by Matthew Monos
After the Washingtonian drama of the past few weeks, the nation is now reflecting, and seeing the tangible proof of the damage which our politicians have once again done to our economy. As I have perused various conservative blogs, forums and Twitter accounts, the reaction of choice seems to be anger. This anger stems from feeling betrayed, and again lied to (I imagine the liberals may feel the same anger). Many of the conservative feel that many of our "hardline" conservatives pulled "Scott Browns" on us. Without thinking too deeply, this makes sense. We, the American people, got more rubbish placed on the weighty pile of crap that Obama had already placed and stifled the economy with! Thus, by this reasoning, people are already calling for the head of men like Allen West and Paul Ryan, for voting for the debt ceiling bill.
But wait. There are some factors that need to be considered first. First, the Republican Party controls a little more than 1/2 (55% to be exact) of the House of Representatives. They do not control neither the Senate nor the Presidency. Therefore, the Republicans control about 1/2 of 1/3 of the entire legislative process. That number technically would translate to an 18% control over all legislation. However, let's remember, the situation is even worse. Not all 240 people constituting that 1/2 of the House are even conservatives. So statistically it's probably more like 3/5 of 1/2 of 1/3 (Hint that takes us down to 10%). Of course all these numbers fail to account that it's just the House "we" control. The Senate can kill anything the House passes. Just for the sake of debate, let's say we had managed to get our debt bill through to Obama via Senate support. He would have just vetoed it, and we'd have to vote on the thing again. Fact is that won't happen. The Republican Party is a minority on The Hill, so expecting things to go our way is naive and unrealistic. Notice I said Republican Party. Conservatives are even more of a minority.
The second factor is this: this whole situation was put off for far too long. Now, I doubt we could have, but if this whole process was started earlier, we might have been able to work something better out. Because the whole thing was put off until the 11th hour, the bill that was passed, became the only option. There was no time for anything else useful to be written, had the House actually voted down the bill on the 1st of August. The fact remains, default was not an option. What was done had to be done.
Now, as we address the third factor, we reach a huge point in all of this that we need to remember. First, we (conservatives) are a minority on The Hill. Getting any deal, anything that doesn't raise the debt ceiling by some huge number (larger than what it was raised by), is both impressive and a success. The reason that such a statement can be made is because we, the conservatives, are merely plugging the dam. Just like the boy in that old American story, our conservative Representatives are merely plugging the dam with their fingers, stemming the liberal tide of Obama and his goons in the Senate. In that story, the boy stays at the dam all night, waiting until the adults of the village find him and make the necessary repairs. So too, the conservatives are stemming the liberal flow until the "adults," i.e. the American voters come forward in 2012 to make the necessary repairs. The Congressional Conservatives who voted for the bill did so for three important reasons. 1) The country simply cannot default. 2) They can't vote against it and allow some Dem challenger for the seat claim that they wanted the country to default. They need to come back in 2012 to be part of putting us back on track. And, 3) If they hadn't voted for it, and the bill was killed, Obama would have raised the debt ceiling himself.
Now granted, this would have probably brought legal challenges and such but think, would it have been better if Obama had raised it himself? Perhaps significantly? At least in this bill, Congress is required to CONSIDER a Balanced Budget Amendment. Of course, I like most of you are nearly positive it will not pass, but at least that's now a thought. Can you imagine how much more the markets would have fallen today, had the (supposed) leader of the free world raised his own debt-ceiling in at least possible violation of his own Constitution? Here's my guess, it would have been a lot worse than the already bad market plunge we've seen.
In fact, our conservatives haven't abandonded us. They're fighting for us right now. They're holding pro forma sessions of Congress every three days, preventing Congress from going into technical recess. Therefore, Obama won't make any more recess appointments this time around. This is a story that really should be talked about a bit more right now. Heck, Allen West, the very man people are now decrying, is in on this deal to serve and protect the interests of the American people.
So anyways, before you jump all over our conservatives, just think about it a bit and give them a chance before you try to undermine them.
No comments:
Post a Comment