Krauthammer on the debt debate
I agree with Krauthammer:
The people spoke [in the Wisconsin recall election]; the process worked. Yes, it was raucous and divisive, but change this fundamental should not be enacted quietly. This is not midnight basketball or school uniforms. This is the future of government-worker power and the solvency of the states. It deserves big, serious, animated public debate.
Precisely of the kind Washington (exhibit B) just witnessed over its debt problem. You know: The debt-ceiling debate universally denounced as dysfunctional, if not disgraceful, hostage-taking, terrorism, gun-to-the-head blackmail.
Spare me the hysteria. What happened was that the 2010 electorate, as represented in Congress, forced Washington to finally confront the national debt. It was a triumph of democratic politics ”” a powerful shift in popular will finding concrete political expression.
But only partial expression. Debt hawks are upset that the final compromise doesn’t do much. But it shouldn’t do much. They won only one election. They were entrusted, as of yet, with only one-half of one branch of government.
But they did begin to turn the aircraft carrier around. The process did bequeath a congressional super-committee with extraordinary powers to reduce debt. And if that fails, the question ”” how much government, how much debt ”” will go to the nation in November 2012. Which is also how it should be.
The conventional complaint is that the process was ugly. Big deal. You want beauty? Go to a museum. Democratic politics was never meant to be an exercise in aesthetics.
Not just ugly, moan the critics, but oh so slow. True, again. It took months. And will take more. The super-committee doesn’t report until Thanksgiving. The next election is more than a year away. But the American system was designed to make a full turn of the carrier difficult and deliberate.
You will find that those who are criticizing the process (Republicans are terrorists and hostage-takers!) don’t like the result. And those who defend the process like the result.
The same was true, by the way, for the health care reform bill. Remember that? Krauthammer believes that the HCR legislation (plus the stimulus) was the main initial catalyst for the voter revolt against the Democrats. I agree.
I think the frustration lies in the fact that we feel we are on the downslope headed towards a cliff.
I’m not a doomsdayer.
The path is what it is though and people who know nothing about economics are talking about the extremists in the Tea Party.
hello?
What are we to do to be treated with respect? Give in ?
Baklava – you have a point. I do agree at the general level with what Krauthammer is saying; he’s speaking wise words, in fact, about what republicanism requires in order to function.
However, there’s also another fact: the debate would not have been as raucous and useful if the Tea Partiers had gone soft. To have this public thrashing out of a future for our country, we need principled people insisting upon principle. I’m quite sure Krauthammer knows that and has said so.
Others, however – such as Magan McArdle – do not understand, and thus objectively support the Democrats. Sorry, neo, I am a regular reader of McArdle and I respect her attempts to play it straight, but in this case her attempt to “be realistic” is colossally wrong-headed.
First of all, if the Tea Party would have done what she wanted – compromise earlier on something or other – then they would have to have been made up of compromisers, and thus the compromise would have been an even bigger disaster than what we got, for they would have compromised early and easily.
Secondly, she of course expects the Tea Party to cave, not the Democrats, who, bless their hearts, just want to hike taxes a little. Tax hikes, she should know, will have nothing to do with any solution to our problems. Absolutely nothing. At this point they are populist sops – period.
Case-in-point, have a look at Illinois, which just recently tried to solve its budget problems by hiking taxes. How’d that work out? It was a tragicomic near-catastrophe, that’s how. Governor Quinn hiked income taxes 67% and lifted the corporate rate to 9.5%. Revenues went up +$300 million (which does often happen in the first year). Peachy, right?
Would have been, had not dozens of the biggest companies in the state prepared to bounce for greener pastures. Any guesses where the revenues went? Buying off the companies to stay – to the tune of over $230 million!
The debt after the gross revenue gain was $8 billion. Assuming net $70 million revenues for the future – which is a joke – and assuming the $8 billion doesn’t increase – which is a bigger joke – that shortfall would be paid off in, oh, about 114 years.
See the report from the dread Gormogons:
http://www.gormogons.com/2011/06/how-to-run-state-into-ground.html
By contrast, how are Wisconsin and Virginia working out? We know, so I don’t need to cite the numbers.
McArdle likes evidence, so fine – let’s talk evidence. Let’s talk about a pattern that shows where and how raising taxes has saved an insolvent state or nation. Waiting… Waiting… *crickets*
She says the Democrats will have to compromise on spending too, as if tax hikes and spending cuts are complementary strategies of equal power in resolving our fiscal troubles. So she pretends as though the Democrats were offering real compromises, while the Tea Party offered nothing (which is crap; Boehner had agreed to significant “revenue increases” before Obama torpedoed the deal by demanding twice as much).
If we have to compromise on taxes for something genuine and substantial, as Marco Rubio so eloquently pointed out in his evisceration of John Kerry, then well and good, we’ll talk about it, especially if it involves simplifying the tax code and mutilating the IRS.
But nothing substantial was offered. Illinois was offered. That’s reality. Krauthammer gets it. McArdle does not.
“Debt hawks are upset that the final compromise doesn’t do much. But it shouldn’t do much.”
Krauthammer’s justification for this statement is less than convincing (including the pejorative “hawks”) and really is an amazing claim elevating popular sovereignty and the democratic process, which wise people know is subject to usurpation and manipulation. It was not messy democracy in action but the structures of constitutional law (desperately trying to be changed by Democrats, for example Obama’s threat to just 14th amendment the whole shebang) which prevented a pure and simple socialist takeover. As it is, who is to really define it wasn’t. Obama got his spending money and the rest of the compromise is promises with a new Politiburo replacing our Congress. PU! Turning the aircraft carrier around is the wrong metaphor. What we have here is a mutiny and the carrier ain’t headed nowhere in particular–it’s just turning circles.
And to use the Wisconsin victory as proof of how the democratic process works! Does one even need to rebut that? That was a democratic process? A state is inundated with national union/socialist power, money, ground forces, and pure thuggery . . . and Krauthammer dares (dares!) to offer that as law abiding democracy? He calls that messy? Is Acorn merely “messy?”
That there was a win in Wisconsin is not due to “compromisers” like Krauthammer (a snobbish elitist); it is the tea party activitists who fought the war who deserve the credit. Let the paid for pundits pontificate that because there was a win in Wisconsin, they say the process works. Next time there may not be. Will they say the process works then? I doubt it. They may be nothing more than overpriced over ego-ed blatherers with no skin in the game.
Thank God for the victory in Wisconsin. The truff, (imagine that last word said by a front line fighter who lost his front teeth and his mouth is still very much sore by the blow given by an SEIU thug) is that good triumphed over evil and Wisconsin is very much distinguished by the lies, lies, and more damned lies of the debt debate.
Curtis: Government and governing and politics have nearly always been a dirty, nasty business. The details change, but that fact remains the same. The founding fathers knew that, and they tried to put in checks and balances and slowness to temper that. I think that’s the reality, and that’s what Krauthammer is referring to, not that there was something wonderful about the process in Wisconsin.
Given that the Obamacare bill process was like a bulldozer, operated at night and without lights, I know why I didn’t like the process or the results. That, and The Nancy saying they had to pass it to find out what’s in it.
kolnai wrote, “the debate would not have been as raucous and useful if the Tea Partiers had gone soft.
Exactly. And the rest of what you wrote is brilliance..
Why can’t we focus our energies on the Democrats and liberals “compromising” or “accepting input” or whatever else.
The ire aimed at “extremist” Tea Partiers is not helping.
It’s alienating.
Democrats understand negotiation better than republicans. Probably has something to do with the dems coming out of union halls and the repubs coming from the rotary club.
Here’s how it works. You threaten impeachment and a right wing military coup if what you’re really aiming for is a simple balanced budget.
I agree with Krauthammer that all these processes lately are working EXACTLY the way our country’s founders intended it to.
1. The House is most directly representative of the people’s wishes and most responsive, time wise.
2. The Senate reacts to changes more slowly.
3. The President is kinda in between (elected every 4 years instead of every two years or six years).
4. The Supreme Court eventually decides if what’s been going on is constitutional (appointed by an elected president and approved by a super majority of the elected Senate for life).
Those guys were pretty damned smart.
A trend that is bothersome to me is this business of states’ presidential Electors being determined by national election results. That’s NOT what our founders intended and I do NOT want my president chosen primarily by people living in the large urban areas.
There’s wisdom and less stress in the countryside.
here is more on recognizing…
pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-credit-downgrade-symptom-of-the-marxist-disease/?singlepage=true
The Credit Downgrade: Symptom of the Marxist Disease
particular points that lend to my major constant point of knowing from EXPERIENCE rather than god of the gaps fantasy…
so many things are duplicated, its NO WONDER that with so many, only those with experience recognized them. and it reveals to them how well read the people who are doping this are, not how dumb or stupid, or crazy, etc..
i figure if someone ELSE says it, maybe it will strike a chord…
In other words, that they would start transforming capitalist America into a socialist state.
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In his Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx urged his followers to “eradicate capitalism” and advocated ten “despotic inroads on the rights of property,” which became known as the Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto. Among them were: a heavy progressive or graduated income tax, abolition of all rights of inheritance, and abolition of property
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It did not take long before this American nomenklatura took control of home mortgages, banks, auto-makers, and most of the health care industry. When tens of thousands of Americans objected to the cloak of secrecy under which all this was taking place, the same Nancy Pelosi called them Nazis. That was exactly what all post-WWII Marxist nomenklaturas called their opponents.
and its EXACTLY what the NAZIs did, using the same methods and arguments and creating equivalent if not copied laws!!!!
nazi does NOT stand for national socialist, etc…
it stands for NATIONALIZERS… they nationalized everything when they started as part of gleikshaltung.
it was the first four years that a short wacko copying and expanding on lenin, and russias ideas, to consolodate and make solid power whether people liked it or not.
the brutal class was key too… as the negative selection made most people pacifists and afraid…
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On Feb. 7, 2009, the cover of Newsweek magazine proclaimed: “We Are All Socialists Now.” That was also what Romania’s Marxist newspaper Scé®nteia proclaimed when the kingdom of Romania was changed into a “Popular Republic.”
a cultural mash up of all the great hits we dont know
but the people who lived it, lived in immigrant communities, were not welcomed by americans and so on… we know as we were there, and came here to get away from it.
The U.S. nomenklatura has produced the same results as Romania’s nomenklatura had – on a U.S. scale.
they are even talking the same kinds of compulsive exercises and such… [they even copied hungary and slovakia too]
Scé®nteia went bankrupt. Newsweek was sold for one dollar.
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a member of the congresional nomenklatura representing the bankrupt state of California – who is also a staunch admirer and visitor of Fidel Castro’s Cuba – began preaching that the future of the U.S. oil industry was “all about socializing,” all about “the government taking over and running all our oil companies.”
In 1948, when the Romanian nomenklatura nationalized the oil industry, that country was the second greatest oil exporter in Europe. Thirty years later, when I broke with Marxism, Romania was a heavy importer of oil, gasoline was rationed, the temperature in public places had to be kept under 63 degrees, and all shops had to close no later than 5:30 pm to save energy.
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In 1978, I paid with two death sentences – from my native Romania – for helping that country rid itself of Marxism, and I could write a whole book about how that deadly virus is now harming my new country, the United States. Maybe someday I will. Here I want only to mention an article published in, of all places, the Russian Pravda, which stated: “It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed, against the backdrop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.”
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but i finally figured out when we will read and learn and find out things…
not by our own incurious selves… no, when its the law of the land, and eveyrone has to read it, and everyone has to comply, or else…
one way or another…
everyone is going to read it
one way, was as a historical curiosity
the other, was for lack of such curiosity and so repitition became a fait accompli as those ignorant of history, but not the principal, tend to quote george santayana
According to the ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu, whose The Art of War is required reading for all CIA officers and military intelligence personnel, knowing your enemy is the most important element needed in order to defeat him. “Know your enemy and know yourself,” he wrote, “and you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
It is time for today’s Americans to become acquainted with Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. This is our enemy.
we now are going to learn it in person
as there is little we can do now to reverse anything..
if it takes longer to fix than to smash, then what if the smashing took 40 years? in truth, it took 80…
Baklava,
I don’t know whether we will have to worry about Dems compromising. So much of their spending is for programs that don’t work that I think the people are getting fed up. If you look at what Philly’s mayor said about the flash mobs, it seems that minds are changing about the causes of problems and people will look to different solutions instead of more money being thrown away. Bill Cosby broke the ice on the black teens issue, but it’s taken a few years for his message to penetrate. Similarly, when it really sinks in that Wisconsin is better off when union bargaining is restricted, more people will say, Why not here?
Krauterhammer is right that our slow and messy system works. It gives the people time to rethink the old givens and form a new consensus. The leftist fringe is losing its allure. They just didn’t know when to stop.
I really believe people are missing a point, not because the idea “the system worked” is necessarily (per se) wrong, but because it doesn’t mean anything meaningful.
Look at some of Krauthammer’s language: “change this fundamental should not be enacted quietly.”
“Change this fundamental?” We’ve gone so far around the bend that what the tea partier’s want is “change so fundamental?” Reminds me of a joke: A man comes home, finds a man in bed with his wife. Wife says, “Look who’s here, big mouth. Now the whole neighborhood will know.”
Our freakish government is so far gone that the big perspective has been lost. Our country is committing adultery and were told to keep our mouth shut.
The voting mob “can’t be dealt with. It feels no pity. It wants you dead. And it will not stop ever.” But I digress here into “hysteria,” and I would spare you that.
Another one: “It deserves big, serious, animated public debate.”
It does? Between whom? Fools and people answering fools? Krauthammer is bestowing legitimacy upon fools; it’s been poverty and the threat of poverty which, for quite some time now, has turned the tide. Not debate.
There is fear and denial which seeks to provide a false assurance and it asserts, “Everything is okay. Hey, our system still works.”
Our system is broken because the actors therein are broken. We have enslaved our children, threatened our security, and now one little non-victory and our system works?
Small victory, perhaps, the debt deal. Certainly, not a huge one, but to a people accustomed to losing, it seems large. Wisconsin was a great victory, but not the debt debate which will turn out on the outside just as it is on the inside.
There’s no such thing as just the system. Thank God for the system but like Franklin told the questing lady, “A Republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
I think the debt deal WAS a small victory and about all that could be accomplished with Republican control of only one branch of the legislature. At least they were talking about cutting spending and not raising taxes instead of raising taxes and trying to figure out how to spend more money.
Want more? Wanna “keep the Republic”? Then do everything you can to help the Republicans capture a BIG majority in the Senate, keep the majority in the House, and elect a Republican president in 2012.
Yeah, I spose it’s academic at this point. The important thing is protecting the 2012 vote from fraud. Hope there is: We could gain the Senate and the Presidency. And the 11th Circuit just struck down the mandate and it seems likely the Supreme Court will hear and rule likewise.
This is the real test of the character of our nation: The tea party initiates the hard measures necessary to restore prosperity, there is genuine distress, but the people remain true. We weather the storm and for a generation the liberals are discredited.
texexec:
I agree with most of what you said at 3:40 pm, except that the Senate is not functioning as the Founders intended, ever since the ratification of the 17th Amendment. A Senate that still represented the states’ interests would be a powerful check on the runaway growth of the federal government. That’s what the Founders had in mind.
I share Curtis’ disgust with the aircraft carrier analogy. Krauthammer is comfortable in his passivity, with his chin-stroking psychiatric approach; not exactly a man of action.
To persist with the carrier analogy, one must consider that the command deck is peopled with idiots and the malevolent, the helm is not hard over, the engines are at slow forward, the radar is inoperative or ignored.
The SuperCommittee will be a disaster. Vicious assaulters(Cliburn for one) are in the same cage with softies (e.g. Kyl) and nothing good will emerge-one of the Repubs will cave, a la Boehner, and that will be that.
We are at the point where one must ask whether playing by the rules must be abandoned. And act.
Thanks Don Carlos.
On retrospection, I see what is animating my thoughts and it is Krauthammer’s rebuke to the very people who risked something. And then incorporating into his argument someone like Scott Walker whose demeanor literally shouts friendliness and bi-partisanship but his actions were 100% heroically no compromise– incorporating him as if that were an example of what Krauthammer endorsed. Walker stood strong and alone. The compromisers did not. They gave into fear.
rickl said:
“texexec:
I agree with most of what you said at 3:40 pm, except that the Senate is not functioning as the Founders intended, ever since the ratification of the 17th Amendment. A Senate that still represented the states’ interests would be a powerful check on the runaway growth of the federal government. That’s what the Founders had in mind.”
You make a good point, rickl. The pre-17th amendment way of putting people into the senate WAS a better way than now.
The Senate does temper what the House does now but it’s a washed out version of how things used to work.
Republicans currently have large majorities in lots of states’ legislatures. Wouldn’t if be great if they could select our senators?
Of course, if ya get right down to it, our founders didn’t intend that anyone “of age” who breathes should be able to vote either.
Heck…in South Texas and Chicago, some people get to vote who DON’T still breathe.
Over the last year the USA has given unaccounted for billions to ‘aid’ Greece. Somewhere around 45 cents of each dollar of ‘aid’ to Greece was borrowed money. In the last 2.5 years the debt burden has grown by 4 trillion and the ‘great comprise’ just added another 2.4 trillion within the next 18 months. The most ‘conservative’ plan offered up, but not enacted, would add another 10+ trillion in debt by 2020. Somewhere between 75 to 150 trillion (no one knows for sure) in unfunded liabilities and interest payments will come due in less than 25 years.
Krauthammer and others can pontificate till the cows come home, but nothing can avert this train wreck except drastic measures. The GOP house flinched. They missed the opportunity to put this mess in BHO’s lap and the laps of the senate dems. Now, they too are tainted.
BTW, I’m all for repealing the 17th along with the 16th, the 23rd, and the 26th. And I fervently support requiring everything DC does to pass the test of the 9th & 10th. And yes, that is but a dream.
Curtis 8/12 @ 8:38pm:
Let’s consider what taking a political risk is.
The risk is a) not succeeding, and b) losing political power or employment. No guillotine awaits.
Now, liken that to a risky surgical procedure: who bears the risk? Not the surgeon.