The GOP drive to make us more reactionary
By Max J. Castro
Wisconsin produces more cheese than Switzerland, and a steady supply of progressive politicians. Indeed, from the early decades of the 20th century – when Robert M. La Follette, a champion of progressivism, served the state as Governor, U.S. Representative, and U.S. Senator, to the 21st century, when Wisconsin elected Russ Feingold, arguably the most liberal member of the Senate (until his defeat in the Democratic “shellacking” of 2010) – nobody would confuse the political culture of Wisconsin with that of Alabama.
Alas, the state still produces plenty of cheese, but American tastes have become globalized and many people today prefer a French brie or a Spanish manchego to the stuff made in the Badger State. As for politics, the defeat of Russ Feingold was only one of several clear signs of a sharp turn to the right. Indeed, Wisconsin Republican politicians can make a strong case that they are playing the leading role in the campaign toward a really reactionary America.
Virtually all the newly elected Republican state governors would like to do away with unions, especially those who represent government employees, this season’s assigned GOP scapegoats. And indeed, many of these freshly minted GOP state chief executives are trying their best to bust the unions. But it was Wisconsin Gov. Scott Parker – the recipient of many campaign dollars and much good will from the Koch brothers, ultra-right billionaires and veteran funders of panoply of reactionary causes and organizations – who burst first out of the box.
And Parker succeeded in virtually crushing the public-sector unions, though he did it through legislation rather than the old time favorites, bullets and baseball bats. He pushed through his anti-union bill despite prolonged and massive protests that paralyzed the state capitol for weeks.
Parker set the example that it could be done, even in a historically progressive state and in the face of fierce opposition. His triumph encouraged other Republican governors, some of whom already have achieved, or are on the way to achieving, a long-held GOP aspiration, a state work force deprived of any weapons to defend itself from exploitation and arbitrary management.
Probably an even more lethal Wisconsin contribution to the current American political circus than Parker is one Paul Ryan, the Republicans’ reputed whiz kid, anointed de facto GOP budget czar by the Republican leadership in the House. It was Representative Ryan, House Budget Committee Chairman, who recently proposed a budget plan that is the most brazen exercise in class warfare on behalf of the rich and against everyone else, especially the poor. Nothing written by Dickens or Marx can equal it as an exemplar of sheer cruelty, dishonesty, and greed. One would have to coin a new word – draconian being too mild to fit the case – to describe the nature of the cuts envisioned by Ryan.
Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were content with viciously gutting the programs that serve “only” the poor and disabled while lowering taxes on the rich to ridiculously low levels. Paul Ryan too wants to do both of these things – to beggar the poor and benefit the wealthy – only more thoroughly. But Ryan doesn’t stop there. He wants to kill Medicare, a program once considered politically untouchable which has proven extremely effective and serves everyone, especially the middle class.
The pretext most often cited by Parker, Ryan, and their ilk is that it is imperative to reduce the deficit or risk imminent dire consequences. If that requires inflicting pain and suffering so be it; a lifesaving amputation of a gangrenous limb also inflicts pain and suffering. Thus on last Sunday’s NBC program Meet the Press, Ryan defended “redesigning” (it’s unclear whether the euphemism is Ryan’s or MSNBC’s Tom Curry who reported on the story) Medicaid and Medicare by saying that it is imperative to do it in order to avert a sovereign debt crisis.
Never mind that the deficit is the result of the economic crisis brought on by the financial deregulation championed mainly by Republicans (and also some corporate-friendly Democrats like President Bill Clinton and his Treasury Secretary Robert Ruvin) plus Bush’s multiple wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, the war on terror).
Yet Ryan targets with an eagle eye to whom the pain and suffering is to be inflicted in service to the greater good—and who is to reap ever-richer rewards. Thus his plan calls for lowering the highest tax bracket from the very low 36 percent (by international and historical standards: the top tax bracket under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower was over 90 percent) engineered by George W. Bush to a measly 25 percent.
How, you may ask, does lowering the taxes on the rich help balance the budget (while lowering unemployment at the same time)? The justification harkens back to an old, discredited theory that went by the name of the Laffer curve (which should have been the laugher curve) that holds that the lower the tax rates the greater the government revenues.
The fallacy of this theory is self-evident but it has also been disproved by history – big tax cuts under Reagan and the younger Bush led to record deficits – and exposed as bunk by its principal architect, Reagan’s budget director David Stockman. Even George H.W. Bush called it “voodoo economics” – an insult to a Haitian religious tradition inherited from Africa.
Moreover, the grotesquely bloated, grossly inefficient, and ever-rising military budget, which by some estimates accounts for over half of all government expenditures – and more generally the enormous cost of maintaining the far-flung U.S. empire – do not come within a mile of Ryan’s razor.
In addition, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, among others, has pointed out the tremendous irrationality of the deficit-cutting craze that currently afflicts much of the Washington political class and the pundits that infest the corporate media and much of the mainstream public media as well. The insanity of cutting government spending, at a time when private spending is sufficient to power only a lame and uncertain recovery, is the stuff of Economics 101.
What is more disturbing is that President Obama, who should and may know better, is among those joining in on the deficit cutting delusion. He boasts, in a statement announcing an eleventh-hour (literally) stopgap agreement with Republicans to avoid a government shutdown, that it amounted to the largest cut in government spending in history.
Obama neglected to mention that it also represents one of the biggest presidential cave-ins in history. In fact, Obama ended up agreeing to cuts deeper than those demanded by Republicans as their initial bargaining position. In other words, as George W. Bush would say, GOP Speaker of the House John Boehner ate Obama’s lunch. The Republicans kept upping their demands and Obama blinked every time. And this was only the first skirmish in many budget battles to come. What will the Republicans demand in a few weeks in order to allow the debt ceiling to rise?
Regarding the long-term deficit problem, Krugman, one of the few economists who foresaw the financial and economic catastrophe of 2008 long before it happened, is especially trenchant and scathing while dissecting Ryan’s proposal. Besides calling it “ludicrous and cruel,” Krugman demonstrates the absurdity of the assumptions and conclusions built into the budget plan. And Ryan is the Republican intellectual knowledgeable of all things pertaining to the budget?
Ryan’s proposal won’t survive in the Senate or, failing that, Obama’s veto. The silver lining in this sea of clouds is that Ryan’s proposal has exposed more clearly than ever, where the Republicans want to go, what they stand for, and with whom they stand.
Gone is the smokescreen of “compassionate conservative” that peppered Bush’s campaign rhetoric. At the same time, Ryan has set a very high bar, and the Democrats seem unable to do anything except to plead to be allowed to jump over a somewhat lower altitude.
The Republicans are not getting 100 percent of what they want, but they are getting a lot and they are setting the terms of the discussion, in spite of the fact that their project amounts to economic insanity and is an insult against the most elementary sense of social justice – the latter admittedly a concept alien and inimical to rock-ribbed conservatives.
Unless the GOP drive to make this nation into a radically reactionary country is stopped by forces not yet on the horizon, we are in – most ordinary citizens anyway – for very hard times.
