The Forecast is for Gray with a 70% Chance of the Abyss
That’s the hopeful message. It sums up the only hope I have for the midterms.
Thirteen months ago, Thom Hartmann described an old song and dance routine that Republicans have been staging for decades.
Here’s how it works, laid it out in simple summary:
First, the Two Santas strategy dictates, when Republicans control the White House they must spend money like a drunken Santa and cut taxes to run up the U.S. debt as far and as fast as possible.
This produces three results: it stimulates the economy thus making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy; it raises the debt dramatically; and it makes people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa Clauses.”
Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans must scream about the national debt as loudly and frantically as possible, freaking out about how “our children will have to pay for it!” and “we have to cut spending to solve the crisis!” Shut down the government, crash the stock market, and damage US credibility around the world if necessary to stop Democrats from spending money.
This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own social safety net programs and even Social Security, thus shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus right in the face.
And, sure enough, here we are now with a Democrat in the White House. Following their Two Santas strategy, Republicans are again squealing about the national debt and refusing to raise the debt ceiling, imperiling Biden’s economic recovery as well as his Build Back Better plans.
And, once again, the media is covering it as a “Biden Crisis!” rather than what it really is: a cynical political and media strategy devised by Republicans in the 1970s, fine-tuned in the 1980s and 1990s, and rolled out every time a Democrat is in the White House.
(Note: I include links in hopes readers will review more than my excerpts)
Two Santas arose in the wake of Nixon’s Watergate hari kiri act, along with supply side economics and its mythical trickle-down theory that devastated the working class till the tech revolution of the 1990s bought them some breathing room for a few years.
The older Republican dream, however, goes back to the Great Depression. They called the wealthy FDR a class traitor with his New Deal programs. The most successful anti-poverty program in US history was part of it: Social Security.
And while the nation is focused today on inflation, women’s rights, threats to our democracy and the vicious plunder of Vladimir Putin, off the radar of most voters is the rising threat that Social Security may soon succumb to deliberate attrition.
More and more Republican politicians are proposing to ‘privatize’ it, just as they’ve done with prisons and public schools, neither of which has delivered promised savings. Instead, student test scores are dropping, prisons were filled with way disproportionately Black non-violent drug users, along with other examples of overt corruption between prison owners and judges.
Now some are proposing to put Social Security funding to an annual vote, subject to the polarized budget negotiations that are marked by numerous GOP efforts to shut down the government (conveniently only when there’s a Democratic president). They don’t really care that American workers fund their own Social Security benefits so it’s not a free handout. If Social Security funds were invested in generally safe blue chip stocks or real estate, it would always remain solvent but instead, lawmakers borrow from the fund. Were they to succeed in privatizing it, its demise would occur within a decade, increasing poverty and insolvency for the seniors who depend on it as a floor so they can have a wee bit of stability in their final years.
Last February Senator Rick Scott, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, released a plan to “Rescue America” — including a proposal to end all federal legislation, including Social Security, after five years. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said in June that seniors should take less from Social Security. Blake Masters, running for the Senate from Arizona, proposed privatizing Social Security in June, as well. Incumbent Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin said all federal programs should be voted on annually which could lead to delayed checks during budget negotiations and even a refusal to fund the program at all. And the Republican Study Committee’s Fiscal Year 2023 Budget proposal includes a plan to push Medicare eligibility back to age 67 and push the start of Social Security from its current 62 to age 70.
This is the same party that blocked any raise in the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr since 2009. Prior to 1980, the longest delay was 6 years. Reagan delayed a raise for 9. The Republican Congress, then Trump, have pushed it to 13 years now. Inflation since 2009 has increased more than 39% in that time, further impoverishing people at the bottom.
If it sounds like I’m just exhibiting anti-Republican bias, that’s not quite accurate. My bias is in favor of helping more American working families survive and I’ll criticize Democrats when they go after the poorest and most vulnerable, just as I did with Bill Clinton in the mid 1990s.
Contrast that with what recent Democratic presidents have done. Obama had to rebound the economy from the housing bubble collapse while reducing the deficits of his Republican predecessor plus he expanded affordable health care more than any previous president. Biden rebounded the economy from the covid shutdowns with the best job growth since at least the Great Depression, is cutting the Trump deficit down at a record pace, has returned more manufacturing jobs from foreign countries than any other president, further expanded healthcare benefits, lowered drug costs AND created the greatest infrastructure plan since Eisenhower got the Interstate Highway system underway.
It’s not partisan bias; I’m just stating the factual record and applauding those deserving of applause.
Still, I remain cynical about Biden’s prospects of getting anything accomplished after December due to the forthcoming midterms. Republicans have hammered at the inflation numbers to obscure all the other Biden economic wins and the windfall profits of corporate greedmeisters contributing to the high inflation.
And what we’re likely to face in 2023 is a Republican Congress bent on impeaching Biden for no crime at all while getting nothing noteworthy done for American citizens for the next two years.
Hell, they might even defund NATO, leaving half of Europe at risk of being overrun by Putin. They let Trump get away with illegally cutting off military aid to Ukraine in their effort to regain parts of their country overrun by Russian troops, so what’s to prevent a repeat?
Steve Bannon, sentenced to 4 months in prison but still a free man pending his appeal, says Republicans will impeach the US Attorney General and FBI chief once they gain control next month, which could end all efforts to bring any insurrectionist or Trump himself to justice..
The red flags are everywhere, the warning bells are clanging louder than ever and too many Dem and Independent voters remain too deaf and blind to it all.
And I hate to be so cynical.
This blast from the past might grant some relief from my cynical outlook.