No Cause for Celebration

At the last impossible moment, Congress averted a federal government shutdown, at least temporarily, with a continuing resolution that keeps the doors open until late next week, when the overall agreement comes up for a vote.  The agreement calls for some $39 billion in cuts--a total of some $78 billion below President Obama's original budget--but without the policy riders, such as the last one in contention, defunding Title 10 health programs primarily for women.  GOPers finally realized they'd basically won, while Democrats pretended it was a civics lesson in democracy.

The excessive fights aren't over, though it could be that America's patience is (how many people even noticed a 7.1 earthquake in Japan last week?)  The epic battles ahead are on debt ceiling and next year's budget, but even next week there is likely to be a lot of contention on this agreement.  Tea partiers are likely to vote against it because it doesn't cut enough for them or doesn't include defunding Title 10, EPA, NPR and quite possibly Evolution.  Some Democrats may well vote against it because of specific cuts or because this immense amount of money drained from the economy may well derail economic recovery. 

It's easy enough to talk about this in terms of extremes on each side losing out for a compromise in the middle.  But in the middle of what?  There are no sides involved when it comes to impact.  These cuts are either going to result in the loss of 100,000 to 450,000 jobs (as one economist estimates, according to Ezra Klein of the WA Post), or they aren't.  What does seem very likely is that it will be the middle class and the poor and the sick who will pay, and certainly not the corporate elite and the mega-wealthy.

But another really troubling aspect of this trend is how it increases vulnerability to the inevitable dangers ahead.  In the short run it increases the vulnerability of individuals and families on the edge, and it increases the overall vulnerability of the economy as it erodes incomes both directly dependent on government and indirectly.  All of this is a result of the refusal of government to increase revenues by taxing wealthy businesses and individuals. 

In the long run it erodes the ability of government to respond to emergencies--particularly the long emergency of the Climate Crisis.  It erodes that ability both in terms of specific capabilities, which are being slowly starved (though President Obama placed emphasis on the compromise budget saving investments to win the future.) But it is also in the area of attitude, of the growing ferocity of seeing government as the enemy, instead of the commons, where we pool resources to help the whole and help those who most need it.  In that regard, this violence to our ability and will to deal with these problems threatens the future.  So maybe the Washington Monument stays open, but this is not a day to celebrate.