The world turns, seasons come and go, the sun rises and falls, and the American government collapses into chaos at the mere mention of the possibility of passing a budget. Such is the way of things; and this week’s crisis has given us just more of the dreary same, except that every time the cycle comes around again, the apocalyptic language gets dialled up a notch. Every time the band strikes up for the annual dance of President and Congress with shut-down and debt default, the music is that little bit louder, the tempo that little bit faster.
The Republican leadership in Congress – who already have a reputation for stubbornness that would make a mule blush and who sometimes act as if they really think this is all just a political dance, and not the actions of a government whose decisions affect people – truly rose to the occasion this time. They rolled out a preposterous set of demands from a long-list of Fox News talking points, including defunding Obamacare; dropping greenhouse gas and oil drilling restrictions, and the building of an expensive and controversial new oil pipeline, among others.
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President Obama, for whom this is the fourth year that congressional Republicans have nearly forced the government into crisis, has clearly had enough. He giving a blistering speech in Washington yesterday:
“No Congress before this one has ever, ever, in history been irresponsible enough to threaten default, to threaten an economic shut-down, to suggest America not pay its bills, just to try to blackmail a President into giving them some concessions on issues that have nothing to do with a budget.”
Boehner, who is in thrall to his caucus, now has to choose between bringing the temporary measure passed by the Senate to a vote in the House, where it would probably pass with a combination of moderate Republican and Democrat votes but which would seriously undermine his position as speaker, or return Republican demands to the bill, which means continuing to face down the possibility of shutting off funding for the government, as well as ignoring the dangerous debt ceiling problem.
One ray of hope is that it is starting to look like Republican resolve is fading. “I don’t want to be undercutting Boehner, but put it this way: I will not let the government shut down,” one Republican congressman, Peter King, told the New York Times. One possible alternative outcome is an even shorter-term solution than the Senate bill, one that would keep the government open just until the end of the week; keeping the music playing for just that little bit longer.
In the end, it seems that the price you pay for a governmental system composed of checks and balances is the risk of total gridlock. What America really needs is a reform of how this entire process occurs, but this is an impossible pipedream.
In the meantime, the world just has to hope that Congress can get this dance done and dusted and find a workable solution. Because at some point, the music is going to stop. And the silence will be deafening.
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