Earlier this month, Moody’s downgraded Irish government debt to junk. Which left the Irish somewhat peeved. The Department of Finance pointed out that it had met all the “quantitative fiscal targets” imposed by the European Union, and the National Treasury Management Agency said that Ireland was sufficiently flush “to cover all its financing requirements until the end of 2013.”
Which is more than the government of the United States can say.
Advertisement
That’s not the only difference between the auld sod and America. In Europe, austerity is in the air, and in the headlines: “Italy Fast-Tracks Austerity Vote.” “Greek Minister Urges Austerity Consensus.” “Portugal to Speed Austerity Measures.” “Even Queen Faces Funding Squeeze in Austerity Britain.” The word has become so instantly ubiquitous that leftie deadbeats are already opposed to it: “Austerity Protest Takes Place in Dublin.” For the rentamob types, “austerity” is to this decade what “Bush” and “Iraq War” were to the last. It can’t be long before grizzled old rockers are organizing some all-star Rock against Austerity gala.
By contrast, nobody seems minded to “speed austerity measures” over here. The word isn’t part of the conversation — even though we’re broke on a scale way beyond what Ireland or Portugal could ever dream of. The entire Western world is operating on an unsustainable business model: If it were Borders or Blockbuster, it would be hoping to close the Greek and Portuguese branches but maybe hold on to the Norwegian one. In hard reality, like Borders only the other day, it would probably wind up shuttering them all. The problem is structural: Not enough people do not enough work for not enough of their lives. Developed nations have 30-year-old students and 50-year-old retirees, and then wonder why the shrunken rump of a “working” population in between can’t make the math add up.
By the way, demographically speaking, these categories — “adolescents” and “retirees” — are an invention of our own time: They didn’t exist a century ago. You were a kid till 13 or so. Then you worked. Then you died. As Obama made plain in his threat to Gran’ma last week that the August checks might not go out, funding non-productivity is now the principal purpose of the modern state. Good luck with that at a time when every appliance in your home is manufactured in Asia.
As I said, these are structural problems. In theory, they can be fixed. But, when you look at the nature of them, you’ve got to wonder whether they ever will be this side of societal collapse. Blockbuster went bankrupt because it was wedded to a 1980s technology and distribution system. In government, being merely a quarter-century obsolete would be a major achievement. The ruling party in Washington is wedded to the principle that an 80-year-old social program is inviolable: That’s like Blockbuster insisting in 2011 that there’s no problem with its business model for rentals of silent movies with live orchestral accompaniment. To be sure, there are some problems parking the musicians’ bus in residential streets, but nothing that can’t be worked out.
But “political reality” operates to different rules from humdrum real reality. Thus, the “debt ceiling” debate is regarded by most Democrats and a fair few Republicans as some sort of ghastly social faux pas by boorish conservatives: Why, everyone knows ye olde debt-limit vote is merely a bit of traditional ceremonial, like the Lord Chancellor walking backwards with the Cap of Maintenance and Black Rod shouting “Hats off, strangers!” at Britain’s Opening of Parliament. You hit the debt ceiling, you jack it up a couple trillion, and life goes on — or so it did until these GOP yahoos came along and decided to treat the vote as if it actually meant something.
Obama has done his best to pretend to take them seriously. He claimed to have a $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan. The court eunuchs of the press corps were impressed, and went off to file pieces hailing the president as “the grown-up in the room.” There is, in fact, no plan. No plan at all. No plan whatsoever, either for a deficit reduction of $4 trillion or $4.73. As is the way in Washington, merely announcing that he had a plan absolved him of the need to have one. So the president’s staff got out the extra-wide teleprompter and wrote a really large number on it, and simply by reading out the really large number the president was deemed to have produced a serious blueprint for trillions of dollars in savings. For his next trick, he’ll walk out on to the stage of Carnegie Hall, announce that he’s going to play Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 2, and, even though there’s no cello in sight and Obama immediately climbs back in his golf cart to head for the links, music critics will hail it as one of the most moving performances they’ve ever heard.
It says all you need to know about the current state of the debt ceiling "negotiations" that the House Democratic Congress is making their point using a video on the subject of the debt ceiling. A video from a radio address on the topic by . . . President Ronald Reagan!
Not only is the Republican Party no longer the "Party of Lincoln," it is no longer the Party of Reagan.
Mr. Steyn:
You were "raised right"!
Thank you for brilliantly (and satirically) attacking the dolts in Washington who are destroying this country.
CUT, CAP, BALANCE!!!!
Stay strong, Mr. Boehner!
"The domestic media coverage of this story has been almost laughably fraudulent"
Yes, and this is, to my eye, the big story - a Press of so little integrity, yet still able to sway (with complete bald face lying) large swaths of the govt educated (and dropouts, of course) populace. Our current leaders are utter incompetents (yet belligerent in Obama's case, a real charming combo) but the Press shares his goal, and so he's declared "the adult in the room."
The Founding Fathers were almost, but not quite, infallible in their design. Their Achilles Heel was a failure to imagine a Press that was actively opposed to the notion of bringing unvarnished facts to the American people for their review and judgment.
LKS, "...a Press that was actively opposed to the notion of bringing unvarnished facts to the American people for their review and judgment."
They can't admit their own bias, so it's hardly unexpected they can't present a rigorous intellectual examination of any given issue. Our populace has too high a % that won't read it, think about it, talk about it. We are the fast food, fast sound bite generation and react to realilty from that viewpoint. Sad.
Also, it never occurred to them that we would have a judiciary that would, with no apparent pangs of conscience whatsoever, completely forget the Constitution and just make it up as they went along.
Wow - that's the most perceptive, intelligent comment I've read in years. The press has truly failed in its duty: to inform the people so they can unflinchingly hold government to account.
I kinda like the "no plan" option the Left puts forward.
In that plan very real and very current cuts are made once we reach the Aug 2 "deadline" Obama has painted himself into a corner with.
Geithner and the President have been trying to construct a crisis environment with this ceiling debate to turn back the tide of last Nov.
The only problem with that is, they are opperating from the assumption that "we" can still afford to pay for overpromises, while Americans have seen a National Depression in which the loss of jobs, homes, and investments became very real. We have visions of Greece and Wisconsin on our TV screens. We read of California and other States and so many cities within them, that are teetering on bankruptcy. We are experiencing the very real cuts local and State governments are needing to impose on their citizens. And yes, we see the protesters fighting too burden "us" more so they may continue THEIR standard of living.
An awful lot of Americans can see very similar behavior from Obama, Reid, the gang of six, and just too many in Congress.
LKS - I would take issue with your comments on the press in the days of our Founding. The presss back then was actually quite involved in muckraking on both sides.
That being said, what they didn't anticipate was the total dumbing down of the population IMHO. They didn't have to deal with 50-60 years of revisionist history being heaped upon the people. They didn't have to deal with a socialist sytem pouring money upon them "helping" them to have their self-esteem raised. We have turned into a society where more people expect a check from the government while not having any skin in the game.
Politicians have been "spinning" since the first elections in this Country, but they didn't have quite the constituency or power they wield today. It is much easier to buy your votes today than it was 235 years ago.
Until this century, there doesn't seem to have been a body of "MSM" of degreed journalists who were claiming to be professional and objective. That makes them much more resistant to objectivity while wielding most of the tools and outnumbering all opposing voices. In short, this MSM is more dangerous than back in the day even if more careful about how they present their bias.
Great column as usual, and great job filling in for Rush yesterday. Your distinction between political reality and real reality, like Rush's Literalville, captures the essence of the moment.
In real reality one of the few absolute certainties is that "Medicare as we know it" will not survive. But the political reality is the claim to preserve MAWKI is the Democrats' preferred strategy. And there are enough voters who are as delusional as the party leadership that it may work, as it did in the recent upstate NY special election.
In real reality the Ryan budget is a just barely adequate small step in the right direction. Without Ryan's plan or something very close to it national economic collapse is a done deal. But that is mere real reality. In the world of political reality, Ryan-style spending restraint is "unacceptable."
The MSM is as separate from real reality as the Democratic leadership that they serve. The President proposed a budget that increased deficit spending until he leaves office. It was defeated 97-0 in a Senate controlled by his party. He has produced no proposals since other than speeches that CBO can't score, and he is the one who gets credit for being the adult in the room with a plan.
I am eagerly awaiting your new book, which will have an honored place on my shelf next to my autographed copy of America Alone. Unless I decide to bury them both in a time capsule to help future historians figure out how such a promising experiment went so tragically wrong.
Mark, there is indeed a call for austerity in the U.S., but in our case it's for the Ruling Class telling the Country Class they have to do with less, much less, while they themselves continue to make policy forcing that austerity and receive, from their dependents, lavish salaries and pensions for their efforts on their behalf.
As for the press corps, those Obama-zombies ought to be called, ala Obama-speak, the "press corpse".
OK, here's an honest question -- maybe dumb, but honest. Which is to say, I am really asking for info, not trying to make a point with a rhetorical question.
Now that I've got that out of the way ...
I saw Speaker Boehner's press conference last night. Someone asked something to the effect of, "How could you reject the President's proposal when it contained $4 trillion of spending cuts?" I like Boehner, but he really failed to answer this question. He just fell back on the usual talking points at this point. (Points which may be completely true in and of themselves, but were unhelpful in answering that question.) He didn't seem to want to answer that question. So, at long last here's my question: What's the deal? Did Obama actually propose some big cuts? If so, can someone give me a few examples? If not, why didn't Boehner just come out and say something like, "Look, the sad fact is the White House never never ever proposed anything of the kind. It just never happened." Why couldn't he bring himself to say this?
Thanks.
P.S. Mark, did you really post this at 7:00AM on a Saturday? Dude, you're brilliant, but you're seriously overdoing it.
Bob Sacramento, Obama has no plan. That's the point. Everything is done behind closed doors so the public doesn't get the facts except through the filter of the fawning press corpse.
I agree that Speaker Boehner should have refuted the leaked, non-published mystery "plan" directly before going on with his remarks.
Does anyone else hate talking points? Where are the great speechwriters of yore? Or presidents who articulate what they truly believe, with passion? I believe we can put blame some of the decline on those selling "communications" instead of English degrees. But I digress....
Obama was to lay out his plan to the media but that never happened. Speaker Boehner was attempting to get the media to do their own work and report that when Obama failed to lay out what his offer had been. Of course the media never reported this failure of the Whitehouse. Boehner's biggest problem--one many conservatives share--is they fail to get their message out for fear of looking partisan. As Rick Perry said, forget it--liberals will never like you anyhow. Time to come out swinging.
"As is the way in Washington, merely announcing that he had a plan absolved him of the need to have one".
So goes the ongoing senescence of the Leviathan. The vision of the currrent "planner in chief" of the moribund progressive era resembles the death bed rants of a ninety year old former beauty queen who keeps asking everyone how she looks in her bridal gown... that future really doesn't exist but those in attendance are perfectly willing to go along with the illusion because they are too paralyzed with fear to imagine how life can go on without her.
Follow
