A fundamental question in all negotiations is, “What do you want?” Of course, there are other questions each party must answer but everything hinges on knowing what you want. Absent that, all negotiations are just exercises in defeating the other guy for no clear purpose other than the opportunity to do a little chest beating. Not much good happens from that.
Indeed, On Thursday Congressman Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) said of the government shutdown, “We’re not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.” And, in fact, nothing good came from that, except for Stutzman’s hand getting slapped by other Tea Party people for making them all look stupid.
The answer to the “What do you want?” question for each side in our ongoing DC dysfunction is “government.” The Democrats want government to be an active agent in society. The Republicans continue to follow the slick campaign quip of Ronald Reagan, “Government is the problem.” That is to say, what Republicans want is to do away with nearly all government. To that point, Grover Norquist has told us that he wants to reduce government in size such that he can “drown it in a bathtub.” And, due to 2010 redistricting, the Republican extremists have managed to shut down much of the federal government and have threatened to default on the nation’s debt in pursuit of their government destruction goal. Apparently, nothing is sacred to them in their quest – not even our national honor nor the world economy.
This is not a situation where each party is equally to blame for the mess we’re in. This is the result of a few dozen radicals holding the United States and the world economy hostage.
The question for all the rest of us is, “What do you want?” If you want to terminate all the things you have come to expect from government, then the extremists’ view and their Machiavellian methods are for you.
On the other hand, what you want might include the protections that only a functioning government can provide, things like meat inspection, careful review of drugs before they’re used on your children, air traffic control so that the airplane on which Granny is riding doesn’t go bump in the night with another airplane, ensuring that our kids get an education for success both today and tomorrow, building and maintaining our bridges and interstate highways, all national security functions, funding the research work at the National Institutes of Health so that when you get sick there is medical help for you and so many other important functions. If that is what you want, then it just might be a good idea to contact your representative and senators in Congress and tell them to shape up, especially if one of them is a Tea Party zealot with his/her gun pointed at Uncle Sam (aka you).
As always, the behavior you tolerate is the behavior you get.
One more time: What do you want?
Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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One Response to What Do You Want?
Dan Wallace October 6, 2013
Jack, yesterday I published a post that overwhelmingly agrees with what you said. In the interest of clarity, however, I think it’s worth pointing out that every government function you mentioned other than the military falls into the <10% of the budget that is categorized as "discretionary spending." I once heard Eliot Spitzer (of whom I'm not a fan, but he was right) say that the Federal government runs an army and an insurance company. It does a large number of relatively small other things. At my last check, defense accounted for about 30% of spending, entitlements (the "insurance company") about 40%, and debt service about 20%. If he were here to advise us, my favorite economist, Willie Sutton, would tell us that's where we have to look to solve the spending/debt problem. Why? Because that's where the money is.