By Mark Steyn
Friday, January 04, 2013
The politics of the "fiscal cliff" deal is
debatable: On the one hand, Boehner got the "Bush tax cuts" made
permanent for most Americans; Obama was forced to abandon his goal of
increasing rates for those earning $250,000. On the other, on taxes Republicans
caved to the same class-warfare premises (the rich need to pay their "fair
share") they'd successfully fought off a mere two years ago; while on
spending the Democrats not only refused to make cuts, they refused to make cuts
even part of the discussion.
Which of the above is correct? Who cares? As I said, the
politics is debatable. But the reality isn't. I hate to keep plugging my book
"After America" in this space, but if you buy multiple copies they'll
come in very useful for insulating your cabin after the power grid collapses.
At any rate, right up there at the front – page six – I write as follows:
"The prevailing political realities of the United
States do not allow for any meaningful course correction. And, without
meaningful course correction, America is doomed."
Washington keeps proving the point. The political class
has just spent two months on a down-to-the-wire nail-biting white-knuckle
thrill-ride negotiation the result of which is more business as usual. At the
end, as always, Dr. Obama and Dr. Boehner emerge in white coats, surgical masks
around their necks, bloody scalpels in hand, and announce that it was
touch-and-go for awhile but the operation was a complete success – and all
they've done is applied another temporary Band-Aid that's peeling off even as
they speak. They're already prepping the OR for the next life-or-death surgery
on the debt ceiling, tentatively scheduled for next Tuesday or a week on
Thursday or the third Sunday after Epiphany.
No epiphanies in Washington: The Congressional Budget
Office estimates that the latest triumphant deal includes $2 billion of cuts
for fiscal year 2013. Wow! That's what the Government of the United States
borrows every 10 hours and 38 minutes. Spending two months negotiating 10 hours
of savings is like driving to a supermarket three states away to save a nickel
on your grocery bill.
A space alien on Planet Zongo whose cable package
includes "Meet The Press" could watch 10 minutes of these
pseudo-cliffhangers and figure out how they always end, every time: Spending
goes up, and the revenue gap widens. This latest painstakingly negotiated
bipartisan deal to restore fiscal responsibility actually includes a third of a
trillion dollars in new spending. A third of a trillion! $330,000,000,000!
Fancy that! In most countries, a third of a trillion would be a lot of money.
But in the U.S. it's chump change so footling it's barely mentioned in the news
reports. Then there's the usual sweetheart deals for those with Washington's
ear: $59 million for algae producers, a $20 million tax break if a Hollywood
producer shoots part of a movie in a "depressed area" as opposed to a
non-depressed area, like Canada. I'm pitching a script to Paramount called
"The Algae That Ate Detroit."
In all the "fiscal cliff" debate, I don't
recall a lot of discussion of algae. But apparently it's essential to the deal.
And don't worry, it's paid for by all the new revenue – an estimated $620
billion over a decade, or about $62 billion a year, which is what the
Government of the United States borrows every 13 days. But don't worry, that's
a lot of algae.
We're already broker than anyone has ever been ever. But
this is America, where we can always do better – or, anyway, bigger, and
broker: Under the "deal," the federal debt of the United States in
2022 is officially projected to be $23.9 trillion. That's in today's dollars,
as opposed to whatever we'll be loading up the wheelbarrow with in 2022. With
"deals" like this, who needs total societal collapse? By 2050, the
federal debt will be $58 trillion. But you won't have to worry about a United
States of America by then: it'll just be one big abandoned Chevy Algaerado
plant.
Around the world, the only interest of friends and
enemies alike in this third-rate Beltway hokum is (to return to the theme of my
book) the question of whether America is capable of serious course correction –
and, from debt ceiling to supercommittee to fiscal cliff and now back to debt
ceiling, the political class keeps sending back the answer: No, we're not. For
a good example of how Washington drives even the greatest minds round the bend,
consider Charles Krauthammer's analysis on Fox News the other night:
"I would actually commend Boehner and Paul Ryan, who
in the end voted 'yes' for a bad deal. But they had to do it."
If courage is the willingness to take a stand and vote
for a bad deal because you've been painted into a corner and want Obama to fly
back to Hawaii at the cost of another $3 million in public funds that could have
gone to algae subsidies so he'll stop tormenting you for a week or two, then
truly we are led by giants.
But is that all there is? As the old song says: What's it
all about – algae? Is it just for the moment we live? What's it all about when
you sort it out – algae? Are we meant to take more than we give?
If you think politics is a make-work project for the
otherwise unemployable, then the system worked just fine. And I don't mean only
the numbers:
On Monday, 300 million Americans did not know what their
tax rates would be on Tuesday. That's ridiculous.
Then, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spent the
night alone in a room with Joe Biden (which admittedly few of us would have the
stomach for). And when they emerged they informed those 300 million Americans
what their tax rates now were. That's unseemly.
Then, in the small hours of the morning, the legislature
rubber-stamped it. That's repulsive.
There's a term for societies where power-brokers stitch
up the people's business in back rooms and their pseudo-parliaments sign off on
it at 3 a.m., and it isn't a "republic of limited government by
citizen-representatives."
There are arguments to be made in favor of small
government: My comrades and I have done our best over the years, with results
that, alas, in November were plain to see. There are arguments to be made in
favor of big government: The Scandinavians make them rather well. But there is
absolutely nothing to be said for what is now the standard operating procedure
of the Brokest Nation in History: a government that spends without limit and
makes no good-faith effort even to attempt to balance the books. That's
profoundly wicked. At a minimum, the opposition, to use a quaint term, should
keep the people's business out in the sunlight and not holed up in a seedy
motel room with Joe Biden all night.
The fiscal cliff was a mirage. If Washington was obliged
to use the same accounting procedures as your local hardware store, the real
national debt would be at least 10 times' greater than the meaningless number
they're now going to spend the next two months arguing over. That's to say,
we're already over the fiscal cliff but, like Wile E Coyote, haven't yet
glanced down at our feet and seen there's nothing holding us up. In a two-party
system, there surely ought to be room for one party that still believes in
solid ground.
But, hey, maybe we can thread all that algae into a
climbing rope ...
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