The System Fails

Confrontation rather than cooperation: America’s democracy is built on balance — but in the debt ceiling matter, Republicans absolutely refuse to cooperate, and strictly for ideological reasons. Their intransigence may well cause the United States bigger problems than the debt crisis.

America is in crisis. How deeply the nation is stuck in this mess becomes increasingly clear every day the bizarre debt limit fight drags on.

One week before what the U.S. media succinctly but accurately calls a budget meltdown or a financial Armageddon, one week before the government would be forced to declare bankruptcy, the politicians in Washington have found no solution to the problem. That is what President Obama correctly described as a “dangerous game” in his latest address to the nation; and in many respects it is highly irresponsible as well.

First of all, the crisis that now threatens America’s financial underpinnings is homemade and totally unnecessary. Raising the debt limit has never been the basis for a fundamental dispute. Since the Reagan days, Congress has routinely raised the debt ceiling dozens of times.

Now, suddenly, the tea party movement — a self-styled group of Republican goody-two-shoes budget guardians — has become an opposition faction saying they will not accept any increase in the debt ceiling unless it is accompanied by dollar-for-dollar spending cuts.

But there’s a solution to this problem. The tea party movement representatives are a distinct minority in the House when compared to sensible Republicans and Democrats. But there aren’t enough moderates in both those factions with sufficient courage to support the “grand compromise.”

President Obama and Speaker Boehner had agreed in principle to an outline for the compromise. Initially, expenditures were to be reduced in the three largest budgetary areas of Social Security, Medicare and in the exorbitant arena of defense spending.

Weakness in the Government System

Next, taxes would be increased. After years of extremely low tax rates, the United States can no longer afford to allow the wealthy to escape contributing its fair share for the common good.

But Republican ideologues sabotaged the compromise, not because they were concerned about the debt level — if that were the case, they would vote in favor of the compromise because it would greatly decrease the accumulation of new debt.

This concern over the debt is a smokescreen for a larger goal. Republicans see the debt issue as an opportunity to demolish America’s already anemic social safety net that has existed for the last 75 years.

Their ideologically motivated intransigence exposes a weakness in the U.S. system of governance, since it is not set up to deal with political blockades and boycotts. America has chosen to have divided government — a Democratic president and a Republican-dominated Congress. To work, that requires cooperation from the outset and not confrontation at all costs.

As President Obama correctly pointed out in his speech last Monday, “The American people may have voted for divided government, but they didn’t vote for a dysfunctional government.” But Republicans apparently want the latter: They have refused to make any concessions since the beginning of the debt crisis.

That calls into question the system that has always thus far worked, namely, that after all the procedural tricks and subterfuges there would be compromise. The majority would rule, but with concessions to the minority’s concerns.

But that treaty is no longer in effect. The debt crisis may well have a far more ominous consequence: the failure of America’s political system.