A widening gap between rich and poor, corporate corruption and a captured government:

Trust in government has all but vanished, but Congress still isn't listening. (Harry Waisbren/Twitvid)





Trust in government has all but vanished, but Congress still isn't listening. ( A widening gap between rich and poor, corporate corruption and a captured government:Trust in government has all but vanished, but Congress still isn't listening. ( Harry Waisbren/Twitvid

If you've been reading the news about our great and all-powerful Super Congress, you know that we're now at the stage where Democrats are apparently looking for the best possible way to acquiesce to all Republican demands in exchange for some promises of maybe getting something in return later, maybe, if the Republicans feel like it . The current trial balloon is to cut the crap out of entitlements and other government programs now, in exchange for an argument later over whether and how to raise taxes. During an election year.

No, really. I know it sounds like satire, but it's really being floated.

The "Super Committee" was set up to be a boondoggle from the moment of inception, mind you, so in order to squeeze even more incompetent buffoonery out of it, you really, really have to try at at. You have to set out with incompetence clearly in mind as your ultimate objective, and you have to focus on it, I mean really focus on it. Drink a glassful of expired raw eggs for breakfast. Repeat demotivational sayings to yourself in the mirror. Envision yourself bungling things spectacularly, maybe set it to music, imagine yourself in a nice little 1980s-movie montage of various failures, capitulations, foul-ups, bungles, goofs, screwups and face plants. Only then do you have, perhaps, a chance to foul government up at the Olympian levels Democrats apparently aspire to reach.

Here is how every budget negotiation for the last ten years has played out. Republicans: "We think we should cut taxes on the rich." Democrats: "Well, we think that's pretty stupid, but all right. As long as it'll get this over with." Repeat, forever.

Oh, there's some grumbling in there, sure. We don't have 60 votes, therefore we can't do anything. We do have 60 votes, but we're tired right now, come back later. We're outraged that the Republicans are doing such-and-such, and we demand a more sensible solution to America's problems, and—what's that? The other side is made up of assholes? Oh, all right, never mind then.



The Super Committee is one of those rare political ideas that nearly every single person in America, aside from the few people who actually invented the damn thing, can all agree was a stupid idea from the moment first proposed. We avoid a GOP-demanded shutdown of government (raise the debt ceiling, like we previously did all the freaking time? Unpossible!) by taking the courageous step of appointing a committee to think about the problem later, chartered by the exact same ideologues and half-wits that blocked all the other steps along the way. Then we say that they'll come to a deal for certain this time, because if they don't we'll cut national defense by some vast sum that our fighting boys in the Pentagon say is completely untenable and endangers America, but don't worry, it will still work because the Republicans will never, ever pressure Congress into erasing those defense cuts during an election year and—all right, I'm getting depressed just recounting this. We all remember it, right? Blah blah blah blue-ribbon panel blah.

Two things have been clear from the outset. First, that we need to raise revenues, because the "cut taxes on the rich and just pretend everything will work out" is, in fact, not working out. It's untenable, and it's screwing up America. Don't ask me, ask the economists. No, I mean the real economists.

The second clear thing was that Republicans would rather burn all of American government to the ground then raise those taxes back up by even one dime. That was the point of the debt ceiling fiasco. It was the point of holding unemployment insurance hostage, and the point of the continual efforts to make sure the "temporary" Bush tax cuts remain in place forever, regardless of what needs ransoming at any particular point in time in order to do it. We had a credit agency drop the debt rating of the United States, citing Republican intractability and inability to treat the economy seriously: didn't matter a bit. We've been mired in economic chaos and misery for years, now: Nope, still not good enough reason to do anything useful. Name a few post offices, block a few judges and spend every other waking moment figuring out how to best cripple the country's finances and let the top n-th of a percent cart off whatever national wealth they can carry.

Making it crystal clear that this dynamic was still firmly in effect during Super-Committee-o-rama, we recently had, at long last, a proposal from Republican Super-members to supposedly "raise revenues" by closing tax loopholes and the like. A true concession, right! Oh my goodness, how can we possibly pass this up?

Pretty damn easily, as it turns out. Because the "close tax loopholes" plan was premised on a few other minor details. Like making the Bush tax cuts for the rich permanent. Oh, and reducing the top tax rate even more than under the Bush tax cuts, because even the Bush tax rates were so very, very cruel to the upper classes. The net result would have been, rather than to supposedly "increase taxes" by $300 billion, to increase the 10-year deficit to the turn of half a trillion dollars.

Yes, perhaps it doesn't take a Republican to come up with a "deficit reduction" proposal that consisted of cutting taxes on the rich and blowing the deficit hole bigger, but it certainly takes a Republican to stand in front of a podium and praise themselves being so goddamn deficit-savvy.

Holy freaking hell, I think we are all tired of these people. Nasty, mean Republicans trying to break government at every turn. Democratic dullards who apparently will agree to absolutely anything, no matter how ridiculous, if it will temporarily save them from a fight.



As the deadline looms, we are in the situation we always predicted. We need Republicans and Democrats to agree on something—that's easy. More to the point, we need Republicans and Democrats to agree on something that would actually help, as opposed to doing concrete harm: That looks nearly impossible. After decades of raiding private pensions and turning sick and injured Americans into a multibajillion-dollar profit center, we have now turned our sights on hurting, to whatever extent possible, the signature accomplishments of the New Deal and of American middle-class life. The Occupy movement may have turned the national conversation from all-deficits, all-the-time to income inequality, corporate corruption and governmental incompetence, but the Super Committee doesn't care. For the Super Committee, the only two possible outcomes are to cut more help to the middle class while coddling the rich, or doing nothing at all.

So here's hoping for nothing at all. Here's hoping that the Super Committee continues its reign of incompetent do-nothingness mixed with ideological saber-rattling, but in the end, they do nothing, which is at this point the only outcome that wouldn't actively hurt the country. Then we can move on to begging the Democrats, during the quickly undertaken move to nullify the supposed defense budgets that are supposed to happen next, to at least get the rest of the damn cuts nullified as well, rather than giving Republicans the exact goddamn thing they wanted, during this entire period of time. Maybe the Democrats can get an agreement from Republicans not to kick their dogs, for a limited period of time, unless the Republicans think a dog really deserves it. Maybe the Democrats can boldly stand up for giving each unemployed American a brand-new tent to sleep in, once yet another round of tax cuts for the rich and austerity for everybody else dips us into recession. No new tents? A voucher for a tent, maybe? A new deduction, so that you can depreciate the effing goddamn tent you're living in at an accelerated rate, tax-wise? Throw me a damn bone here.

There seems only one thing that needs to happen here. The goddamn, cynically budget-busting, evil-as-all-hell Bush freaking tax freaking cuts need to expire, already. That would come closer to solving the budget problem then all the austerity and catfood commissions combined, and it has as added bonus the sole requirement of our leaders simply sitting on their asses for a while, doing nothing, which is quite possibly the singular thing they are accomplished at. Every other commission, every other stupid little fight—all of it, from the Republican side, is geared solely towards extending or deepening those tax cuts for the rich. On the Democratic side, the only "policy" that needs to be followed is to block it.

God knows there's going to be plenty more opportunities for Republicans to sabotage government, in the next year. God knows there's not a damn thing we can do to stop them. But maybe—just maybe—we can drill it into the thick skulls of the Democrats that the only reason Republicans are so eager to hold government hostage, at each and every possible damn opportunity, is because they know full well Democrats will give them a reward for their troubles.

