Lop Sided

At tender ages my younger sister and I were supervised by what is called today an au pair who, as we grew older, favored my sister. If I was “naughty” it was “honestly, that boy.” When my sister misbehaved it was “honestly those children.”  The latter part is reflected in the reaction of a large part of the population to the Congressional impasse over raising the debt ceiling.


“Honestly that Congress! They should all be put on bread and water to see how it feels.” That’s pretty much the prevailing sentiment among many Americans of all political persuasions. While it may have merit generally, it doesn’t in this case. It is Congressional Republicans, you can look it up, who are obstructing what has always been an essential and routine procedure, at the risk of demolishing the national credit rating among other unpredictable dire consequences.

 

There is an arguable difference of opinion over the proper approach to our financial problems, barely arguable in my opinion. To me the impact of the Great Depression is a piece of history that more than hints at the need for red ink for investment in the short term. Taxes are an unpleasant necessity, less so on those who can most afford to pay them. Results of the policies of our previous president do nothing to support the merit of upper income tax cuts, other than to their beneficiaries. Those in power who share this thinking have already deferred for the most part, let’s say 75%, to those who feel that belt tightening is the only cure. Unless our side submits to unconditional surrender, our opponents threaten to bring the house down and damn the consequences.

 

The existence of differing opinions does not mean that the truth invariably lies somewhere between, a notion that the folks running the media apparently don’t accept. To quote Paul Krugman; “if one party declared that the earth was flat the headlines would read ‘Views Differ on Shape of Planet.”

 

There are no two sides, and consequently no legitimacy, to the debt ceiling argument. It must be raised to pay for expenses incurred by previous presidents and Congresses. Whatever today’s legislators feel about these past commitments, they are entitled to discontinue them, but not to renege on previously incurred indebtedness. As a nation we have never in our history argued publicly about not paying our bills. That we are doing so now is the figurative equivalent of having a gun pointed at our heads, in this case by an overly enthusiastic legislative minority of novices, to accomplish by threat what it’s unable to accomplish by a traditional time honored process.