It has been four five six days since the mid-term elections, and during that time I have started and abandoned four six seven different posts on that topic. So many different emotions have filled me. I may have needed at least little space to make better sense of them. A fable (kind of) to start off…
Once, there was a group of three Mexicans who set out on a fishing boat to catch sharks. However, their boat soon experienced adverse winds and mechanical difficulties, and they were lost at sea. The fishermen existing on nothing but raw fish, rain water and the tiny amounts of additional fresh water they could condense and trap. Finally, after nine months and nine days, they were picked up by another fishing vessel, some 5500 miles from where they had started. (True story)
Of course, the Mexican fisherman were malnourished and emaciated. The captain of the ship that rescued them, a Democrat, immediately ordered that a sumptuous feast be brought forth for the starving men. They ate and ate until they had had their fill, gorging themselves on rich roast meats and delectable baked goods and every manner of decadent indulgence.
The First Mate of the rescue boat, himself a Republican, thought ill of the captain’s plan, however. He immediately dashed off a wire to the corporate office, complaining that the feast had ruined the food budget for the vessel’s entire trip. What is more, he strenuously objected to the eating habits of the rescued men. “They ate with reckless abandon,” he reported. “Plate after plate of rich, fatty food. To eat like that only will lead to grave ill health — obesity and heart disease and diabetes and worse. This must be stopped immediately,” he concluded.
The corporate managers summoned the boat back to the harbor, and launched an inquiry into the captain’s actions. They heard evidence from nutritionists and health experts, who confirmed the First Mate’s fears. No one could remain healthy on such a diet as this, they concluded. The captain was reprimanded for his poor judgment, and ordered not to pick up any more lost fisherman for the remainder of his commission. The next day, he apologized to the corporate managers, although many, including the First Mate, felt that he still didn’t really ‘get’ it. They vowed to watch his every move with great vigilance, lest his insidious plan come to pass, and every fisherman on the sea become obese and unhealthy.
And that is where I find myself after the elections. I am not disheartened that the electorate has focused its attention on putting America on a healthy diet. I am disheartened that the electorate seems not to have distinguished between the necessary government actions to turn back a catastrophic recession — a spending “feast” fed to starving fishermen, if you will — and the long-term fiscal realities that we must face.
Somewhere, somehow, successful candidates managed to turn the government’s response to the recent economic crisis upside down. Not only did they portray the government’s response as ineffective, they managed to sell it as the cause of the crisis. That is absurd. Without the Bush/Obama TARP and stimulus interventions, today unemployment would be much higher, and economic growth would be much weaker (perhaps even the economy still contracting), and bankruptcies and mortage defaults would be at even higher levels, and government spending (on safety net programs) would be considerably higher, and government receipts would be much lower (on a smaller economy; all capital losses, no gains), and federal deficits would be much higher, and federal debt would be growing much faster.
But that’s not what seemed to be in people’s minds last Tuesday. Voters seemed to think that runaway spending and an expansionist view of government had created the economic crisis, had created the huge deficits and growing federal debt. They seemed to be oblivious to the reality that the campaign promises of many of the newly elected — to move immediately toward cutting spending and balancing the budget — likely would push the fragile economy right back into recession, economic contraction, job losses and all the woes that derive from that.
I would love to have an honest debate in this country about the proper size and scope of government, about how we really do address structural over-spending; about how to use tax policy to most effectively promote economic growth. Unfortunately, the mid-term elections were not that debate. They were a debate between the cynical fantasy of the minority party (to cut taxes and cut spending so as to balance the budget, all to end the current recession) and the naive oblivion of the majority party (failing to put forth a necessary agenda to address the country’s long-term structural deficits).
Gahhh.
From the Center Square 
November 8, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Last week, a lot of people bought a package, hook line and sinker, that has no intellectual honesty.
“The math is simple—and bleak. In Obama’s budget, Social Security costs $787.6 billion; defense costs $928.5 billion; debt payments cost $250.7 billion. Together they total $1.967 trillion. If you remove that $1.967 trillion from the equation, as Lee suggests, you’re left with $1.863 trillion in spending to work with. At this point, balancing the budget—i.e., wringing $1.669 trillion in savings out of that last $1.863 trillion—would require slashing every government program that’s not defense or Social Security (Medicare, Medicaid, veterans affairs, education, and so on) by 89.6 percent” — Newsweek The Gaggle Blog 10/27/2010
The incoming majority party is not offering an honest debate.
November 8, 2010 at 6:28 pm
I read that Newsweek blog piece, too, and found it be very on point. Yesterday, even stalwart right-winger Ben Stein was on CBS Sunday (I think it was), decrying this fiscal fantasy.
I don’t mind that the right is putting forward this fiscal vision, though. The only path that their fiscal ideology can put us on is a gradual bending of the deficit curve downward. And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, that is a desparately needed thing. But I do deeply resent that they portrayed Obama’s absence of a vision like theirs to be the cause of the severe recession, and that implementing their vision would fix the recession. If anything, I think Obama shares the vision. He’s the one out there appointing a commission to do this very thing, when Republicans decided pandering to their base was more important that fiscal policy. So what started as a legitimate fiscal vision became a dishonest campaign premise, and became a distorted policy platform (cut taxes and balance the budget).
Thanks as always, Jeff, for reading and commenting.
November 9, 2010 at 4:29 am
Jeff & TSC,
I’ve a slightly different take on this and the Obama administration’s actions. First, I agree that the math on the fiscal side is brutal and no one wants to tell the people the truth. The administration did get shafted by the lies put out there by Fox & Co. by getting blamed for deficits and spending that weren’t their fault at all. To be honest, I just find the republicans really disgusting and the grownups in that party are mostly silent, although David Stockman and Paul Craig Roberts are sounding the alarm while calling their party out at the same time.
But there are some other problems that are just now starting to surface. The administration, through Summers and Geithner, have had a relationship that’s too cozy with the banks. To be sure, the TARP was baked in the cake, but the SEC under Obama has let people like Angelo Mozilla of Countrywide mortgage get off with a slap on the hand even as it’s known at upwards to 90% of every mortgage originated by that institution was fraudulent and threatens to result in the nationalization of Bank of America which means that we as taxpayers have to take yet another one for the team—a team that I didn’t elect to join BTW.
Basically, there have been a bunch of fraudsters running amok and they need to be cooling their heels in a jail cell. Had Obama taken a hard line with the banks and throw some folks in jail, he might have seized the populist mantle from the tea party types and averted the mid-term debacle. As it was, he seems to be in bed with them and seems powerless to control events. One of the things that gridlock produces is an opening for the fed to “resolve” these sorts of matters, since the legislators can’t “get along”, hence we have the spectacle of them printing up money to save the banks which ultimately will cost us. The entire purpose of the republican effort is to deliberately create gridlock, so the unelected fed can continue “solve” certain issues—many of which they created in the first place.
Yes, the republicans are full of it, but the administration is not blameless here.
November 9, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Greg, you’ve given this a lot of thought, and I mostly agree with your view. Personally, I give far less weight to the presence or absence of criminal convictions against the bad guys (although I’m all for that too) than I do to the financial reform legislation passed in July. That was a big-time piece of legislation. They may have left a few pieces of the past unresolved, but they sure did set a new direction for the future. In my opinion, that legislation disqualifies the administration forever from being “too close to the banks.”
Many thanks as always for helping create a more cogent democracy.