The Electorate's Mirror Image

"I'm afraid that we're going to have either hyperinflation, skyrocketing interest rates, something.  I have lost my faith we can do it voluntarily."  the late Senator Warren Rudman speaking about the country's fiscal problems which he thought could not be solved without a crisis

 

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Following the above list of BO's destructive anti-American records the fiscal cliff & sequester are his next ruinous steps - maybe BO cannot believe himself the predicament he has put the country & the Republicans in – the American people will be further hurt by the fiscal cliff & sequester per his design & the Republicans will get the blame thereby strengthening BO's hand.

 

As a reminder the fiscal cliff is an economic precipice, created by law in summer 2011, that threatens to cast the U.S. back into recession.  It is a fiscal hit of up to $720 billion over time, starting on or just after January 1, 2013, caused by the immediate expiration of a host of tax rate cuts and the onset of $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over time mostly in Defense.  The sequester was an outgrowth of the original fiscal cliff concept – it is the mandatory mindless automatic spending cuts that kick in starting in 2013 if lawmakers can't find comparable cuts by then.  Although the fiscal cliff does include substantial spending cuts it does not necessarily include the mindless sequester & that is why I separate them.

 

A refresher on how we got here includes Republican fiscal ineptitudes under Speaker John Boehner's leadership that started in February 2011 & continues even today.  The issues include continuing resolutions to fund the government, negotiations re spending cuts, the debt ceiling, & extending Bush era tax-rate cuts – the expiration of which BO now admits will hurt the middle class & not just the wealthy as he claimed all during the campaign.

 

The focus of disappointment started on February 18, 2011 in the House when 92 Republicans joined every Democrat in voting to defeat an amendment that would cut an additional $22 billion from the 2011 FY $3.8-trillion spending plan.

 

Most freshmen Republicans campaigned in 2010 on cutting spending $100-billion their first (calendar) year in office & repealing &/or defunding ObamaCare to whatever degree possible.  This was soon watered down to mean cutting $100-billion on a pro rata FY basis as a negotiating starting point that would be reduced from $100-billion to $61-billion to $38.5-billion & to postpone the fight re defunding ObamaCare.  The $38.5-billion spending cut number, proudly announced by Boehner, turned out to be only $300 million of real spending cuts or less than 1% of what was announced.  This was the Republicans first bite @ the financial responsibility apple.

 

The second bite came in the summer of 2011 with another Republican capitulation in which the debt ceiling was raised by $900-billion (as BO wanted) in return for $756-billion in unspecified spending cuts over the next ten years with over 90% of the cuts coming way late in the out-years thereby rendering them useless & meaningless.  The August 2, 2011 Budget Control Act established the unconstitutional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, aka the Super Committee, whose mission was to make an additional minimum of $1.2-trillion cuts in federal spending (a trivial amount in the total scheme of all the planned spending over the next ten years) – but if the Super Committee could not agree than the sequester of mindless automatic spending cuts, like the Graham-Rudman bill of twenty years ago, would be made starting in January 2013 – right after the November election.  The Super Committee's work ended in failure with the following statement -  "After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee's deadline."

 

After seventeen months to work things out to avoid the fiscal cliff & sequester absolutely nothing of substance has changed & now we are just a few days before the Christmas Holiday break with the fiscal cliff & sequester ready to needlessly further ruin many people's lives – all per BO's design.  Our elected reps didn't make the right thing happen then so what would make anyone think they are going to now?  Please note I said "the right thing" not some phony last minute political deal with such tricks as counting as a budget cut the $6.2 billion savings for not spending money left from the 2010 Census – like Boehner did in 2011. 

 

Congressman Frelinghuysen provided me with the following report that shows BO is not a serious negotiator @ all - "Instead of cutting spending to use the revenue to pay down our debt, the President suggests using $50 billion for a new 'stimulus' package, an extension of unemployment insurance that already provides benefits for 99 weeks, a one-year deferral of the 'sequester' across-the-board budget cuts which will do nothing but postpone the difficult decisions the President and Congress must make."

 

A recent poll shows that although most people don't want their taxes raised 65% of respondents think it is OK to raise taxes on the wealthy.  Even more entrenched are the people who don't want their government programs touched.  Election winning politicians are a mirror image of the electorate & that is the problem the nation is facing in this fiscal cliff & sequester matter.

 

As bad as the imminent fiscal cliff & sequester are they are really just a mini test of our resolve to face our larger problems & we have no reason to believe this is going to turn out good with BO in the position of power wanting more spending & the Republicans not being able to find principles to unite behind.

 

Congressman Ryan's budget plan of April 2011 – generally regarded as the most fiscally responsible budget presented in years - would still increase the national debt by some $5 trillion over the next 10 years and continue $400 billion annual budget deficits through at least 2021.  This was one of my problems with Ryan in the last election & it will be again going forward.

 

The fiscal cliff & sequester are just a drop in the bucket for what lies ahead in a seemingly never ending problem expressed in tens of trillions of dollars.  The real problems & big money are in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and veterans' benefits – & these programs are virtually untouchable.  We see above that our elected reps are just not interested in solving our economic problems & neither is the majority of the electorate.