Yesterday's Crisis Again Tomorrow

Democrats and Republicans in the United States Congress managed to remember their responsibilities just at the last minute and didn’t allow the world’s biggest economy to go bankrupt. The common sense of the moderate conservatives finally won out over the brainlessness of the tea party radicals. That’s the good news.

Better news would have been if, after weeks of squabbling over the government’s budget, they would have said they wouldn’t let something like this ever happen again. Unfortunately, the exact opposite is the case. The agreement reached is only a temporary solution. The Secretary of the Treasury is allowed to take on new debt only up to the beginning of February 2014. The government will receive funding to pay its employees only up to mid-January.

The old infighting will begin anew right after Christmas at the latest. By the start of the new year, there will be renewed threats to again shut down the government. Again a month after that, the arguments will start over as to how best to avoid a national bankruptcy.

In Washington, yesterday’s crisis is always tomorrow’s crisis. The basic reasons for the U.S. system of government’s dysfunction have not been addressed. The tea party representatives were able to keep an entire nation in a state of paralysis for weeks — and they will do so again. Ideologues not interested in compromise can never be convinced to change. They act out of conviction only.

With their unprecedented blackmail tactics, tea party representatives only succeeded in convincing most Americans that they are incapable of governing rationally. That can only be bad news for a two-party democracy like the United States.