U.S. pays for shutdown, default crisis

Suppose you are the loan officer in a bank.  Today, you have three customers coming in.

Customer A arrives. This customer has a good and stable income, pays bills on time, has made debt payments reliably and is a community leader.

Then comes Customer B.  This customer has just had a pay cut, lives from paycheck to paycheck, has barely kept current with loan payments, but reassures you about future intentions to make loan payments a high priority.

Finally, here’s Customer C.  This customer has no job, has repeatedly threatened to halt loan payments and is inclined to think the bank could get along all right without the loan being paid off. 

Sound familiar?  It should, because there are people in Washington who fit each of these descriptions. 

The bank?  That’s the lender of all the previous debt on which payments are now due – the American people, financial institutions and foreign countries.  In short, the bank is the world.

Customer A represents the United States playing its usual role as the most powerful nation in the world, a country whose dollar is the standard by which all other currencies are measured.

The dollar is the world standard, because everybody believes that the United States will use all of the resources necessary to maintain its reliability.  In other words, America has always stood behind its debt.

The Washington leaders who have traditionally supported this view were both Republicans and Democrats, people whose politics differed but not to the point of weakening the country.

Customer B represents the members of Congress who said they were willing to shut down the government and to threaten defaulting on the government debt.  Some of them suggested using gimmicks to make loan payments for a few more days, giving them a little more time to try to change Obamacare.

This year, the group included every Republican member of the U.S. House and Senate.

Customer C represents the members of Congress who voted, even at the last minute, against reopening the government and letting it make debt payments.  They attacked others in their party who refused to go along with them.

This group included 144 Republican House members – three-fifths of all GOP representatives – and 18 Republican Senators.

For a while, Republicans in Congress gave a higher priority to “defunding” Obamacare and mandating the Keystone XL pipeline than to safeguarding the dollar and keeping the government in operation.

None of this means that the GOP was wrong on the issues it raised. While they do not control either the Senate or the presidency, they virtually had the obligation to offer their alternate policy views and fight for them.

But there are limits how far people should go in seeking to change national policy.  Finally, a majority of Senate Republicans and a minority of the House GOP came to that view.

Centuries ago, Robert Burns, the Scottish national poet, wished that some power would give us the gift “to see ourselves as others see us.”

Probably, every member of Congress wants the United States to be seen as the world’s greatest power, having the economic and military strength to influence events everywhere on earth to America’s benefit. 

Yet those who shut down the government and brought the country to the brink of default on its debt appear not to recognize that their strategy undermines the world’s confidence in the United States and weakens the American economy.

Countries with which the United States does business are openly worried about the value of the “full faith and credit” of this country.  Countries with which the United States competes could quietly sit back and let this country discredit itself.

Respected economists, including some of the most conservative, warned that the government closure and risk of default would harm the economy, especially the recovery from the crippling recession.  Polls reported that people do not dislike Obamacare to the point of being willing to pay this heavy a price.

Consumer confidence in the economic outlook plunged. That translates into less consumer spending and fewer retail sales, the backbone of the economy.

The pundits are already saying that we will face much the same government crisis in a few months.  The two sides will not agree on a budget, they say, and default will again loom.

If they are right, the cost could be a greater economic impact and more harm to America’s standing in the world.

 
The revival of the traditional GOP, determined to overrule the Tea Party, is the key to preventing this outcome.  Customer B will have to start behaving like Customer A.

Distrust, minority tactics plague Washington

The level of distrust in Washington has sunk below the level between the United States and the Soviet Union during the deepest crisis of the Cold War.

In 1962, the United States detected missiles from Communist Russia being shipped to Cuba.  Work had begun on readying missiles to reach many American targets.

President John F. Kennedy prepared an American response if the Soviets did not turn their ships around and take the missiles back to Russia.  The world was at the edge of war.

The Soviets were willing to back away in the face the threatened American action.  But, in return, they wanted the United States to remove its missiles from Turkey, right on the border of the Soviet Union.  Kennedy seemed to refuse.

History has shown the Soviet Union was quietly promised that American missiles would be withdrawn in a few months, so that the United States would not be seen to have taken the action in connection with the Cuban missile crisis.

The Soviets took the Kennedy diplomats at their word and withdrew their missile operations from Cuba.  Their trust was rewarded when, several months later, the U.S. missiles were pulled out of Turkey.

Now, look at the dispute in Washington that led to the government shutdown and the threat of default on U.S. debt payments.

House Republicans blocked votes on funding government and raising the debt ceiling unless they got concessions on defunding Obamacare and making other spending cuts.

President Obama said that he would not accept demands backed by holding the government hostage.  As the crisis continued, he said that he was willing to negotiate on the matters raised by the Republicans only after they stopped blocking government funding and raising the debt limit.

The House GOP would have to trust that Obama would keep his word, promised publicly, and back off their action to end the government crisis, as the American public overwhelmingly wanted.

But they refused to extend to the president the same degree of trust that the Soviets had been willing to give the United States.

It would not be too far a stretch to say that the danger to the constitutional order in the United States of this year’s conflict was as serious as the danger to the world of the Cuban missile crisis.

Obama’s stance was meant to defend a widely held view of the Constitution as much as to protect his health plan or spending priorities.  The issue is about the rights of a minority in the American system.

Some conservatives say that, because the United States is a republic, the rule of the majority is not required, and the minority must have virtually as much influence.  Only in a direct democracy, like a Maine town meeting, does a majority rule.

The United States is a republic and that means that government is run by people elected directly to serve the public good.  It does not mean that majority rule can be ignored.

The Constitution is clear that decisions are made by a simple majority, except in a handful of specific matters. It did not require that all decisions had to be made jointly by the majority and minority.

While ideally the two sides should negotiate and arrive at a common agreement on major issues, the minority should not be able to block any action with which it disagrees.  Obama said he was willing to negotiate, but would not make up-front concessions on key Obamacare provisions.

That’s why the president rejected the offer by Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who wanted concessions on Obamacare from the White House to allow government to re-open.

If the president let the minority dictate to the majority, it would promote stalemate and possibly damage the ability of future governments to make decisions as foreseen by the Constitution.  What would be the point of elections for president and Congress?

Obama deserves credit for defending the Constitution, because he refused to use it for his own purposes in the debt limit conflict.

The Fourteenth Amendment says: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, ... shall not be questioned.”  Some scholars say that provision was meant to prevent to Congress from reneging on already authorized borrowing.

Obama declined this advice and accepted that Congress can vote a debt limit that would apply to future borrowing, though it should not cause a default on existing debt.

 
In the end, what matters most is not Obamacare or the level of government spending.  What matters most is protecting the Constitution and that means majority rule.

Moderate voters have nowhere to go

More American voters consider themselves politically moderate than either conservative or liberal.

So, why is our political system so deeply polarized between conservatives and liberals?   

Why don’t politicians cater to the middle of the spectrum?

One answer may be that our entire political debate has slid to the right.  With the exception of the hot-button, social issues, today’s liberals are a shadow of what it once meant to be a liberal.

Traditional liberals would be fighting for more programs to aid the disadvantaged, less military spending, tougher controls on financial institutions, and stronger protection of civil liberties.

Now, the Democrats, often considered the more liberal party for its historic support of positions like these, is reduced to fighting a rear-guard action to defend programs going back 50 or 70 years, like food stamps or Social Security.

That shift applies as much to so-called liberals on the Supreme Court as it does to Congress.

In short, most of today’s liberals look like yesterday’s moderates.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have moved to the right.  The tea party movement has the support of about a fifth of the electorate, enough for its activists to take control of the party and push aside traditional, moderate GOP leaders.

These newly active Republicans control the party apparatus so well that they condemn moderates who were party leaders long before them as RINOs – Republicans in name only.

Neo-Republicans have polarized political choice to the point that many would-be moderate voters may not find leaders to support.  Without a moderate alternative, they have no choice but to line up with one side or the other.

A recent independent national survey found that, when considering GOP efforts to block Obamacare, moderates oppose Republican hard-core tactics by more than 2-1.

In the battle for the moderate vote, the Democrats count on this split, while the Republican right seeks to convince the GOP that, because about half of all voters don’t like Obamacare, any tactic to oppose it will pick up some moderate voters.

In the struggle over Obamacare and the national budget, the small band of House Republicans who oppose the health program but also reject a government shutdown could be the core of a moderate political force. 

They offer a sign of principle over pure politics. Whether it is a political turning point remains to be seen.

Perhaps the notion of conservative-moderate-liberal is only relative, despite the right side of the GOP promoting ideological purity.

Maine may provide a good illustration of how ideology mixes with pure politics.

In 2010 governor’s race, Republican Paul LePage was the obvious conservative, Democrat Libby Mitchell ran as a liberal traditionalist, and independent Eliot Cutler offered a pragmatic alternative to both, especially LePage.  Thanks to the split in his opposition, LePage won.

In 2014, LePage will seek re-election. The Democrats will offer Mike Michaud, the second district congressman and member of the party’s moderate “Blue Dog” group.

Cutler, running again, is unlikely to profit from a weak major party candidate in the field, as he did in 2010.  As a result, he might end up as a liberal, attempting show that Michaud, the moderate, is too conservative for Democrats.

Cutler would move from moderate to liberal.  His problem may be that Michaud has a mostly progressive record, yet conservative enough to please all but hard-core LePage voters.

In the Senate race, GOP incumbent Susan Collins can legitimately claim to be a rare congressional moderate.  Her voting record produces a moderate rating and could make her hard to beat. 
 

Democrats might believe that Collins is vulnerable because she is not liberal enough for today’s voters. Shenna Bellows, the former executive director of the Maine ACLU and newly announced
candidate for the Democratic Senate nomination, may be betting on it. That presumption could be a mistake in a state where unenrolled voters outnumber Democrats or Republicans and may
see Collins as their choice.

Conservative Republicans may dislike or even challenge Collins, but her problem could be more that she is a good Republican than because she is a moderate.  She shows remarkable loyalty to the GOP, even after its Senate leader killed her transportation bill, partly because it had bipartisan backing.

Trying to appear moderate by proposing a back-down by the Democrats on a couple of 

Obamacare provisions before her party agreed to end the government shutdown, she merely repackaged the position of House GOP hard-core conservatives.

Being a moderate may be ineffective in Washington, as shown by Collins’ need to support the GOP conservative position in the shutdown showdown.

There now seems to be little chance of a moderates gaining power in Washington.  That would take Collins and other Republicans being willing to buck their more conservative party mates.

“Blame game” hides fault for government shutdown

In Washington, it’s called “the blame game.”

Its purpose is to assign fault when things go wrong, so that voters will know who to support and who to oppose at election time.

It quickly gets down to simple name calling without much reference to facts.  But fault does exist, and voters should at least know who is responsible for what in Washington.

The crisis leading to the federal government shutdown lets us compare blame claims with real responsibility.  Here are some questions and answers.

Why did the government shut down?

In 2010, the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – passed the Congress, totally dependent on Democratic votes in both the House and Senate.

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the new law is constitutional.

But the Republicans don’t like it and would like it to be repealed. With a Democratic president and Senate, they stand no chance of repealing this existing law.

Tea Party House Republicans decided the best strategy to undermine the law would be to tie Obamacare changes, designed in a somewhat disguised way to halt the law, to some piece of essential legislation.

Nothing is more essential than funding federal government operations or ensuring that the government pays interest on the federal debt and takes on debt needed to fund already approved activities.

These House Republicans convinced most other GOP members of the House to support a strategy tying passage of these essential measures to changes in the health care law that would more or less gut it.

This strategy has probably never been used before in American history.  The Democrats were committed to preventing it this time, but the House majority refused to back down. The government shut down.

Who’s to blame?

You can decide for yourself who is to blame for what.

But you should be aware that this bill would only keep the government operating until mid-November at its already reduced spending levels.  There are no new spending programs in it.

You should also know that, despite claims by some opponents that the Affordable Care Act represents an unconstitutional invasion of personal rights, because everybody must participate or pay a penalty (just like the income tax), the only body authorized to say whether a law is constitutional has said that it is.

Nothing in this discussion says there’s anything wrong with preferring a private insurance system with the uninsured using emergency rooms, the way it was before Obamacare. But the normal way to go back to that is by passing a new law, perhaps after new elections.

Recent polling finds a strong majority of people do not approve of the House GOP strategy.  That does not mean they all like the health care law, where the poll now shows about an equal split.

Do the Democrats bear any responsibility? 

Sure, but not for the back-and-forth battle between the Senate Democratic majority and the House Republican majority.

Congressional Democrats are upholding the normal way of doing business, an approach that follows the law and keeps the government functioning.  

But President Obama has helped the GOP come to the conclusion that the American people dislike the health care law enough to support closing down the government to stop it.

Until recently, the president had not been aggressively promoting his signature legislation, which may encourage some people to believe misinformation about it is correct.

Once the law was passed, he should have led a massive public campaign to explain it.  It is possible that much opposition to it simply results from a lack of information or misinformation from its opponents.

And his administration failed to get organized and has had to defer some parts of the program, increasing its vulnerability to partisan attack.

What about the media’s role?

Its version of being objective is to give equal time to both sides without covering the facts.  Reporters may worry that the facts favor the Democrats, leaving them open to charges of bias if they say that.  But the media’s balancing act, leading some to assign equal responsibility to each side, is a poor substitute for good reporting.

What did the Maine congressional delegation do?

Both Democratic House members and independent Sen. Angus King opposed making Obamacare concessions to avoid a shutdown. 

Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who dislikes both the House approach and Obamacare, voted loyally with all Senate Republicans against a “clean bill”, in effect supporting the House GOP strategy.  In contrast, a few courageous House Republicans voted against the Tea Party strategy.

Next year in Maine and across the country, will voters decide who’s to blame?