The country is rapidly approaching a fiscal train wreck, the scale of which has only been seen in “Super 8”. Most train wrecks are of a sudden nature and almost impossible to prevent at the very last moment. The fiscal train wreck that is approaching has been coming down the tracks for a few months now and will not hit for almost another two months and yet nobody is doing anything to prevent the pending disaster.
The US federal government is rapidly approaching the maximum limit on its debt borrowings. It is expected that the US debt will hit approximately $14 trillion in early August. At that point, the federal government will not be able to borrow additional funds to pay its obligations and will mostly default on its debt obligations. The default on our federal debt is expected to wreak havoc on the world’s financial system. The Republicans are holding the federal government hostage as they demand massive cuts in federal spending in order to approve an increase in the debt ceiling.
“It is deja vu all over again.” I am beginning to see a very familiar pattern develop in the approach to legislative impasses. The Republicans put out their position which is always an extremely conservative position and state that there will be no compromises. The Republicans in both the House and the Senate are 100% behind this proposal. The Democrats then publish their position which has most of the Democrats supporting this position, but of course never universal Democratic support. This Democratic position is already compromised from a truly progressive position and the Democrats let it be know that they will negotiate even further. As we know, the Republicans do not negotiate at all and an important deadline approaches.
It is at this point, that the “Lone Ranger” President jumps into the negotiations. Missing in action up to this point, the President, like our masked childhood hero, now steps into the fray with the clock ticking down. The President took this approach on the international scale as he arrived on the last day of the Olympic Committee’s decision for the site of the 2016 Olympic Games and tried this same approach when he arrived on the last day in Copenhagen at the International Conference on Global Warming. One both these accounts he failed to persuade the appropriate body of his viewpoint and in both cases he was turned down.
In domestic politics, the Lone Ranger does not like to partake in the long drawn out battles to win public opinion which would involve an extensive road tours constantly outlining his position. Also involved in this process of passing legislation favorable to the party’s platform would be strongly convincing reluctant members of the Democratic Party to stand together through this fight. This would entail confronting his own party members. The President prefers to come in the last minute to the stalled talks and convince his party to give the Republican Party almost everything they want eking a small token of reform for his own party. We saw this approach in the healthcare debate in which the President never got his party to go along with the public option. The President again used this last minute entry into the budget debate last December with the President conceding the tax breaks for the wealth and no reduction in tax benefits for large corporations in order to get the budget passed as the deadline approached.
The President has been missing in action during the debt ceiling debate. The Republicans have put out their position demanding hundreds of billions in cuts in federal spending in return for increasing the debt ceiling. The Democrats have no cohesive policy and the President has not been leading the debate. Therefore, we can expect the President to approach the legislative talks again at the last moment in the beginning of August. At this point he will make it clear “that his hands are tied” as the deadline approaches and that although he does not support all these cuts he will go along with them “in the name of compromise.” The Republicans will get massive cuts to social programs, support of education and most likely cuts to Medicare and Social Security. We will hear that time just ran out and the President will promise that next time he will not support such massive cuts. “Who was the man?”
H O W A R D S B E N D 
You’re so right, How. So many of us keep waiting for him truly save the day, but so often he falls short. It is disappointing. I still can’t find my way to jumping off the bus, though. I am so much more disillusioned and disappointed that the GOP creates this environment of stalemate and inaction. I cannot understand why so many people vote against their own interests, their children, their environment, their futures. Or that our political system makes it impossible for elected officials to fight for what they believe in. I still hope he knows what he’s doing, as naive as that sounds.
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