This Week at Clown College

This week under the big top on Capital Hill, leaders of the respective political parties are dueling to out-farce each other in their displays of political theater. POTUS is letting anybody who will listen know that he is inviting dozens of Republican lawmakers to dine with him at the White House, where he will undoubtedly remind them of how badly they lost the election last fall. These highly publicized events are to show The People how hard he is working to reach a compromise, even though I'm not convinced he is. And for the Republican's part, Paul Ryan submitted the Republican's version of a budget yesterday. It should be regarded as noir humor at this point, in part because of what it's provisions would do to the US economy, but mostly because it has no chance of passing.

Let me gaze into my crystal ball and tell you what will happen next. Despite Obama's very showy display of political theater -- last month's whistle-stop tour to take his case to the people and this week's breaking bread with Republican leadership -- the Republican-controlled House will pass some version of this budget just so that they can complain about Obama's and Senate Democrats' refusal to solve the country's fiscal issues. They're not wrong, but they're also not helping. They are not negotiating in good faith. Both parties seem intent on acting like they're trying to solve this, without actually trying to solve it. It's like watching a team of monkeys and a team of clowns play each other in charades.

But why is this budget such a schlocky circus prank? I see four main reasons, none having anything to do with the advisability of the provisions:

1. It repeals The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) outright. What's your pitch on this, House Repubs?

"Hey, Senate Democrats. Many of you have fought for universal healthcare coverage your whole careers. Most of you signed on to this legislation back in 2009 at significant political risk to your own careers, and many of your colleagues that voted for this lost their scalps in the aftermath. How about forgetting all the scars from that battle and passing this repeal.

Oh, and Mr. President, as you know, we hate Obamacare. Like, white hot hate. We know it's the signature accomplishment of your presidency, one that will be the foundation of history's treatment of you, and one that you spent the bulk of your post-election war chest of political capital to get passed. We know that you continued to campaign on its successful passage during last fall's election. And we know that by doing so, you won that election. But we'd take it as a great show of political fence-mending and good intentions if you'd follow the Senate's lead and repeal it. Because we hate it so much. Pretty please." 

Any proposal that includes a provision like this was never intended for anything but Red State Viagra. It's totally DOA.

2. It attempts to balance the budget in ten years without lifting a finger to reform Social Security. Everybody knows that the biggest elements of the federal budget are the safety net provisions: Medicare, Medicaid  and Social Security. Republicans will rail on about cutting spending and needing to "get our fiscal house in order." Here they show that they are no different from any politicians dependent on popular support for survival -- that's to say, panderers. Any serious reform to entitlements must include Social Security reform. Yet the R's won't touch it. Why? Because seniors are the only consistently loyal constituency they have left.

3. Lowers the top tax rate to 25%. The argument here will seem like a bit of a re-tread from #1, but remember the fiscal cliff-ocalypse just two months ago, the one that ended with raising the top tax rate by about 4% back to where it was before the Bush-era tax cuts? Well apparently Republicans would not only like to call a do-over. They want to reduce the top tax rate by an additional 10% from the Bush-era tax cut level.

"Let's just put all of the partisan bickering of the last few years behind us and agree that another 10% in the pockets of The Rich will be better for everybody. The sooner we do this, the sooner the free-market leprechauns can emerge from their cells in the evil Socialist redistribution camps and lead us all to our own individual pots of gold at the end of the Reagan Rainbow."

4.  Continues cutting non-defense discretionary budget (i.e., no cutting defense, Social Security, Medicare/caid). Remember the chainsaw budget mechanism called sequestration? How it was supposed to be so crazy, so damaging, that neither party would ever think of letting it go into law? Well they did it anyway. Because STARVE THE BEAST!! Yeah. Well. Ryan's budget proposes to balance the budget on the back of all remaining government programs, programs like veterans benefits, agriculture, national parks, natural resources, FDA, FAA, NIHS, CDC, infrastructure, law enforcement, justice department, commerce, state department. Et cetera, et cetera. And why? Because he's too cowed to even suggest putting Social Security on the table. I mean, discretionary spending as a part of the budget averaged 8.7% of GDP from 1972-2012. In fact, discretionary spending was below that average from 1992 until the 2008 recession. I assume it rose above that average as a result of the Bush-Obama stimulus packages enacted to combat the recession. But the percentage has again dropped below the 40-year average, and is on pace to drop to less than 6% of GDP by 2022. I have many friends that work in the federal government who are taking a 20% pay cut already because of sequestration. Those in essential services like the FBI or Diplomatic Protection don't get to take that time off as compensation. They work for free. Why are salaries at the Clown College immune from the sequestration? Seems to me they are nothing if not discretionary, especially lately. The way current leadership works, we could limit Congress to working two days a week and get better return on labor.

Ryan isn't a deficit hawk. He's not a national debt hawk. He's an ideologue. Ayn Rand is the only founding father that matters to him. Pretty sure he took his oath of office on a copy of Atlas Shrugged. You could argue that the House leadership's decision to appoint him chairman of the Budget Committee was their first, last, and only answer to any budget proposal that POTUS might make.

"We are happy to negotiate, so long as you agree to everything we demand. We're going to balance the budget by lowering taxes for rich people and corporations, cutting healthcare for poor and disabled people, kicking the burden for infrastructure and education down to the state level, and we're gonna do it all without touching Social Security. And we're gonna do it in just ten years. Because leprechauns."

It's like a non-stop political satire sitcom, with plots so ridiculous, even Stanley Kubrick couldn't have conceived of it. Yet this is the reality of our politics right now. Democracy is messy. But it's even messier with intractable ideologues at the controls.