Well sure. But getting your preferred policy into the US constitution is ipso facto an extreme solution to an issue that has seen shifting majorities through the years. That’s the narrow case for why it’s an extreme demand to make when the issue at hand is dealing with the deficit. (That is mainly or at least in half caused by tax-cuts.)
And that’s all I have to support, right? That it’s an extreme demand to make on an issue where there’s vigorous disagreement.
But to the bigger issue of if its wise: Why stop there? Why should you not aim to state in the constitution that federal and state governments are allowed to raise taxes for law enforcement and the federal army and nothing else. Then we’ve legislated Libertariania in the constitution and left the “power in the hands of the people” to do everything else, out of the hands of politicians (or as they used to be called: the peoples representatives).
The Dems were not capable of dealing with the deficit back when they controlled all of Congress instead of just the Senate. They were hoping to postpone it until Obama’s last term. But the Tea Party got the GOP back in control of the House, and now the Dems have a strong interest in trying to make the GOP’s attempts to deal with the deficit as unpopular as they can. Hence the insistence on tax increases. Back when they controlled Congress, they could have let the Bush tax cuts expire. But they voted to extend them, hoping to buy votes in the 2010 elections. That didn’t work.
But if the GOP is able to put together a plan to deal with the deficit, and it is even mildly acceptable (and successful) the Dems (and possibly even Obama) are doomed in 2012. How do you think the voters are going to react to the scenario where
[ul][li]Dems take over Congress in 2006. [/li][li]The economy crashes and burns. [/li][li]Bush, and Republicans and Democrats, pass TARP. Total cost of TARP is around $25 billion (remember, TARP gets repaid; Obama’s stimulus doesn’t). [/li][li]Obama takes over the White House, and now the Dems control all three branches. The deficit goes thru the roof. [/li][li]Dems blame all this on Bush (obviously). “We had no choice, the stimulus package will keep unemployment under 8%, Keynes told us to spend during a recession, etc.”[/li][li]The stimulus bill passes, but unemployment is higher than Obama claimed it would be if no stimulus were passed at all. [/li][li]Dems claim that nothing much can be done about the deficit. “We can’t cut spending, we can’t raise taxes, there’s nothing that can be done. As a matter of fact, we should have jacked the deficit higher than we did.”[/li][li]Along comes the Tea Party. They say they can deal with the deficit. [/li][li]They get elected.[/li][/ul]No wonder the Dems are putting so much energy into trying to make the GOP break their commitment to not raising taxes. Because they are scared shitless of what to say in 2012. “We claimed it couldn’t be done, and our promises about the economy didn’t pan out. When we had the chance to implement our ideas about the economy (rescinding the Bush tax cuts) we didn’t do it. But it is all the fault of those nasty Tea Partiers for not letting themselves be forced into doing what we didn’t have the balls to do. So vote for us again!”
By this time next year, the economy will probably be picking up a bit. If it does, BHO better be as good as Slick Willie was at taking credit for things he fought to prevent. Otherwise, his skinny little butt is toast.
This one I actually somewhat agree with. The democrats could have gotten started on deficit reduction and got out ahead of the republicans. In their defence, the pressing problem in jan 2009 was -800k jobs/month and you dont want to either cut spending or raise taxes in that environment. But I still have to concede that they somewhat chickened out on that.
Everything else you wrote is highly specious, though
This one I actually somewhat agree with. The democrats could have gotten started on deficit reduction and got out ahead of the republicans. In their defence, the pressing problem in jan 2009 was -800k jobs/month and you dont want to either cut spending or raise taxes in that environment. But I still have to concede that they somewhat chickened out on that.
(Wrt to the rest of what you wrote, a huge chunk of the present deficit is:
a) Bush tax cuts
b) Medicare Part D
c) The Wars
I think that view’s gone semi mainstream considering that Joe Scarborough floated it the other weak.
Then we got costs on account of the recession, and that one is presently still blamed on Bush by a majority of the electorate, right or wrong.
That’s pretty much it. Stimulus spending this year is 150B$ or something like that.
The smart money still says that if the economy is bad then Obama loses. If it’s good he’ll win.)
You said you wanted the people’s representatives to decide whether to raise taxes in the same way we decide pretty much everything else and then face voters in the next election. Which is what the Tea Party did. They got elected, therefore they are the people’s representatives. Most of their success was based on a promise to deal with the deficit, and not just by jacking up the debt ceiling and continuing to spend. And therefore they are going to answer to the voters in the next election. Isn’t that how you want it to happen?
And certainly if they propose an amendment to balance the budget, and the voters don’t want that, the TP will suffer at the polls.
Only in the minority of jurisdictions where they did get elected. Not “THE people”. Once they got to Congress, they had an obligation to work with all the other “people’s representatives”. They have not. As you know.
But the Tea Party is generously about 70 guys and gals in the House and 7 guys and gals in the Senate. And the Senate has a democratic majority - that’s on account of our most very wise founders who wanted the Senate to temper radical change.
A fair reading of how representative democracy in the US is supposed to work is that if someone wants to pass a Balanced Budget amendment then that’s voted on in the house and the senate and every representative votes on it according to what they ran on and their political convictions. They have the responsibility to represent the voters in their district or state.
But if the republican caucus in the House de facto says “you - New York and California - are gonna vote as we - Kansas and Tennessee - want or else we’ll wreck the Economy”, well then that’s a subversion of representative democracy because the representatives are no longer bound by their loyalty to their constituents but under threat from other representatives, and the districts and states they represent.
Plausibly, if it becomes law they will. And us progressives arguing that they are behaving in an unreasonable, unprecedented, extremist way is on the hope that they will suffer at the polls even if it doesnt become law.
Exactly. It’s the Right who have done such a good job of driving California into the ground, and quite on purpose. They want as high a debt, as crippled a government, and bad an economy as they can create. Because they think those things will give them the leverage to implement their psychopathic vision of a theocratic/hypercapitalist/fascist society.
Prop 13, the single biggest obstacle to California’s recovery (well, that and the entire direct democracy/proposition system), was passed with 65% in 1978, and given the overall Democratic dominance now, they can repeal it with another Proposition any time they want to. I think we all know how that vote would turn out. But go on, blame the Republicans.
I’d call this the single biggest obstacle: A constitutional provision dating back to 1933 requires a two-thirds vote for general fund appropriations for purposes other than public schools (Const., Art. IV, Sec. 12). Because the Legislature typically passes one main budget bill, the requirement has effectively applied to the whole budget bill.
But, yes, same solution. If Californians want to fix their budget problem, any number of solutions are entirely within their hands.
You said you wanted the people’s representatives to decide whether to raise taxes in the same way we decide pretty much everything else and then face voters in the next election. Which is what the Tea Party did. They got elected, therefore they are the people’s representatives. Most of their success was based on a promise to deal with the deficit, and not just by jacking up the debt ceiling and continuing to spend. And therefore they are going to answer to the voters in the next election. Isn’t that how you want it to happen?
And certainly if they propose an amendment to balance the budget, and the voters don’t want that, the TP will suffer at the polls.
Regards,
Shodan[/QUO
Meanwhile the rest of us will suffer. They are a sliver of our society with big money backing who have little popular support. They are a joke that has gone on too far.
The Tea Party people are elected representatives. But they are not a majority. Governments that allow minority parties to hold up the entire country unless their demands are met are governments with problems.
What happens if next time, it’s a few dozen liberal congressmen are willing to destroy the country unless their demands for universal health care are met? And it will be because if one group succeeds, others will follow.
And the Tea Party can talk about wanting to fix the budget all it wants. But it refuses to face the reality of what that will take. So they keep insisting that everyone else figure out a way to fix the budget using magic beans or something.
What? If you want me to call the Democrats weak and worthless I’ve been calling them that for years. They just aren’t the instigators, in Prop 13 or much of anything else. You could replace them with the same number of corpses and the drop in initiative and energy would be barely noticeable.
Has anyone actually taken the time (or expended the effort) to IDENTIFY these ‘perpetrators of injustice’ everybody is refering to?
Who ARE these alleged ‘criminal types’ and why are they not identified and morally castigated by the vast majority of Americans who forsee their entire life-effort going down the (proverbial) sewer?
“But if the republican caucus in the House de facto says “you - New York and California - are gonna vote as we - Kansas and Tennessee - want or else we’ll wreck the Economy”, well then that’s a SUBVERSION [emphasis added] of representative democracy because the representatives are no longer bound by their loyalty to their constituents but under threat from other representatives, and the districts and states they represent.”
So, we have had a surfeit of allegations (pro and con) of treason. And the general consensus appears to be that the actions (or in-actions) of these persons does NOT, in fact, meet the Constitutional definition of ‘treason’.
What does the Constitution have to say about “SUBVERSION”? Namely being the subversion of the standard (and traditional) Democratic Methodology of Government?
