I don't have to remind you that Washington right now is consumed by a "fight" that the barely Republican House of Representatives has decided to pick with President Biden and the Democrats over raising the legal limit for the amount of money the federal government is allowed to borrow.
I don't have to remind you, although some of you may have forgotten, that raising said limit was never a "fight" during the years that Republicans controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, not even after they rammed into law a trillions-of-dollars tax cut for the 1%, a tax cut that left said trillions sitting either offshore or in corporate treasuries, and not "trickling down" to the rest of us. (Side note: I've always appreciated the honesty of using the word "trickle" instead of, let's say, "gush." It's a reminder that Republican policies are engineered to give them the goldmine, and everyone else the shaft.)
I shouldn't have to remind you that the "fight" is, for all practical purposes, an attempt to weaponize for purely partisan purposes the full faith and credit of the United States, which (as of right now) is being propped up by our allies and trading partners, both of whom rely on us for their own political and financial stability, as we rely on them for ours. Nor should I have to remind you that their purpose in doing so is to create economic chaos at a level that will propel them back into control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, so that they can continue to replace constitutional government with a kleptocracy. On the other hand, it's worth making the effort to make sure that all of you have been warned.
But I think it's both fair and essential to make absolutely certain that everyone understand fully that the media some-people-say-but-others-say "debate" about the raising the federal "debt ceiling" is something of a sideshow that, by design or otherwise, distracts all of us from the real fiscal problem facing us.
And it is simply this: far too many of the United States talk a much better game of fiscal probity than the one that they actually play. And, like it or not, the principal offenders are red states, the ones that pay lip service to balanced budgeting while using money from people they hate to balance their budgets.
I could use the specific circumstances of almost any one of these states to make my point about this. But, since it's been in the news recently, and because it used to be a launching pad for the national careers of Democrats, I think I'll take the case of Arkansas as my Exhibit A.
Actually, Arkansas could be used as Exhibit A for another political problem, and one that is bipartisan in nature, the rampant nepotism that pervades American politics. It's always been there, of course, and, once in a long while, it has a chance of doing something of value, as the Cuban Missile Crisis illustrated. But, more often than not, it changes things for the worse, and that certainly seems to be the case with Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
You may recall Sanders as the combatively dishonest "press secretary" (one of several, in fact, but perhaps the best-know one) for Donald Trump during the four years that he disgraced the Oval Office. Sanders did her fair share of disgracing her office as well. But that should not be completely surprising, considering the fact that she got the job solely because she is the daughter of Mike Huckabee, himself a former governor of Arkansas. But that is the new career pathway that has been created by the GQP in the age of autocracy it has launched: when you fail in one job for which you were not qualified, fail upward in another, and make sure your children get the exact same opportunity. And so the voters lather, rinse, and repeat all of us into perpetual failure; it just makes it easier for Republicans to scream "The system is rotten, but our opponents are even worse!"
And so it was with Sanders; with almost breathtaking speed, she went from failing in the White House press office to the governor's mansion formerly occupied by her father, where she now threatens to continue her track record of incompetence. If anything illustrates the reality that the old American ideal of learning the ropes by working your way up them has vanished, this surely does.
I mention all of this in part because nepotism and mooching go hand-in-hand; both are forms of corruption, and the presence of one form is enough to breed others. And mooching is definitely what goes on in red-state government--mooching, that is, off of federal revenue produced by the more productive policies practiced in blue states.
That Democratic policies in blue states produce more tax revenue for the entire nation that the Republican policies is beyond any doubt. Certainly that is the case when The Wall Street Journal is willing to document it. For decades, the Journal has, in its own stoic, slightly snotty way, defended the indefensible aspects of conservative economics without any regard to reality. That has been no less true since it was purchased by Mr. Fox News himself, Rupert Murdoch, who has done more than anyone to destroy honest journalism in our nation. But here it is.
Well, Murdoch may be willing to admit it, but you'll never hear it from the likes of Sarah Huckabee Sanders. What you will get instead is fatuous claptrap about so-called "small government" like this gem: "As long as I am your governor, the meddling hand of big government creeping down from Washington DC will be stopped cold at the Mississippi River."
Maybe not, if that hand is stuff with cold, hard cash that Arkansas needs to balance its budget, hand out a tax break it couldn't otherwise afford, AND provide the state's residence disaster relief that might enable them to make use of the tax break in the first instance.
For starters, she has already promised a combination of tax cutting and spending that, without the federal money that Biden's policies are pumping into state budgets, will be utterly unsustainable. This, by the way, would be a side effect of the utterly inhumane budget bill that Barely Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has whipped his barely-majority into passing by a solitary vote. In the enormously unlikely event that the bill becomes the actual federal budget, red state governors like Sanders can kiss their own cut-and-spend plans goodbye.
And it gets worse.
In addition to the infrastructure and green initiatives signed into law by Biden, Arkansas and many other states need federal relief from the series of storms that have hit them. In fact, Washington has been taking care of 75% of the bills for relief, a fact that Sanders has readily acknowledged. Unfortunately, she has done so in the context of a demand that it take care of 100% of that cost.
That's right. Go away, meddling hand. But make absolutely certain that you leave behind you as much of that crispy cash from blue states as you possibly can. It's a mindset that brings to mind the complaints that '60s era conservatives had about student protests against "the system," despite the fact that the student protests were financed in part by the willingness of their parents (i.e., part of "the system") to pay for tuition, room and board.
Believe it or not, back in the day, I had some sympathy for that point of view, not the least of which because I was one of those students (although I went to college in the '70s). But that just makes me that much more comfortable about calling out the hypocrisy of red-state leaders who, in the immortal words of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, "vote no and take the dough." Sanders is hardly alone. Just look at the track record of Florida Governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis. And, while you're at it, pray that he never becomes President DeSantis.
In the context of the current House hypocrisy on the subject of federal spending, one often hears about the need to cut up the government credit card. But maybe we're talking about the wrong credit card. Maybe the card that we need to cut up are the cards that belong to red state governments, the latter-day equivalents of those '60 college students. Maybe what we should be doing is giving them incentives to take the log out of their own eyes before the complain about splinters in the eyes of blue states. (That New Testament reference seems appropriate, since so many red-staters aspire to the practice of Christianity.) Maybe, just maybe, at the extreme end of those incentives, we consider the possibility that these states are essentially bankrupt, and that they require a federal takeover to get their finances straightened out. Maybe even a demotion to territorial status, temporarily.
I'm not advocating these things. But I think they're a useful way of illustrating a point. We're supposed to be the United States of America. We're all expected to pull our weight. And some states are far too comfortable with not doing their fair share, even while they point their hypocritical fingers at the states that are not only pulling their own weight, but the weight of their critics. You want to root out immorality in American government? Well, how about starting right there?
Like I said, corruption breeds more corruption. And if you've bought into the bill of goods the GQP sells that government is always corrupt and Wall Street is always squeaky clean, you're part of the problem. Corruption doesn't have to exist. Freeloading doesn't have to exist. Nepotism doesn't have to exist. Because the people selling all of these poisons live in fear of democracy's antidote: the people, rising up and demanding their birthright: a freer and better world.
Rise up, already. Demand more from red and blue states. Demand more from yourselves. Demand the better worlds that those who came before us suffered and died for. We owe it to them. We owe it to ourselves.
And, like the Preamble to the Constitution says, we owe it to our posterity. Our children, and their future. We can still give them a better world than the one we inherited. Let's not throw that chance away.
Let's pick it up and make the most of it. Now, tomorrow, and always.
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