The “Supercommittee” is due to report their plan to the Congress next week. Judging from watching the weekly talkers on Sunday morning, the hunt for the guilty has already started. Everyone has a plan: “Rivlen-Dominici”, “Gang of Six”, “Toomy”, etc, etc, etc. Suddenly there’s a need to split budget cutting from tax reform. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I flip between the morning shows on weekdays and the members of that supercommittee are on those channels every day. You know things are bad when the Congressmen start talking about Congress like it’s a place they’re not really sure where it is. It’s funnier than hell to watch John Kerry or Ron Paul say “I don’t know what Congress is thinking/doing”. Really? Haven’t you been there for the last 30 years? I will not miss this oportunity to point out that the City has deftly handled this problem without playing any games. (A claim neither our state our national gov’t can make.)
Here’s what’s going to happen: there will be one big final push to segregate budget cutting from tax reform. That will either fail or the cuts will be so minimal as to amount to zero. The supercommittee will subsequently fail with both sides blaming the other. You won’t be able to watch the news without seeing one of those grinning idiots. There will be a debt downgrade and turmoil in the markets. Guys like me that own small businesses will stop spending money on anything that isn’t absolutely necessary (and maybe not even that). The economy will stall to near zero. Politicians, along with their cohorts in the media, will openly lament, that corporate America is sitting on all their cash and pretend not to understand why.
On the political front, after the committee fails, you will see both sides rise in righteous indignation about how irresponsible the automatic budget cuts (sequestration is what they’re calling it) are. How could any right-thinking American possibly stand by while the defense budget is cut by 25% (or whatever it is) and domestic spending by the same amount. The messaging will make it appear as though nobody in Congress is quite sure where this “sequestration” idea came from. The law will be changed and the budget won’t be cut. There will be various recriminations and some cuts may come through but, in the end, America will experience a debt crisis. Not quite a Greek-style debt crisis but the part that will hurt the American psyche the most is when the Chinese come to town and demand that Americans either get the fiscal house in order or they’ll stop lending us money. That will be humiliating but there’s nothing we can do about it – cuts will be made at that time but we won’t have much leeway or control over what those cuts will be. If that’s not enough, none of the people running for President is capable of providing the leadership necessary to get us out of this.
At that point, I’ll join the Tea party, (I don’t know how wild my friends in the Tea party will be about this…:) and run for Congress. I don’t know how applicable the Tea party agenda is in Manassas but it would appear to be exactly what we need in Washington. It’s clear that the established parties are far more concerned with their own well-being than in the health of our collective union. What is required is a fundamental recalibration of America’s goals and aspirations and we need new blood to do that.