Back to Basics

Yes, we are back to basics. In fact we are about to get down to the most basic of all basics, paying for what we’ve already bought.

I know, I haven’t been here for a while. But, as I am sitting here recovering/healing from a fractured knee it seemed to me a way to fill some time (thanks for all the well wishes I know you are thinking and some will send): And then  it seemed to me there is a subject that needs to be revisited because if you thought the several failed votes to deform health care were a circus and a nightmare, not to mention a defilement of basic decency, then wait because there is worse to come with one difference.

The difference is this: The worse to come has a deadline, an inescapable deadline.

So, here we are in early August and if you recall back in the Spring I did a couple of pieces about that pesky thing called the debt ceiling coming around again. Well it took a little longer than I thought it would or estimated perhaps though not by much and here it is, just upon us.

Yes, the U.S. Department of the Treasury has declared Sept. 29 default day, that’s the day the United States of America won’t be able to pay its bills unless the debt ceiling is raised.

Now of course we know that on the occasions when this had to be done during the presidency of Barrack Obama, Democrats had to provide about three-fourths of the votes even though Republicans have had control of the House of Representatives since January 2011 and have controlled both the House and Senate from Jan. 2015 forward.

The Democrats had a clear interest in doing that, well two actually. First they understood it is the necessary, absolutely most routine required business of the United States to pay its bills and that this is done periodically by raising the ceiling on the amount the U.S. has borrowed — not will borrow but has borrowed.

So any increase now of the debt ceiling is not to pay future bills but to pay the ones we’ve already run up as a nation since the last time they did this, which is over a year ago because it was timed to avoid having it come up again during 2016 — the election year. Neither party wanted the drama while running for election and President Obama had seen the show too many times to want to see it but that one more time.

So, for example, all that money we have since thrown away in Afghanistan since late 2015, in a war that in its 17th year is the longest war in American history; the war without purpose, pause, end or strategy:  The money’s been borrowed and now we have to authorize paying the most recent installment on the war loan.

In a vintage WWII movie called “A Walk in the Sun” a character named (as I recall) Archie predicts to one of his platoon mates after the landing at Salerno that decades later they will still be fighting  “the war in Tibet”. Well Archie was sort of in the right locale and he was sort of right, we have a war without end, one for which the bills keep mounting and have to be paid. In 2035 the war will be in its 34th year — providing the Congress pays for it when debt ceiling lifts come around.

Now then, who wants to be the one to explain all this debt ceiling stuff to the president? No? You don’t want to do that? Too complicated right? Who knew? All these complications.

Well, none of us has to do it. Put that one on Gen. Kelly’s to do list.

So there plainly is historic and present fiscal necessity and responsibility in this equation, which simply is that we gotta pay the bills we have already run up.

But what about the political equation?

Given that Republicans control both houses of Congress AND THE WHITE HOUSE this time, shouldn’t they really provide all their votes to raise the debt ceiling, which by the way will take 60 votes in the Senate, not 51, and, of course, the usual 218 votes in the House?

Well you would think they would and should. But since the Republicans habit has been to fail to provide more than about a quarter of the votes necessary on at least the past five or six of these occasions, that would mean pretty much all 48 Democrats in the Senate and pretty nearly all 190 odd Democrats in the House will need to vote to raise the debt ceiling to avert a national default.

Now why would they do that when the result will be that Republicans will turn around and run against them — calling them spendthrifts and borrowers as Republicans forever and ever and ever have done? Why would the Democrats do that,especially since they are no longer protecting a Democrat in the White House? Why would they do that when they don’t even have a normal Republican president, a normal, knowledgeable, sane political being in the White House?

I know, I know, the questions are rhetorical and I don’t know why they would either.

On Aug. 1, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer met with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin (always seems to me besides lacking the sense not to work for this president that the secretary is missing a vowel).

They met to talk about the debt ceiling. Mnuchin is reported to want “a clean” debt ceiling increase as is said to be the desire of McConnell.A clean increase means one without conditions, amendments, provisos; just a yes vote to raise the debt ceiling to whatever the necessary limit is for the next necessary period.

Republican really, really reactionary kooks, of which there are five or six dozen in the House and Senate — you know those guys that call themselves “the Freedom Caucus” and people like Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas — always want to attach conditions and negotiate this most basic piece of the function of the U.S. government — the raising, spending AND MAKING GOOD ON THE RAISING AND SPENDING OF FEDERAL MONEY ( thought it’s a primary constitutional duty they have).

This had never been a problem in the entire 229 year history of constitutional government of the United States — at least not until these folks started making it one along about 2011.

A clean debt ceiling increase is what Schumer has always argued for and backed, as the Democrats always have done in both houses and one would think would be ready to do now.

But why should they do that this time if they have to provide the vast majority of the votes to a federal government in which both elected branches are controlled by Republicans?

And if they do, what should they get in return, ask for in return, in fact demand in return?

Sure, I have a list as long as your arm and I am sure Schumer does and that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi does as well. But is there any reason to expect that Republicans will deal and deal fairly?

Why in the world would anyone make a deal with McConnell, the one and only man in the history of the United States to steal a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court using a pack of lies to do it? He was entrusted with the Constitution but he lost it.

Why would anyone make a deal with at least 49 people on the GOP side of the Senate and the more than 218 on the House side who voted flat-out to throw between 20 million and 30 million Americans off their health coverage and health care and several millions of them out of nursing homes into the street? Why would you trust people like this? Would you? I wouldn’t. Should Schumer and Pelosi and their members?

And then there’s himself in the White House. Who trusts him except his diminishing base, down now to about 37 percent?

So if Congress doesn’t get this done before going on recess in about 10 days then when  Congress returns after Labor Day — I’ve read, it has only 12 session days scheduled before Sept. 29 brings that debt ceiling default deadline — it could get pretty interesting.

It will be on all the cable news networks though of course they will tell you different things about it as they do about all things depending on your political flavor. You can bank on that even if the U.S.A. arrives at a moment when it won’t have any money in the bank.

In fact, starting the day after Labor Day, it will likely be on those networks every day, maybe all day. It’s going to be a new version of “Let’s Make A Deal”, except there will only be one door.

By then, they tell me, my knee should be back to normal although it is anyone’s guess whether the United States then or ever will be anywhere close to the same again.