Recent political events have been cast as a huge change in the political landscape and there are certainly lessons to be learned. Voters will always vote their pocketbook and this is nothing new or startling. As long as we have massive unemployment, anger will be the ruling emotion at the polls. The fact is simply that during the entire history of our nation, we have only had a super-majority by any party for a grand total of 12 years. In this case the 60 votes in the Senate was always an illusion, never a reality.
The media would have you believe the Democrats had this unstoppable force for an entire year and managed to fritter it away. It”s true the Democrats are fractured and timid but remember that the Republicans played every game they could to deny Sen. Franken his seat for eight months, leaving Minnesota with only one Senator for all that time, denying the Democrats their 60th seat. To further weaken the situation, Sen. Lieberman (I-Aetna) is not a Democrat at all. He gave a keynote speech at the Republican convention endorsing Sen. McCain and attacking then Sen. Obama. He may caucus with the Democrats in order to preserve his seniority and committee chairmanship but he has not backed them on any important issues, including health care. Why he is allowed to continue in this capacity is tribute to the Democrat”s weakness. By all rights he should have skid marks on his fanny from being tossed out.
Let”s be honest about our plight as a nation. We, the people, need help from our government to recover from this great recession and we need it now. The recession started and reached its greatest depths under Republican mis-leadership. It is now time for the party that is responsible for putting us in this position to finally begin to participate in helping us to find our way back to prosperity instead of simply blocking every initiative that is proposed in hopes of regaining power at the expense of our continued suffering. What we have today is a perverse twist of what a Senator or Congressman is supposed to be and do. Instead of holding office to help the people, we instead witness the spectacle of legislators who are only concerned with their own re-election and power, so they simply do nothing to deliberately prolong the suffering and anger for their own personal gain, which is shameful.
Once again, these times call for intellectual honesty. Why didn”t the media focus on the deficits while Bush was in power despite the fact that he turned a $200 billion surplus into a $1.1 trillion yearly deficit by 2008? Then Treasury Secretary Paul O”Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney in 2002 that growing budget deficits ?expected to top $500 billion that year, posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. “You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don”t matter,” he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued, “We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due.” A month later, Cheney told the treasury secretary he was fired. The deficit ballooned by over $4 trillion under St. Reagan and that”s in 1980s dollars. For my Republican friends who always ask where I find these facts, Google this and read it for yourself.
The day Obama was sworn in, suddenly deficits became the major issue for the first time as deficits only concern the Republicans when a Democrat is in the White House. The mystery is why the supposedly liberal press goes along hook, party line and sinker. When private business and the consumer are tapped out only the government can lead us out of recession and we need everyone in government to be a part of the solution.
Lowell Grant is a weekly columnist for the Record-Bee. E-mail him at c21vintage@aol.com.
