Bi-Partisan Compromise ... Phooey

The only thing that aggravates me more than the mind-numbed robots endlessly repeating the left-wing mantra that all of our current problems are the responsibility of George W Bush, the Republican Party, and Fox News (with occasional tips of the hat to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of right-wing talk radio); is listening to their counterparts telling us that its all the fault of the man behind the curtain Barack Obama, the scarecrow Harry Reid, and the Wicked Witch of the West Nancy Pelosi.  

Oh don't get me wrong, GWB deserves his share of the blame, as do the rest of this cast of characters and a few more besides.  In fact the list is a rather long and distinguished one, going back to the 30's and including such luminaries as presidents FDR, LBJ, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter; along with Senators such as Bob Dole, George Mitchell, Trent Lott and Tom Daschle.  While we're at it, let's add in some current and former Speakers of the House like Sam Rayburn, Thomas 'Tip' O'Neill, Newt Gingrich, and John Boehner. 

You see, much as I hate to admit it, President Obama was right when he said that "we didn't get here overnight".  Of course he misused one of the only statements of fact that he's made since taking office; but the truth remained that the problems we face now have been brewing since long before the current President ran for elective office at any level.

As for the idea that all of this can be solved by some bi-partisan compromise ... please.  After all, wasn't it such bi-partisanship during the FDR Administration that got us Social Security in the first place?  Hasn't it been some bi-partisan shenanigans that have allowed politicians in Washington who have known for decades that Social Security was eventually going to go broke, to do and say nothing?  Isn't the only compromise that Democrats and Republicans have reached about the national pension program in recent years one involving adding people that were never originally intended to be a part of it? Bi-partisan spirit in Congress has done little more for this program than to trade its imminent failure for the votes of those protected by it.

As for health care, it was wage and price controls implemented under FDR during WWII in a bi-partisan spirit that got employers into providing health care insurance for workers instead having them pay their own medical costs in the first place.  Not content with setting us on another road to failure however, they made an additional bi-partisan effort with the 1965 Social Security Act, creating Medicare and Medicaid in what amounted to another government attempt at wage and price controls, this time for health care. 

Not only did their compromised effort prove a dismal failure, but with these two new programs, States were now conscripted into the no-win game as well.  Costs continued to go up and increasingly successful (and expensive) medical technology insured that this bi-partisan effort would eventually become another financial monster.  How did our bi-partisan Compromisers answer dawning awareness of another government program that was on the verge of collapse?  ... by adding insult to injury with bi-partisan passage of prescription drug coverage under G W Bush.  No longer content with poisoning what little is left of private sector health care however, the Obama Administration decided to strike the next blow in nationalizing health insurance and health care in the US with what has now become known as Obamacare.  Early analysis of this most recent effort (which surprisingly was not bi-partisan, but a partisan lack of compromise on the part of Democrats) tells us that Government has once more worked its magic, and things will be getting more expensive much quicker than they had been, under the control of a government that can't afford them.

But let's not focus on the big three (now four) entitlement programs as the limits of compromised bi-partisan disaster.  Doing so might cause you to miss other government support programs passed over the years like food stamps and subsidized housing by a legislature ripe with bi-partisan compromise, in an effort to create a dependent class while spending other people's money.  It would also mean that you had failed to take notice of the legislative alphabet zombies that now stalk the land and cannot seem to be killed.  The IRS, DEA, and EPA may be the most infamous of these bogeymen; but the HHS and DHS (and its minions of the TSA) have mandates and budgets that are growing almost as quickly as their public unpopularity. 

Why should any of this make you angry?  Because we let all of this fraud, waste, and nonsense be spoon fed to us in the spirit of the bi-partisan compromise that legislators told us was required to make government work.  Republicans and Democrats alike not only continued to support failed programs, worthless subsidies, and useless departments, but added to their numbers and budgets in a truly bi-partisan fashion that has run up the debt to what was once an unimaginable number. (Feeling compromised yet?)  

So now we're told that the problem is the rancorous language of partisanship in Congress; and the only thing that can save us is Bi-Partisan Compromise. 

Bullshit! 

The problem is that professional politicians, who won't have to utilize the monstrous programs that they've compromised the rest of our futures with, are sitting fat and happy on great pensions and medical coverage that's the envy of the world.  Having secured their own bit of the American dream they are once again trying to stir up voters in the months winding up to an election with nonsensical rhetoric about bi-partisanship. While legislators continue to do nothing to fix real problems in this country, party spokesmen and political pundits drone on about the lack of bi-partisan compromise to provide political cover for the inaction of Congress.  Well, I've got a compromise of my own that might gain broad bi-partisan support: 

Do your job (for once) and we'll think about re-electing you.

The "C" Word

More and more in society we find ourselves faced with words that almost dare not be spoken in polite society, and sometimes not even outside of it. The 'N' word certainly fits in this category, unless of course you are a young African-American male greeting or chiding another young African-American male. The 'F' word also seems to draw considerable scorn, in spite of having the ability to describe an act of love (though I admit that it does so inappropriately and rather coarsely at best). There are other letters and other words associated with them that could be included as terms of obscenity (two come quickly to mind, one beginning with an R and another a D), but I think you understand the point of my introduction. I would now like to add yet another to this list of loathsome and disgusting words, this one beginning with the letter 'C'.

Now while considering this word to be repugnant, I find that it's impossible to have a discussion of it without its use. So if you will pardon the mention of this rather opprobrious term for the duration of this posting, I would appreciate your indulgence as I take up discussion of the word 'Compromise'.

I know that this is probably not the one you expected to see; but its recent misuse and abuse has made it a particularly loathsome term that has seen far too much degradation to be spoken any longer in polite company. Ostensibly a word used to describe “a settlement of differences by mutual concessions”, it has been bastardized as a result of constant misuse by politicians and pundits in the media alike.  Having taken on an almost sacrosanct definition, this term is no longer deemed a method, but a goal instead. 

No longer can the term be used to describe “something intermediate between different things”, instead it has become a term describing little more than abject surrender. In order for one side or the other to now compromise in political debate, they must give up closely held beliefs, principles, and sometimes even common sense in the name of agreement in a tainted process that can later be lauded by elected officials as if it had meaning. In truth, it no longer matters what such agreement turns out to be, as long as it's reach 'in the bi-partisan spirit of compromise'.

How else should we view the Faustian bargain acclaimed by many on both sides of the aisle as the best compromise that could be reached in regards to raising the debt ceiling. Are we expected to applaud compromise when government celebrates its supposed spending cuts by going on a binge that raises the national debt by over $200 billion in a single day? Shall we cheer the House for whittling and watering down bills passed to the point of uselessness in the spirit of bi-partisanship? Will we commend the Senate for a form compromise that involved refusing to vote on anything? Perhaps we could provide a standing ovation to a chief executive whose idea of compromise is to insult everyone around him and then blame all but himself for not playing nice.

And what's the result of such shoddy compromise, a plan which neither garners the revenue increases that one side insisted upon, nor performs the real spending cuts that the other demanded for agreement. The truth of the matter is that as far as the Debt Ceiling is concerned, this contemptible compromise isn't worth the red ink that it's written in. One might even go so far as to say that the spirit of compromise which this attempts to represent is itself Compromised.  (“to expose or make vulnerable to danger, suspicion, scandal...”) 

The concept of compromise in politics has become nothing more than another unpalatable piece of the English language, unsuitable for use in any company, let alone a polite one. In its name the citizens of this country are far too often asked to accept idiotic, pointless, and sometimes downright evil choices in the spirit of something without meaning. The 'Compromises' reached by the Jackasses and Elephants in Washington are now little more than two thieves agreeing on what they consider an equitable split of the loot. Compromise has become so perverted and so offensive in nature that it would be far more accurate to use instead an equally reprehensible word beginning with 'C'; and one that likewise has no place in political discussion in this country, Capitulation.

(All definitions were provided by Dictionary.com.)

Partisan

As I watch the final negotiations going on about turning the "Bush Tax Cuts" into the "Obama Tax Rates", I cannot help but be amused at the maundering of many of the political pundits going on out there. While recognizing many of them as probably better educated and certainly better connected than I am, I find that they appear to be suffering from compromised thinking ... about compromise. As we once again are regaled with the very public 'sausage making' of the legislation under negotiation, like many I find myself more than a little disgusted with what these media pundits find laudable in the process. 


We are told that President Obama has somehow given in without a fight to the right (though not without calling opponents some names) by granting tax breaks to the rich, to the detriment of his left-wing base and his potential re-election in two years. We are likewise told that the Republicans in both Houses of Congress have sold out their fiscally conservative principles in the name of no longer being seen as the party of no. 


On top of the unemployment insurance that was always part of the deal (and which admittedly both sides wanted anyway), they have allowed the left to add extraneous nonsense to enter the negotiations on legislation for such things alternative energy and ethanol subsidies; seriously jeopardizing voter support they received in the recent election. Mostly what we are told however, is that both sides are showing a return to a bi-partisan spirit in crafting this legislation, and that this is indeed a beautiful thing.

But what is the value of such compromise? Are elected representatives to be applauded for giving up on what they told us were fervently held beliefs in the name of compromise? Did we elect them to abandon what they told us were core values, or were they sent to Washington to represent those beliefs for us? How are we to trust them in the future, or the very concept of our representative republic itself, if so many are willing to compromise in such a way? What is wrong after all with a little partisanship. 


In spite of what we have been told recently, partisanship is a part of this country's history. Since the Revolution, this country has reveled and suffered through partisan debate. Many did not want to make the break with Britain in the first place, even as battles were being fought. After winning our freedom, many did not want to replace the originally passed Articles of Confederation with the stronger federal government of The Constitution. 


That founding document in turn could not be officially ratified by the States without a serious partisan debate over the addition of the Bill of Rights. And after all the dust had cleared, the Hamiltonians (followers of Alexander Hamilton) and the Jeffersonians (followers of Thomas Jefferson) bitterly debated what they considered at the time to be the encroachment of the federal government into areas that it had no business for decades afterward. Why then should we be surprised that Federalists and Statists continue to debate such issues in this country to this very day? 


This is not to say that one philosophy or the other should rule the day (much as I would sometimes wish it), nor is this an endorsement of a particular political party. It is however to say that bi-partisanship is not a good of itself, nor should it mean that each side can have something bad for the country if the other can have one in turn; a practice which sounds more like adding insult to injury than it does like meeting in the middle. As far as the general lack of bi-partisan thinking and compromise slowing the wheels of government down, my question would be: "What's wrong with that?" 


In spite of what they would like us to believe, the two major parties have proved themselves equally unable to govern and not so far apart in the direction they would like to steer the country. The argument now more often appears to be about the speed we are driving on an unsafe road rather than the direction we are going. 


The out-of-control ride is becoming increasingly more difficult to watch from the back seat. If such partisan wrangling slows the pace of government attempts at encroachment of personal freedom in some way, then I'm all for it. If standing by principles should in some way slow the runaway train that government has become in any way, it has my full support. 


Compromise is defined in Dictionary.com as "a settlement of differences by mutual concession". It is also defined as "an endangering, especially of reputation". While I might be in favor of some of the former when required, I find that I am increasingly disgusted to discover far too much of the latter going on these days. Far from applauding such bi-partisan back slapping however, I would prefer a little partisan backbone in my elected officials.