Mountain Views News          Saturday, June 4, 2011

13

LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

 Mountain Views News Saturday, June 4, 2011 

HOWARD Hays As I See It

GREG Welborn

 “. . . whenever the 
people are well-informed, 
they can be trusted with 
their own government; 
that, whenever things get 
so far wrong as to attract 
their notice, they may be 
relied on to set them right.” 

- Thomas Jefferson

 

I wrote last week about 
the rationale behind Republicans’ 
targeting education and teachers. 
They’ve targeted public education specifically; 
an institution Jefferson felt so strongly 
about, he (unsuccessfully) sought to have 
federal support for education codified as an 
amendment to our Constitution.

“(W)henever the people are well-informed”, 
they tend to question assertions that 
budgetary concerns are behind education 
cuts; as in Texas, where 97,000 teachers face 
lay-offs while lawmakers push for a $250 million 
taxpayer commitment to bring Formula 
1 auto racing to Austin; and Kentucky, which 
endured cuts to “education at all levels” and 
a teacher pay freeze while offering over $50 
million in support to a theme park featuring 
a full-size replica of Noah’s ark.

Along with an educated electorate, Republicans 
have reason to fear one with a memory. 
In his column last week, Greg Wellborn 
advised we remember the “message” of the 
2010 elections. As I see it, voters are expressing 
buyers’ remorse over those they voted for, 
who don’t seem to remember why they were 
elected in the first place.

Greg cited the recent election of a Democrat 
in the historically-Republican 26th Congressional 
District in New York. Of more 
consequence for 2012 is the shift in electoral-
vote-rich swing states.

Two weeks ago in Florida, the first Democrat 
in twenty years was elected mayor of 
Jacksonville, the state’s largest city. A Suffolk 
University poll found Republican Gov. Rick 
Scott with a 32% approval rating. According 
to Suffolk Political Director David Paleologos, 
“It’s taken Gov. Scott less than 100 days 
to begin a free fall in popularity and to generate 
negative perceptions about job performance 
and damaging the state he was elected 
to lead.”

Gov. Scott resisted voter-approved anti-
gerrymandering legislation, turned down 
$2 billion in federal high-speed rail funding 
(workers were to have union protections) and 
followed the party line in sacrificing education 
for millionaire tax-cuts. In solidly-Republican 
Jacksonville, President Obama now 
enjoys higher approval than Gov. Scott.

In Ohio, the CEO of a Columbus railcar 
manufacturer described Republican Gov. 
John Kasich’s decision to turn down federal 
rail funds as “mind-boggling”. “The only 
thing I can compare it to is the interstate-
highway program back in the ’60s. Where 
would Ohio be today if it opted out of the interstate 
highway system?”

After cutting millions from the budgets of 
local schools, nursing homes, children’s hospitals 
and community health programs, Gov. 
Kasich sought to eliminate the estate tax to 
ease the burden on millionaires. Utilities and 
oil companies saw their taxes cut, with state 
parks offered to the highest bidder for oil and 
gas exploration.

Within a month, Ohioans have gathered 
214,400 signatures on a petition to reverse 
Kasich’s decision taking away collective bargaining 
rights from public employees - 90% 
of the total needed to put the referendum on 
the ballot. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows 
the governor’s approval at 38%.

 Wisconsin election officials have now certified 
sufficient signatures and given approval 
for the recall election of six Republican state 
senators this summer. As noted in the Milwaukee 
Journal-Sentinel, “At no time in U.S. 
history have attempts been made to recall so 
many legislators at the same time over the 
same issue”, Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s 
attempt to strip state employees of their collective 
bargaining rights.

Gov. Walker’s numbers haven’t been helped 
by his moves to consolidate power in the governor’s 
office (over natural resources, veterans’ 
affairs, Medicaid), attempting to evade 
oversight by the legislature and accountability 
to the public. Nor have voters approved 
of his declaring the affirmation of domestic 
partnership rights, such as hospital visitation 
for gay couples, to be “unconstitutional”.

According to a recent Public Policy poll, 
half of Wisconsin’s likely voters want to see 
Walker recalled; a hypothetical match-up 
shows former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold 
beating Walker 52% to 42%.

Nation-wide, “the people are well-informed” 
enough to see through Republicans’ 
playing chicken with the debt ceiling, 
described by Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI) as 
a “ploy so egregious that (they) have had to 
spend the last week pleading with Wall Street 
not to take it seriously and risk our economic 
recovery.”

National default is threatened in order to 
impose the “budget” prepared by Rep. Paul 
Ryan (R-WI). They’ve largely abandoned the 
pretense of referring to “debt”, rather than 
just “spending”, reduction; if the proposal 
had anything to do with addressing the deficit, 
it wouldn’t be calling for ladling out billions 
more of taxpayer funds to those already 
holding 90% of our wealth.

The prize Republicans seek for their benefactors 
is Medicare, because, quoting bank 
robber Willie Sutton, “that’s where the money 
is.” Seniors may be left with little more than 
a voucher to try and find private coverage, 
along with responsibility for hundreds a 
month in out-of-pocket expenses, but insurance 
conglomerates will have their 20-30% 
cut for million-dollar executive bonuses and 
dividend checks, courtesy the taxpayer. And, 
thanks to Rep. Ryan’s budget, we’d remain 
the only developed country on earth where a 
family can be financially ruined if a member 
gets sick.

A “well-informed” people, however, might 
not easily relinquish that prize. A February 
WSJ/NBC poll finds 76% of Americans view 
cutting Medicare to address the deficit as 
“unacceptable”. An April Washington Post/
ABC poll shows 72% supporting a tax hike 
for those making over $250,000 a year. In 
the same poll, 67% support the right of state 
workers to unionize.

Republicans have reason to fear an electorate 
with a memory in 2012. The people 
saw “things get so far wrong” in New York’s 
26th District, Jacksonville, FL, throughout 
Ohio and Wisconsin, however, they couldn’t 
wait any longer, and have already shown how 
“they may be relied on to set them right”.

 


The Debt Limit Fairy Tale

The news this week from the mainstream press 
is that failure to raise the country’s debt limit will 
end the American way of life and ruin the U.S.’s 
reputation for years, if not multiple decades, to 
come. That story line has about as much truth to 
it as your typical children’s fairy tale. 

Let’s first explain some terms that are being 
thrown around without proper understanding. 
The debt limit is the legal amount of debt that 
the U.S. government can have outstanding at any 
one time. It’s almost exactly like the credit limit 
that you and I, along with the rest of America, 
have on our Visa card. We’re allowed to borrow 
only so much. The debt limit has nothing to do 
with whether or not our obligations will be paid. 
Again, just like our credit cards. If I reach my 
limit with my Visa card and Visa is unwilling to 
increase the amount I can borrow, it doesn’t mean 
that I’m going to default on the debt I owe them. 
What it means is that Visa is unwilling to lend me 
more money until I show that I can start paying 
down the amount I already owe. That’s actually a 
good thing, and so it would be with our country.

To hear the professional political class tell 
it, the U.S. will immediately start defaulting on 
debts owed, lose its standing in the world and 
generally suffer a terrible economic fate if it’s not 
allowed to borrow more money than it already 
has. Hopefully, this is starting to sound a little 
weird to the readers of this column, because it 
should. If the debt limit is reached and no further 
borrowings are allowed, the U.S. will have to 
start cutting back on its spending. It would no 
longer be allowed to spend more than it takes in 
and finance that deficit by borrowing. It will have 
to cut back somewhere. 

Now, it is possible that the government would 
choose to cut back by missing interest payments 
on its bonds, but that would be a purposeful move 
on its part, not a natural and unavoidable result of 
reaching the debt ceiling. The government could 
just as easily cut back on discretionary spending 
in other areas or reduce the entitlement spending 
that’s on autopilot right now. Those are actually 
the more rationale responses, and I suspect that 
when push comes to shove, it is exactly what the 
government would do.

That’s not the same thing as saying it’s what 
the government wants to do. There are plenty in 
the current administration and in Congress that 
want to continue to spend. They will resist with 
every fiber of their body cutting back on their 
cherished programs, which are the foundation 
of their power and position. What’s a humble 
politician to do without the ability to spend some 
money in his or her district? The reality remains, 
though, that if the ability to spend more is removed, 
they will be forced to cut back the profligate 
spending that has so badly hurt this country.

It’s fascinating to me when I read about all the 
economists who have signed petitions or Op-ed 
articles describing the 
disaster that awaits us if 
the debt limit isn’t raised. 
Fascinating because there 
has been almost no media 
attention paid to the 150 
economists (including the 
likes of former Treasury 
Secretary George Schultz 
and the Nobel Prize winner, Robert Mundell) 
who signed a statement explaining that increasing 
the debt limit without incorporating meaningful 
and enforceable reductions in spending 
would actually be the most damaging thing one 
could do to the economy.

Their logic is inescapable. Government spending 
in recent years has risen from about 18% of 
the economy to 24% today. Because tax payers 
haven’t yet been forced to pony up more of their 
hard earned dollars, that increase in spending 
has created the deficit and debt limit problem 
we face today. If politicians are allowed to raise 
the debt limit without agreeing to spending cuts 
now, they’re never going to agree to them. All the 
leverage in the negotiations would be removed. 
If spending is allowed to stay at its new, higher 
level, then it is almost a foregone conclusion that 
taxes will have to increase – and not just on the 
rich. As has been explained in countless articles, 
there aren’t enough billionaires and millionaires 
in this country to meet the current spending levels 
– let alone pay down existing debt – even if 
they were taxed at 100% of their earnings. The 
middle class will inevitably be asked to pay more. 
These higher taxes will depress economic activity 
and force us into a deeper recession. Smart 
business owners and investors know this. If they 
believe that government spending will continue 
unabated, they know that taxes are going to increase, 
and they will choose not to invest their 
hard earned capital today. That reduction in investments 
will cause further unemployment and 
recession today.

So, the debt ceiling debate is really a debate 
about whether we’re going to further shift assets 
and power from the private sector into the hands 
of government bureaucrats. It has nothing to do 
with whether we’ll default on existing debt. President 
Obama is wedded to his “transformation of 
America”, and he’s not above playing a very high 
stakes game of chicken with our future and our 
children’s future. Let’s hope that the debt limit 
stays right where it is and the U.S. is forced to 
start paying off its credit card.

About the author: Gregory J. Welborn is a freelance 
writer and has spoken to several civic and religious 
organizations on cultural and moral issues. 
He lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife and 3 
children and is active in the community. He can be 
reached at gregwelborn@earthlink.net.


This material was made possible by funding from the Department of Health and Human Services through the Los 
Angeles County Department of Public Health. 
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