Shooting Ourselves In The Foot

I have noticed for a while that the older I get, the faster time seems to pass. For example, it seems like just yesterday that I was writing my first blog, which dealt with our then impending plummet off of the fiscal cliff. Part of the legislative solution to that problem was pushing the sequestration cuts back by two months so that the Congress could find a better way to cut our deficit.

Perhaps to no one’s surprise, Congress was not able to find a compromise. The cuts that were supposed to be so draconian that they would never be allowed to take effect have now been allowed to take effect. Some experts are predicting that the way these cuts are constructed will put our fragile recovery in jeopardy. It is possible that furloughed Federal workers and other reduced government spending will cause ripple effects, lowering employment and possibly sending us back into recession.

The worst part about all of this is that it did not need to happen. It is a completely manufactured crisis which was the solution to another completely manufactured crisis. Government dysfunction at its best.

Since 1940, there have only been 12 years where our government has run a budget surplus. This has resulted in a debt of over $16,000,000,000,000. The Treasury Department is limited by the debt ceiling as to how much it can borrow to pay for the spending Congress has already approved. As it reaches this ceiling, Congress must enact legislation to allow more borrowing. Throughout history, this was a housekeeping measure. Party whips would allow some legislators, including Senator Obama, to cast dissenting votes, but never at the risk of defeating the measure. This changed in 2011.

Trying to cut the deficit by refusing to raise the debt ceiling is the equivalent of someone balancing their household budget by not paying their credit card debt. The spending had already occurred; it just had to be paid for. Not sending in the monthly payment is just going to get our interest rate increased and will cause us to incur a late fee. The fact that the Republicans in Congress were willing to risk default was enough to lower our county’s credit rating. The crisis was manufactured, but it still had to be resolved. The President’s solution was sequestration.

Sequestration was a method of encouraging a Super Committee by automatically making cuts that both parties would find unacceptable if they did not agree on ways to actually reduce the deficit. Since these cuts were not actually supposed to take place, they were not designed to be pretty. With few exceptions, every line item in the budget is cut evenly, giving no thought at all to what is reasonable and least harmful.

To go back to our household budgets, imagine if we tried to save money by evenly cutting back on every item that we spend. Delaying some expenditures is going to cost us more money in the future. That leaky pipe in the front yard is not going to fix itself and delaying the repair may actually make the job more difficult. Reducing some payments may be downright perplexing. If the bank will not refinance your mortgage, just how do you reduce your monthly payments?

This is the situation in which our government has put itself. No one is going to argue that finding wasteful spending within the budget is a bad idea, but sequestration does not do that. It also does not guarantee that corporations like General Electric, Wells Fargo and Boeing will actually pay taxes. In the tax years from 2008 to 2010, these profitable companies did not. It simply fires a gun in the dark and hopes to find a target. More than likely we will shoot ourselves in the foot.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that our foot has suffered. Our country’s politics often make us do things that are contrary to our interests. For example, consider our blood supply.

How many times have we heard that blood supplies are dangerously low? Yet we continue to exclude 50,000 healthy men from donating because at some point since 1977 they have had sex with another man. It does not matter if safe sex practices are consistently observed, that monogamy is practiced or if the person has tested negative for HIV. Sex with another man, even once, excludes a person from donating for life.

Compare this to the heterosexual population that is not asked about their safe sex practices or their number of partners. If you are a woman who has had sex with someone in a risk group, you are excluded from donating for only 12 months. The same waiting period applies to someone who has received payment in return for sex. The lifetime ban for men who have had sex with men is not consistent with other blood donation rules.

When inconsistencies exist there is a question of discrimination. The ban was put into place when the AIDS crisis was new and there was legitimate fear. However, we now have more informed scientific knowledge and accurate ways of testing both people and the blood supply. Given the choice between bleeding to death and accepting screened blood from a gay or bisexual man, I would take the blood.

The aim Conservatives aim can be just as good when dealing with their own. Chris Christie is a highly popular Republican governor in a blue state, which places him in the pack of possible GOP candidates in the 2016 Presidential race. However, he has raised Conservative criticism for praising “President Obama’s handling of Hurricane Sandy just days before the presidential election” and slamming Republican leaders for delaying aid for those affected by the storm. He was conspicuously absent from the list of those invited to the Conservative Political Action Conference, while proven losers like Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are all scheduled to speak.

It has been said that the first thing that you should do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging. At least we know if this advice is not taken, we will have Obamacare to repair the damage to our foot.