It's not what you think it is...

This government shutdown is the least surprising thing to happen since Barack Obama took office. It's been inevitable for some time, and to be honest, I'm surprised that it didn't come sooner during one of fights over the debt ceiling. The unfortunate reality is that this is exactly what Republicans - or at least tea party Republicans - have wanted for a long time. Republicans believe that a) the government is too large and b) that the government spends too much money.
Therefore, "starving the beast", as it were, is the only way to create what they would consider substantive policy to limit the size, scope, and spending of the U.S. government. To use an Obama analogy, they want to use a chainsaw to cut the U.S. budget, when a scalpel is necessary.
Sure, the U.S. government spends too much money. Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, etc. all agree with that. But just what the government SHOULD be spending the money on and what it shouldn't is not at all agreed. Conservatives typically believe that we should be cutting any and all social programs; including education, health care, medicare, medicaid, unemployment, etc. Basically those things that support the majority of older and low-income Americans - and don't create profit. While Democrats typically want to cut things like military spending, tax subsidies to wealthy individuals and companies, and raise corporate taxes. These are two different perspectives on the role of government, and to be fair are worthy of a legitimate, healthy debate.
However, the arena for hashing out this debate is not a continuing resolution to pay the government's bills. Especially when Republicans are using it as an excuse to defund the signature legislation of the Obama administration, before it's even been implemented. Republicans don't even want to give it an opportunity to work, even though the American public essentially supported the ACA by re-electing the man whose name has become synonymous with the law.
So by shutting down the government, Republicans have essentially won this round. We can only hope that the American people see what they are trying to do and recognize that Republicans are not attempting to defund Obamacare (the ACA), but instead trying to starve government to the point of ineffectiveness, so that only those essential functions will be taken care of (which for them is military only). There's a good chance Republicans will take the PR hit for this government shutdown, but Americans are so apathetic, misinformed, and myopic, that unfortunately I don't think this government shutdown will have an major electoral impact.

The truth...

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/46941182#46941784

Where has this guy been?

Not only was this speech a good political move, especially for a president that has maintained low but respectable ratings despite a fledgling economy, but he was right on.
Democrats are so quick to qualify any comments they make about politics, by stating that both Democrats and Republicans are to blame for the ineffectiveness of government, and especially of Congress. While I think it’s important to recognize how poisonous money to both Democrats and Republicans has been to our political process, when we’re looking at actual legislating, it’s naïve or just completely disingenuous not to recognize that Republicans are holding up the process.
Republicans say that the president and Democrats in congress will not work with them; but what they fail to recognize is that when you come to the table with something so radical, and tell the other side before negotiations, and all throughout negotiations, that you’re unwilling to negotiate, it makes it somewhat difficult to get anything done. The president came into office hoping to work with Republicans, despite a filibuster-proof majority in the senate, and an overwhelming majority in the house. However, even with Republicans in a position of considerable weakness, they managed to throw wrenches in the cogs of government, and it was only be the skin of their teeth that Democrats managed to pass the Affordable Care Act.
Since then, and especially since the midterm elections, Republicans have done literally everything they can – including lying, delaying, chastising – to hurt the president politically, but have unfortunately spent no time actually legislating. Their goal, as stated, is to make President Obama a “one term president”. They believe that any substantial, positive legislation, no matter how much bi-partisan support it might get, will not get passed. The only legislation that has been passed since the Affordable Care Act have been only those laws necessary to prevent government shutdowns, the discontinuation of the unemployment insurance, the discontinuation of the payroll tax holiday, and the like. No new substantial legislation is on the horizon, and I don’t see any formulating anytime soon.

While Republicans have been the main focus of my ire during almost the whole Obama administration, I have to say that I received something yesterday that really angered me.
After Barack Obama was elected president, his campaign warchest still had a ton of money left in it, and a lot of excitement to go with it. Therefore, the people that were involved in the campaign started a political action committee called "Organizing for America". That PAC has since become (with the upcoming election) "Obama for America". I have no problem with this, as they wanted to continue to campaign for Obama's policies, and they knew they were going to have a tough election fight in 2012.
However, what I do have a problem with is that I received an email from them yesterday telling me that they were going to be supporting an Obama super PAC called "Priorities USA". What??!! Excuse me??!! I typically just delete these emails, but I after reading the subject - "We will not play by two sets of rules" - I knew exactly what they were going to say. The person whom the email was supposedly from was "Obama for America" campaign manager, Jim Messina. Messina basically spends the first of the email explaining about the awful decision (which I fully agree) in Citizens United, and how Republicans have been raising and spending massive amounts of super PAC money. And how the majority of that money spent has been on negative ads, and that Republicans are looking to raise about half a billion dollars in super PAC money before this election is over.
Alright...I'm with you so far.
Then, he goes on to say that because of this, we (Democrats, I guess he's saying) need to put aside our disdain for the Citizens United decision, and just go ahead and support super PACs. He says that this election is too important to NOT support super PACs, and that while we disagree with the decision and want it overturned, we will need the money to compete with Republicans. I CALL BULLSHIT!!!
Are Republicans going to raise a ton of money from super PACs...sure. However, even without the support of the "Obama for America" or the Obama administration, the president would receive tremendous super PAC support for his re-election. Legitimizing these awful entities by saying that it's necessary to support them, is only going to make the argument against them that much more difficult.
Obama's whole message in 2008 was that he was receiving massive numbers of donations for small amounts that were adding to a huge flood. That was a good message, and I think it could be again. Once these super PACs become a "necessity" to combat the other side that is using super PACs, they'll be a mainstay in the political process. Just to be clear, super PACs undermine our democracy, and should be made immediately illegal.
I cannot believe that "Obama for America" would take this stand, and it makes me seriously question their ethics as an organization and their view of the political process. I will support President Obama in the election, but I will give absolutely no money to "Obama for America".

"I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want, and get it." ~ Eugene Debs

Funny math...

Something doesn't add up. Oh, right, it's the idea that we can make up a budget deficit of over a trillion dollars by cutting spending. Our total budget is just shy of 4 trillion, so the idea of cutting essentially one fourth of that seems ludicrous. This is the federal government we're talking about. Sure, there are several places where cuts are not only needed, but probably necessary, but that still does not mean that we can possibly make up the deficit simply by cutting out one fourth of all government expenditures.
And the - excuse me, but *bullshit* - idea that Republicans want to cut government for the good of the economy is just that - bullshit. If Republicans truly cared about the economy, they wouldn't call for cuts in only Democrat-supported programs, while supporting the continued massive tax cuts for the top 1% of income-earners in this country, that got us into this mess in the first place. Not to mention the fact that the "Bush years", where Republicans controlled both the presidency and all of congress, weren't exactly years of fiscal conservatism or austerity in the federal government. Republicans want smaller government...whenever the government is controlled by Democrats.
So where does that leave us? That leaves us the with politically unpopular (though not as unpopular as politicans would lead us to believe) decision to raise taxes. And I guess "raise" taxes is not really the proper term. We should simply let the unpaid-for tax cuts that the Bush administration put into place expire.
Two arguments Republicans make about this don't many any sense to me. The first is that letting the tax cuts expire on the richest 1% would hurt the "job-creators", and therefore would be detrimental to our efforts at stimulating the economy and creating jobs. My issue with this, as discussed in a previous post, is that this has proven to be demonstrably false. The so-called job-creators have NOT been creating jobs since these tax cuts have gone into affect, and have in fact been continually whining in an effort to get the rate even lower. The second argument is that we as a society should not continue to "feed" the government more and more money over time, because we're just creating a bloated system that doesn't actually use our money wisely. The problem with this argument is that operating costs increase over time; therefore it stands to reason that it would cost more money to run the government than it did twenty years ago - or even ten years ago. But somehow the Republicans believe that we can go back to some magical government expenditure amount that we had at some magical time when everything worked out perfectly. The problem is that there was never a time, and there is no magic number. Our government costs what our government costs. Should we eliminate or modify programs that dont' work...certainly. Should we try to eliminate waste wherever we can...of course (we could start by getting rid of congressional pensions and lifetime healthcare benefits). But overall, any business person has to admit that over time, the cost of operation goes up - that's a simple fact of life.

Failure

I can't say I'm terribly surprised that the debt-reducation "super-committee" did not accomplish their task. Congress, whether as a complete body, the house, the senate, committees, subcommittees, or super committees, have been completely unable to accomplish anything substantial in the past couple of years, especially with regard to the the debt and deficit, and tax policy.
Congressional Democrats and Republicans have diametrically opposed views with regard to debt-reduction and taxes, and therefore it is understandable that these discussions and coming to agreement would not be an easy thing to do. However, the job of congress, of our government in general, is to serve the people in this country. So it doesn't really matter whether they disagree or not, the very nature of politics, and their responsibility as politicians, is to compromise and come to agreements regardless of their differences.
Therefore, by the simple standard of serving the citizens of this nation, and compromising to pass legislation to take care of the debt and deficit, these men and women on this committee have failed us.
But let's not let us forget that the President (regardless of his actual ability to affect legislation, or not) has also been a failure. It's a failure of a different kind, but Republicans are correct in one critique of the president - his failure of leadership. There's been a lot of hand-wringing by Republicans and Democrats, blaming the other side for the failure to pass legislation, by saying the other side is not willing to give in on anything. This would indicate to me that both sides are acting childish and obstinate. But the failure of the president has been to push congress to act, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans are getting exactly what they want. The president has wanted to remain above the fray, but the problem is that he's been characterized as uninterested (whether fair or unfair, if people are seeing him seemingly uninvolved, it looks bad as a leader). The president needs to push the congress, house, senate, subcommittee, super committee...whatever, to get their act together and pass legislation.
So now that the super committee has failed, we're left with these "trigger" cuts that will slash funds toward both military spending and heathcare and medicare. Falling back on "trigger" cuts is totally unacceptable; not to mention the fact that Democrats and Republicans are already trying to alter the trigger, indicating that cutting military spending is a no-go (Republicans), or cutting medicare and healthcare is a no-go (Democrats).
As a liberal, I have to admit that I see a large part of the problem being Republicans standing firm on the Grover Norquist strategy of never, under any circumstances, raising taxes. We're in a MAJOR debt/deficit crisis, which is not as dire as it's made out to be, but will become so if we fail to stimulate the economy. The problem with the current tax structure, is that it continues to give tax breaks to people who do not need it, and who are hoarding the money (NOT stimulating the economy). The real tax breaks that would help the economy, should go toward the middle class who will spend the money, get the economy moving again, and then those that have the means to start or build their businesses will do so, because it will be profitable, regardless of their tax rate.
A member of congress cannot be hard-lined; especially a member of a super committee whose sole purpose is to come to an agreement about debt and deficit reduction.

Shame on you, congress.

A Bad Rap

There is a fairly common narrative going around the country today within Democratic and liberal political circles, that President Obama’s first term has been a failure. Not in terms of getting things done, per se, but in terms of living up to the hype of hope and end of partisanship that he so eloquently stated he would bring to Washington, DC and the country at large. I disagree.
I don’t disagree that there was a tremendous amount of hype surrounding the then first-term Senator, or that the Obama campaign took advantage of that hype to propel Mr. Obama into the White House. However, my disagreement stems from the idea that President Obama has failed to live up to this hype, or that he has failed to move beyond partisanship. You blanch?
The hope surrounding candidate Obama was that he was going to “change Washington”. While the specific understanding of this concept is rather muddled and ambiguous, and understood differently by almost every person in the country, the general idea was that the cronyism, corruption and extreme partisanship needed to end. So Mr. Obama swoops into Washington with a Democratically-controlled Congress, both House and Senate, and people start saying that what they always say when either chamber of Congress changes from one party to the other, that the President has a mandate. Just as a small digression, I will say that I hate this term mandate, as it undeservedly gives whoever is using an almost carte blanche authority to do whatever they want in the name of it. Tangent aside, Democrats eagerly got busy on their plan for overturning many of the more unpopular and unproductive policies of the Bush administration. President Obama welcomed Republicans, even though a large minority, to bring ideas to the table for shaping policy moving forward. The president tried to create transparency in government, and figure out what were some major policy matters that both sides wanted to deal with.
It was just about this time that the idea of reforming the healthcare system came to the forefront. For the next several months congress fought this issue back and forth, with the Republicans adding little to no actual policy suggestions, but instead repeating the message that the whole bill should be scrapped and the process started anew (euphemism for “kill the bill”). Republicans did not want healthcare reform; both because they thought jobs and the economy should be the number one focus of congress, and also because they – like Democrats in congress – had insurance and prescription drug lobbyists breathing down their necks, and stuffing money in their drawers. So the president did what he could to remain above the fray, while reasserting to both Democrats and Republicans alike, that this was going to be the most comprehensive healthcare reform in the last 50 years, and that they needed to figure out how to bolster care, provide options, and reduce costs. Republicans wanted nothing to do with this, so Democrats were left to fight this battle out themselves and suffered devastating scars from the battle.
Democrats not only got a bad healthcare reform bill, but suffered devastating losses in the 2010 midterm elections. The Republicans gained a few seats in the Senate, and won a huge number of seats in the House, thereby taking back one of the chambers. The president, though crestfallen over the demoralizing losses Democrats suffered in the elections, was nonetheless prepared to remain above the fray and work with Republicans on creating sound policy. What the president didn’t see coming was the influx of hard-lined tea party freshman that were not willing to work with moderate Republicans, Democrats, or especially the president on anything. Their view of government was that it was too big, and they saw their wins a sort of directive to begin the long, slow process of killing it from the inside.
Republicans, in typical “do anything to win” fashion, decided that they had to pander to the extreme tea party wing of their party, and as a result, the whole party shifted further to the right – both with regard to fiscal and social policy.
President Obama responded in his typical conciliatory fashion, welcoming the new members to congress and telling them that he was excited to work together. The new members were less than excited, however, to work with the president, or anyone else for that matter, and were hell bent on cutting government spending, taxes and any form of social “welfare” (i.e. any and all government programs) that they could. Their goal had nothing to do with creating jobs, but instead was simply pandering to their dogmatic ideology and the loud extremists that supported it.
Obama has since spent from then until now grinding out weak legislation after weak legislation, all in an effort to get something – anything – done, but continuously getting a stick in the eye from Republicans; both on the weak legislation itself, but also on his failure to lead. It’s a bizarre world. The president has made an effort to not only include Republicans in the discussion, but have given them more than ample representation in the bills he’s helped produce, even to the detriment of his own ideological principles. While some may see that as weakness, it’s actually showing a lot of strength and leadership, and the president is now taking flak from all sides for his neutrality.
I think the bottom line is that the fact that both Democrats and Republicans are unhappy with the president is a testament to what a good job he’s doing. Neither party really cares what party the president is a part of, as long as he’s willing to do whatever they want him to do. This president isn’t doing anything ideological for either party, and therefore neither of them can stand him for it. Although the American people might be frustrated by how ineffective government seems to be these days, it’s not the president that should take the blame, because he actually is doing what he said he was going to do, and he has brought change to Washington, it’s just that congress hasn’t yet received the memo.
To quote the Alfred from The Dark Knight, speaking of how Batman must be the bad guy for a while to do the right thing, “Endure, Master Wayne. Take it. They'll hate you for it, but that's the point of Batman, he can be the outcast. He can make the choice that no one else can make, the right choice.” This is what Obama is doing, and this is what he will continue to do. It might cost him the 2012 election (although I’m not really sure who to, as the Republicans have a very weak field), but he will continue to do what he has to do, and sign weak legislation, because that’s what he knows he has to do to get Republicans and Democrats to work together.