Thursday, November 11, 2010
Thoughts about John Boehner as Speaker
The presumed accession of Representative John Boehner to the position of Speaker of the House of Representatives has stimulated me to think several things. First, about Boehner himself, he comes across as a blowhard, spouting Republican orthodoxy. There will be no tax increases on his watch. Republicans will become paragons of virtue and thrift and save the Republic by trimming waste and unnecessary programs from the federal budget.
If you think only about what he says and about the dangerous situation this country is falling into, you may conclude that he is a complete jackass. There is no way that any party, any administration, is going to save us from ultimate ruin simply by trimming waste and unnecessary programs. The gap between services that the public demands and the revenue available to pay for these services is too great. However, many Republicans, especially those who are political activists and vote in primary elections and raise money for election campaigns actually believe such nonsense. It was the great and revered Saint Ronald Reagan that told them that. In spite of plenty of evidence to the contrary they still believe it.
I think that Mr. Boehner is a reasonable and intelligent man. He must know that he is uttering nonsense. Why? He has a coalition, a political movement to lead. If he is to continue as leader, he mustn't get too far away from the doctrine of his followers. In his present position, or the position to which he aspires, he can not solve the nation's deficit problem. He will need help.
David Stockman, St. Reagan's advisor on the budget, has laid out a program for the solution. First, let the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of December. Let them expire for everyone, including Mr. Obama's beloved middle class. There still won't be enough money to pay all the bills. Make some cuts in entitlements for everyone, even the rich. Defense spending must be cut. It is unrealistic to think that we can be perfectly and completely secure against foreign aggression if only we spend enough on fancy weapons and a great Defense department. We live in a dangerous world and we have to accept some risk. We must reform the practice of medicine so that our health care costs are reduced to a level closer to those of Canada and other developed countries. We must stop coddling the rich by keeping the Reagan tax rates. We should go back to the rates in effect during the Kennedy and Nixon administrations. We should raise the age of retirement from 65 to, say, 68. We should reduce subsidies to farmers. I can go on and on with this list. If there is pain, it must be shared by all, not just the retirees living on their meager Social Security benefit. The rich, the wealthy corporation farmers, the bankers, the security speculators, the military-industrial comples, and all the rest must share in the pain.
Boehner can not accomplish this difficult task. We need to help by insisting on getting wealthy contributors out of the business of financing elections. It will probably take a constitutional amendment to limit the spending by candidates and their supporters to a level that allows their opposing candidates the same access to the public as that provided by their money. Money equals talk and excess money drowns out the opposing opinion.
If you think only about what he says and about the dangerous situation this country is falling into, you may conclude that he is a complete jackass. There is no way that any party, any administration, is going to save us from ultimate ruin simply by trimming waste and unnecessary programs. The gap between services that the public demands and the revenue available to pay for these services is too great. However, many Republicans, especially those who are political activists and vote in primary elections and raise money for election campaigns actually believe such nonsense. It was the great and revered Saint Ronald Reagan that told them that. In spite of plenty of evidence to the contrary they still believe it.
I think that Mr. Boehner is a reasonable and intelligent man. He must know that he is uttering nonsense. Why? He has a coalition, a political movement to lead. If he is to continue as leader, he mustn't get too far away from the doctrine of his followers. In his present position, or the position to which he aspires, he can not solve the nation's deficit problem. He will need help.
David Stockman, St. Reagan's advisor on the budget, has laid out a program for the solution. First, let the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of December. Let them expire for everyone, including Mr. Obama's beloved middle class. There still won't be enough money to pay all the bills. Make some cuts in entitlements for everyone, even the rich. Defense spending must be cut. It is unrealistic to think that we can be perfectly and completely secure against foreign aggression if only we spend enough on fancy weapons and a great Defense department. We live in a dangerous world and we have to accept some risk. We must reform the practice of medicine so that our health care costs are reduced to a level closer to those of Canada and other developed countries. We must stop coddling the rich by keeping the Reagan tax rates. We should go back to the rates in effect during the Kennedy and Nixon administrations. We should raise the age of retirement from 65 to, say, 68. We should reduce subsidies to farmers. I can go on and on with this list. If there is pain, it must be shared by all, not just the retirees living on their meager Social Security benefit. The rich, the wealthy corporation farmers, the bankers, the security speculators, the military-industrial comples, and all the rest must share in the pain.
Boehner can not accomplish this difficult task. We need to help by insisting on getting wealthy contributors out of the business of financing elections. It will probably take a constitutional amendment to limit the spending by candidates and their supporters to a level that allows their opposing candidates the same access to the public as that provided by their money. Money equals talk and excess money drowns out the opposing opinion.
Labels: defense spending, farm subsidies, John Boehner, public financing of election campaigns, Republican nonsense, Ronald Reagan
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Troubles for Republicans
Following the election of November 4, Republicans have been thinking out loud - well, at least in print - about the future of the Republican Party. Some of the Party theorists, like Richard Viguerie, argue that the Republicans lost the recent election because they didn't live up to their beliefs while in office. These beliefs include small government and low taxes, fiscal discipline, and respect for and encouragement of individual initiative and responsibility. They argue that while George Bush gave lip service to these ideals he contrarily increased the size of government and embraced perpetual borrowing to pay for the bloated government.
Other thinkers, including several Republican governors, realize that the national Republican Party's problem is at least partly due to the incompetence of the Bush administration. Katrina comes to mind. The Party will have to rebuild its reputation as a competent governing group if it is to regain the trust of enough American voters to regain some of the power it had just a few years ago.
My diagnosis, that of a life-long Democrat, is that the basic message of the Republican Party is out of date. I remember hearing a local Republican business man in my home town tell me about 75 years ago that "government should leave business alone." Other Republicans have said quite often that "government spends too much money." That was one of President Gerald Ford's favorite sayings.
One serious problem for the Republicans is that many middle-class professional and retired persons, like myself, who used to be loyal members of the Party have left it. Many well-to-do persons see the Republican policy of reducing taxes on the rich as simply a hypocritical gimmick to reward some of their election campaign funders. Almost nobody takes seriously the argument that rich folk must be allowed to keep a lot of their money so that they will have money to invest in new enterprises to provide employment, etc., etc., etc., and that taxing them will discourage them from such investment.
As a counter example, consider Microsoft. This was a firm started with a very small investment. All Bill Gates needed was a personal computer with enough capacity to write and store code. His most important investment was to buy an operating system from another engineer who had named it "Quick and Dirty Operating System" or QDOS. Gates changed the name to "Disk Operating System" or DOS. He then had a product that manufacturers of personal computers needed to help sell their machines to a public that knew nothing about machine language programming.
A better counter example is the state of the economy during the Clinton administration. Clinton increased taxes to put the federal government on a pay as you go basis. These "high" tax rates certainly did not stifle the growth in business during the Clinton years. The "low" tax rates of the Bush years don't seem to have had the effect of stimulating the economy. Recent experience does not provide an proof of the Republican theory that letting the Rich keep more of their money will stimulate the economy. The short word is "trickle-down economics." The Republicans promoted it when I was a child and they still promote it today. It's an idea that they should discard.
A huge problem for the Republican Party is that it has allowed a rather small but very dedicated group of Conservative Fundamentalist Christians to dictate many of the policies of the Party and of any Republican administration. Party leaders, such as Nixon and Reagan, cultivated this particular bloc and made them the core constituency of the Party. The class of professional people has tended to leave the Party as a result. The Party is coming apart. What it needs is a new leader who can put together another coalition that will hold together.
Other thinkers, including several Republican governors, realize that the national Republican Party's problem is at least partly due to the incompetence of the Bush administration. Katrina comes to mind. The Party will have to rebuild its reputation as a competent governing group if it is to regain the trust of enough American voters to regain some of the power it had just a few years ago.
My diagnosis, that of a life-long Democrat, is that the basic message of the Republican Party is out of date. I remember hearing a local Republican business man in my home town tell me about 75 years ago that "government should leave business alone." Other Republicans have said quite often that "government spends too much money." That was one of President Gerald Ford's favorite sayings.
One serious problem for the Republicans is that many middle-class professional and retired persons, like myself, who used to be loyal members of the Party have left it. Many well-to-do persons see the Republican policy of reducing taxes on the rich as simply a hypocritical gimmick to reward some of their election campaign funders. Almost nobody takes seriously the argument that rich folk must be allowed to keep a lot of their money so that they will have money to invest in new enterprises to provide employment, etc., etc., etc., and that taxing them will discourage them from such investment.
As a counter example, consider Microsoft. This was a firm started with a very small investment. All Bill Gates needed was a personal computer with enough capacity to write and store code. His most important investment was to buy an operating system from another engineer who had named it "Quick and Dirty Operating System" or QDOS. Gates changed the name to "Disk Operating System" or DOS. He then had a product that manufacturers of personal computers needed to help sell their machines to a public that knew nothing about machine language programming.
A better counter example is the state of the economy during the Clinton administration. Clinton increased taxes to put the federal government on a pay as you go basis. These "high" tax rates certainly did not stifle the growth in business during the Clinton years. The "low" tax rates of the Bush years don't seem to have had the effect of stimulating the economy. Recent experience does not provide an proof of the Republican theory that letting the Rich keep more of their money will stimulate the economy. The short word is "trickle-down economics." The Republicans promoted it when I was a child and they still promote it today. It's an idea that they should discard.
A huge problem for the Republican Party is that it has allowed a rather small but very dedicated group of Conservative Fundamentalist Christians to dictate many of the policies of the Party and of any Republican administration. Party leaders, such as Nixon and Reagan, cultivated this particular bloc and made them the core constituency of the Party. The class of professional people has tended to leave the Party as a result. The Party is coming apart. What it needs is a new leader who can put together another coalition that will hold together.
Labels: Bill Gates, low taxes, Microsoft, QDOS, Richard Nixon, Richard Viguerie, Ronald Reagan, small government, Trickle-down economics
