Readers who have paid any attention to cable news channels or political journals lately have probably noticed that the Republican Party is already declaring victory in the 2010 midterms, cajoling the media to report that they’ve seemingly won before a single vote has been cast. The reality is that this is a very volatile and unpredictable election year. If anything is certain, it’s that nothing is certain.
As President Obama has said in many speeches, for Republicans to win, the electorate would have to have a collective case of amnesia. Republicans are running hard against Obama, trying to hang all our problems on him. But our economic instability – and the foreign entanglements we’re still in abroad – stem from the Bush era. It was the Republican agenda that got us into Afghanistan and Iraq, that led to dirtier air and water, and resulted in the surplus generated under Clinton being wasted.
The deficit has seemingly become the Republican Party’s favorite campaign issue. It’s funny, because while they were in power, they were spending like there was no tomorrow. Now they claim that they’ll get that deficit paid down if we give them the gavels back.
Sorry… no sale!
It’s true that our federal deficit has gotten too big. We need to be relying on our own common wealth to provide for the public services we want and need. We have become addicted to borrowing and spending, and we need to kick that habit. Fortunately, there are ways we can reduce the deficit responsibly, without shredding our social safety net or putting off badly needed infrastructure investments.
Here are three ways:
First, we need to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire.
Contrary to what Republicans have repeatedly told us, tax cuts do not lead to long-term prosperity. We as individuals cannot spend our dollars as wisely as we can through our government. What we are really doing with taxes is pooling our resources so we can build things, like highways, the Internet, or a better electric grid.
Taxes are our membership dues in America. If we don’t collect enough dues to pay for the nation’s upkeep, we go into debt or America goes into disrepair. Of course taxes should be fair: people shouldn’t be asked to pay more than their fair share. The problem is that those who have the most are paying the least in taxes, percentage wise. That’s why the Bush tax cuts – at least those on the wealthy – must be allowed to expire.
Second, we need to end the occupation of Afghanistan.
Supposedly, our mission there is to destroy al Qaeda. But al Qaeda is not a country, it’s a global terror network. It can move its operations anywhere it wants. It doesn’t have to be concentrated in one place. Consequently, it cannot be defeated with conventional weapons in conventional battle. No matter how long we stay in Afghanistan, there will never be a ceremony where Osama bin Laden signs the instruments of surrender. We cannot and never will win a so-called war against a noun. So we ought to stop pretending otherwise and leave Afghanistan. Maintaining costly bases there is not an efficient or an effective way to hunt down terrorists.
Third, we should eliminate unnecessary defense spending.
Our military budget is simply too big. In fact, our budget for the last year was almost as much as the rest of the world’s… combined! We are spending nine times as much as China is. This just doesn’t make sense.
We seem to have fooled ourselves into thinking that we can buy security. But we can’t. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has already made some small but encouraging steps forward by pushing Congress to cancel expensive weapons programs, like the F-22 Raptor, an advanced fighter that was designed during and for the Cold War era. But we need to do more… much more. Unfortunately, Republicans want to preserve wasteful and unnecessary defense spending while whacking badly needed public services. As Patty Murray said in her 2004 re-election campaign, “They’ve got the wrong priorities!”
Republicans have demonstrated through their own rhetoric that they cannot be trusted to govern responsibly. It is hypocritical for them to talk about reducing the deficit while simultaneously advocating for spending that make it worse.
If we really want our deficit reduced, we need to keep Democrats in charge.
Andrew Villeneuve, a 2005 Redmond High graduate, is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, a Redmond-based grassroots organization. Villeneuve can be reached at andrew@nwprogressive.org.
