Richard Wolff: Debt Showdown is "Political Theater" Burdening Society’s Most Vulnerable

[Jefferson23]

This morning from Democracy Now

July 28, 2011


Republicans have agreed to a vote today on a budget plan they say will cut the deficit $917 billion over 10 years. The move sets the stage for a showdown against unified Democratic opposition in the Senate and threats of a White House veto. To discuss the debt talks and economic austerity worldwide, we’re joined by Richard Wolff, Emeritus Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of several books, including "Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It." "This is political theater in which two parties are posturing for the election coming next year," says Wolff. "To put it in perspective, the number of times the government has raised the debt ceiling since 1940? Ninety, almost twice a year. This is a normal, automatic procedure. Every president, Republican and Democrat, has asked for it."

SNIP* AMY GOODMAN: So we are watching this dance in Washington. The House is going to vote today around the issue of the debt ceiling. The Senate says it’s dead in the water. President Obama is vowing to veto. What does this all mean?

RICHARD WOLFF: Well, basically, your word "dance" is perfect. This is theater. This is political theater in which the two parties are posturing for the election coming next year, using this occasion—to put it in perspective, the number of times the government has raised the debt ceiling since 1940: 90, almost twice a year. This is a normal, automatic procedure. Every president, Republican and Democrat, has asked for it. When they ask, typically, the representatives of the other party say, "Well, you’re not managing the government real well," and then they vote for it. And that has happened over and over again. So what you’re seeing is a decision, politically, to make it theatric, out of what otherwise would have been a normal procedure.

A hundred years ago, the Congress said, in order to control the government and not to allow businesses and rich people to be able to invest in government money easily, we’re going to have the government limit how much can be borrowed. That was the idea. Now it became automatic, as we became a debt society—excuse me—and so, suddenly, the Republicans basically decided to make theater, to run their campaign a little early this year, and to slow it all down and make a big to-do.

The world expects that this will have to be undone in a few days or weeks. They’re kind of amazed to see it being stretched like this, this old, normal procedure. And the assumption is that the politics in the United States has become as dysfunctional as our economic situation. And so, that’s the danger, that this rigmarole, this theater, is really a sign that normal life in the United States has been disrupted on a scale that people haven’t seen before.

in full: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/28/richard_wolff_debt_showdown_is_political

[LongTomH]

1. I recommend these paragraphs........

RICHARD WOLFF: There are a number of things that are not on the table. And frankly, I’m amazed that the President refers to what he does as a "balanced approach." First of all, the war and its enormous costs, off the table in any serious way. Going back to a serious taxation of corporations and of the rich in America, just, for example, at the scale that they were taxed in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, off the table.

Basically what’s being done is to suggest that now, after a "recovery," in quotations, that has only recovered the stock market and corporate profits and bank reserves, that has done nothing about unemployment and foreclosure—we haven’t had a balanced economic arrangement in this country for years. So, suddenly we’re going to be balanced in what’s coming next. That’s a strange kind of logic. Why is there not facing up to the war, the fact that you’re not taxing the rich? And perhaps the worst, we’re at a crisis because we have an economic system that hasn’t worked well, and the government bailed out banks and corporations by using public money. That was done to help them. It hasn’t helped many other folks. So now is not the time to do balance. Now is the time to correct the imbalance that has built up over all these years. And I think that would be where the President really ought to start.

[Jefferson23]

2. Yes, I agree these paragraphs speak to the main concern, after all

we have Obama, a Democrat in the WH. Yet, I hear this is primarily a Republican/Tea party responsibility problem, as
Obama's choice of Summers and Geithner were not his own, among other decisions.

[louslobbs]

6. +1 those paragraphs

Lou

[truedelphi]

3. Since the President has not had the will to state the obvious:

Social Security, if not tampered with, is in good shape, has its own fund and does not deplete the US Treasury, I no longer see much point in the man.

A friend believes that RFK Jr will run, as over the next two months things will deteriorate so badly that he will be willing to risk his neck for the downtrodden masses.

She has a blog called - http://www.plumdreams.com

[Jefferson23]

4. Interesting, thanks. n/t

[Myrina]

5. I'd prefer Ted Jr but at this point will take any REAL progressive.

Sigh.