Childish politics

One of the really distressing things about the political discourse in this country is how many political decisions seem to be based on insubstantial things like the vanity and ego and sheer childishness of people who really should know better. The desire to score cheap political points, to not want to give what the other side can claim as a victory even if the measure is a good one has become so obvious, especially in the Republican party, that it should be embarrassing, if as a nation we had not lost our sense of shame.

During the health care debate, for example, it seemed like all it took for the despicable Joe Lieberman to oppose any measure (such as single payer, the public option, extending eligibility for Medicare) was for any progressive group to express support for it. This may also lie behind the fact that the US still has not adopted the metric system or why there is irrational denial to even consider global warming as a potential threat. Opposition in some quarters seems to be at least partly based on the fact that these measures are popular in other countries.

As another example, look at the to-be Republican House majority leader Eric Cantor’s statement on a suggestion to balance the budget.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.), who is likely to become House majority leader in January, said Tuesday that many lawmakers wouldn’t support VAT-type tax because its ties to Europe might make it politically poisonous in Washington. [My italics]

“I don’t think any of us want us to go the direction of the social welfare states around the world,” Mr. Cantor said at the CEO Council.

There are good and bad things about the VAT (Value-Added Tax) but the fact that it is used in some European countries should be totally irrelevant to the discussion except as a source of data on how well it works.

I am not saying that there are no substantive reasons for the opposition but one gets the palpable sense that if Europe does it or if ‘the left’ supports something, that is enough for Republicans to view it with deep suspicion and seek reasons to oppose it.

Republican party leader Mitch McConnell actually said that one of the reasons he opposed the new START treaty (which was ratified yesterday by the Senate on a 71-26 vote) is because he did not want to give a victory to ‘the left’. I do not have an informed opinion on the START treaty since I have only a little idea of what it contains, but the idea that a major political leader would oppose something of international significance because it might provide a boost to his political opponents is highly disturbing.

But this is what passes for political thinking among the leaders of the Republican party. Not the merits of issue itself but where it comes from and who is supporting it.

I suspect that the current Republican opposition to things like high-speed rail is also based on similar feelings. Creating a massive network of high-speed rail lines that span the country would be a tremendous boost to the economy, creating jobs and stimulating industry. But because other countries such as China and in Europe have taken the lead in this area, following in their footsteps would somehow imply that the US is not #1.

This has reached such absurd levels that some are considering repealing Bush-era legislation that will phase out incandescent light bulbs. They presumably think that replacing them with compact fluorescent bulbs is some kind of evil European socialist plot that seeks to deny them their god-given right to have their choice of light bulbs

At least we should be grateful that this kind of childishness on a large scale is a fairly recent phenomenon. If it had happened in the 19th century, we would still be riding in horse-drawn carriages since these same people would have opposed the introduction of the steam engine because it was invented and developed in Europe.

As the country falls further behind in science and technology, as its infrastructure crumbles and its health system falls apart, these people are not going to look for good ideas wherever they originate because they will be too busy chanting “USA! USA! Were #1!”

Indefinite detention

Our constitutional scholar-president, who promised to shut down Guantanamo within a year of taking office, is about to sign an Executive Order that gives him the right to hold detainees there indefinitely, and that the administration alone will do any reviews of the prisoners’ status.

[T]he order establishes indefinite detention as a long-term Obama administration policy and makes clear that the White House alone will manage a review process for those it chooses to hold without charge or trial.

Obama no longer even pretends that he values the law or the constitution and seems to think he has imperial powers.

The dysfunctional Congress-2: Practice

In yesterday’s post, I described the way the budget process should run in the Congress, with the twelve appropriations committees in each chamber passing a spending bill, reconciling it with the bill passed by the other chamber if there are differences, and then passing a single reconciled bill that is sent to the president for his signature. All twelve such bills are supposed to be passed before the August recess, to be signed into law by the president to take effect with the new fiscal year starting October 1.

Congress and the White House also have the option of using Supplemental Appropriations. This is meant to provide a way to deal with unexpected major expenditures that could not have been anticipated in the budget process, such as catastrophes like hurricanes and earthquakes. (In the past few years, however, this option has been heavily exploited to fund expenditures that are not emergences, like the never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other countries. For example, in 2008 about $200 billion, about 17% of the total discretionary budget, was allocated to the so-called ‘Global War on Terror’ using supplemental appropriations. By not using the regular budget for these expenditures, the government can disguise the true cost of those wars. See this site for what the real costs of the wars are and how they are hidden from us.)

It all sounds very orderly, as one would expect from a government that has had over 200 years to develop a smooth working structure.

But what actually happens? “In 26 of the past 31 years (FY1977-FY2007), Congress and the President did not complete action on a majority of the regular bills by the start of the fiscal year (see Table 2). In eight years, they did not finish any of the bills by the deadline. They completed action on all the bills on schedule only four times: FY1977, FY1989, FY1995, and FY1997.” (My italics)

In the current year as of today, already three months into the fiscal year, the Senate has not voted on a single one of the twelve appropriations and the House has voted on only two of them (Military/Veterans and Transportation/HUD). In an effort to obtain a budget, Congress tried as a last resort to pass all twelve separate appropriations bills by rolling them all into one gigantic $1.2 trillion ‘omnibus’ bill. But that attempt failed on December 16th because the Senate Republicans blocked it.

(Note: The total government expenditure (using the 2008 budget figures) is around $3.0 trillion. Of this, about $1.8 trillion consists of mandatory spending that Congress cannot tinker with (such as Social Security payments, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the national debt, etc.), leaving the Congress with just $1.2 trillion of so-called discretionary spending to cover all the rest of government. It is the allocation of this money that Congress has control over. The recent tax deal that was signed into law reduced revenue and increased expenses to the tune of $858 billion, about three-quarters of the discretionary budget, and yet it sailed through Congress because it benefited the oligarchy.)

So given that not a single appropriations bill has been passed and the omnibus bill failed too, the country is operating without a budget.

So how is the government functioning? By using the option of ‘continuing resolutions’, which allows the Congress to pass stopgap appropriations that are based on the previous year’s expenditures, plus a few ad hoc changes to meet any contingencies that were not present the previous year. This means that almost all government agencies will be able to continue doing what they did the previous year.

In 2010, the first continuing resolution was passed on September 29, just before the beginning of the new fiscal year, that continued funding until December 3. Then just as that expired, a new continuing resolution was passed on December 4 extending the spending until Saturday, December 18. On Friday night, they passed another continuing resolution that lasted through December 21. Another continuing resolution was passed yesterday that extends this form of temporary funding until March 4, 2011.

So we now have a situation where the Congress will have to start the process of planning the budget for fiscal year 2012 before it has even passed a budget for fiscal year 2011. Is this any way to run the world’s biggest economy, living hand-to-mouth by passing temporary spending authorizations that can last as little as just a few days?

It costs an enormous amount of money (over four billion dollars) to pay for both chambers of Congress. You would think that they would be obliged to complete the most basic task required of them, which is to pass a budget. It is an absolute disgrace that they have not passed a single one of the twelve appropriation bills so far, and that there seems to be no sign of them doing so in the near future. If members of Congress were treated like any other employees, they would have been fired for gross incompetence, instead of being allowed to bloviate over non-essential matters and preen before the TV cameras.