Aiming At Austerity

Today is Election Day in Jordan and according to many of my friends here, they are not terribly heartened by the prospects of the new Parliament. “They’re not very honorable,” has been the common theme—“all they want to do is raise my taxes,” my colleagues have cried about the candidates.

Well, it is a national holiday today so everyone can go vote, and I spent some of the morning watching the first episode of the TV show, “Rome,” and while watching the shenanigans in the Senate (the one in Rome, I mean) I couldn’t help but think about election days yet again. As I watched the bitter partisanship playing out in ancient Rome on TV, around the time of Julius Caesar, seeing the machinations and mendacity, well, it made me think the French just have it all together in that glorious phrase, “The more things change, the more they stay the same!”

I did a little work on-line looking up some facts (far more enticing than writing more college recommendations—I am only 60% finished with this year’s crop for whom I agreed to write). Let’s take a little look-see at the United States. I learned that nearly half the population of my homeland is receiving government benefits—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps, etc. About 45% of adults pay no federal income tax at all. The U.S. government is taking in $2.2 trillion in tax revenues this year (and for those who think I am tax-free, may I remind you of the tax code: in my first year abroad I paid taxes in both the US and Jordan for the same salary in Jordan! Now I just pay taxes on investments in the US, and oh yeah, I pay taxes in Jordan) and I almost lost my train of thought… The U.S. government is taking in $2.2 trillion in tax revenues this year, and spending $3.5 trillion. Without some dramatic policy changes, we’ll be borrowing more than $1 trillion from China and other nations every year for the next 10 years. Add up all the numbers and what do you get? Paralysis? Incoherence?

Two years ago Americans panicked at the polls and fired the Republicans, and last week, Democrats lost a lot of seats in Congress as we get nervous again and worry about paying higher taxes. What about a sober reckoning of reality? Is it imminent? Hmmmm…maybe we should surrender benefits? Reduce our international ambitions? Gulp, pay higher taxes? It’s just not the American way.

As I listened to the bitter debates from afar, it was finger pointing in the most glorious sense. The Democrats are, of course lambasted as Big Government—however, let’s remember that during the Bush years private enterprise was given a free hand, and Republicans dismantled governmental regulation, leaving banks free to take ever-crazier gambles until the entire financial system blew up. And other commentators will tell us that the government has no right to spend wealthy taxpayers’ money on social engineering policies, since they say long experience shows us that it is the free market, not government, that creates real economic growth.

And another bizarre element I read about from here is Newt Gingrich blaming President Obama’s actions as president as “outside our comprehension” because they reflect his “Kenyan anti-colonial” worldview." Oh, that is why things have been bad! We have a ticked-off African running the show. But listening to the Tea Party movement picks up on this anger certainly. This movement is filled with resentment against a ‘THEM,” liberal elites, and Wall Street bankers and the president with a suspiciously foreign-sounding name…all angry over the deficit, and sounding like they want to dismantle the federal government and return to local rule.

So the big debate, as I hear across the pond and cyberwaves, is what about extending the 2001 Bush tax cuts for 98% of the population, or also for 100% of the population? Ezra Klein of The Washington Post pointed out that option 1 would add about $3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, while option 2 would add $4 trillion. How’s that for fiscal restraint? What should we do? How do we aim at austerity? Cut health care? That’s rationing! Cut defense spending? Not while we have ongoing wars or potential ones on the horizon.

The best solution, of course, is to cut somebody else’s benefits—but not mine or yours. Oh, Lord, give us austerity…just not yet.

Oh, my. I wish my Jordanian friends well today as they choose leaders who will steer this ship, and I think I will retreat to another episode of “Rome”—at least I know what will happen to the Republic as I watch the soap opera…and I can admire the cool architecture and production values as I wonder what we will do in our Senate.

Tomorrow I promise I will come back to my postcards from Kathmandu.