If Republicans take control over the U.S. House, and possibly the entire U.S. Congress (Senate included) this November, what will likely occur over the next two years politically and economically in the Nation? Based upon the prior performances of Republicans during the past dozen years and the stated policy positions over last two years of the GOP and the Obama Administration, next to nothing is to be expected from Washington DC.
The Supreme Court may add some of its own excitement during the next two years. It will likely dismiss Federal challenges to the Arizona anti-immigration law. Federalism will be enshrined as the new force in America – let every state, county, city, citizen, wealthy corporation, and nut group do as it wishes. Any future vacancy in the High Court during the next two years will go unfilled as a more conservative Senate will not likely approve any Obama nominee.
The Supremes will probably strike down parts of the 2009 healthcare legislation that compel all citizens to purchase private health insurance. This will gut a good part of ObamaCare, making any future Congressional vote to repeal rather moot. The Supreme Court would likely permit any state, such as Massachusetts or California to require such universal purchases under their reserved powers to regulate all types of Insurance, but a Federal mandate would exceed its very conservative view of the U.S. Constitution. During the next two years, due to massive fiscal constraints, no U.S. State will attempt any healthcare reforms on its own. Medicare, Medicaid and Private Health Insurance Costs will escalate to new extremes during the next two years.
With a noticeable number of new ultra-conservatives, libertarians, and extreme anti-government, anti-tax and anti-compromise members as part of the next Republican Congressional majority, President Obama will be facing stark opposition to everything he has proposed or might propose. He’ll be lucky to have any new administrative or judicial appointments approved. An unprecedented number of Administration positions that require Senate approval have yet to gain approval. Those positions will likely go empty for the next two years – a victory for those who hate all public sector employees. The Obama Administration will limp along with only half of the wholly incompetent administrators the Bush Administration had for 8 years.
Upon what national policies could Majority Republicans and the Obama Administration agree? There will be no financial or banking reforms, no public election financing or disclosure legislation, no environmental or immigration reforms, no new energy or education initiatives, no unemployment extensions, and no federal financial assistance to the 50 states. Absolutely no new legislation will be proposed or enacted during the next two years. Too bad the rest of the world will move on, the needs of Americans will mount, and the movement of the earth around the sun, will all continue for the next two years.
The massive oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will be quickly forgotten and alternative fuels, carbon taxes, or even a small gasoline tax; will all fail to gain any public or political support. Sales of hybrid and electric cars will stagnate, but then so will sales of all cars in the U.S. because consumers won’t have the money or credit to buy new ones. During the next two years, China will surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest manufacturer and consumer of automobiles. It will still have an undervalued currency and a massive trade imbalance with the U.S. We will still be the world’s largest economy, but it will be shrinking faster than experts ever imagined just a few years ago.
There may be two new massive financial bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack by the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Republicans will blame Democrats for having to do these things, and the discussion will be forgotten after those two private and federally-created entities are allowed to liquidate and disappear. More U.S. banks will fail over more residential and commercial foreclosures and associated write-downs, but that will be quietly handled as it has been over the past half century by the FDIC. Congress and the Administration will quietly add to the deficit by approving additional bailout spending, simply blaming the poor in Detroit and Cleveland, plus fascists and socialists in the Democratic Party, for forcing them to do this necessary dirty work. Washington DC will do everything and anything to keep the Bond and Stock Markets on Wall Street, London and Hong Kong perpetually placated and pleased.
Nothing of significance in the Federal Budget will be cut. Some programs might be frozen at 2010 levels, or projected increases from 2008 will be reduced, but that won’t matter in the big scheme of things. Billions in wasted corporate tax subsidies to Hedge Funds, Brokerage Houses, Big Banks, Oil and Energy Companies, Agribusiness, the Real Estate Industry, Export Companies, Military Suppliers, and every other well-funded and lobbyist-represented wealthy special interest will continue over the next two years. A few unknown small federal programs will be ceremoniously sacrificed to keep International Bond speculators happy but they will constitute in the aggregate less than 2.5% of all public spending – essentially a rounding error when one discusses $4 trillion dollars or more in the same sentence.
Overall infrastructure spending will see a modest bi-partisan increase, principally for roads, highways and bridges. Mass transit, Amtrak and High Speed rail will get a bit more money for studies and planning to keep well-connected consulting and engineering companies satisfied with a predictable source of income, but nothing of consequence will actually be started, built or completed anywhere in the U.S. during the next two years To do so would require that we establish a definable and collectable source of public money (taxes) which of course our wholly paralyzed, gridlocked and corrupt political system is wholly incapable of enacting. We’ll leave the actual implementation of these projects to and for the Chinese, Europeans, and other countries around the world that are not awash in so much public and private debt, and who possess long-term outlooks that exceed our ingrained nationwide immediate-gratification quarterly-only perspective.
We will probably enact a few more tax cuts, particularly for large businesses and the very wealthy, as we firmly believe in trickle-down prosperity, despite the fact that reality has made such a belief a complete fallacy. Besides, those two groups will so dominate Washington DC that they will have the money and organization to get things accomplished when both political parties will be completely divided into numerous irreconcilable factions that will be utterly oblivious to the needs of the rest of the Nation. Of course, these new tax cuts enacted during high unemployment, low private business investment and activity, and overall stagnant Federal Tax Revenues, will only exacerbate annual Federal Deficits and the total Federal Debt.
Anyone advocating tax increases, real spending cuts, establishing sane national priorities, making hard choices, or mentioning extreme income and wealth inequality will be relegated to National Public Radio and Television, and a few liberal or moderate news sources that will be generally ignored by the majority of Americans and their political leaders.
Many more new electronic gizmos will be launched to distract us from reality during the next two years, making anything made and sold before 2010 seem outdated and outmoded. None of them will actually improve anyone’s life, skills, or the owner’s employment or sexual prospects. All of them will be designed by a few groups of people in the U.S. and overseas, built exclusively overseas because all the technology and manufacturing facilities exist there, marketed to U.S. consumers who still have the financial ability to waste money on such worthless devices or who are so addicted to new gizmos they will forego food and sex to get the latest ones, and the profits from the sale of these gizmo sales will inure to the top 2% of U.S. and global citizens who happen to own or manage these international companies.
To solve high systemic joblessness and under-employment, those unfortunates will be ostracized, vilified and marginalized by the rest of the country and our political leaders. When all unemployment benefits run out, the official unemployment numbers will look great on paper and thus our political and business leaders will announce that unemployment is no longer an issue. Most who will “lose” jobs or income during the next two years will not be eligible for unemployment benefits because they were independent contractors who ran out of projects, employees who did not work enough during the prior two years to be eligible, or who were never hired after graduating from school.
The unemployed will be forced underground and will make limited forays in public due to the fear they will be blamed for the continuing deep recession and that they might be considered no better than illegal immigrants. There will be a complete lack of any meaningful job creation by the public and private sectors during the next two years but official unemployment numbers will no longer be kept as the information gathered will be completely useless. Incomes for those still employed in the public and private sectors will continue to stagnate, and benefits will be greatly curtailed so as to bring them into alignment with compensation in third world nations.
During the next two years, the top 2% will increase their share of the nation’s income and wealth to Galaxy-size proportions, to be measured in being light-years apart from the other 98% of Americans and the other 6 billion worthless people who over-populated our planet. The lucky 2% will engage in even more speculative and aggressive investing by using more and more indecipherable and complex financial instruments based upon wagers wholly removed from any real economic, social, or human values that we might have shared for the past 10,000 years of civilization. They will be able to “buy” synthetic collateralized basketball futures including the new Miami Heat trio of LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade.
The cities of Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland and Buffalo will propose to sell themselves to the Bank of China and become four free-trade zones open to unfettered global commerce and unregulated immigration in a final effort to repopulate and rebuild themselves. Chinese investors will announce they are ready to build a high-speed rail line to connect all four cities if they become a North American Chinese Territory. Congressional Republicans pledge to fast-track the deal.
Free speech will come under attack – not from individuals or government – but from large corporations and wealthy individuals. Corporations (complete legal fictions that are now considered to be individuals with all the rights associated with natural people) will happily and aggressively sue individuals, organizations, and smaller business entities, who might criticize or question them. With their minions of well-paid lawyers filing endless libel and slander suits, and lawsuits over copyrights, trademarks and patents, they will force silence from and bankrupt their much smaller defendants, and ensure their unfettered power across the Nation and in Washington DC. This will also be the standard basis of their countersuits in response to the flood of private litigation that will be filed against major financial and banking institutions during the next two years by individuals; public and private pension funds; shareholders; former real estate owners, debtors and creditors; and other large international investors who lost big during the 2008-2010 Financial Crisis, and who will still be hurting financially.
Most likely Republicans, who will control the U.S. Congress during the next two years, will unanimously agree to impeach President Obama. The truth or facts have never been an impediment to any of their actions, policies or statements during the past. They need only a few pretexts – and they will find many – to start a debilitating, nasty, dilatory and dead-end impeachment effort. This will drag down the Administration for the next two years, further ensuring absolutely nothing is accomplished in Washington.
Republicans have shown they are willing to trash the entire U.S. economy and the welfare of 98% of its citizens in order to regain power in 2010 by any means necessary. They will continue to do so and personally destroy President Obama over the next two years so they can regain complete power in the November 2012 elections. Unfortunately there are enough uneducated, ignorant, angry, fearful and voting Americans who will enable them.
Everything our political and economic leaders have been arguing about since 2000 (and probably since 1990) is the same in 2010, and will be the same in 2012 – and probably in 2020 – because we have reached that unique point in every empire’s history when its people and leaders simply cannot address or solve anything. The U.S. will still be in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next two years and possibly wasting human lives and our national treasury in Korea and elsewhere around the globe because our insane Military Industrial Complex knows no limits.
This is also that special inflection period just before every Empire’s final, inevitable, messy and rapid collapse as a result of its internal failings, self-inflicted wounds, hubris, stupidity, and global Financial and Military overreach. It is obvious that our voting citizens, along with our political and business leaders, cannot understand or change this depressing trajectory.
We are left to making some basic plans on how to pick up the pieces and start over when our mix of drama, comedy and tragedy is finally over. We will watch helplessly as the huge theatre dramatically and suddenly collapses on all the players and audience. We will then stare blankly at the huge mess while standing outside without any protection in the middle of a raging storm.
Marc Pascal, happily ranting from dysfunctional Arizona. My family and I have just moved to a new residence since our last landlord lost the condo in foreclosure. It’s actually newer and nicer than – and the same price as the old place. We’re all in good health and wish all TMV contributors, editors and readers the best news and health for the rest of 2010 and beyond.