Just Relax, It'll All Be Over Soon

Every once in a while there is an issue with the water heater here in the Royal Delapidation Estates complex where I live. Without fail, it means that I need to minimize the cold water pressure and maximize the hot. If and when the water heater gets fixed, the cold water pressure needs to be increased in order to keep from being scalded. Like the cold/hot water balance in a shower, fiscal policy needs to be fluid, so to speak, in the same way.

There are few constants in economics, and therefore, responsible economic policy can’t call just one constant setting on all variables. While I don’t want to resort to name calling, America is flush with Republicans who are hypnotically in accord with this idea that no taxes and no government spending is the way to economic prosperity. To use the bathing metaphor, they want to eliminate showers altogether.

One hero of this corps of financially dysfunctional is the otherwise seemingly decent Grover Norquist who has chaired Americans for Tax Reform since its inception in 1985. The following quote of Norquist’s says all you need to know about him: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” With a nice Scandinavian name like Norquist you would normally assume a certain social practicality free of violent tendencies… right? To reuse the bathing metaphor, if Norquist actually had his way, there would be no water with which to drown the government.

While Norquist is trying his best to commit government-i-cide, I’d rather quote Barney Frank by saying tax cuts don’t put out fires. It is one thing to bite the hand that showers you. It is a completely different thing to have to go without a shower. It would be worth honoring the flighty Republican cries to shut government down just for one day because that would be as long as it would take for the scads of Tea Party fist shakers who are sucking on any number of government teats to sober up and switch their support to the “Democrat” party.  

Americans for Tax Reform was allegedly the idea of President Ronald Reagan who also spoke as if he found government despicable.  He was the first president to speak in such clear terms on how much he hated the managerial administration of America. Thanks to him, new generations now run around irresponsibly believing that anything with the word “federal” in front of it is the devil or at the very least does not work. It has gotten to the point that earlier this year House Speaker Boehner announced that if federal employees lost their jobs due to GOP cuts then so be it. Federal employees officially joined the list including union members, the poor, Mexicans, Planned Parenthooders, the unemployed, the middle class, the uninsured, Europe, the educated, education, teachers, Northeasterners, etc., that Republicans hate.

It has come down to Republicans only seeing the guys that print our postage stamps as recipients of the welfare program known as tax funded government employment. They want to take people who process disaster assistance loans to small businesses and drown them in the tub. They want those Border Patrol loafers to get a real job with one of those companies in the private sector that are making record profits, but aren’t hiring.

There is a real mental disorder in which people dysfunctionally obsess over money. Due to the fear of financial ruin they hesitate spending even the money they need to spend, to the detriment of their health, living environment, or interpersonal relationships. These drawn out shenanigans of debt ceiling debate were controlled by people with this disorder or people who are faking the symptoms. Their money hang-ups created a fake panic in Washington DC when the people were rightly more concerned about unemployment than they were about the deficit. Instead of doing something about unemployment, two branches of government spent 100% of their time working on something 17% of people think is a priority. Ronald Reagan’s own economists are warning that the current Republican lack of agility is wrong. Meanwhile, the Republicans are chanting “shut it down” while waving Ronald Reagan placards. It sounds like an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

I woke up to an interview with Grover Norquist on the radio yesterday morning in which he paid tribute to the man who gave him his start at ATR, Ronald Reagan. He credited Reagan with reducing taxes, reducing spending (misleading to false), and presiding over growth. He DIDN’T credit Reagan for his record deficit, record spending, or his tax hikes. Nor did Norquist credit Bill Clinton with raising taxes, presiding over record growth, or balancing the budget. Nor did he mention that Democratic presidents have created more jobs in the past 30 years than Republicans did in the past 36.

Norquist is so obsessive about his no tax, no spend fantasy, it is creepy. It may not have to do with his prescription for growth. He may just have a fetish for seeing America under water. So when America wakes up bound on the floor in the hall outside his bathroom we should know it won’t end good. We are actually there now. It’s just that we are still unconscious.