The Debt Ceiling Debate and Compromise: Who Won? [65]

Thanks for considering my hub, Onuigbos. While I agree that Tea Party and Conservatives (as opposed to Republicans) clearly want Obama as a one-term President, I can't go quite as far regarding their motives. No doubt the consequences of their flawed understanding on how government and the economy in this country work is to crash the economy, as it has done many times in the past, I don't believe it is out of malice for America nor do they want to do it on purpose, most of them anyway. As you say, the debt ceiling was fabricated out of whole cloth with the now realized result of lowering our debt rating, I can't quite say they are unpatriotic. On the contrary, I think they believe they are behaving in a very patrioc way; it is just they don't understand that throwing-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater is not a good way to run the country nor what our founding fathers had in mind with they wrote the Constitution.

If you have managed to bully your way through some of my other admittedly verbose hubs, you will find where I talk about RWA's, Right-wing Authoritarian followers. Much of the Tea Party and Conservative movement is made up of RWA's whose distinguishing, and fully researched, characteristic is they blindly follow those they perceive to be authority figures. Those that score high on the RWA scale will not question what they are told, even if the face of unquestioned facts to the contrary, and will defend their authoritarian figures ideas fervently; even to the use of violence in extreme cases. That is why it is so hard and frustrating to work with RWAs.

American Romance, there is certainly nothing romantic in your social and political views, that is for sure. I am not sure what you mean, "there is no social justice". I look at societies like Somalia, Cambodia during Pol Pot, and Russia during Stalin and that is what I think of when you say "no social justice"; in other words, pretty sick societies. When you said "ribs showing" and "starving people" if you meant it in terms of what is going on in Somalia today, then, of course, you are certainly right. However, I took the term in a more common meaning that there are very hungry people in America and that, sir, is certainly true; just walk around parts of the Appalechia's or in the ghettos of major cities.

Tax the poor, what an interesting idea and certainly in line with your believe there should be no social justice.

I wonder how many working poor are poor because the rich are keeping them that way because the rich have the power to do so. Don't tell me they don't or won't, just look at your American history and what led to the formation of Unions, they certainly do. Don't tell the workers of big companies whose pensions were wiped out because of greedy illegal activitiy of the wealthy and powerful who wanted to become even more rich and powerful on the backs of those who work for them. Enron was a case of pure, unalderated greed by the rich which ended up destroying the lives of thousands of people who trusted them. Don't talk to me about how well off those 12 million lower, middle, and upper middle class people driven out of work with many going into poverty and hunger by the greed and wrong-doing of wealthy and powerful bankers and financiers who manipulated America's financial system to their own benefit.

Get real, American Romance, anytime, and I mean anytime with no exception, when on class of people get the upper-hand in a society, unless mitigated by an outside force, such as a socially conscience government and society, then that class will increase its advantage over and at the expense of the less well-off.

Actually, American View, I am and always have been fiscally conservative. This is not saying I am a fiscal Conservative as is now represented by many in the Tea Party, for example. I am more of the Collin Powell mode. In fact, until the religious right took over the Republican party, I have always been a Republican; my first Democratic presidential vote was for Bill Clinton.

In a phrase, "Being fiscally conservative is good for the country, being a fiscal Conservative is not." Historically, you cannot find a period, and there have been several, the most recent being 2001 - 2008, where fiscal Conservatives have been in control and the economy didn't get into a BAD recession or depression as a result. I challenge you to find a period where we followed a fiscally conservative, or, further to the left, progressive economic policy that resulted in anything worse than a minor recession. My research goes up to 1893 at this point and so far what I just related is what I found.

I will definitly have to check out your hub, for sure.

I am glad you enjoyed my hub, John, thanks for visiting. I am happy to hear you are enjoying America and our lifestyle.

I haven't mentioned in a hub or comment before, but, when I view a President of the United States in such terms as you bring up, I always have to remind myself that, in America, our Constitution organizes government such that it is very hard for any promises made during a campaign to be fulfilled. This is particularly true when you have one party in Congress taking a unique course in U.S. history, a publically vowed promise of their own that their NUMBER ONE priority is to make sure the President doesn't fulfill even one of his or hers promises. We have that now, of course, with the current set of Tea Party and ultra-Conservatives that control what used to be a Republican party but more properly should be called the Conservative Party; which, appears to be a close cousin in political philosophy of the defunct Know-Nothing Party of the mid to late 1800s and is clearly the reformation of the Anti-federalist party of the early 1800s.

I am hoping that once American's understand that the practices of the Tea Party are distructive, not constructive, that they will go back to voting for the compromise-friendly Conservatives, regular Republican, and right-leaning Democrats that they did in the past so that our government can get back to our unique brand of dysfunctional, yet pragmatic governance.

First I need to say how happy I am for all of the great comments this hub generated.

Yes, American Romance, I have seen people in America with ribs showing; believe it or not, there is true, honest-to-goodness poverty in this country. And, if you use your booze and steak anectotes make for good press but unfortunately has little resemblence to the truth of the matter.

From your comments about 50 million on "entitlements" I gather you oppose people receiving Social Security and Medicare because that is to whom 80 or so percent of the "entitlement" money goes.

You ask great questions Jo, thank you. As CMerritt and others have said, Americans have lost because of the Tea Party bringing America to the brink of disaster for purely ideological reasons. They are the George Mason's of the modern day; he preferred not have America as we know it today, rather than compromise his principals. As a consequence, he almost succeeded in stopping the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

Thanks for the comments American Romance. Terrorists? No, Extortionists, Yes given what the Tea Party chose to fall on their sword over ... it was the full faith and credit of America and not the budget. I seriously doubt there are but a few token Democrats, independents, or, for that matter, Republicans in the Tea Party; this simple reason is they don't hold to your principals.

As I have mentioned in other hubs, if you listen to the Tea Party platform of extremely limited federal, but a powerful State government tied with extraordinary laissez-faire economic policy with truncated federal judicial power, you are listening to the same rhetoric of anti-Federalists who did not want America to exist as it does today. If the Tea Party had its druthers, based on its platform, the Federal government would return to its size (small) and authority (none) that it had under the Continental Congress.

I am in the middle of writing a hub on the CC&B idea of the Conservatives, which I am sure will be resurrected, but, as you can guess, my position is that it is very damaging to effective governance, especially the BBA. You have to wonder why, if the BBA is such a good idea, that the creators of the Constitution didn't build any semblance of such a mechanism into the document in the first place. And, as the world has shrunk and become so interconnected with events happening at lightening speed, the BBA morphs from a bad idea into a potential national disaster by hogtying Congress in such a way as to prevent them from reacting to events as they happen.

Hi CMerritt. You won't find me disagreeing with you one bit about when you sum it up, we all lost, the total loss clearly outweighs any esoteric win for the Dems; we lost a lot, some of it permanently. However, as you might guess, I come down on the other side on the BBA but, I will save my arguement to that for another hub.

THink about it Peter, all the Dems initially wanted was a clean debt ceiling increase and then to fight the budget cuts out in the 2012 budget negotiations. When the Conservatives pressed, the Dems then wanted to make sure they protected unreasonable cuts to the entitlement programs. The Dems were perfectly willing to make large, smart cuts to the budget ... at the appropriate time. After all of the rhetoric dies down, what do we have left but an almost clean debt ceiling increase that is tainted with a $900 billion budget cut the Dems were willing to do anyway, just a few months from now.

The compromise committee that is now in charge of all the stuff everybody has been yelling about is going to have to do something or else those across-the-board draconian cuts that BOTH sides hate with a passion will alledgedly take place. Once more we will see brinksmanship but with a major difference, the country's future will not be hanging in the balance. The Dems successfully moved the debate to where it ought to be in my view without giving up anything they weren't already willing to give up, don't you see.

American View, I appreciate the information and am very happy to see another political writer presenting facts. Now, of course, I need to dig deeper as what you imply about the period 1929 - 1941 doesn't quite mesh with what I understand at the moment; I haven't got there in my depression/recession saga hub. I haven't done a lot of detailed research for 1945 - 1960 yet.

Thanks for the comment Peter- I thought about titling ths hub "... Won: Democrats-1, Conservatives-0, and AMERICANS-0". While I often accuse the Democrats of being "spineless" myself, it is normally in conjunction with backing down to the Conservatives.

Thanks HSchneider, I appreciate that. I was going to bring the bit about the Bush tax cuts up, but, decided to keep the hub short(er) for a change.

Thank you for your comments as well American View. Let me work from bottom up on what you had to say. I don't know the specifics yet but in general FDR's "stimulus", sort of Obama on steriods, did work; it pulled America out of the depression by the mid-1930s. However, FDR was, believe it or not, a fiscal conservative as were the opposition party. Consequently, once American started to sluggishly grow, he instituded a major austerity program slashing the budget left and right. The country immediately and predictably, because the timing was all wrong, sunk back into a recession and never recovered until WW II ... check it out. That also sounds like a repeat of 2008 until today, doesn't it, except the Obama, unlike FDR, is not joining the Conservatives in forcing the country back into recession.

Back to the top. I absolutely agree with you that America was the loser in all of this. I had started the second section of this hub to write about just that but decided not to in order to, as I mentioned to HSchneider, to keep the hub short.