Throngs hopeless before the masters

My sister sent a commentary by Charlie Reese, retired journalist of the Orlando Sentinel, titled 545 vs. 300 million. It was annoying enough (sorry sis) that I started looking into it. Shortly after that my dad sent an email of the same thing asking me to comment on it. I appreciate that he asks for my opinion. I had no difficulty finding the text online, in several places too. Even Snopes, the site that debunks fraudulent claims had a copy (though all they say is that Reese did write it, the first version was back in the 1980s and it was updated most recently (for personnel changes) in 2008). So here we go. Reese wrote in part:

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

According to this claim, 300 million people are helpless before 545 rulers (435 representatives, 100 senators, 1 president, 9 justices). All we need to do is not reelect anybody and all our problems will go away. I don't buy it.

Fortunately, I blogged about this topic a week ago. The ideas here are not original with me. The source of the problem in governments of all levels is a paradox at the core of the American voter. We want government to solve all of our problems. We don't want to pay for any of the solutions. Politicians are quite happy to exploit that paradox for their own advantage. That means we've always had the opportunity to throw the bums out. But we happen to like the way our bum brings home the pork for our district or state while leaving all the other districts and states -- and our children -- to pay for our goodies. The president creates the wildly unbalance federal budget because if he didn't he would have a voter revolt -- don't you dare touch my Social Security, Medicare, mortgage deduction, and farm subsidy. You had better make sure I and my neighborhood and country are safe too. We've come to expect all those government programs to be a right.

The news (by which I mean NPR) has had several stories about Obama signing an executive order to form a bipartisan commission to bring down the deficit. He did it that way because Congress couldn't get the votes to form the commission -- something about several GOP senators changing their vote at the last minute while accusing the Dems of making the whole deficit reduction thing one big meaningless show. Right. Like the GOP wasn't going to do the same if they had their own commission. That's a way of saying that, in spite of heated rhetoric, the GOP isn't any more serious about the deficit than the Dems. Need an example? Scott Brown, that new senator from Mass. campaigned on fiscal responsibility. Where to cut? His answer: eliminate waste. I know the government is famously inefficient, but there is no way to trim $1.6 trillion by cutting only waste (then again, he might be hiding the GOP definition of waste). Keep in mind that amount is about 20% of the whole budget.

The end of the Reese tirade that I got from my sister (which wasn't on the online sources, so I doubt it was by Reese, besides I've seen it before) listed the various American taxes (telephone usage taxes included) and then says:

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world.

Let's see, 100 years ago was 1910. Being the most prosperous country in the world wasn't all that hard to do, neither was having the largest middle class. That could mean the middle class was actually quite tiny compared to now and the poor of the time had no social safety net. Other emails that get passed around also note that in 1910 the average life expectancy was 47, while it is about 76 now. Health is much better, roads are much better -- highways exist now, I'm glad I have a phone that can be taxed, my parents get Social Security, my other sister is on Medicaid, and America has a pretty good military. No, I don't want to go back to conditions of 1910.

While I'm on the subject of deficits, reader Daniel did reply to my last posting on that issue. He remains unconvinced that now is a good time for America to face its mounting debts in spite of my elaborate explanation. You can read his response at the end of that posting. In turn, he hasn't convinced me, and I'll leave it at that.