Defund. Delay, Default, ReDefine

The debt, deficit, dysfunction dance continues undaunted in Washington.







The House Republican majority (with growing Democratic support) has authored defund and then delay for Obamacare, along with repealing a hated medical device tax. A continuing resolution from either chamber should include legislation which scales back spending, authorizes austerity, and brings back balanced budgets to federal governance







Yet President Obama and the Democratic leadership in the US Senate have resisted any reforms to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Fearing the reproach of their party leaders, the liberal US Senators from Massachusetts voted against repealing the medic al device tax, too. Now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants to increase spending, which includes a measure to end the sequester cuts.







Washington liberals have learned nothing from the ongoing impasses, except how to exploit Establishment interests in the nation’s capital at the expense of the nation.







Still, the deadline for the debt ceiling fast approaches. If Congress (both the House and the Senate) does not pass legislation to extend borrowing authority for the federal government, the United States will default on its debt to credits. The shaking that will grip the world’s financial markets, the breakdown of trust with American investments, and the decline of confidence in the United States may be too much for the fragile global recovery to bear.







Or will it? Is default such a bad thing?







One news source referenced the last major default, Germany 1933. The unscrupulous, deliberately evil dictator Adolph Hitler stopped payments to the World War I allies which had imposed ruinous financial indemnities on Germany, even though the Great War originated from complicated European alliances coupled with militarist ambitions and imperial implications.







Germany did not deserve the full punishment of the Versailles Treaty.







Today’s generation of Americans should not be saddled with the debt of a federal government which has spent beyond its means, ignoring the economic strains and damaged legacies of national debt unlimited.







Perhaps a default will force future leaders to spend within their means, since creditors will no longer lend. Austrian economist Murray Rothbard suggested a radical repudiation of the national debt, all while criticizing President Ronald Reagan for reneging on his promises to stop the hefty spending.







Besides, default implies more than not paying, but also returning to one’s origins, in the same fashion that a computer seizes then returns to its original applications. A philosophical point, perhaps, but one worth pursuing in light of the unmooring of modern American governance from the outlined confines of the United States Constitution.







When it comes to a potential default, who is at fault?







The United States federal government has been at fault for spending money that the government does not have. Default may be the only course correction left for a government which was supposed to be for the people and by the people.







The deficit spending has been a problem before, one which leaders have called out, and connected with the national political culture. This disillusionment with Washington micromanaging begins with President Dwight David Eisenhower, who announced the threats posed by the looming “military-industrial complex.” Future Republican Presidents have not paid attention, including Ronald “Government is the problem” Reagan. George W. Bush certainly was not paying attention to Eisenhower’s concerns, then or now. How can any party leadership claim to advocate for limited government while at the same time expanding the spending spree without limit?







Republicans throughout the country were rightfully dismayed with Bush 43. Many turned independent, and some so discouraged they threw their votes to anyone but McCain in 2008. Come 2012, and another corporate-like Establishment Republican emerged, a weak and weakened front-runner who had laid the groundwork for President Obama’s takeover of the health care industry. How could anyone believe that he would undo what other Establishment figures had already done?











The political process with Establishment politicians has created a culture in which Big Business or Big Government prospers at the expense of the states and the people.







Limited Government advocates, whether Republicans and in some cases Democrats, have decried this Washington atmosphere, which justifies spending billions of dollars on interest groups, useless studies, public institutions which do not serve the public, and now a compromising character, even among the party which distinctly ignores the individual and small business interests in this country.







So, why has this division surfaced in the Republican Party? Local and statewide leaders recognize a lobbying force within the party which protects the interest of Big Business, instead of Little Everyone Else. Collusion on spending, entitlements, and expansive military efforts have discouraged millions across the country with the Republican Brand.







The Tea Party movement amassed precisely to end this double-talk chokehold on the Washington branches of both political parties, which represented special interests instead of the Constitution. Entitlement reform and spending reductions have gone from “we should” to “we must”, and today in Washington, from Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas)and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky)to House Reps Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) and Mick Mulvaney (R-South Carolina), new conservative leaders are redefining the Republican Party, freed from the shackles of Big Business and Big Government.