The Chris Moeller Archives

The Democrats circle the drain

The story of America’s Congress dating back to the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s presidency in 1981 is largely a story of one party capitulating to the other. Republicans lead. Democrats cave. Tonight on Nightline. The often-used metaphor (at least by me) for President Obama and the Democrats is that of the kid at school getting his lunch money lifted off him every day by a pack of bullies. This week's agreement on the budget and the debt ceiling rises not quite to that level though. Imagine instead the boy that's getting robbed also being pantsed and stuffed headfirst into a garbage can. Now we're getting close.

Washington's “compromise” agreement contains no tax increases. There are no hikes for the rich even though our nation's top tier earners have seen their tax rate of 91% during the Eisenhower boom of the 1950s plummet to 35% under Bush and Obama. There was no closing of tax loopholes. There was not even an extension on unemployment benefits in the plan. These should have each been dealbreakers for President Obama. The lack of tax revenue is what caused this mess to begin with (along with our costly and immoral wars overseas), and yet the rich will wind up having to sacrifice nothing. Wall Street criminals made off with trillions, throwing a raging keg party with our money at our house in our absence. They were rewarded with even more bags of money, no new regulations in the banking industry, and now working people and the unemployed get to clean up the vomit and the garbage that the party left behind.

We’re set up now for more than $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years, a new Congressional panel that will look into even further cuts in entitlements, and automatic cuts if Congress fails to find common ground during the future negotiations in which Republicans will have less incentive than ever to compromise since their opponents again demonstrated that they will eventually fold their tents. Democratic Congresswoman and shooting victim Gabrielle Giffords theatrically interrupted her long and difficult convalescence to travel to the Capitol Monday and cast a vote that will gut Social Security and Medicare. This is a dramatic and thrilling new standard for demonstrating how much strength and effort the Democrats will expend to disappoint us.

This vote provides an opportunity for the conservative con men of the political class to now destroy Medicare, a program they hate with career-motivating passions because it stands as vibrant, living proof that government-administered health care works better than a system of health care-for-corporate-profit. The “shock doctrine” has been effectively implemented in the United States. Fear of the nation’s default forced by ideological warriors of the extreme-right exposed the president again as both a coward and a fool. (Oh your god, I can't get over what a weak politician this guy is.) You have to guess otherwise that he’s just been playing the game until he can cash out financially upon leaving office.

Some Republicans didn't vote for the budget deal today, but don’t make the mistake of thinking they didn’t get everything they wanted. There were a handful left behind to be publicly angry with "the compromise,” but if a Republican voted against this deal, that’s only because that hard-line individual wants to starve the nation of even more of its basic services and protections for the poor and disadvantaged and for our crumbling infrastructure. Theirs is a curiously-popular ideology. It promotes taking money away from nursing homes and schools because a tax on yachts would restrict “individual freedom.” I don’t pretend to understand it, but I can recognize it. They know that as long as they can continue to swerve hard to the right, Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi will hug tight to the "middle" regardless of where the line is painted on the road. The people don’t matter now. We’ve been cut out of the process by the Citizens United ruling and the effective dissolution of the McCain/Feingold Act. It’s a government now of the corporations for the corporations by the corporations. They’re swerving us as far right as we can possibly go. Life in the fascist lane.

posted by CM @ 8:45 PM