Letter 2 America for February 11, 2014

Dear America,

Though I have a few more ideas on the subject of economic inequality, it seems appropriate to take a short hiatus from the subject and discuss what is not only the current political situation relative to the debt ceiling and immigration, but what has been the chronic problem in American politics since the Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress in 2006.  Everyone forgets that for the first six years of the 21st century, Republicans controlled all of elected government: the White House and the Congress.  You might remember if you think about what they gave us when in total control: two foreign wars that produced nothing but debt and death for the United States, a drug program for the elderly that has increased both the deficit and the national debt because it forbade the federal government to negotiate with drug manufacturers and providers regarding price, and a tax cut for not just the middle class, but for the richest Americans that gave them the lowest tax burden since Ronald Reagan, all of which eventually led us into the largest budget deficits in history until that point and a doubling of the national debt along with obligations for the government that continue to mount debt on top of debt.  The deficit--that is the annual rate at which the national debt increases because of an excess of spending over revenue--now continues to decline dramatically, but it is no thanks to the Republicans, who no longer have universal control of the related government processes.  But perhaps what is most notable about all that isn't that as a nation we seem to have forgotten what the Republicans have done to us, but that we still seem ambivalent about the policies that have led us to near ruination.  We should have learned that the Republican obsession with supply-side economics is a self-serving canard manifested only in the policy of the party, not in reality.  You can have all the supply possible, but without demand it doesn't create wealth or prosperity for anyone; what difference does what you produce make if you can't sell it because almost no one has any money to buy it with?  None-the-less, the Republicans are newly emboldened in their never-ending quest to enrich those already in control of most of the capital in the nation, and as a bi-product of that effort an attempt the evisceration of the social programs that have lifted millions out of hunger, if not out of poverty.

Flush with the oft mischaracterized victory in reduction of the food stamps program by $800 million per year for the next decade, there is renewed talk among the reactionaries in the Republican Tea Party caucus of withholding an increase in the debt ceiling--which allows the government to borrow to pay the government's bills--and forcing a default with ruinous effects on the cost of borrowing in the future for both the federal government and us citizens if they don't get even more draconian spending cuts, which are already cutting not just fat, but muscle and bone as well, as evinced by the fact that millions of people will have less food on their tables because of the cut in the food stamps program embodied by the recently passed, two-years- overdue agriculture bill.  They also seem unconcerned by the political effect of refusing to pass an extension of unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed because the Republicans in The Senate are filibustering it.  Further, they are undaunted by the potential electoral disaster represented by the refusal of conservatives in The House to allow an immigration bill that would affect millions of voters' families in a positive way to even be considered.  They seem to think that no one remembers what their policies have produced in the past...the recent past.  And this is all possible because John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House, won't put the relevant issues to a vote for fear that his party will embarrass itself by refusing to help the millions of workers who put food on their tables, clean their houses and manicure their lawns as well as many of the other things that most Americans don't want to do.  So, it comes down to this.  We won't have an immigration bill during 2014 because the electoral consequences of the argument over it in The House will embarrass the Republicans, and it is possible only because there are two men in Congress who have something more potent than veto power; they can prevent issues from even being discussed.

John Boehner as Speaker controls what bills come to the floor of The House for votes.  If he says that a bill won't be brought to a vote, he can accomplish that with parliamentary procedure.  And in The Senate, Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, can call for the withholding of votes for cloture of debate on a subject and without saying a word on the floor on account of expedient conventions in the form of Senate rules, thus also preventing bills from being voted on in The Senate.  These men, who claim to support strict construction of our Constitution, exercise their peremptory powers like vetoes cast even before the fact of the attempt to legislate, and they do so despite the fact that this country purports to be a democracy in which the majority rules.  I say "purports to be" because in our federal legislature, the opinion of the majority of the voters as expressed in the most recent election never even gets to be heard much of the time, which has brought law-making in this country to a virtual halt and thus stalled progress on all kind of things from economic recovery to the humanism that we would like to take credit for in the world.

And now, the Republicans are indignant about the fact that President Obama, in an attempt to move forward on some important issues in despite the intransigence of a disloyal opposition , is employing plenary use of his executive powers to bypass the Republican blockade on legislation as if that impediment to the progress of our nation at a time when progress is so sorely needed.  What I wonder is this; will the American people remember all this when they cast their votes in November.  They seem to blame the Democrats for much of what is going on...or I guess I should say isn't going on...but while the Democrats have the power in the sense that they control The Senate and The White House, they are not able to use it because the democratically obtained mandate they have has been trumped by furtive procedural chicanery.  It is rarely noted that of the votes cast for members of The House in 2012, a majority were democratic by a margin of millions, but I say this about that.  If the majority of the American people want what President Obama and the Democrats have offered, they should stop voting as if they don't.  Either send a Democratic congress to Washington to work with The President in November or just give it all to the Republicans and let them do it to us again.  But either way, stop blaming the Democrats for what the Republicans won't let them do.  As I often say, on election day the majority of Americans get what they deserve.  But sometimes unfortunately, the rest of us get it too.

Your friend,

Mike