Both January 6, 2021 and January 6, 2023 were sad days for our democracy.
The former was something the U.S. had seen only in movies, like Frankenstein and extraterrestrials. An outgoing President attempted a coup. He egged on people who attacked Capitol police and threatened to hang the vice-president. Fortunately, he was thoroughly incompetent.
This year, Kevin McCarthy’s comical contortions to accommodate every crazy demand of his party’s extremists were sad and dangerous. He exemplified the principle-free politician, to whom only power matters. He’ll do anything necessary for his advancement. (Not all politicians are so extreme.)
We didn’t see Republicans invite Democrats to collaborate to get government going again, in some sane fashion. That might have worked. Just trying might have weakened the Republican extremists’ hold over McCarthy. (If he made some reasonable effort, and Dems chose to enjoy the embarrassing spectacle to serve their political purposes, Dems are complicit.)
The extremists are right that the U.S. political parties are too powerful and too inextricably involved in every aspect of our governments. Unwanted by our founders, they’re like prescription drugs: doing something helpful and making life easier, but with dangerous side effects the maker tries to minimize.
Unfortunately, since moderate Republicans value party above country, these extremists could seriously damage the country they purport to love.
The consequences are obvious: greater gridlock and deeper bitterness; hamstringing any beneficial activity by our government; wasting more time than expected on impeaching Biden for policy differences, rather than improper or illegal conduct.
This is childish tit-for-tat. Some Democrats wanted to impeach Donald Trump even before he took office. The Party didn’t support them. Once Trump as President did things any schoolchild could tell were unlawful and against the nation’s interest, Democrats (and a few courageous Republicans) impeached him. There’s no indication Biden has done anything remotely impeachable.
Above all, it’s now more likely the Republicans will plunge us into economic disaster by preventing us from raising the national debt ceiling, as Congress must do periodically. (Congress approves a budget; as a formality, if there’s a deficit, Congress must vote again on it.) Later this year, the nation’s debt will reach the borrowing limit Congress set last time.
The federal debt limit is a weird thing. Suppose my wife and I set a family debt limit. Maybe we owe banks and credit card companies, and are tired of paying more and more interest instead of replacing the muffler. We decide that if we exceed the limit, we’ll stop paying. But the banks and credit card companies didn’t approve our plan. They foreclose, and we’re in even worse shape. Smart!
Experts say a default could cost the U.S. six million jobs and $15 trillion in household wealth. The U.S. credit rating would sink, sending interest rates for homes and cars skyward. We’d be in a recession. Folks on Social Security and Medicare would get nothing. Investors’ loss of confidence in U.S. debt, the only truly safe asset, would explode the world economy.
McCarthy has promised the extremists to refuse this time, without severe budget cuts. He’ll try to impose cuts that hurt us regular New Mexicans, not huge corporations, you can bet. (Higher taxes would make more sense. U.S. taxes are relatively low, particularly on corporations.)
This is governing by extortion. How about some sort of collaborative government with folks who disagree working together for all of us?
That ain’t how party politics works.
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[The above column appeared Sunday, 15 January 2023, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and on KTAL (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/) and be available on both stations’ websites.]
[The column mentions, “The extremists are right that the U.S. political parties are too powerful and too inextricably involved in every aspect of our governments. Unwanted by our founders, they’re like prescription drugs: doing something helpful and making life easier, but with dangerous side effects the maker tries to minimize.
“But by placing party above country, Republicans could seriously damage the country they purport to love.”
As I transformed the above column into a short radio commentary, having to shorten it and make it punchier, and turn sentences more declarative, it struck me that in the published column I’d stopped short of hammering home the point about Federal Debt Limit being as foolish as a family creating a personal debt limit and defaulting unnecessarily if the limit were exceeded. What the Republicans are doing, by weaponizing this formality and threatening not to let us pay for stuff we’d already approved and received, unless we make drastic and harmful cuts, is exactly, in the family situation, like me telling my wife, “I’ll throw us into bankruptcy if you don’t cut the kids’ food budget in half and stop feeding that damned dog!” ]
[The column notes that Biden appears to have done nothing remotely impeachable. His troubled son Hunter appears to have profited from Biden’s prominence by cutting deals with foreign countries; but that’s akin to George Bush cutting deals with Bahrain while his father was Vice-President then President; and it’s a lot less harmful to us than Trump’s son-in-law helping Saudi Arabia against its enemies, and getting well-compensated pretty openly. (I’ve seen no indication that George Bush or Hunter Biden influenced or determined U.S. policy. They just got paid.)
Further, as with Trump’s many misdeeds and crimes, impeachment isn’t the right process to re punish activities prior to one’s presidency. (Perhaps illegal activities directly involved in winning the Presidency should be an exception to that.) Whatever Hunter did several years ago isn’t ground for impeachment of Biden as President.]
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