Showdown

We’re headed into a showdown and the government will soon be shutting down.  Make sure you impress your neighbors and friends by wielding these 11 facts from the Moogaz.  Bold points are the elevator lines.

1. The budget bill is for 2011.  That’s right. This year.  Congress couldn’t get its act together last year because of the election and since then they haven’t been able to agree on anything.  So here we are, in the middle of the year with no budget.  Seven stopgap measures has already been passed, the last one is due to expire Friday.  On Friday, the government shuts down.

2. Budgets have to start in the House.  This one did, which is why it’s called House HR 1.  The House is run by Republicans now, split really into two factions: the Tea Partiers led by Paul Ryan and the rest led by Boehner.  Democrats are in the minority but not in the Senate.  Harry Reid still runs the Senate.  Montagues.  Capulets.  Someone’s bound to die.

3. Tea Partiers said they wanted to cut $100B from the 2011 budget.  That was last Novermber.  Now we’re in April so they’ve prorated it to $60B.  Democrats have been willing to meet in the middle at $30B but Boehner can’t be seen as leaning left or he’ll get eaten by the primary monster in the next election.  Or lose his Leader position.  Or both.  He’s the proverbial rock.  Paper beats Rock.

4. For the guy next door who bugs you about numbers, $60B versus $30B is 4% versus 2% of 2011 Discretionary spending.  Discretionary spending is 14% of all spending.  So we’re talking about a battle over 0.28% of the Federal Budget.  That’s like arguing over buying a pair of shoes when you make $60K/year. http://goo.gl/73O31

4. Keep in mind that 50% of this Discretionary spending is Defense.  Republicans want to increase their budget by $8B; Democrats want to lower it by $1B.  The Montagues want tanks. The Capulets want middle class relief.

5. Republicans added riders to the House bill HR1.  These are amendments that don’t really have to do with the budget but ride along.   Nobody likes the riders.  They include:   http://goo.gl/NGy2a  The Montagues want to drive their tanks over the environment and anything remotely nice.

6. Keep in mind that earlier as part of a budget deal, tax breaks for high income earners were continued.  Rich people are cool.

7. And GE pays no income tax. Big businesses are cool too.  Jobs jobs jobs. (unless you work for a school or are doing something good for somebody; then your job is stifling job creation)

8. The economy is in a recession, people are being squeezed by higher prices and stagnant wages, and the top 1% has accumulated all of the wealth of the last 20 years.  But this budget proposes to cut:

• Cuts the EPA budget by 1/3rd – no more environmental protection (think BP oil spill). Actually the whole list of EPA cuts is even more fun to read: http://goo.gl/VJtW3
• Cuts UN funding and international assistance  (think Libya) http://goo.gl/dFHcO
• Cuts to Americorps and community programs: http://goo.gl/SLHza
• More cuts where I couldn’t find a damn list on the Internet to put here

Well, a lot of cuts. Even sports fisherman agree: http://goo.gl/GdetX  This all falls into point 8.  Which is that I hardly see any cuts to business or moneyed interests.  Cut taxes for the rich because they’re not rich enough [pat on back].  Now let’s cut programs for everyone else [go team].

9. Oh wait, the bill also wants to cut the new regulations that would regulate Wall Street.  Because Wall Street, with its record profits and vanishing regulation, really needs a break. That Bernie Madoff is a nice guy; what ever happened to him?

10. All of this starts over again when we debate the 2012 budget and the upcoming debt ceiling bill.  In a new look at mandatory spending, Paul Ryan would like to cut assistance to the poor and elderly and “restructure” Medicare.  Read this as slash and burn all in the effort to keep tax rates at “historic” 18 percent levels (0% if you’re GE :)).  He calls it the Path to Prosperity, unveiled today:  http://goo.gl/MqZ3h Paul Ryan has Congressional Health Care so he’s not worried.

11. By Saturday, one side will start losing.  I feel like it will be us.

Where is the Populist Angst?

We’re deep in a Great Recession.  The haves seem to be doing well though (Google profit up, MasterCard up, Mobil skyrocketing, Apple up, Microsoft up).  And the have nots not so much. (Unemployment, etc)  Yet the only credible populist uprising, namely the Tea Party, is squarely pointed against government, and not the elite.  In most historical cases, government has been the vehicle OF populism, not its enemy.  Unions, trust busting, regulation.  So what happened?  Here’s three thoughts.

1) The link between unemployment and Wall Street was never really connected.  I think there’s a couple reasons for this.  First is that today’s Wall Street business are not necessarily its employers.  Big banks may run the economy, but their tentacles are so far and wide it’s hard to connect a local bank or employer shutting down with the power plays in Manhattan.  In the past, if big businesses were profitable and shutting down factories towns felt it directly.   Now, faults are so spread out – maybe it was globalism, education, immigration – that the direct cause and effect is hard to establish.  And, small town Joe probably has money in some 401K tied to one of these companies or he’s impressed with its latest product so how can he be angry at these big businesses?

2) The Democrats are in power, so the zealots are on the right (and they’re the party of businesses).  If it were the other way around, Democrats could yell class war and point the finger at the cozy relationship between business and Republicans.  But it was Democrats who supported TARP in order to save the economy. And Democrats who worked with big businesses to craft Finance and Health Care legislation. It’s hard to yell at the fox in your coop when you’re working with him to build the fence.

3) We’re ever more a diverse fractious nation.  An educated middle manager who loses his/her job to outsourcing probably finds it pretty difficult to relate to a burger flipping minimum wage earner who also lost his/her job to outsourcing because all of the customers lost their jobs.  Maybe at one time we all watched the same television at 8pm, but now we’re flipping through a million forms of media.

So here we are.  Angry but not sure who to be angry at.  Leadership that can’t be angry.  And not sure if our neighbor is angry at the same thing.  Profits rolling in and people unemployed.

Ariana Huffington would like to kick off a populist movement, her book and blog community are trying to stir up the pot.

But who knows, maybe a lack of populism is a good thing?  At least we’re not rioting in the streets.