Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

I’m actually quite frightened. Pretty scared actually. And for a big guy, that tends to be cockier than most, that’s not a position I really enjoy. But, having processed the Republican budget proposal, as well as Obama’s, that is the only rational emotional response any human being can have; however, since I’m a man and I don’t have rational emotional responses, I’m just going to get mad.
Let me first sum up for my dear readers what the proposals entail. Basically, Obama’s biggest cut is to be achieved by freezing non-security discretionary spending for 5 years. This means cutting money for programs like the SEC, which oversees the financial industry (gee, I wonder why that could be important?), as well as other programs that improve our environment, support education, etc. The most heinous cuts Obama makes are the ones that reduce help for poor families paying to heat their homes during the winter months, as well as cuts in Medicare payout to doctors, and beginning interest on federal Pell student loans for undergrad and grad students before they graduate.
As usual, this isn’t enough for Republicans, who want to cut every educational, environmental, and social program on the books, while preserving tax breaks for big oil and refusing to make any cuts to the military, even when military leadership has recommended that certain procurements be curtailed because they are obsolete. Somehow those pork projects aren’t the kinds they want to cut, especially when the manufacturing plants are in their district, as is the case with Speaker of the House, John Boehner.
The problem is, neither party is willing to make the cuts necessary to balance the budget, nor are they willing to make the investments that will make our economy more efficient, streamlined, and productive.
The military is a huge portion of the budget, and it is by far the most inefficient spending we engage in as a nation. None of the weapons we build, whether they be plane, ship, bomb, or gun, will ever have a secondary contribution to our economy. In other words, we pay to build things that don’t do anything for us. And then there’s the issue of maintaining a massive standing army—for what? So Republican presidents have the ability to get us in foreign wars that are purposeless? Look, we can all agree that it is necessary to have some kind of military, especially in this day an age, an elite Air Force and Navy, but we are far beyond spending what is necessary for our defense.
Keep in mind, the budget for defense is on the same scale as Medicare and Social Security. But whereas the money we spend on the military, by and large, goes away, the dollars these programs receive are recycled constantly within the economy. Every Medicare dollar goes toward keeping a person healthy—a person, by the way, that has paid into the system for their entire working life—a person by the way, that may be a grandparent, parent, or the human being reading this column. To boot, every Medicare dollar feeds hospital revenues, pays our doctors and nurses salaries, and trickles into the private market from prescription medicine to the Scooter Store. The same can be said of Social Security. It pays for mortgages, rent, groceries, and Christmas presents; anything really, that can be bought in our consumer marketplace. So while all three programs are a similar size in the federal budget, two act to stimulate the domestic economy on primary, secondary, and tertiary levels; whereas with the military, we only reap the salaries we pay to our soldiers and our manufacturing employees—the rest goes abroad, or sits in corporate bank accounts.
This is known in economics as the "Guns vs. Butter" trade off. Does a government spend its money on the military, or on domestic development? Right now, we are spending far more than justified on "Guns," and it's killing us.
The other thing that seems to be left out of the conversation is that just 2 months ago, Obama and congressional Republicans agreed to extend the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, adding an additional $700 billion to the federal deficit. And now we’re in just dire need to cut funding for Social Security, Medicare, and other programs because the deficit is going to swallow us whole? Give me a break.
What all of this clearly illustrates is that politicians will make the easy choices, like giving their rich buddies a tax cut (a vast majority of our elected officials are millionaires and billionaires, and run in those circles), while refusing to approach political issues that might receive criticism or be uncomfortable, for example: cutting military spending, relaxing federal drug laws, or eliminating tax loop holes for multinational corporations (remember, they deal with lobbyists a whole lot more than the average Joe).
The other problem that people don’t seem to want to address is that the two party system, along with the dynamic of American politics, are fundamentally flawed when it comes to addressing difficult issues and solving long term problems. For one, if a politician attempts to take on a politically powerful entity, say for instance the military industrial complex, they are going to face tremendous attacks from the other party during the next election. In the case of the military, that politician will be called “weak on defense,” “a friend to terror,” and God only knows what else.
Second, Americans tend to vote out the party in power when there is a bad economy, and when people are suffering. Underlying message: its actually good for the opposition to make things as bad as they can be going into the next election—this explains Republican political behavior pretty well since Obama’s election in 2008.
Third, because of the tremendous amount of money in our political system from lobbyists and large corporate interests, politicians have little to gain from looking out for the little guy. Average citizens have neither the time, nor money, to effectively lobby their politicians. Thus, it’s easy for politicians in our system to justify cutting programs like unemployment insurance, welfare, education, and other social programs.
Finally, the news media in this country is inaccurate, biased, and full of propaganda. Obviously, most liberals will point to Fox News here, but even a close read of the supposedly liberal New York Times reveals massive lapses in basic journalistic integrity. Bottom line: Americans don’t know who to believe, so they can’t hold politicians accountable in lockstep—we’re so divided that our vote is largely impotent. Moreover, many Americans simply vote against their best interests, which violates the basic tenet of economics: that people will make rational decisions when they have sufficient information about that decision. Guess what’s missing?
Oh, and about those investments we should be making? It’s been shown that spending money on transportation returns as much as 400% the investment for the economy. We also know that programs like food stamps and unemployment have well over a 150% return on their investment. It’s nice to know that Obama’s budget increases spending on transportation, and withholds cutting food stamps and unemployment. It is even better that it includes increased spending on education, whose value to the economy is immeasurable, being that education is the basis upon which civil and modern society it built. The problem is that Republicans are going to fight with our President tooth and nail to cut them all significantly.
Additionally, we must remember that this is only the federal budget. State budgets across the U.S. are bleeding massively, and the single biggest expense on the chopping block is education. What isn’t being talked about? As usual, prisons. Spending on incarceration represents a huge portion of state spending (10% here in Oregon), and yet there is no talk of relaxing drug laws or prison sentences. If anything, people want there to be more punishment, and longer sentences.
So, to sum up, our collective government, state and federal, refuses to cut military spending, prison spending, or close tax loopholes for wealthy corporations and individuals, preferring instead to cut education, social programs, and oversight to protect consumers. And, given our two party system, and the dynamic of media and politics in the U.S., not much is going to change unless the general public comes to some kind of mass, collective epiphany.
Unfortunately, according to a recent study, it’s not likely…for more on that, check out Krugman’s article yesterday. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/opinion/14krugman.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss