Wishing Away Facts and Calling It “Compromise”

Whenever conventional career politicians such as Joe Biden declare, “It’s a compromise,” and claim that’s a good thing — hold onto your wallets and purses.

In this compromise, Barack Obama got the most important thing he wanted: Extension of the debt limit into 2013, past his anticipated reelection. Obama bragged that the bill contains several trillion dollars of “immediate” spending cuts — over the next ten years.

Only in the make-believe world of political Washington can something both be “immediate” and span a ten-year period at the same time. The bill also forces additional spending cuts, using a trigger, before Christmas. Either more cuts are made, or across the board, automatic spending cuts will occur.

Both sides know these across the board cuts will never occur. Most Republicans won’t allow the Pentagon to be cut, and no Democrat will allow cuts to just about anything else.

Entitlement programs, by everyone’s description, remain untouched by this ‘compromise.’ They’re busting the budget and destroying the economy, but nobody will address them. “Bipartisan” is clearly no more of a solution than past Republican or past Democratic control of government was.

Are these cuts even for real? It’s anybody’s guess. Several trillion dollars of cuts over ten years is a lot for any Democrat. The typical Democrat, and a few Republicans too, would like to RAISE spending by a trillion dollars a day, not cut it. They see no problem with the infinite expansion of government debt through fraudulent, politicized currency manipulation.

One thing’s for sure. If Obama likes this bill, you can be sure it’s not a good one. Be afraid that Democrats and conventional Republicans are happy over this bill. They probably already see ways of getting around the supposed “cuts.”

Compromise is futile, because both parties are carrying out the same majority will. ‘Give us the benefits of capitalism and the freebies of socialism.’ Socialism fails every time it’s tried, because it’s based on coercion, bureaucracy, and central economic calculation. Exactly how do you think Medicare got so broke?

But Americans (a majority of them, the ones who call for ‘compromise’) feel like they’re somehow different. They think that in America, we can have the best of both worlds. We can have unlimited government protection while at the same time enjoy a thriving economy, one which improves every generation.

It will never happen.

The elusive ‘compromise’ sought out by our establishment politicians, Boehner and McConnell no less than Barack and Biden, is based on this desire to resolve an impossible contradiction. Put simply, you cannot have your capitalism and eat it, too.

In all the uproar over the debt crisis in Washington D.C., we forget that this crisis was created by actual people. These people include politicians in both parties and (gasp!) the voters themselves. A majority of Americans continue to insist, “No new taxes! Cut spending! Well … not THAT program; I like that program.”

Raise taxes on “the rich,” they say. And who are the rich? Basically, anyone who makes more money than you do. As a result, we have a deficit and a national debt too large for sophisticated mathematicians to calculate.

The Tea Party was screwed by this compromise, and most of them know it. They’re the sober ones amidst the spending addicts. The crisis in Washington is the climax of decades of reckless and mindless wealth redistribution “for the good of society.” In practice this means: The good of the politicians getting votes by spending other peoples’ money. The addiction is fueled by politicians who will not say no.

Well, guess what? The spending addicts have finally run out of other people’s money. Plus, the economy has stopped growing because of an administration that hates the private sector, increasing taxes and regulation rather than reducing them.

I am a mental health professional. I can’t say that I have ever encountered the level of insanity that is today’s politics. It’s legalized plunder, and the pirates are our elected officials. The insanity lies in treating it like it’s something civilized and reasonable. It isn’t, and it never was.

It’s easy to blame and hate politicians, but they’re not the real enemy. The enemy is us — those of us, at least, who won’t face the truth that we can’t run up a credit card into infinity without eventually paying some kind of economic price. Like it or not, America has hit fiscal bottom.

Phony band-aids aside, the crisis is not over. It’s just beginning.