Geronimo!

Let’s go over the fiscal cliff

"Americans had a choice this November, and they voted for bigger government. Rather shielding voters from the consequences of their decisions, let them pay for it."

Even if Thiessen is right -- and he very well might be -- it hardly matters, because the GOP lacks the principles (by a mile), and the guts (by five miles), to do anything like that. Just wait and see. The only true principle of both political parties is to get into power, and then to do whatever it takes to stay in power as long as possible.  If that means compromising "principles" until they're unrecognizable, then so be it.

And, anyway, if Government were starved of tax money, wouldn't it simply find ways (continuing resolutions, executive orders, etc.) to keep spending and piling up debt, rather than cutting services and entitlements? Taxes collected are already vastly less than what's being spent, and yet spending and debt continue to spiral upward, not downward.  Harry Reid won't let the Senate produce a budget year after year for good reason -- to avoid letting everyone watch whatever budget they came up with blown to smithereens by Democrats' unrestrained spending.

All you have to do is look at the GOP leadership to know what's coming and to become depressed at the prospect.  The GOP will sell its soul to make a deal, or it would if it had a soul to sell, and the "compromise" Obama will agree to with a smile will move the Big Ratchet a few more clicks to the left.  As a result, the GOP's electoral prospects will become even worse, not better.

Why does the GOP still do pretty well at state and local levels?  My guess is that it's because people see what's being spent by their own communities and states as their own money, which gives GOP preaching about fiscal responsibility some credence.  But I think that perspective is mostly lost at the national level, where it's easier to think what you're spending is Other People's Money -- money from rich localities and rich people, not yours. Federal tax money is viewed as a public commons where everybody gets to graze at little or no cost to themselves.  And it's easy not to notice that a constantly increasing proportion of the grass is no longer homegrown, but trucked in and bought on credit.

As we see in the EU, the party implodes when the credit card gets cancelled.  It could be much worse for the U.S. than what irresponsible borrowers like Greece are experiencing in Europe.  Germany can bail out Greece, and maybe a couple of other Mediterranean profligates who never thought the bill for their entitlements and lifestyle would come due.  But who can bail out the U.S.?  Not the Chinese, and even if they could, it's best not to even contemplate what the terms would be.

Byron

Three thoughts on the election

For what they might be worth:


1. By far the most troubling thing about the re-election of Obama is what it says about what the American electorate has become. It might seem puzzling that the ongoing economic implosion of the European economies did not serve as a warning, an admonitory example, of where Obama's policies necessarily lead. But in my experience we learn unwelcome lessons only through personal, immediate, and direct revelatory experience, and that's what it will take. To coin a metaphor for the holidays, our economic thinking will clarify when this Christmas Train finally flies off the tracks and lands us in Greece.

2. There is a perverse feedback loop between economic failure and the expansion of the entitlement state: The worse the economy gets, the more people become dependent on government support -- and they naturally will vote for the continuation and expansion of benefits someone else is paying for. The common view was that Obama's failure to revive the economy made his re-election less likely, but I think it made his re-election more likely. What was presumed to be a bug turned out to be a feature. Worse, the entitlement state, which Obama represents, inevitably expands with every round of economic failure, because, once instituted, benefit increases are forever. The ratchet goes in one direction only. Or, to loosely quote David Frum, "Over the long run, the knife of government always cuts left."

3. The re-election of Obama is not the disaster that his election in 2008 was, because with the GOP retaining control of the House, government remains divided. The principle of divided and competing powers has always been the keystone of our system, the only reliable protection the individual citizen has from the depredations of government. The words that should send a shiver down the spine of any thinking American are these: "It's time for those people in Washington to finally set their partisan disputes aside and begin to cooperate so they can get things done."  A chilling idea if there ever was one. Gridlock is good, and the more of it, the better.

Byron