No Thanks for the Political Class

by Irwin Stelzer

Weekly Standard
November 26, 2011

Greece and Italy may be ungovernable, but America is ungoverned. The president ducked out of the country for an Asian tour while the supercommittee tried to reach agreement on a plan to cut the deficit. But the Democrats refused to offer specific cuts in entitlement spending, despite a Republican agreement to modifications of the tax code that would produce billions in new revenue, most of it by withdrawing from the wealthy various opportunities to use special provisions to reduce their tax burden. This increase in tax receipts, largely from the rich, did not satisfy the Democrats’ insistence on a $1 trillion increase, to come from higher tax rates on “the rich.” It might take a sharp reaction from the market to force the politicians to veer off the road to ruin on which they are taking the country.

This stalemate suits the president, whose campaign strategy is to blame the Republican Congress for refusing to raise tax rates of “millionaires and billionaires.” The failure of the supercommittee to agree will trigger spending cuts of $1.2 trillion over the next decade, starting in 2013, absent some change in the law. The largest will fall on the military, reducing it to something like its pre-World War II level of effectiveness, according to Leon Panetta, Obama’s defense secretary. The president, who has always wanted to cut the U.S. defense establishment down to size and rely more on international organizations to implement U.S. foreign policy, is undoubtedly unperturbed at the prospect. Only a threat by Panetta to resign might force the president to allow a change in the law, but such a surrender of power and perks is not fashionable these days.

With the president having foresworn governing in favor of campaigning, and members of Congress paralyzed by ideological differences and obsessed with their reelection chances, the absence of legislators and lobbyists this Thanksgiving weekend—they are among the estimated 42.5 million Americans who took to the cars, trains, and planes—left the government no less a force than it will be when they return on Monday. And return they will: A visit to constituents is one thing, remaining permanently among them quite another. There is no Cincinnatus in this crowd.

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