"Inexcusable"

From yesterday's hastily called press briefing after failing to reach a budget agreement with Speaker of the House John Boehner to avoid a government shutdown this Friday, President Obama:

"But it would be inexcusable for us to not be able to take care of last year’s business — keep in mind we’re dealing with a budget that could have gotten done three months ago, could have gotten done two months ago, could have gotten done last month — when we are this close simply because of politics."

This coming from the leader of the party that controlled every branch of the government last fall when the budget for fiscal year 2011 should have been passed.

Instead of sounding like he's playing defense when he says he refuses to be "put in a box" by the threat of a government shutdown, Speaker Boehner, indeed all Republicans, should instead go on the attack by exploding with something like:

""Inexcusable!!??"  Are you kidding me?  What's inexcusable and irresponsible was President Obama and the congressional Democrats not passing a budget for 2011 in the first place.  Even the possibility of a shutdown rests squarely on their shoulders.  We're the one's trying to clean up not only their mess, but their unfinished business as well."

Hardball, Speaker Boehner, you gotta play hardball.    

A Serious Man

As promised, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) released his 2012 budget plan today and by the tone and substance of it, all Americans, not just Republicans, not just conservatives, but all Americans should rally around it.

Meanwhile, the budget meeting between Speaker of the House John Boehner and the President apparently broke down without an agreement over this year's budget.  As a result, the looming government shutdown seems increasingly unavoidable.

A serious man, a serious plan, a serious party, and, we pray, a serious nation.

The Great Reckoning continues.

Round One

The devil's in the details, to be sure, but when I heard this from House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) on Fox News Sunday yesterday previewing his 2012 budget proposal, I was heartened:

“We are giving them (Democrats) a political weapon to go against us...But they will have to lie and demagogue to make it a weapon…Shame on them if they do that.”

As everyone knows, from either the Left or the Right, this is a fight that simply must be fought.  The time is now.  The result will not be anything like a 100% - 0%, first-round KO.  Nor will it a 75%-25% TKO.  Nor even a 60% - 40% unanimous decision.  It'll likely be something more on the order of a 55% - 45% (or closer still) split decision. 

But a win's a win and, if I may switch metaphors for a moment, the fruit will not be found in the victory itself, but, rather, in the fruit the victory will bear.

Seconds out!  (back to boxing)

Real Money

Millions, billions, trillions.  Unfortunately, in the on-going budget debate, these words fail to represent anything like real money for the average American.  Heck, even as just words they've simply become  synonyms for "a lot".

My favorite way of helping someone get their minds around the incredible numbers routinely and nonchalantly thrown around in Washington is to ask them whether or not they can imagine spending one-thousand dollars a day.  That's still a good deal of money for most people (me too), but they can at least imagine it.  I ask them to imagine further that I gave them one-million dollars cash and instructed them to spend one-thousand of it each day.  How long will the million last?  One-thousand per day means 365-thousand per year.  So, a little less than three years.  Correct.  I then ask them to try imagining me giving them one-billion dollars instead.  Spending at the same rate of one-thousand dollars a day, how long will the billion last?  Most people freeze here.  The answer, of course, is a little less than 3,000 years.  3,000 years!!??  Yep, 3,000 years.

The numbers currently being argued over are a $3.7 trillion-dollar budget and $61 billion-dollars worth of Republican proposed cuts.  Trillions, billions?  They're just words that mean "a lot".

Let's go the other direction and try to get our minds around how small these cuts are actually are.

If the $3.7 trillion dollar annual budget was instead an average Joe's $37,000-a-year salary, how much cutting are the Republicans actually proposing?  Are you ready?  $610.  That's right, six-hundred and ten dollars per year.  Now, if that same average Joe is maxed out on his credit cards and overdrawn at his bank, would you consider a $610-a-year, belt-tightening fix, "extreme"?  For heaven's sake, that's less than $12 bucks a week.  He probably spends that much on beer and cigarettes alone.

Real money I tell ya.     

"The False-Choice Dodge"

Before wandering into some nonsense about the Bush tax cuts and deficit spending (she just couldn't help herself, I guess), Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus writes some very useful, and surprisingly honest, things about the rhetorical tactic of presenting and then rejecting "false choices".  Do check it out.

A Slow and Steady Boil

OK, now that I've taken a shot at all the pantywaisted politicians and pundits afraid to fight for fiscal sanity from Washington, may I offer a bit of advice to the still-boiling Tea Partiers both in and out of government?

Stop talking about a possible government shutdown as if you're almost eager for it!  This is bad politics, foolish even.  I'm afraid that the very same quality that makes the GOP base relatively independent of its party, makes them also, at least sometimes, very poor practitioners of the art of politics.

The oft-repeated "truth" is that just as the Republicans were blamed for the government shutdown in 1995, so will they be in 2011 if it comes down to it.  That's what Howard Dean thinks anyway.  But this is not necessarily so.  I'm as convinced now as I was in 1995 that the GOP failed to make the case sufficiently that Bill Clinton was the real culprit in the government shutdown.  Heck, they hardly even tried.  The same dynamic is at work today.

The first words out of every GOP leader's mouth every time he's in front of a camera should be something like this:  "We're struggling mightily to avoid a government shutdown and restore reason to our budgeting process.  But the Obama Administration and the congressional Democrats are fighting us at every turn.  Their fiscal irresponsibility over the past two years when they controlled all of the government has lead to this mess, and their stubborn obstructionism now is continuing it.  If they persist in this irresponsible behavior, they will force a government shutdown, and worse, much worse, we fear.  We're doing everything we can to avoid this calamity, but we need the help of the American people.  Please call or write your congressman..."

Will it be tedious to do this?  Sure, but as someone once said, "Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards." (Look it up.)  In politics, only very rarely can you convince anyone immediately of much of anything, much less can you expect an overnight epiphany on their part that the fiscal path we've been on for 75 years now is headed for a cliff.

But headed for a cliff we are, and convince them we must.  So, a slow and steady boil is what is most necessary now.

That, and to start blaming the looming shutdown on the Dems!  

Simmer Down

That's the admonition I'm hearing more and more often from GOP professionals and many otherwise conservative DC pundits about the budget-cutting preoccupations of the Tea Partiers.  It's also a prediction about their tenacity.

Two years of Obama-Pelosi-Reid policies brought them to a boil in 2010 and the mid-terms erased overnight the Democrats' huge governing advantage.  Hurray for us!  But, the Wise Men now counsel, they must drop this singular focus on the country's immediate budget problems lest the rest of America lose patience with them and they do real harm to the Party's prospects for 2012.  No matter, they continue, feigning sotto voce, when the budget cuts effect them personally, that is, when their Social Security and Medicare benefits are reduced, their hot water will cool quickly indeed.

I'm not so sure.

The constituencies of the parties are not two sides of the same coin.  As the Democrat Party is the party of big and ever-bigger government, their base, as you would expect, is comprised chiefly of people who favor big and ever-bigger government.  Increasingly, it's made up of people who depend on governemt as well.  Witness all the public-sector union uprisings over the most modest of cuts or restrictions.  That dependency is key for it means that, ultimately, the Party owns the base and not the other way around.  No matter how much the Democrat Party disappoints them, where else do they have to go?

The base of the Republican Party is different.  As the GOP is the party of relatively smaller government (Sadly, I've given up looking for a party of actually small government), its constituents are people who think similarly.  As they want little or nothing from government, or from the Party even save to keep the government off their backs, they are more, much more, independent than the average Democrat voter.  They can, if they wish, own the Party.

They can also walk away from it.

This is all a long way of saying that I think the GOP professionals and DC pundits are dead wrong about the Tea Partiers.  If the Republicans remain focused on cutting the budget, both near and long term, they may well lose the next election.  But if they don't, they will most certainly lose.