I would like to dedicate today's Musings to the late Congressman Mike Synar, a fighter for our nation's health, and for the sanctity of its political process. We are lucky that we had such a congressperson, and we badly need more like him. It is my hope that when and if real campaign reform is ever passed, it will be called the Synar Campaign Reform Bill in honor of this upstanding public servant's memory. Rest in peace, Mike.
My theme today is hypocrisy -- specifically, Republican hypocrisy. Yesterday, I discussed my disappointment at Bill Clinton's inordinate delay in producing a real balanced budget, certified as such by the CBO. Today, I'm looking at the way the GOP has responded to that budget, and I don't like what I see. All along, the GOP has held up the holy grail of a balanced budget as justification for some of their more outlandish tactics (shutting down the government, whining about Air Force One seating arrangements, etc. etc.). They know, as indeed most of us know, that the public definitely wants a balanced budget. As the public looks around and sees their purchasing power eroded by high institutionalized interest rates, and their children's future jeopardized by a mountain of debt, their acceptance of the need for a balanced budget will soon reach, or perhaps already has reached, critical mass. The Republicans know this very well, and carry the call for a balanced budget as an irremovable mantra on their lips. But looking at their reaction to the President's belated release of a true balanced budget it becomes apparent that that is not their true agenda.
Of course, all along there has been another plank in their platform which they have pushed for openly, and that is the tax cut. Scarcely related as it is to the push for a balanced budget, there has been no lack of criticism from all sides on this unnecessary, superfluous, manifest pandering to the electorate's baser instincts, pandering which fortunately has NOT been paying off. Every time the pollsters have asked us which we care more about, a balanced budget or a tax cut, we have responded overwhelmingly and responsibly that the balanced budget is the higher priority. But now that the GOP has to concede that their chief adversary, the President, has at long last come through on his promise to submit a true seven-year balanced budget have they spoken sunnily about a chance for true negotiations, for honest discussion of each side's differing priorities? They have not. Instead, they are STILL screaming about the President's lack of good faith, of his insincerity on the goal of a balanced budget, even going so far in some cases as to flat out state that the President really doesn't even want a balanced budget.
Now I would be the first to concede that the President was dragged kicking and screaming to the altar of a balanced budget. But reality is that he has now in fact submitted one; yet the GOP seems constitutionally incapable of conceding that such is the case. Now, we are hearing from them that Clinton is really just a big-spending liberal, out to impose Washington's power on the poor helpless states, and, in a breathtaking avoidance of fact, that Clinton's budget does nothing to stem the tide of growing debt threatening our children. Wait a minute, keepers of the elephant: How else are we to start paying off the debt if we do not first balance the budget? Balancing the budget is balancing the budget, whether we do it through cuts in defense or cuts in Medicaid. So what is all this irrelevant nonsense from the Republicans?
This nonsense stems from the fact that, apparently, the Republicans have another agenda, a private agenda, to which they won't own up in public, which is the destruction of the federal government as the instrument of the people's will where our obligations to our fellow human beings are concerned. Whether we're talking about responsible aid for education, conscientious protection of the environment, or enshrinement in law of our traditional sense of obligation to those weaker or poorer than the rest of us, this current breed of Republicans would sweep aside decades of history, and abdicate the role of government as the instrument of society's sense of obligation to itself. By demagoging in their response to the belated Clinton balanced budget it is now clear that the real intentions of the GOP are nothing less than libertarianism gone mad. The balanced budget is merely the flag in which they have wrapped those intentions. And now that someone has come forward with a balanced budget which does NOT shred the safety net, and does NOT hand over the environment to whichever business has the largest pockets, these hypocrites have been caught with their pants down. So the dirty little secret here is that the Republicans don't have a balanced budget as the heart of their real desires any more than Clinton apparently did before last Saturday.
So forget about all that rhetoric you've heard about how the GOP, for all its extremism, is to be applauded for having had the guts to step up to the plate and call for the government not merely to slow down its rate of spending but to actually start on the glide path to real balance. Forget about all that rhetoric you've heard about how the GOP is to be commended for having had the guts to touch that third rail and call upon Medicare to step into the nineties, and take the politically distasteful steps needed to avoid bankruptcy. All that is really going on is that responsible financial policies have been pushed by them as a vehicle to carry out the agenda which their well-heeled supporters are pushing. It is a sad, and unworthy, ending to a battle which began with such high- minded style in the minds and mouths of people like Domenici and Kasich. Shame, shame, shame.
Whether or not you agree with the foregoing, let me hear your voice, and let us start a true dialogue. Write to