I have hesitated to post anything about the current budget impasse in Washington. I know that one of the traditional benefits of federal employment has been job security. That's a big reason many federal employees took their jobs. Any threat to job security worries federal employees even more than private sector employees. In the end these budget impasses are almost always resolved without a government shutdown so why worry people unnecessarily? Jonathan Chait writing in New York Magazine explains why this impasse is looking very dangerous:
The incipient showdown in Washington is ... very much a crisis of legitimacy. American government has developed customs for resolving the divided government problem [when the White House and Congress are in the hands of different parties]. In the best cases, the two parties try to compromise. In the worst cases, failure to compromise leads to stalemate. ...
Since taking control of the House of Representatives in 2011, a coterie of Republicans has challenged this informal approach. Their belief is that the absence of cooperation should lead not to stalemate but to the president bending to their will. That assumption implies a delegitimization of the presidency that Obama has come to understand, belatedly, that he can’t accept. ...
The tension between the two parties is higher now than ever before because they disagree not only on underlying policy but on the basic premises of shared governance. Obama recognizes that allowing debt-ceiling hostage crises to become enshrined would not only subject him to continuing extortion but set the system on course for an eventual default when, inevitably, ransom negotiations fail at the last minute. Establishment Republicans are trying to talk their base out of extreme measures without addressing their deeper belief that House Republicans are entitled to extract concessions from the president, via threat, without compromising at all. ...Even before Republican Congressman Joe Wilson shouted "You Lie!" at President Obama during an address to a joint session of Congress in September 2009, Republicans were mounting an all out effort to delegitimize President Obama. This process accelerated after the 2010 election and has not abated even since Obama decisively defeated Mitt Romney to gain a second term of office. As ridiculous as it would sound to most people, I think it is taken as an article of faith in many Republican circles that regardless of the election results, Barack Obama has no right to be President of the United States. To compromise with Obama is to concede that he is the rightful President of the United States and this they cannot do.
This dispute may get papered over again before the end of September but my guess is that we're past that. The country needs a resolution to this problem. There's going to have to be a winner and a loser in this showdown. We won't get that sort of clear cut result without a government shutdown. That may be the price we have to pay.
12 comments:
Our country was founded by compromise and anyone who thinks our government can work without compromise is an idiot. In my opinion, consistent with the above statement, there are many idiots today in the Republican party. However, I do not believe it represents anything close to a majority of Republicans - at least I hope not.
I think it is unfair to link to Larry Klayman as if to cite him as a typical republican. I think most thinking Republicans are disgusted with the Tea Party types and would have nothing to do with a person like Larry Klayman.
'The tension between the two parties is higher now than ever before because they disagree not only on underlying policy but on the basic premises of shared governance."
And it gets worse. Underlying the above is that they disagree on the legitimacy of governance itself in a broad sense (other than their own, of course, or when their constituents need federal help), and are unable to agree on simple factual bases upon which to construct their arguments.
The problem is, is that the Democrats do not feel that they need to provide a budget as the Constitution requires. Even when they had all Democrat House and Senate, they could not and would not provide a budget. If the Government shuts down, it is because the Democrats refuse to do a budget. Remember, your President said that there would be no sequester during his second Presidential debate.. By signing a budget, he could have prevented it, but nooooo, he knows best.. Five years without a budget. He has no legitimacy to lose. Since there is no bigamy allowed in Hawaii, his mother was never married to his dad as he was already married to a wife in Kenya. And that is the beginning of his legitimacy problems..
9:43- You are representing the point of this article perfectly. Loosen the tinfoil hat just a touch perhaps.
9:43- The House has to send a budget bill to the Senate, as all budget bills start in the US House, not in the US Senate, as ordered by the US Constitution.
10:47: address his or her points rather than making ad hominems.
11:53- Sorry, but bringing up Obama's parents and Kenya as a question of his legitimacy is not a 'point' that can be addressed. People that make that argument cannot be reached by reason and should be openly mocked.
Also, the 8/11 Budget Resolution passed by the Dem Senate and Repub. House does qualify as a budget.
The House has sent a budget to the Senate every year for the past five years, but Senate Majority Leader Reid refuses to allow a vote on the budget bills (or any other legislation he personally dislikes).
@1:58
That is because each of those House budgets were batshit crazy. LOL just LOL.
to 2:24 - history is clear, the Democrats in the Senate for years have not allowed a vote on a budget. They even recognize Obama's budget proposals have been DOA and reject them. Placing a label on a proposal is not a vote.
it's disingenuous to say the senate hasn't entertained a vote on a budget in such and such years when the budgets they have been handed are literally insane. cuts totalling over 10% of spending, defunding the health care law the country wants and Congress passed (and SCOTUS upheld), cutting food stamps to the bone, etc. etc.
you can't hold the senate in (at least complete) contempt for not bothering to vote on ayn rand's fantasy (especially since it would never pass). that's like saying i am to blame for not deciding what to eat for dinner when my spouse has only offered up "crap"
How about the first two years of His Excellency's reign when the House was democratic? Why couldn't his own people submit a budget the Senate could endorse? too busy messing with health care to care about the budget?? No excuse for this period of time. Can't blame Bush, can't blame the Republicans.. If it looks like a turd, smells like a turd, and feels like a turd, it doesn't need to be tasted to be a turd..
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