Babies and Bathwater

Like so many congresses before it, the 112th Congress has kicked the can on the budget down the road a few years, but not before Speaker Boehner was mugged by the recalcitrant Tea Party-ers throwing a tantrum worthy of the most leather-lunged three year old.  Meanwhile, Majority Leader Eric Cantor was busy cutting the legs out from under his own leader by pandering to this mob with calculating ambitions of his own for the Speaker's office.  All this hissy-fitting by the no-new-taxes-compromise-is-a-dirty-word crowd was playing out against a backdrop of exasperated voters, shell-shocked investors and worried governments world wide.

The difference this time, however, is that the real world consequences of this doomsday approach have been plastered on the news as investors around the world panicked and dropped markets by huge margins.  At least one investment rating company downgraded U.S. Treasuries from their AAA rating for the first time since Andrew Jackson issued debt obligations on behalf of the fledgling United States of America.

Real world results?  By refusing to consider all the options on the table, the Tea Party has emasculated party leadership and sent the economy on a roller coaster ride that will almost certainly kill any near-term job creation in this country, and likely will put us into the second half of a double-dip recession.  So, what do we have to show for it?

No serious effort to reduce the deficit was achieved.  We are still trying to drain Lake Superior with a teaspoon.  The much ballyhooed concession of getting a vote on a balanced budget amendment was political theatre from the start.  Super majority voting requirements in both houses of Congress and all the states doomed this before birth and even with a successful vote in Congress it would take years of wrangling in the states before any decision was reached.  I haven't even touched on the scary notion that in a time of national emergency, the ability to raise money by borrowing from friendly nations would be constitutionally foreclosed, likely with devastating results.

The right-wing, to which I proudly belonged not too long ago, is fond of describing taxes as job-killing.  To put not too fine a point on it--that's just crap.  Really.

The tax code of the United States has been successfully manipulated by special interest lobbyists almost since income tax was imposed in the early twentieth century and thus we see a set of laws that has been bent to serve business--big and small.  Everywhere you look the law is riddled with deductions, exclusions and exemptions for starting and owning a business.  For example, capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income.  Stamps and phone lines, office supplies and advertising, employee benefits and 401Ks and thousands more, all designed to allow business to re-invest in the economy and still be profitable.  The truth is, business knows exactly how to avoid higher taxes:  They invest more in the business.

It isn't new or higher taxes business really fears, it's uncertainty.  People like a level of predictability in the ordering of their lives and businesses-being owned and operated by people for people-like exactly the same thing.  Predictable, responsible action in Congress and the White House begets confidence in leadership.  The feeling that there is a reliable hand on the tiller of the ship of state leaves the electorate free to do what we do best-innovate, grow and outstrip the world in creativity and productivity.

Instead we find ourselves held hostage by a super-minority of mal-contented neer-do-wells struggling to wrest the tiller from calmer and more experienced shipmates as we veer madly toward the rocks.  This is not healthy debate, this is throwing not only the baby out with the bath water, but the soap, towel and tub right along with it.  At the core, the uber-rich don't want new taxes because an uncertain future clouds the vision of new business growth so they want to squirrel away their cache against further calamities.  An altogether reasonable response in uncertain times, however unfair it might seem to those of us with modest means.

Meaningful debt reduction can only begin when we re-evaluate how and where we choose to project military force and start making defense budget begin to look proportionate to the actual needs rather than having an enormous standing military in anticipation of what might happen.  I'd like to have a million bucks in the bank in anticipation of what might happen but in order to achieve that goal I have to increase my income and decrease my expenditures--substantially.  In governmental terms, I need to raise taxes and cut spending.  Slashing one without the other just leaves a bloody stump.

I heard a Tea Party Republican on a talking heads Sunday news show make the following statement:  "I don't think all these bad things are going to happen like they say they are.  It's a bunch of hooey."

The three most salient words in that sentence?   I don't think..

Warts And All

Last night I watched an awards show.  Not a glitzy Hollywood production (although there is a tragic connection to that fabled city of dreams), but a PBS presentation of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Songwriting.

Onstage, Sir Paul McCartney-son of a midwife and jazz musician-from humble beginnings in Liverpool, England became the third recipient of a prize named for the Brooklyn-born son of Russian -Jewish emigrants who fled pogroms in their homeland for the promise of a new chance in America.

George died tragically young-at the height of his compositional powers and popularity-from a brain tumor, in Hollywood at the Cedars-Sinai Hospital on Fountain Boulevard.  He was thirty seven years old.

Stevie Wonder-second winner of the prize last year-was born blind in Saginaw, Michigan-the product of a broken home in a racially charged era.  He performed 'Ebony & Ivory' with Sir Paul, who had written the song as a duet specifically for the two of them.

The evening was filled with high profile musicians performing McCartney's songs, him singing a few of his own, and even Jerry Seinfeld poking some gentle (and very funny) ribs.

All-in-all, it was very entertaining, and the sort of thing that makes me think about who we are and what we have become as Americans.  And how far we have yet to go to perfect this union.

Imagine, the first bi-racial President of the United States, presenting an Englishman with the most prestigious popular music award America has to offer.  An award named for a Russian Jew, George (and his lyricist brother, Ira) children of an immigrant family.    Onstage was the blind boy from Saginaw with family roots in slavery in Dixie.  

The first honoree was the Newark-born son of Hungarian immigrants.  His name is Paul Simon.

We have come so far, yet the road is longer still.  The immigration debate will go forward, let's hope the policies to come don't lead us to a darker past, best left to the dustbin of history.

Still though, last night I was reminded again just how great it is to be an American.  Warts and all.