It is broken, let’s fix it

So the big fight is on in D. C. about what to do with the national budget. The House of Representatives is in the hands of the Grand Old Tea Party and is in a fighting mood. These rebels in Speaker John Boehner’s army are in no way ready for a compromise, even if the President has said that we need to talk now and come up with a lasting solution.

To that end, the President has pretty much said that everything must be on the table, with one exception; any agreement on a budget must include an increase in taxes on the wealthiest Americans as well as spending cuts. Boehner, very well aware of the mood of his Grand Old Tea Party compatriots, has said the one thing that cannot be included in any agreement is any tax increase at all.

For his part, Obama wants a plan that will set a debt ceiling that will not need to be increased until the year 2013. That, in his view, will settle the matter long enough for an agreement to be reached that will be lasting. It will also be one year past next year’s presidential elections.

In an interview on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Senator Dick Durbin, D. Ill., acknowledged one problem with the President’s position calling for an increase in the debt ceiling; as a U. S. Senator, Obama voted against an increase in it. In fact, Durbin acknowledged that Obama’s vote against the increase was probably cast because the President who asked for it was from the other party, which is precisely why the Grand Old Tea Party in the House of Representatives will vote against it now.

One might be tempted to quote the warden from the Paul Newman movie “Cool Hand Luke” when he said “What we have is…a failure to communicate”. But that would only be partially true. What we have are two political parties who are increasingly in the hands of their bases, and in each instance, that base is hardly representative of the country as a whole.

For instance, President Obama has offered compromises that would include spending cuts that are far greater (four trillion dollars over ten years) than what the Grand Old Tea Party has asked for. But his plan includes tax increases on the wealthy. And it is opposed by extreme elements on both sides; from the left because it includes cuts in Social Security and Medicare and from the right because it will ask for more taxes from the uber-wealthy.

Well, in this instance, neither side can get what their bases really want. What the left-wing of the Democrats wants is more social-welfare legislation and far greater tax increases on the wealthiest Americans. What the right-wing of the Republicans wants is repeal of all social-welfare legislation and, for all intents and purposes, no tax on anyone in the billionaire’s club.

Since neither side is going to get what they want, are both parties willing to throw the baby out with the bath water, or will they find that compromise isn’t the nasty word they’ve led us to believe it is? It’s high time, after all, to realize that this “all or nothing” attitude is what got us in this mess in the first place.