Republican is too afraid of the Tea Party to do something like that. The Democrats did nothing but give in the negotiations and nearly wasn't enough as the Tea Party feels they are entitled to get everything they want even though they are merely a small faction within a political party. Not withstanding the fact the Senate and Presidency are in Democratic control.
As big as this budget fight may have seemed, it will be nothing compared to what is coming in a few weeks. There was a way to compromise with the budget. There won't be one when it comes to the debt ceiling.
In advocating not raising the debt ceiling, the Tea Party is basically advocating the collapse of the global economy and American civilization. The United States defaulting on it's loans would cause the an economic crisis that would likely put the Great Depression to shame.
Not only should the debt ceiling definitely be raised, but cutting spending at a time like this is just plain dumb. The deficit doesn't matter right now. The government needs to keep spending. It is the best thing the fragile economy has. The cuts that have already been passed and will be passed for the 2012 budget aren't going to help the economy, because the deficit isn't a drag on the economy right now. What is drag is that money isn't flowing and government has the ability to make that happen by itself.
What's really funny is that the Republicans ran up huge deficits when they weren't in any way necessary. They fail to notice the debt added on by George W. Bush is significant and is much worse than what is being added now. That debt was created for tax cuts for the wealthy and unnecessary wars. That was a period where the budget could have easily been balanced.
Debt and deficit just don't matter at this moment in our nation's history. Tens of Trillions of dollars of debt sounds way more scary than it actually is. We are the world's biggest market, so any country that would demand payment on their loans would be destroying their own economy. Spending is the way out of this shaky economy. It's not tax cuts. It's not dealing with the deficit.
That's not to say that the issue of debt and deficit shouldn't be dealt with, but now isn't the time for that. If the economy is stable and the country's work force is working, the government should definitely not spend the way that it is spending now.
And honestly the way to deal with the deficit isn't through domestic spending. If someone is really serious about that issue they have to be willing to take on Military spending and Entitlement Spending. Those are the areas where real changes can be made. Money to Planned Parenthood isn't a drop in the sea, but spending on an over-size, over-utilized military is absolutely massive.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Thanks for reading and please comment.
-Michael.
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