Letter 2 America for March 8, 2013

Dear America,

I'd like to amplify a point I made a couple of days ago.  The Republican tactic of withholding necessary measures for the country to continue running smoothly--in 2011 it was increasing the debt ceiling--yielded the super committee that was supposed to obviate the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings (GRH) mandatory deficit reduction known as "sequestration."  The current sequestration amendment to GRH--the current iteration of the law, which has been ruled unconstitutional, amended, eviscerated, ignored and allowed to expire is called "PAYGO"--fashioned by the congress and signed into law by President Obama under the duress of not getting an increase in the debt ceiling, was required to total $1.2 trillion.  It was supposed to occur if the super committee didn't impose its own cuts and revenue enhancements totaling a similar amount, which they did not.  And the reason they did not is that the Republicans on the super committee refused to consider any revenue increases at all, led for the most part by Jed Hensarling, a southern Tea Party type Congressman with national ambitions and an insatiable appetite for the camera and the lights.  But then, less than a year and a half later in December of 2012, the Republicans agreed to a tax increase, in other words more revenue, in the amount of something between $650 and $800 billion, depending on who is doing the counting.

With all that in mind, the point I want to amplify is this.  If the Republicans on the super committee had agreed to just two thirds of the lower number in tax increases then, only $800 billion more would have been required in the form of cuts, and the Democrats would then have had to agree to any reasonable proposal--a strategic win for the Republicans.  But the Republicans refused to seize the opportunity.  Why? Because they feared repudiation at the polls by their constituents if they allowed any revenue enhancement, and they thought the rest of us were asleep at the switch.  Then, of course, the elections of 2012 came along about a year later, and their constituents repudiated them anyway, along with the rest of us, largely because progress was more important to the voters than whether taxes on the rich went up or not. Thus, during the lame duck session of congress following the election, the Republicans agreed to the tax increases, at least in part, but it was in the way of capitulation rather than celebration of the fact that they were willing to compromise.  Doing it in the first place would have served them much better than doing it as an act of contrition...a poor choice by anyone's estimation, I believe, and you would think they might have learned a lesson.  But now, seeing themselves as boxed in by the same constituency that rejected their tactics in 2012, they are trying to salvage their reputation with the voters in the same way; anything but raising taxes on those who can pay, and any way at all seems to be what they are willing to do...exactly why they lost the election of 2012.  Nobody likes them for being liars and slanderers, but here they are again, doing what they do, now what they are known for. 

This incessant palaver about the sequester being The President's idea in tandem with the claim that he got "his tax increases" in January is the current tactic embraced by the Republican Party as a fiat from leadership.  They have dictated that rationalization to the members and demanded that all members use it as if it were the script of a Mamet play, changing not a word, and that is why it always sounds so stilted, and thus contrived, when you hear it.  But the American public seems not to be subscribing to the Republican slant on this whole thing this time any more than they did last year.  As to the sequester being President Obama's idea, the analogy I heard last weekend was this.  If a robber accosts you and demands your money while waving his gun at you and threatening to kill you, it is no defense for the robber that offering to give him your watch because you have no money was your idea.  And as to the notion that The President got his tax increases, those increases and more would have occurred two years ago if the original Bush tax cuts had been allowed to expire as was the condition of their enactments during the first term of George W. Bush.  But through the same tactics--filibuster, holding other measures hostage, casuistry and the like--the Republicans extended their life for two extra years.  So, as to the reversion to the Clinton era rates for the 1%--the tax increase that The President got according to Boehner--that was only half the tax increase that President Obama wanted in exchange for twice as much in spending cuts.  Half a loaf is better than none, but it still isn't enough.

It seems that most Americans don't pay much attention to the details.  But it appears that the majority of us were in the room when all this occurred, and thus we know in the global sense what is going on, and who is driving the crises from each one to the next.  In 2010, it seemed that the Republicans were one step ahead of the Democrats...prepared with new rhetorical caviling for every occasion that required it.  But now they have overreached, and the vote in 2012 should have made that clear.  They missed their chance to refresh their image in 2011, and the Democrats, including President Obama, seem to realize it this time, much as they did under Bill Clinton in the mid-nineties when Newt Gingrich was dispatched to political purgatory...now, it seems, never to return.  The question this time is this.  Will the Democrats engage in enough hyperbole and word games that they become the new Republicans of 2014.  And to think that none of this would be happening if Harry Reid and the Democrats had just let themselves be emboldened by their convictions and ended the power of the Republican senate minority to thwart them at every turn, which derives almost entirely not from a popular mandate, but from their ability to do so.  Every time I hear a Republican reproach the Democrats for their failure to act while they had control of both houses of congress and the White House I wonder if anyone else recognizes that with the filibuster in The Senate and the Blue Dog Democrats in The House, the Democrats didn't control anything.  If enough people do, and the Democrats don't over reach as the Republicans always do, maybe the myth of control will become reality in 2014.  That's our next chance to effect real change...if only Harry Reid will get out of the way.

Your friend,

Mike