The Debt Ceiling, Debt, and America's Political Hide: the Consequences of Willful Imbecility

Beaucoup ink has been expended on the economic consequences of a U.S. debt default, should that happen, but not much has been said about its political consequences. It seems to me that regarding the economic consequences, the central one is the partial loss of national autonomy that would stem from a failure to agree to keep paying our debts. Even a dinosaur can see that while it's a bad affair to have to borrow money with which to pay back a little of the money you've already borrowed, if you suddenly decide not to make the minimum payment on your credit card, so to speak, you end up ceding a lot of decision-making power to the large entity or entities who have been extending you what amount to loans on a monthly basis. But I guess the tea-timers in Congress don't know that…. It's just one of the many things they don't know.

Still, I'm focusing here on the political inferences that might be made by the powerful in this country and abroad. Wouldn't the lesson be something like, "Americans can't be trusted to elect a government that will manage their affairs competently, so their form of government is doomed, probably sooner rather than later?" The other day I was listening to an interview with some Ivy-League economist professor, and he pointed out that at some point after any default (and only after), the president might end up having to invoke the 14th Amendment "to save the Republic." That language stuck with me: the professor is right in that nothing less than the Republic's viability could hang in the balance.

Can we continue to manage our own affairs, or are we so stupid that we intend to keep sending cartoon characters to the halls of congress to do our bidding for us, and do it unbelievably badly? How do you sustain a republic with a majority of dunces and a legislative branch that is a nearly perfect symbol of that majority? How do you sustain a republic if its economy goes up in smoke thanks to the willful imbecility of a major branch of its government?

I still think saner heads will prevail and a deal will be reached, but I'm not as sure of it as I used to be. I'm not entirely certain Mr. Boehner can keep his side of the aisle from committing economic treason, or suicide (or whatever you want to call a refusal to honor the nation's debts) and thereby provoking an economic meltdown and possibly a constitutional crisis when the president has to deal with it by fiat.

Finally, as for the general right-wing strategy for dealing with the fix in which we find ourselves – namely, a very expensive government combined with our blockheaded refusal to raise the necessary revenue to sustain it -- I can offer this by way of The Wisdom of the Jurassic (what little of it there is): a capitalist economy CANNOT shrink its way out of a severe economic situation. Capitalism is like a shark: it must keep moving or it dies. Cutting guv'mint spending to the bone is therefore not the right thing to do, and anybody who thinks otherwise is dumber than a pile of particularly dumb rocks. The only way we will move from red to black at some point is if the economy generates sufficient wealth combined with a fair tax code that allows us to collect enough to pay for what we want the government to do. It would help, of course, if we stopped collectively pretending we don't want the government to do anything.