PICAYUNE —
Perhaps because I rarely visit Washington, I’m persuaded that the budgetary hostage crisis currently obsessing the nation’s capital holds little fascination for the general public. Wasn’t that what last month’s “fiscal cliff” deal was all about? Government by televised melodrama appears to be losing its ability to hold the nation in thrall.
To start with, there have been too many of the damn things. Promoted for ratings-building purposes by cable news networks, by politicians eager to garner TV face time, and by Pundit-Americans to enhance our own self-importance, these theatrical showdowns have succeeded mainly in undermining respect for democratic institutions.
Too bad, because if President Obama keeps playing his cards right amid Republican bluffing and liberal panic, the outcome of the upcoming debt-ceiling showdown could end up restoring that respect — if only in the sense of reminding everybody of something he said in 2009: elections do, indeed, have consequences. But hold that thought.
We’ve seen this movie before. Most people figure that there will be yet another last-minute deal and a “dramatic” vote in Congress whose outcome is foreordained. Speaker John Boehner will be forced to allow a debt-ceiling vote because there’s no sane alternative, and no evidence Boehner’s crazy.
The bill will likely pass with a minority of responsible Republicans joining Democrats to preserve “the full faith and credit of the United States government” against the prospect of becoming, as the president memorably said in his recent press conference, a “deadbeat nation.”
This time too, Obama’s doing a good job of explaining things in terms almost everybody can understand.
Too professorial by half, he hasn’t always done that.
“These are bills that have already been racked up, and we need to pay them,” Obama said. “So, while I’m willing to compromise and find common ground over how to reduce our deficits, America cannot afford another debate with this Congress about whether or not they should pay the bills they’ve already racked up.
“If congressional Republicans refuse to pay America’s bills on time, Social Security checks and veterans benefits will be delayed. We might not be able to pay our troops, or honor our contracts with small-business owners. Food inspectors, air traffic controllers, specialists who track down loose nuclear materials wouldn’t get their paychecks.
“Investors around the world will ask if the United States of America is in fact a safe bet. Markets could go haywire, interest rates would spike for anybody who borrows money -— every homeowner with a mortgage, every student with a college loan, every small-business owner who wants to grow and hire...
“So to even entertain the idea of this happening, of the United States of America not paying its bills, is irresponsible. It’s absurd. As the speaker said two years ago, it would be, and I’m quoting Speaker Boehner now, ‘a financial disaster, not only for us, but for the worldwide economy.’”
Over at The Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky noticed even Newt Gingrich making sense: “Everybody’s now talking about, ‘Oh, here comes the debt ceiling.’ I think that’s, frankly, a dead loser ... The whole national financial system is going to come in to Washington and on television and say: ‘Oh my God, this will be a gigantic heart attack; the entire economy of the world will collapse. You guys will be held responsible.’ And they’ll cave.”
Even conservative thinkers at the National Review have grasped what Obama appears to have understood all along: that “the prospect of default ... is not a source of Republican leverage in the debt-ceiling fight; it is the primary source of the Democrats’ leverage.”
Then why have so many liberals been running scared? Watching ordinarily astute observers like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calling for Obama to resolve the impasse by ordering the Treasury Department to mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin and deposit it with the Federal Reserve has been little short of astonishing.
I mean, why not a handful of magic beans, or a trailer-load of Monopoly money?
I’d never argue economics with Krugman. I accept his word that the coin would be a technically legal accounting trick giving the Treasury “enough cash to sidestep the debt ceiling -— while doing no economic harm at all.”
Politically, however, such a stunt would have been catastrophic. Millions of Americans genuinely worried about government spending would have been thrown into panic. If people don’t grasp the fallacy of comparing their family finances to the national debt -— and it’s clear that most don’t — resorting to legalistic chicanery could only confirm their fears. The hard-won Democratic advantage on fiscal issues would vanish overnight.
Besides, there’s no need. According to Bob Woodward’s “The Price of Politics,” Republicans hoped to stage this spectacle just before the 2012 elections. Obama’s veto threat stopped them.
So now the president’s got the GOP exactly where he wants them.
It’s just taking everybody a while to figure that out.
(Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons can be emailed at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com)
Columns
No debate on debt ceiling
- Columns
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- Vocability Words can be both familiar and extremely confusing when taken from their usual context. Ask any wine enthusiast about legs, fat or bricks and they may assume you are speaking “Vinonese.” Ok — I made that word up; but the language of wine does indeed include legs, fat and brix which have entirely different meanings from what you might assume. Working with definitions from http://www.wineschool.com/vocabulary.html, try your basic knowledge of “Vinonese.”
- Vocability Words can set a tone for a situation, alter someone’s perception of an individual or group — in short, there is power in them. The Bible cautions, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue...” — Proverbs in 18:21, ASB. With that in mind, I will be focusing on words, some recently used and some obscure, to test the readers and build on what you already know. There will be theme weeks, for instance next week will focus on words involving wine — for no particular reason! So try your vocabulary skills with the following and see how you score. I’m always open to suggestions for material.
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A hard rain is gonna fall...
By Kathryn Jean Lopez/Syndicated columnist
After disappearing during his term in office and bringing scandal to his family and state, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is going to Washington, having won election to Congress. And that’s far from the worst story reflecting the current character of our nation.
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. - More Columns Headlines
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