What happens after the 2022 Midterms?

After the American Century

The 2022 midtern elections are over, and it appears that Donald Trump is losing his hold on the Republican Party, which might help the nation move away from nasty politics, denialism, and polarization. However, both houses of Congress will be rather evenly split.  Many fear that the next two years will be a time of gridlock in Washington, with little legislation getting through. If the Republicans choose this path, however, I do not think it will lead to victory, for the following six reasons.

Why two years of gridlock is unlikely

1. The climate crisis is worsening, and the years when Republicans could stonewall attempts to deal with it are over. They will lose credibility if they keep on obstructing.

2. New candidates to replace Trump are going to need some achievements to make them credible. Possibly there are no wanna-be candidates in the Congress, but if so, this would be the first time. 

3. People doubted that Biden could get much legislation through in his first two years, but in fact he did rather well. There are a few (admittedly very few) moderate Republicans who will vote with the Democrats on particular issues.

4. Bi-partisan support for Ukraine is likely to continue, especially after the events of the last week, when Russia was forced to withdraw from Kherson. If Republicans do not continue their support, then they will be helping Putin, who is surely one of the least popular foreign leaders among Americans. Who cannot be inspired by the Ukrainian determination and grit? 

5. There is always pork barrel legislation (highways, bridges, airports, etc.), which every legislator wants, in order to please the constituents. 

6. Disasters will always strike, whether tornados, hurricanes, or floods. The President has the power to declare a national disaster, which unleashes federal resources and funding. If the Republicans try to play hardball, Biden can refuse to declare a disaster, which would be especially likely if there are any games being played with passing the budget or raising the ceiling on the national debt. 

I am not predicting peace and harmony, of course. But for all of these reasons, gridlock is not the most likely outcome. In fact, Washington is quite used to functioning with a White House that does not control both houses of Congress. 

The next election

With the midterms over, the 2024 presidential election comes into sharp focus. It is early days, but it seems likely the Republicans will not simply fall in line behind Donald Trump. He has a LOT of baggage, most obviously in the form of on-going lawsuits. One reads reports already that leaders want to see a fresh, younger face.

Democrats are worried that Biden is a safe pair of hands but lacks charisma. His age has become an issue for some, too. If he chooses to run, however, it may be hard to run in the primaries against him. Should he decide not to run, presumably in about a year from now, then a vigorous contest would follow.

In short, it might turn out that in 2024 both parties will have new candidates, almost certainly younger candidates than Trump and Biden.  If so, it will be an extremely interesting election.

Republicans Vote for a Shutdown

Republicans vote for a shutdown

After the American Century

Only 45 Republicans voted for the budget bill that would keep the government open. They have 51 seats, barely enough for a majority, but need more than a simple majority. Under Senate rules, they need 60 votes to end debate and then vote on the bill. According to the New York Times, five Republicans who voted against included the majority leader, Mitch "ConMan" McConnell. He voted against his own party, and yet was later on the radio blaming the Democrats for shutting down the government. John McCain, who is not in good health, was the only senator who did not vote.

McConnell has been an incompetent, self-serving embarrassment as party leader. So little legislation has been passed in the last year and he has been so divisive, that he ought to resign and let someone else try their hand at it. Consider the situation. There ought to have been a budget by Christmas, but instead, McConnell only produced a continuing resolution that kicked the can down the road to yesterday's deadline. There is still no budget, and the Democrats were asked once again to vote for a temporary extension of last year's budget. This is no way to run the legislature. If the Republicans cannot manage to produce a budget when they control both houses of Congress and the White House, it is a sign of gross incompetence. 

Not all Democrats were against the bill. Five supported it, including te newly seated Doug Jones from Alabama. He voted for the bill, though one might have thought that a lawyer famous for defending civil rights might have voted no. The other Democratic turncoats were, like Jones, from swing states where moderation is the safe road to re-election: North Dakota, Missouri, West Virginia, and Indiana.

For readers abroad, who may not know what this means, the shutdown only affects the Federal government. I heard an incompetent "expert" on the radio this morning declare that because of the shutdown all the schools in the US would close on Monday and that no one would be able to take a driving test. This is not the case, as both are State (not Federal) functions. Likewise, if someone needs a marriage license, that is a local matter. But a shutdown, at least in theory, could stop airport security (it will not) and close all the national parks (it will). The tax offices will be closed and all federal employees in Washington will get an unpaid "vacation" until Congress starts to do its job.

Meanwhile, the Republicans will try to convince the public that the Democrats are responsible for the shutdown.

Washington Shutdown: The US Defeats Itself

After the American Century

The deadlocked government is a pathetic spectacle. The US is becoming a fumbling superpower, and Washington seems to have lost touch with the dangers that lurk in legislative gridlock. Meanwhile, the world is moving on, even if the US government is not. Perhaps in theory no other nation is as powerful as the US, but in practice no external enemies are needed. The United States is defeating itself.

When future historians analyze the post-Cold War era, they will describe how the United States, without a major external threat to bind the government together, splintered into factions and undermined the nation's finances, its environment, and its ability to compete.

Because of internal divisions, the world's only superpower is losing its moral and economic leadership. Congress, and more particularly the Republican Party, bears major responsibility for the crisis, as the nation sinks deeper into debt while lobbyists protect special interests and ideologues slash essential programs, such as food stamps, that assist ordinary Americans.

The opportunity to be a world leader in alternative energy technology has been squandered, and other nations instead are developing those industries and making themselves more efficient than the United States. American energy use per capita remains twice that of Europe, not least because of the widespread use of fracking in the US, which pollutes ground water in order to produce more oil and gas and promote continued over-consumption of energy.

Congress has also failed to meet the need for affordable health care necessary to remain competitive with other industrial nations. Obamacare is better than the old system, but it is still a poor compromise. It is the best program that Congress could produce, but compared to what already exists in other nations, it remains a private and for-profit system that is over-priced. In America, decent health care is in danger of becoming a consumer good for the well-to-do, not a right for all citizens. Obamacare seeks to deal with that, but it is not an optimal solution.

Compared to health care available in Scandinavia, Germany or France, Obamacare is expensive because it requires an army of insurance industry employees, lawyers, and accountants, none of whom do anything directly for patients. They are supposed to make the system more competitive and therefore less expensive. This is akin to setting up competing traffic lights, sewer systems, libraries or fire departments based on a fantasy that this will improve service.

Congress has also gutted a tax system that was functioning well in the 1990s. After 2001 Bush created large deficits by reducing the income tax on the wealthy. As a result, the debt burden grew for a decade, and an increasing share of the federal budget is now used just to pay interest. With this debt burden, the government's ability to take new initiatives has declined, but Congress refuses to re-instate a tax system that can pay the costs of government.

Congress does not save in all areas, however. Since 2001 it has spent an unspecified amount, far more than $150 billion, on surveillance and spying. The spy agencies allegedly can read all messages and infiltrate everywhere, but they either cannot or do not wish to stop the epidemic of Internet fraud or the avalanche of spam, both of which are costly drains on the US economy. National security is now defined as almost entirely a matter of stopping terrorism, and apparently the Congress thinks that it is impossible to spend too much on that goal.

Symptomatic of the general American failure of these years are confrontations over the budget.  leading to today, October 1, with its government shutdown. The government is without funds. This idiotic brinkmanship puts the American currency and the US economy at risk.

Should foreign nations, corporations and investors lose faith in the political stability of the United States, the rush of money out of the country could possibly be irreversible. Oil might be traded in Euros rather than dollars, for example. Investors looking for a stable currency could go elsewhere. Suddenly, the US might need to pay its own debt rather than rely on others to buy its government bonds.  If that happens, the collapse will eclipse the crash of 2008, and the era when the United States was a superpower could come abruptly to an end. It could become a gigantic, economic invalid, with high interest rates, a huge national debt, and an outmoded energy system.

This extreme scenario is unlikely, but the Republicans are doing what they can to undermine permanently the integrity of the economy. They are becoming a greater menace to the United States than any foreign threat. Having won the Cold War, the United States is defeating itself.

Ten Ways to Respond to Syrian Use of Poison Gas, Other than Bombing

After the American Century

This column was written before the possibility of removing the poison gas emerged, with the subsequent negotiations between Russia and the United States. Much happened in just a week.

The use of poison gas is completely unacceptable and risks transforming warfare into indiscriminate mass-extermination. Some people therefore think that President Obama is showing weakness because he is not just bombing Syria without consulting Congress first. They would like to see more cowboy diplomacy of the sort practiced by Ronald Reagan in Libya and by George Bush I in Somalia. By some strange logic, many of the Republicans who cheered on George Bush II in attacking Afghanistan and Iraq now want restraint in Syria. But war should be declared and funded by Congress.

The more serious problem is that officials inside the Beltway, both Republican and Democratic, have reduced the available options to (1) launch missiles or (2) do nothing. There is serious mental poverty in Washington when people cannot think of more options than that.

Here are ten other ideas about what might be done. No doubt some of these ideas are better than others, but none of them involves bombing a foreign government or killing people.

(1) Punish economically the states that supply the Assad regime with arms and military supplies. It should cost something to support gas warfare. American tourists might also be advised to avoid travel to such countries.

(2) Press the World Court in The Hague to investigate and charge Syrian scientists and government officials with crimes against humanity.

(3) Launch a global public relations campaign against Russia and China for supporting Syrian atrocities at the UN and thereby paralyzing any world response.

(4) Seize Syrian government assets, if any remain in the United States, and use them to feed the enormous number of refugees fleeing the civil war.

(5) Create a no-fly zone over Syria, so its air force cannot bomb the Syrian people.

(6) Work insistently with the Arab League to develop a coherent regional response to the crisis.

(7) Break all diplomatic relations with the Syrian government. Expel their ambassador and staff.

(8) Press the rebel groups to find common ground to create a political alternative. Otherwise, their victory over the current government would likely only lead to more civil war.

(9) Press NATO (i.e. the European so-called allies) to take a role in the crisis. Europeans seem to have forgotten that it was in their own World War I that poison gas was used indiscriminately.

(10) Hold ceremonies at the graves of soldiers who perished due to gas warfare in every European country that refuses to hold Syria accountable.

One could also drop vast quantities of laughing gas on Syria, and see if that changes the mood. (OK, that is not a serious proposal, but it shows the ability to bomb, while not doing it.)

These are some of the many things the United States might do in this crisis and that President Obama could do (in most cases, including the laughing gas) without consulting Congress. It is time to use more imagination and less force in meeting international crises. The military approach has not been so wonderfully successful that all other alternatives can be ignored.

The Sequester and the Congress Are a Disgrace

After the American Century                                                                                                                                                      

The current deadlock in Washington is the result of a failed political process. In particular, the United States Senate has created rules that prevent it from getting anything done. The House is little better. The public watches with a mixture of amusement, anger, and despair. The poll ratings for Congress are so low one might think the United States had a legislature made up of appointed political hacks. Could intelligent and dedicated politicians really produce anything as inane as the Sequester?

Neither Americans nor the rest of the world can respect such legislative incompetence. A Chinese cartoonist depicted the situation this way in The China Daily:

In Britain, The Economist concluded, "The rather camp-themed scenario in which Congress tries to force itself into behaving with the spectre of whips and cattle prods ends with the US economy handcuffed to the bed and no immediate prospect of escape."  The Economist makes the spectacle sound a bit kinky, but I find it just sad. What investor or voter can be inspired by such intransigence and incompetence? The economy is improving, and the unemployment rate is falling, but the sequester threatens to undermine the recovery. European nations have tried austerity measures based on analysis, perhaps mistaken analysis, but some thought went into it, and they have failed. The US now has embraced mindless, robotic austerity measures, which one assumes are certain to fail, though the American economy is actually doing better than it should, under the circumstances.

The automatic across the board cutbacks that are imposed by the Sequester Agreement are literally mindless. Rather than take a hard look at Federal spending, the cutbacks make no distinction between programs that are working and useful, those that are pork, or those that have outlived their original purpose. Uniform cuts, in the end do not make any sense. Should the government build half an aircraft carrier or half a fighter plane? Should school children get lunch some days but not others? To put it another way: are all the things the government does of equal value? Are all of them of equal urgency? Do all of them stimulate job creation to the same degree? Do all of the government's programs have an equally beneficial effect on the environment? Clearly the answer to all of these questions is "NO."  Some programs create jobs and have a multiplier effect, and others retard economic growth. Some prevent pollution, others create it.  

The job of the legislature is to make intelligent choices between programs. Which ones should be funded, and to what extent? But Congress is in dereliction of its duty. It has ceased to function intelligently. It avoids choices. It does not engage in intelligent debate followed by compromise. It has abdicated responsibility and allowed uniform, mindless cuts in every program. 

The current US Congress is a disgrace.