7/22/2009:
Listening to the disingenuous whining of the G.O.P. regarding the outrageous and irresponsible debt Obama is creating provokes various reactions. Here are ten of them.
(But first, the image it conjures is that of Al Czervik (Rodney Dangerfield) taking the controls of his yacht and wreaking havoc in the bay: his rampage ends as, unable to figure out a way to stop the boat, he slams into Judge Smails’ (Ted Knight) wonderfully named Flying Wasp. Czervik’s initial reaction seems to be one of embarrassed culpability; he runs over to inspect the damage and then, as only the most clueless and pampered multi-millionaire ever could, he looks down and exclaims to Smails, “Hey, you scratched my anchor!” And just in case there is any confusion, Czervik represents George W. Bush–an analogy that is apt on myriad levels.)
The first is: You assholes just spent eight years incinerating the American Dream; now you have the temerity to come out of your crawl space and complain that the guy with the big firehose (Obama) is getting everything wet? I guess it wasn’t so bad when it was a different guy with a different hose; in fact, it was oddly warm when the last guy was splashing all over your face…admit it, you kind of liked it, didn’t you? Different water sports for different folks, as the saying goes.
Second, as this piece by David Leonhardt reminds anyone with eyes, the debt did not exactly hit unsuspecting Americans like a tidal wave on January 20, 2009. Indeed, the bulk of this deficit took the entirety of the Bush administration to metastasize. And don’t kid yourself: it was a very calculated process, with malice aforethought. Nobody could have predicted how insane the real estate bubble truly was (though Paul Krugman was more like Paul Revere for many years while few people in positions of power listened; indeed he was regularly mocked and marginalized), but one need not have actually experienced the Great Depression to see what was coming. Indeed, one only needed to live through the late ’80s S&L crisis or the dot.com boom & bust to understand that monopoly money only works when one is playing the board game.
Third: Funny how nobody can quite bring themselves to consider the actual costs involved with that little foreign clusterfuck also known as Iraq. To put it in simple terms: it has not been an inexpensive adventure.
Fourth: How come the people who benefit least from tax cuts for the wealthy understand least how rotten a deal it is? (That is a rhetorical question, mostly.) The G.O.P. can always count on its base to take a bite out of the Baby Ruth bar.
Fifth: Seriously, how the fuck is it possible for people that work for a living (and pay taxes) to still be hoodwinked by this scam?
Sixth: Other than total ignorance or reflective racism, I can think of exactly zero reasons these same tax-paying American workers fail to see why universal health care is not a fantastic thing. You know, something that would actually help, not hurt them. Fox News and the people that watch it are, of course, beyond assistance. But for the rest of the folks? Obama is simply going to have to damn the torpedoes and do a much more effective job conveying what a no-brainer this actually is. Hopefully tonight is the first significant step in the right direction. Stay tuned.
Seventh: If you find yourself discussing these matters with a Republican friend who claims to be appalled with the way Obama the Socialist is saddling future generations with mountains of debt, feel free to refer to this (taken from the Leonhardt article, above):
The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.
You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.
The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists’ assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.
About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.
Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.
About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.
Eighth: If Bill Kristol and Newt Gingrich, those arbiters of equality, are stridently opposed to legislation, how could that legislation possibly be a bad thing? That is just shorthand logic at work: look at who is fighting universal healthcare: the most insufferable conservatives and the insurance industry. Those guys have your best interest in mind as much as this guy does:
Ninth: Anyone who thinks invoking Cheney is either a cliche or a cheap shot, just remember, this is the motherfucker who said Deficits don’t matter!
Tenth: Read this.
The Al Czervik analogy works on many levels, but it’s difficult to promote the notion of poor, unsuspecting America being represented by the bilious buffoon Elihu Smails; that old codger deserved his comeuppance, and Czervik, clown that he is, still is the one we root for because it’s not our money, it’s not our country club. It’s a country club cage match, and the only spoils the winners get is the privilege of being kings of a…country club.
Perhaps the better analogy, from the same movie, is the less metaphorically sticky moment when Carl (Bill Murray) watches lightning strike the priest and quickly, without a second thought, sneaks off into the night. All jokes aside, one would be hard pressed to come up with a better single image signifying the accountability of the ones who brazenly drove us off the cliff.
Lastly and perhaps most importantly: did I just actually utilize scenes from Caddyshack to discuss Republican intransigence on Obama’s initiatives? Well what do you want, nuanced, reasoned insight and exhaustive historical analysis over what boils down to the G.O.P. being scared shitless that successful health care policy will further entrench them in the wilderness? You’ll get nothing and like it!
