[Vision2020] Cliff After Cliff

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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January 2, 2013
Cliff After Cliff By CHARLES M. BLOW

We have a deal. But please hold your applause, indefinitely.

We momentarily went over the fiscal cliff but clawed our way back up the
rock face. Unfortunately, we are most likely in store for a never-ending
series of cliffs for our economy, our government and indeed our country.
Soon we’ll have to deal with the sequester, a debt-ceiling extension and
possibly a budget, all of which hold the specter of revisiting the
unresolvable conflicts and intransigence of the fiscal cliff. Imagine an M.
C. Escher drawing of cliffs.

Be clear: there is no reason to celebrate. This is a mournful moment. We —
and by we I mean Congress, and by Congress I mean the Republicans in
Congress — have again demonstrated just how broken and paralyzed our
government has become, how beholden to hostage-takers, how vulnerable to
extremism.

A fiscal cliff deal was cut at the last possible minute, covering a minimal
number of issues. It was far from perfect and barely palatable. It was a
compromise, and compromises are inherently imperfect. No one likes the
whole of it, but they balance the bad parts against the good and see beyond
dissension.

As the fiscal cliff votes came down to the wire, many repeated the
aphorism: don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But sadly, we are
beyond even that. Now the perfunctory has become the victim of the
grueling.

The American people suffered through another moment of manufactured
suspense brought on by political malpractice. There was no grand bargain.
There was only a begrudging acquiescence.

Not only is the era of grand bargains
“over,”<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/us/politics/grand-bargains-give-way-to-legislative-quick-fixes.html?_r=0>as
Jennifer Steinhauer wrote in The Times on Tuesday, I believe that the
era of basic governance is screeching to a halt.

As Steinhauer pointed out in
September<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/politics/congress-nears-end-of-least-productive-session.html>:


“The 112th Congress is set to enter the Congressional record books as the
least productive body in a generation, passing a mere 173 public laws as of
last month. That was well below the 906 enacted from January 1947 through
December 1948 <http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/80res.pdf> by
the body President Harry S. Truman referred to as the ‘do-nothing’
Congress, and far fewer than even a single session of many prior
Congresses.”

That’s an abominable shame. The one function of a lawmaker is to make laws.
They can no longer seem to do that in any meaningful way.

It is no wonder that Gallup finds Congress’s approval rating stuck in the
teens<http://www.gallup.com/poll/158948/congress-approval-stuck-long-term-low-streak.aspx>.


We have moved from a type of governance where the art of the compromise was
invaluable to one where adherence to ridiculous pledges is inviolable. (By
approving this fiscal cliff deal, many Republicans voted to broadly raise
taxes for the first time in decades and many are still grousing about it.)

The change has taken place primarily among Republicans, who have struggled
to balance the responsibilities and prerogatives of minority-party status
with the anxiety of losing their long-held power at the expense of the
growing influence of minority and historically marginalized constituencies
like women and gays.

Smaller federal government! Out-of-control federal spending! States’
rights! Defense of Marriage! Defund Planned Parenthood! There is an
individual argument (merit not withstanding) to be made about each of these
issues in its own right. But only a person who is willfully blind or
hopelessly ignorant would not acknowledge the common thread that runs
through them: the fear of a future in which income, wealth and cultural
inequalities dissipate and traditional power structures dissolve.

The country’s debt and solvency are real and legitimate concerns, but the
true crux of the friction lies in the implicit arguments about the cause of
our troubles. It is the tired and worn takers vs. makers argument just
slathered in lipstick — Resistance Red, I suppose.

And since some of these Republicans are from safely gerrymandered
districts, they have little to lose and something to gain by holding the
line even if it continually pushes the country to the brink.

House Republicans like to say that Americans voted for a divided government
and this gridlock is what becomes it. But that’s not entirely correct. As The
Economist<http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/11/congressional-representation-0?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/callvotersuppression>pointed
out in November:

“The Democrats won 50.6% of the votes for president, to 47.8% for the
Republicans; 53.6% of the votes for the Senate, to 42.9% for the
Republicans; and... 49% of the votes for the House, to 48.2% for the
Republicans (some ballots are still being counted). That’s not a vote for
divided government. It’s a clean sweep.”

Republicans control the House in part because of the geography of ideology
— cities tend to have high concentrations of Democrats and rural areas have
high concentrations of Republicans — and because of the way district lines
were redrawn, in many cases by Republican-led state legislatures.

So we will be soon be pushed back into a state of panic because Republican
members of Congress demand a state of paralysis.

We are stuck with this reckless, whining and ultimately dangerous gaggle of
wounded spirits. As many people can attest, an animal is often at its most
dangerous when it’s sick, wounded or afraid. Brace yourselves.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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