That thoughtful observer of the passing parade, Nancy Pelosi, weighed in on the “debt ceiling” negotiations the other day: “What we’re trying to do is save the world from the Republican budget. We’re trying to save life on this planet as we know it today.”
It’s always good to have things explained in terms we simpletons can understand. After a while, all the stuff about debt-to-GDP ratio and CBO alternative baseline scenarios starts to give you a bit of a headache, so we should be grateful to the House minority leader for putting it in layman’s terms: What’s at stake is “life on this planet as we know it today.” So, if right now you’re living anywhere in the general vicinity of this planet, it’s good to know Nancy’s in there pitching for you.
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What about life on this planet tomorrow? How’s that look if Nancy gets her way? The Democrat model of governance is to spend $4 trillion while only collecting $2 trillion, borrowing the rest from tomorrow. Instead of “printing money,” we’re printing credit cards and pre-approving our unborn grandchildren. To facilitate this proposition, Washington created its own form of fantasy accounting: “baseline budgeting,” under which growth-in-government is factored in to federal bookkeeping as a permanent feature of life. As Arthur Herman of the American Enterprise Institute pointed out this week, under present rules, if the government were to announce a spending freeze — that’s to say, no increases, no cuts, everything just stays exactly the same — the Congressional Budget Office would score it as a $9 trillion savings. In real-world terms, there are no “savings,” and there’s certainly no $9 trillion. In fact, there isn’t one thin dime. But nevertheless, that’s how it would be measured at the CBO.
Around the world, most folks have to work harder than that to save $9 trillion. That’s roughly the combined GDPs of Japan and Germany. But in America it’s an accounting device. This is something to bear in mind when you’re listening to the amount of “savings” touted by whatever triumphant bipartisan deal is announced at the eleventh hour in Washington.
So I find myself less interested in “life on this planet as we know it today” than in life on this planet as we’re likely to know it tomorrow if Nancy Pelosi and her chums decline to reacquaint themselves with reality. If you kinda dig life on this planet as you know it, ask yourself this: What’s holding the joint up? As the old gag goes, if you owe the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank has a problem. If you owe the banks 15,000,000,000,000 dollars, the planet has a problem. Whatever comparisons one might make with Europe’s soi-disant “PIIGS” re debt per capita or deficit-to-GDP ratio, the sheer hard numbers involved represent a threat to the planet that Portugal or Ireland does not. It also represents a threat to Americans. Three years ago, the first developed nation to hit the skids was Iceland. But, unless you’re Icelandic, who cares? And, if you are Icelandic, you hunker down, readjust to straitened circumstances , and a few years down the line Iceland will still be Iceland and, if that’s your bag, relatively pleasant.
That’s not an option for the U.S. We are chugging a highly toxic cocktail: 21st-century spendaholic government with mid-20th-century assumptions about American power. After the Battle of Saratoga, Adam Smith replied to a pal despondent that the revolting colonials were going to be the ruin of Britain: “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” said a sanguine Smith.
That’s generally true. Americans of a certain bent looking at post-war France or Germany might reasonably conclude what’s the big deal about genteel decline. The difference, of course, is that Europe’s decline was cushioned by America. Who’s around to cushion America’s decline?
If the IMF is correct (a big if), China will be the planet’s No.1 economy by 2016. That means whoever’s elected in November next year will be the last president of the United States to preside over the world’s dominant economic power. As I point out in my rollicking new book, which will be hitting what’s left of the post-Borders bookstore business any day now, this will mark the end of two centuries of Anglophone dominance — first by London, then its greatest if prodigal son. The world’s economic superpower will not only be a Communist dictatorship with a largely peasant population and legal, political, and cultural traditions as alien to its predecessors as possible, but, even more civilizationally startling, it will be, unlike the U.S., Britain, and the Dutch and Italians before them, a country that doesn’t even use the Roman alphabet.
Couldn't agree with you more. The Nancy Pelosi(s) of the world have always existed, and as tragedy should have it, arrogance and a false sense of reality trump any reasoned argument. The inmates have finally taken over the asylum. We call them Democrats. Mark,they have convinced and addicted enough of the American public that approx 50 % of them to agree with their delusional schemes. Good Luck!
Over the years conservatives have played the "compromise" game with the likes of Nancy Pelosi and the lib-progressive redsitribute the wealth socialists...
How has that worked out for us?
We live in a country where half our citizens believe that they are entitled to their countrymen's wealth, possessions, and money.
Talk to your buddy, Kevin Williamson. He seems to think that increasing the debt limit is the pragmatic thing to do. I don't think so. It is our financial last stand. We are creating the biggest monetary bubble in the history of the world. It is better to pop it now than to let it grow. Remember the Alamo!
"Remember the Lockerbie bomber? He was returned to Libya because he was terminally ill and only had three months to live. That was two years ago. It’s amazing what getting out of the care of the Scottish National Health Service can do for your life expectancy. "
Well, Pelosi Galore's man said he was going to fundamentally change America, and when you change America you change the world.
I guess we shall see if China is as kind of benefactor as we have been, somehow I don’t think the dragon cares much about that sort of thing.
No. Nancy. Hyperbole is no more effective than "promises unkept" bh POTUS. Dems have lost credibility, but people are still scared. Is this what you really want? an Elecotate of people afraid?
Yes, fear (and its pal, control) are exactly what Nancy and POTUS and FLOTUS and Reid and SEIU and AFSCME (?) want - fear so that they can continue at the public trough.
I'd say the vast majority of NR subscribers (and thus commenters, outside of flamers) would mostly agree with your piece but here is a question that I feel continues to go unanswered:
What the hell are we going to do about it? The same problems continues to be diagnosed over and over (often from different, creative, sometimes even humorous angles) yet rarely are any solutions attached to them.
I say this not so much as criticism of NR; rather exasperation and frustration over where our country has veered and where it might be headed.
At my company, I have little use for those that tell me why we can't do X or Y because of A, B or C. Fine, those are important items to note but I can hire anyone to tell me why something CAN'T be done - what separates the performer from the non-performer are those that provide the solutions to get things done.
1. Deleverage and rein in our bankers, as Canada, the Nordics and Germany have done, to their huge advantage.
2. Stop importing an underclass and move toward points-based immigration - again, as Canada has done, to their great advantage.
3. Shift our military/f-p attention away from Europe, towards India. Ramp up our alliance and make them and their region the focus of most of our f-p attention and forward resource deployment in this century.
4. Raise lots more children, and raise them better. Turn off the idiot box. Shield them from the culture of the Big Stupid.
5. Teach children real skills. Stop telling ourselves that every child should get a college education. Bring back the vocational ed. track for the majority, and reserve college for no more than 20-25% of HS graduates.
"“What we’re trying to do is save the world from the Republican budget.”"
This gives one all the insight into the socialist world vision of Democrats that is needed.
Congress is not elected to save the world.
The highest loyalty of ANY elected official is the Constitution and the American people. These people show their true colors whenever they make such statements. Their loyalties are clearly elsewhere.
Take away 90 percent of those balls she wears around her neck and she may go intergalactic. No problem since we don't have a space programme anymore. Maybe the Russians can deal with our space junk.
It is possible, Mr. Steyn, that you are too optimistic, for you have not mentioned domestic civil unrest or a surprise terrorist or military attack on the continental United States.
Still, many a cloud has a silver lining, for illegal aliens are fleeing Obama and Pelosi's America and returning to Mexico, where the jobless rate is far less than ours. There is also a large, growing and comfortable American Expat community on the Yucatan.
I believe they call this voting with one's feet. It used to happen mainly in countries where the governments ruled by fiat and bullied their citizens. Oh, wait.....Nevermind.
Reed,
Not only are illegals fleeing the U.S., note WSJ, July 29, "My Own Private Island". Speaking of our "cultural elite", could these wealthy buyers be planning their escape from Armaggedon?
Another great article though this one was a bit like Irish coffee, mixing uppers and downers.
China is only destined to surpass us if we let them but, it's hard to see the political will in our electorate or the elected. Certainly Nanny is content to glide into obscurity, let her!
We are turning the corner if the next few days pan out. It won't be perfect but if we are winning the debate the policy follows.
Don't you just love CBO scoring? Only there could continuing to spend more than you have equal a cut! End the baseline follies!
"Two-bit provocateurs across the map pick off remnants of the old order with ever greater ease."
Like the fact that Mexican narco-terrorists are setting up camp miles within our borders and our government keeps proclaiming that the border has never been safer? Not only that, we are actually purposely arming them.
This guy in the whitehouse HAS got to go.
One more thing...As long as we have a liberal compliant media and a citizenry that goes along with their false narrative, Conservatives will NEVER even have a fighting chance even if they hold the line as they are now. You watch, Obama will be "declared" the victor in this epic battle and the Republican Party will be forever ripped apart.....Game Over
The American world always had places one could go if they wanted to live under a dictatorship or in a non-prosperous economy. In the post-American world, will there be a place to go if one does NOT want to live in a dictatorship or a non-prosperous economy?
I'm not saying, "America, love it or leave it," but I always wondered why people who weren't happy with America didn't just move somewhere else. If you prefer the European system, move to Europe. The rationale seems to be that they cannot find work in Europe, without considering that this is a side effect of the European approach to things.
I don't want to preserve the world "as we know it". I want to go back to the world of ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, or more. The POTUS fails to grasp that Americans don't believe they are mediocre and don't want to be told they have to settle for less. (Let's hope Obama's next gig isn't coaching an NFL team.) They want to have their economic cake and eat it, too. All the subsidies and entitlements have to be paid for.
I am almost 60, and I think all the entitlements and subsidies should be eliminated. Sure, I'll get hurt, along with 50 million or more other people, but the country will be better off. I am willing to be an economic casualty, if the country improves. I feel lately like I am destined to be an economic casualty in any case, and the country is not improving.
The Pelosi mindset of enshrining the current state of things is counter-intuitive, since she worked so hard to help "fundamentally transform" the nation. I keep thinking that the United States is like a ramshackle old house on the edge of town, once grand but now fallen into serious disrepair. Many people live in it, some with special needs, and the internal society is dabbling with a relatively feral approach to solving its problems. Suddenly the crew of "Extreme Makeover, Home Edition" shows up, with plans to make the house better than new. They will add rooms, paint, fix the plumbing and electrical, etc. But the residents say, "No, you're going to change our house as we know it!"
So one can say this from either side. Is Pelosi the resident saying the house must not be changed? Am I the resident wanting to avoid the changes that have already happened? There is a difference. Existing changes have resulted in a less comfortably habitable dwelling. Proposed changes could (but might not) improve it, at some cost. Specific changes to return it to its former glory produce a known product. This is why I want to go back, not forward. I just don't trust Pelosi and her wrecking crew to get it right.
To rimfrel: "The American world always had places one could go if they wanted to live under a dictatorship or in a non-prosperous economy." Thank you for your beautiful write-up. It is people like you who should be a source of inspiration. There is a book called “Escape from Freedom” by Eric Fromm, which should be taught in American schools, that is, if we still have a country by 2012. The book may explain what has happened in the 2008 elections. There is a difference between the system that I came from and the one we have here. In my native country, the dictator was imposed on us. Americans, on the other hand, freely chose a dictator for their POTUS. After he finishes with us, we may wish for a shack in a free country.
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