The Fortnightly Rant for June 3, 2011, from The New Hampshire Gazette, Volume 255, No. 18, posted on Thursday, June 23, 2011.
Having temporarily set aside some of their other fetishes, such as government-funded abortions that never existed, gay marriages that no one asked them to participate in, and blue-collar felons on parole, Congressional Republicans are now fixated on another of their intermittent concerns — they have vowed to let the U.S. Government renege on its financial obligations rather than allow Congress to raise the debt ceiling. Yes, any day now we’ll be able to proudly proclaim, “Among deadbeats, we’re No. 1!”
To prove he means business, last week Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took Granny hostage, saying he’d block any rise in the limit without “substantially addressing” Medicare.
The debt limit is a uniquely American and somewhat mysterious institution; no other nation operates under such an arbitrary and self-imposed restriction. If its purpose is to limit public debt it has certainly failed, so perhaps its raison d’être lies elsewhere.
The GOP’s concern has been triggered, as always, by Democratic occupancy of the White House. During the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George Herbert [Hoover] Walker Bush, and George W. Bush the limit was raised a total of 29 times without a fraction of the present hubbub. Mystery solved.
Let’s say the Republicans make good on their threats — for the good of the country, of course. The U.S. government defaults. Any future borrowing must be repaid at a higher rate. Government services once thought to be essential are shut down. With government spending severely curtailed, the economy slips back into recession. Unemployment jumps back up into double digits. Desperate times tempt people into taking desperate measures; the crime rate soars. The economic slowdown causes tax revenues to plunge even lower; prisons must be closed. Property values shrivel as more and more mortgages sink “under water.” You’ve heard of The Greatest Generation? Welcome to The Greatest Depression.
Most Republicans argue that the consequences would not be as bad as we have painted them here. And those who survive the fiscal apocalypse will have learned a priceless lesson about the value of fiscal prudence.
Even those who disagree with the GOP might see something worthwhile coming out of this catastrophe. Once the Republican Party has been finally, unequivocally, and universally revealed as a cabal of crackpots and charlatans, we might be able to operate under a rational, functioning, post-Reagan, post-Laffer Curve political and economic system in which no trickle-down theories need apply. Ten or twenty years into the most diabolical financial hangover in history, the harmful effects of defaulting would eventually have to dissipate. A new, rational political era could then be born in which economic policies are based on logic and utility rather than greed and superstition. The price will have been horrendous and it’s not a cure any sane person would choose, but at least we would have solved a major problem once and for all, right?
Maybe not. The nation’s newsies videotape every quiver of Mitch McConnell’s jowls whenever he vows to steer the ship of state onto the rocks. You might think they would tell us if there were a Constitutional provision barring any default on the debt.
Well, there is, but they can’t be bothered to mention it. The Fourteenth Amendment says, among other things, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
If the news media survive the looming econo-pocalypse in anything like their current form, it will be only a matter of time before we find ourselves in La La Land all over again.