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Desperate Times?
I often feel that the basic disagreement between Status Quo Conservatives and the more radical Tear-it-Down conservatives is between those who think the government is basically doing a good job — with perhaps some adjustments needed at the fringes (think of Speaker Paul Ryan’s budget plans) — and those who see a $20 trillion debt bomb and growing government tyranny and are desperately seeking a fix. I am in the second camp. Moreover, I think we all can agree that Congress, for one reason or another, does not lead the nation. Nevertheless, there certainly are good people in both the House and Senate who would follow a president who was willing to take the heat for proposing and executing on a radically constitutionalist platform.
Which brings me to why Senator Ted Cruz has always been on my shortlist. Any anti-status quo leader has to be able to take the heat and stay in the kitchen: this is precisely what Cruz did in the Senate. People hated and ridiculed him, and he kept at it, without getting defensive or losing his cool. I can only imagine what it is like to be in that position and not taking it personally.
We are, indeed, in desperate times. Sooner or later, the other economic shoe will drop. We can still (sort of) get ahead of it. And we surely will need a president who is willing to do what needs doing, while not leaving the path of a constitutionalist, limited government.
Published in General
With whom?
If you freeze the debt ceiling, there are only three choices: 1) Arbitrarily end about 25% of government payments immediately. 2) Immediately raise taxes on the middle class. 3) Start to actually reform the Federal government.
I think Brent is calculating that it will force American’s to peer into the abyss and actually muster up the political will to reform the Federal government including entitlements. Brent believes this will be less painful then waiting for the debt markets to force it on us, going for hyperinflation.
I am not sure I agree with Brent, but I have been advocating the “serve the check” strategy as long as I have been on Ricochet.
Freezing the debt ceiling is hard to explain to people who just want their monthly checks. It is very easy for the press to demonize.
I think the hyperinflation scenario may be almost inevitable now. Nobody seems to believe that one cannot just keep printing paper, or merely “grow out of the debt.” Even here on Ricochet, people like James P keep insisting that everything is fine, or will be, with just slightly better management.
I agree, but I diverge on how to to get the 92 million back into work. Halting illegal immigration a small part of the solution. Going after free trade is a counterproductive solution.
The main solution is getting rid of Federal mandates like Obamacare, and employment regulations that make it harder to hire and fire people.
The next most important thing is to get rid of the federal incentives to not work. Make it harder to get on disability. Make unemployment a decaying benefit so that the incentive is to find work quicker.
I agree. The Fed is in a panic about deflation, and the Treasury has no compunction about running the printing presses. The Fed will not raise interest rates beyond 1% until there is significant wage inflation. This is one reason why the Fed is a champion of raising the minimum wage.
The problem is that keeping rates low does nothing for the economy except raise asset prices. Its a big boon to the big banks and financial services industry, but not for small community banks and main street businesses that still have to show deposits or cash flow to grow loans and credit.
If the Fed wants to see lower income wages increase it should raise rates, that will adjust more savings into deposits at local banks which will increase loan rates to small businesses, which are the main drivers of economic growth.
Local banks hardly ever make loans to small businesses any more. Such “old style” banking is sleeping with the Dodo Bird. Businesses get their funding from a wide range of funds and institutions – but not, by and large, from local banks.
Banks have lots of money. But they are not incentivized to loan them out to anyone but other highly rated banks. So the money sloshes around, not actually hard at work at anything productive.
This is a direct result of banking regulations.
Part of the problem with Ryan is his measured temperament. In one sense it doesn’t matter, but in another it very much does.
Even if Ryan is making the best possible choices for the conservative movement going forward, he seems like an easy-going kind of guy. This gives his more fired up allies the sense that he doesn’t care as much about turning this around as he actually may.
Yes, you can blame the radicals for not being wise enough to see Ryan’s wisdom. However, one trait a leader needs is the ability to convince his followers that he cares as much or more about what they care about than they do, for this enables the followers to trust their leaders when they make choices that seem like compromise.
Reality may be that Ryan does care just as much, but the perception is that he’s pretty malleable. He comes across as sober and almost indifferent, which gives a lot of us the impression he’s more satisfied with the status quo than he should be.
Argue until you’re blue in the face that voters shouldn’t be like this, but the fact is they are, which means GOP leadership has to deal with it if they want continued support. Yes, reality matters more than perception, but if people don’t perceive you’re on their same page, you may as well not be unless you’ve got lots of time to prove yourself.
I would go differently. To me, you remove every barrier to investment in plant and equipment in the US for US market consumption. Make it the cheapest place to invest and make things we buy. Allow tax free repatriation of foreign profits if they go into plant and equipment.
100% first year depreciation, no minimum wages, skill training paid for, at will employment, right to work, zoning waivers, reasonable environmental reviews.
Put “Made In USA” back on the products. Give taxpayers ten cents on the dollar up to $500 tax credit for all labelled goods purchased.
Of course, goods 100% made here by foreign owned companies also qualify for the credit.
To further my point, by most objective standards in no way did FDR make improve things during the Great Depression. In fact, he made them much worse.
But most people got the sense he was fighting for them and really cared where they were coming from. As a result, he was incredibly popular and lionized by many historians despite doing an objectively awful job.
Likewse, Ryan may or many not be a more genuine conservative’s friend than Cruz, but Cruz has made a loud ruckus ever since he got to Washington, giving conservatives every impression he’s willing to fight like hell to represent their interests.
I won’t say that whether or not he’s done any good is beside the point (because it’s not), but impressions matter, and to the more impatient among us, he’s made a good impression.
Some of us keep quoting stats and trying to convince people that GOP leaders are doing a good job, failing to recognize that if you have to rationally convince people of that sort of thing you’ve already lost. Maybe people shouldn’t feel their way into political opinions, but they do.
GOP leaders seem almost entirely unaware that this is how people operate, thinking instead that if they just “do the right thing” they can neglect to sell what they’re doing or (more importantly) themselves to the public, that good choices will just speak for themselves.
But ignoring reality never works and never will.
You are correct in this. Small banks exist to become purchased by too big to fail banks.
Much thanks for this, MFR.
To tie in that post with the point I’ve been making:
There are pragmatists in Washington who would do exactly what radical me wants done if they thought it could be done. They oppose me for tactical reasons.
There are also GOP Washington pragmatists wouldn’t change anything substantive even if the GOP had 75 Senate seats. I can’t say it’s everybody, but there were enough there from 2003-7 to ensure that Congress was a pork producer from hell.
So although the former group could one day actually be on my radical side, in the short term they’re always taking the side of the don’t change anything ever because we like it this way crowd. This leads those who want what I want to think (rightly or wrongly) that they’re fundamentally on their side, not ours.
Impressions matter, so somebody better start acting like it.
The problem is the radicals you speak of make up only a portion of House caucus and the larger conservative movement.
My own opinion is Ryan’s temperament, combined with his wonkish knowledge of the budget, and willingness to take PR arrows for unpopular opinions (SocSec & Medicare reform) makes him an almost perfect spokesman. I’m pretty sure a Cruz, in your face, type repels as many as it attracts and is not the best choice for getting people to accept the hard choices that will have to be made.
FDR was a fatherly figure not a fighter.
Prior to the 2014 election I was pretty supportive of the GOP leadership. I even wrote a post in favor of the cromnibus, thinking that now that they had a majority it was a good way of clearing the decks of any influence of Senate Democrats for future budgets (while holding the funding for Homeland Security hostage to stop Obamnesty) and allowing a return to regular order and a real budget and appropriations process.
Well, what happened? As soon as the GOP leadership could hide behind the robe of lonely 5th circuit court judge they fully funded Homeland Security including all the funds that would be needed to implement Obamnesty. Then while Ryan did his job as Budget committee chairman following regular order the Senate and House leadership and the appropriations committees stabbed Ryan in the back and made a deal with the Pelosi and Reid in a massive omnibus appropriations bill. Ryan should have ripped up the deal upon becoming Speaker, that he didn’t is a big black mark against him in my eye.
In August I was so hopping mad that I drank my morning tiger blood became an ardent Trump supporter.
Yet, now I am #NeverTrump.
This election has not been good for my psyche.
I don’t think that the GOP leadership is at all “unaware” of the emotions of the so-called “base.” But I don’t see anything they can do about it. I hear what the “basers” are demanding, and all of it seems like political suicide. They want the “Establishment” to “fight,” but the only thing they seem willing to recognize as “fighting” is charging into the machine guns and dying. Maybe they would be satisfied if Ryan sat down on the Capitol steps and lit himself on fire to prove that he “cares,” but I suspect that even that would not be enough.
Ignoring reality (the reality of emotions) may not work, but neither does committing suicide. Sure, Congress can shut down the government and guarantee a Democratic House and Senate for Hillary in 2017. But then what?