Behind the Budget, Democracy Is at Stake in the U.S.

For several weeks now, it has been believed that a real debate about the United States’ financial problems and its budget was taking place. The truth has erupted in the past few weeks through the deadlock of these negotiations, which continue tonight. It is no longer a question of value; the numbers are close enough to allow for an agreement.

The financial stakes are high. They concern a reduction in expenditure amounting to $35 billion from the budget presented by the White House. This is certainly worth our attention, but an ideological debate has emerged from this issue. The impossibility of reaching an agreement is nothing other than a deadlock in democracy.

A division in the Republican Party has appeared for all to see. Between its moderate wing, its base and the extreme right of the tea party, John Boehner, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, is trying desperately to rally his troops and to get a consensus. The Republicans need this all the more since Barack Obama’s announcement of his seeking the nomination and the beginning of his election campaign, which has highlighted the impossibility of building a consensus on a Republican candidate.

Since yesterday the Republicans have been making demands. They want to stop the subsidization of family planning activities. Obviously, the anti-abortion movement is the group leading that demand. However, what bothers most people is that family planning is a only a small drop in the ocean of Planned Parenthood and that its activities reach far beyond the issues of abortion, including assistance to many families, fertility problems and many others.

The second topic will also send a chill down your spine: As a condition of the renewal of its budget, the Republicans’ version demands the removal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s right to regulate toxic gas emissions. This means nothing other than giving companies license to pollute more without anyone complaining. Therefore, the budget is being used to force this government agency to abandon its pollution standards, which are known to be less strict than in other parts of the world.

These two examples, which are making headlines in the media in this toxic climate of “countdown to compromise,” demonstrate two worrying excesses of American democracy:

• 1. The evil habit of attaching considerations to bills other than those relating to the law itself has now affected the budget process. The Republicans are taking the budget hostage for reforms that have nothing to do with it. This instance has allegedly created a drift of democracy.

• 2. In second place is the budget debate, which has major financial and economic consequences. Instead of determination in budgetary matters, the Republicans are demonstrating their lack of interest in their “priority” aim and are substituting it for “social” objectives, namely ideological aims.

Last night, faced with this attitude, President Obama recalled what is at stake and rightly raised the specter of another recession, at a time when unemployment is falling and when a gradual recovery is underway. He has personally put a lot of work into the three meetings he had arranged at the White House. In his statement last night, he said he was “not yet prepared to express wild optimism.” He also refused a last-minute attempt to grant an additional week’s extension.

The countdown to government shutdown has begun. It would ban 800,000 federal employees from accessing their place of work and deprive them of pay. Beyond that, pensions and other federal contributions would not be paid — even the troops in combat zones would not receive their salary.