Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Post-Election Wednesday

Well, the Republicans won 58 seats in the house that they didn't have and now have a 239-185 majority and they gained five seats in the senate resulting in a 49-46 minority. The media is painting the tea party as extremist and, to be sure, there are some extreme elements in it, but the same can be said for the "Rally for Sanity," (about which Mary Katherine Ham demonstrates that there is idiocy on both sides of the electorate). In any event, the next two years ought to be interesting. Here are some predictions:

Good things:
  • more fiscal responsibility
  • a thorough reading of Obamacare (which even many Democrats admit they hadn't read) to see just what exactly is in it.
  • a relaxation of the stranglehold that the unions have over jobs and businesses
  • less willingness to bail out entities that do not deserve it (e.g. California)
  • more accountability in spending (The WaPo discovered that the TARP money went from the taxpayers to the companies to the politicians who voted for TARP. Neat circle there.)
Bad things:
  • the introduction of more "academic freedom" bills in statehouses across the land
  • more attempts by emboldened young earth creationists, under the cover of "a mandate from the people," to introduce creationism in public schools all across the country
  • less science funding in areas of biology and genetics—anything that can be connected to evolution.
I hope I am wrong about the bad things but I am betting not.

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5 comments:

  1. Okay, so I have to take issue with most of your account of the upside.

    more fiscal responsibility

    Maybe, but only because the government is divided. When the GOP had Congress and the white house, they spent like drunken sailors. (See this graph)

    a relaxation of the stranglehold that the unions have over jobs and businesses

    Union membership has been in decline for the last 40 years, regardless of the party in power (see this graph). Having a Republican house of reps will almost certainly not accelerate that trend.

    Also, private sector union membership is less than 8%. Public sector membership is almost 37%. Unions don't have a stranglehold on businesses, they have a stranglehold on bureaucracies. And I doubt the GOP will dislodge any public sector unions.

    less willingness to bail out entities that do not deserve it (e.g. California)

    Maybe. But the GOP was in charge when TARP was passed. Don't underestimate their propensity to bail out bad actors.

    more accountability in spending (The WaPo discovered that the TARP money went from the taxpayers to the companies to the politicians who voted for TARP. Neat circle there.)

    Again, this may pan out because the federal government is now divided. But this certainly isn't because Republicans have a proven track record for accountability in spending. Under their watch, $12 billion was shipped to Iraq in cash on pallets. I don't think they saved all the receipts.

    I think it's time to face the fact that the U.S. doesn't have a responsible political party for grown-ups. Divided government is our best option at this point.

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  2. AMW, the debt began to rise in earnest during the first Bush presidency and then took off during the Clinton years. I agree that during the first half of the 2000s, the Republicans spent like drunken sailors (remember the "throw the bums out" movement?) But the rise in the debt since the Democrats took over congress in 2006 has been frightful.

    Unions: you are correct. I was focusing on public employee unions, although the history of the US is littered with private sector union disasters (US Steel, UAW, Delta airlines) in which the union contracts forced a thriving industry or company out of work.

    TARP: the GOP was not in charge when TARP was passed. Bush was president, but both houses of congress were democrat-controlled. His mistake was signing the bill.

    I hope it does pan out, but many of the tax and spend republicans lost their shirts in the midterms when Bush was president (the 12 million dollar pallet crowd) because the people saw them for what they were—hypocrits. This may be a different crowd. One thing that may happen is that, if they don't govern the way the people that put them there want, we may get a third party in 2012.

    Do you agree with the "bad things" category?

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  3. Whoops! I retract the TARP statement. Should have checked my facts there.

    As for the debt, if you study that graph I believe you'll find it started its ascent under Reagan, continued through Bush the Elder, and then began to taper off under Clinton. Under W it started to launch again, and took a big spike right at the end of his term (with the start of TARP). But, unfortunately, the trend just got worse over the last two years.

    I'm hoping for a repeat of the '90's, where a Democratic president fights with a Republican Congress and we get something approaching fiscal responsibility and expansion of free trade.

    I do agree more or less with your Bad Things list. Except that will be due more to gains at the state gov't level. Ultimately I don't think Congress has much to do with the first two bullet points on the list.

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  4. "I'm hoping for a repeat of the '90's, where a Democratic president fights with a Republican Congress and we get something approaching fiscal responsibility and expansion of free trade."

    Sorry, but it's not going to happen. In the 2006 and 2008 waves moderate Republicans were wiped out. In 2010, the Democratic Blue Dogs were. In 2006, the Republicans interpreted their losses as they were not being conservative enough, not realizing the moderates were in "unsafe" swing districts. I hear parallel rumblings now with Democrats, viz. Pelosi running for Minority Leader. There's no one left for commmon ground so this time everything will seize up. Sometimes this is good but sometimes when you have difficult problems such as long term debt, global warming and out-of-control health care costs doing nothing is often the worst option.

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  5. "I hope it does pan out, but many of the tax and spend republicans lost their shirts in the midterms when Bush was president (the 12 million dollar pallet crowd) because the people saw them for what they were—hypocrits. This may be a different crowd."

    Nope. Senator-elect Rob Portman was Bush's OMB Director from 2006-2007. Politifact put it this way:


    "As OMB director from May 26, 2006, to August 3, 2007, Portman was deeply involved in the fiscal year 2008 budget process. (The fiscal 2007 budget would have been handled by his predecessor.)

    The fiscal 2008 deficit of nearly $459 billion was more than twice the fiscal 2007 deficit, which approached $161 billion."


    What the people did was to throw out the immediately previous bums, not knowing that the "new guys" know the 202 area code quite well.

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