The Living Room Times

[WARNING: Political ranting ahead, with some profanity. I’m pissed off.]

I’ll be the first to admit that, as a relatively new Coloradan, I don’t pay as much attention to state politics as I should. But tonight, on my commute home, I heard a story on Colorado Public Radio about the current budget debate — and it made me furious with the Republicans in this state. But my reaction was broader than that, because the story perfectly encapsulates, albeit on a local level, the utter irresponsibility and cynicism of so many Republicans and “conservatives” nationally right now — the very sort of thing Andrew Sullivan has been decrying as nihilistic oppositionism. This story is, in a nutshell, why the excitable Sully is, in this instance, absolutely correct.

Colorado, like many states, is in the midst of a huge budget crisis. Many painful spending cuts have already been made, but the shortfall remains huge. Yet, Keynes and Krugman be damned, the budget has to be balanced, come hell or mile-high water. So the Democrats are now pushing bills that would eliminate tax exemptions for various things, from soda to candy to bull semen — yes, bull semen. Republicans and business leaders object on the grounds that these are effectively tax hikes (which is true) and would hurt businesses, thus resulting in the elimination of jobs (and the reduction of other forms of tax revenue, offsetting some of the fiscal gains).

As I listened to the voices of folks criticizing the bills, I found myself feeling pretty sympathetic to the Republicans’ position. I needed to know more details, certainly, but at first blush, this seemed to me like a case where maybe the Democrats are raising taxes when they should instead be cutting more spending. My inner fiscal conservative was awakened, and felt predisposed to oppose the Dems’ plan.

And then they started talking about the Republican “alternative.”

The Republican bill would require that some specified amount of money — I forget the exact number — be trimmed from the state budget through state employee layoffs, pay cuts and the like. Okay, well, as the son of two Connecticut state employees, I wasn’t instantly on board — I know all too well what the misleading siren song of anti-state-employee demagoguery sounds like — but I was willing to listen. Hey, maybe the GOP had found some places where cuts could genuinely be made. I was certainly curious to hear the details.

But there’s the rub. There are no details. The Republican proposal would simply mandate that X amount has to be cut from the budget, and then leave it at that, requiring that the governor decide what, specifically, to cut from state services. “Layoffs and pay cuts,” the GOP would say, without providing any guidance about who or what. So the Republicans would get to take credit for being fiscally responsible and preventing tax increases, while the governor — who, I should add, is a lame-duck Democrat — has to make all the hard choices, and suffer all the blowback from those choices.

Pardon my French, but what fucking bullshit.

That is not a good-faith proposal. It is not policy-making. It is not legislation. It is not governance. It is not even an advancement of conservative principles; a principled conservative would put his money (or lack thereof) where his mouth is, and propose specific cuts that would shrink the size of government in ways that would make Ronald Reagan smile. But that’s not what this is. This is just an absolute, total abdication of responsibility by one of the two major political parties in this state.

Their “proposal” to solve the state’s serious, crisis-level fiscal problems is to proclaim a number from On High, declare their job done, and let someone else — some liberal! — figure out the details?!? Are you fucking kidding me?!? This is the conservative alternative I’m supposed to sign onto, if I think the Democrats are being a little too tax-and-spendy? This utterly irresponsible bollocks is my only other choice? Really?!?!?

The cynical political calculus couldn’t be more obvious, of course. As I said, the GOP gets credit for preventing tax hikes, and the Democrats get the blame for whichever painful cuts they decide to make. That’s if the proposal somehow succeeds. If it fails, as it’s pretty much guaranteed to (you might say designed to), the GOP gets credit for trying to prevent tax hikes, and the Democrats get the blame for opposing the GOP’s brilliant anti-tax proposal. And the public is too stupid to realize they’re being played. Politically, I get it. But governmentally? Good grief! This is our government?!

In a sense, this is precisely why our system is broken — but you know what, that’s not good enough. This isn’t a structural problem; this is a problem of cynical individuals, acting of their own free will, making indefensible choices. The Republicans could act like grown-ups, and participate in the political affairs of the state (and the nation) like partners in governance — or at least give the majority Democrats the opportunity to accept or reject such a partnership. But they’ve chosen not to do that. They’re not offering an actual partnership. They’re not offering anything real. They’ve chosen instead to be purely cynical obstructionists, with nothing to offer but transparent bullshit. That was and is their choice; they could have chosen differently. And so they don’t deserve to have me, or anyone else, make excuses for them. Pointing out that liberals also do irresponsible, cynical things at times is letting the Republicans off the hook much too easily for this particular abdication of the job we, the people, elected them to do. Next time the Dems do something similarly shameless, get back to me and I’ll consider the facts of the specific situation. But right now, it’s the Republicans who are doing it, and you know what? The sort of cynical, irresponsible jackasses who would make such a transparently political, hopelessly useless, shamelessly demagogic “proposal” — in the midst of a serious, extraordinarily difficult-to-solve crisis — have no business governing a homeowner’s association, let alone a state or a nation. These people should be voted out of office, every last one of them.

And until they are — until someone makes the “conservative” opposition in this state and this country understand that being a loyal opposition requires making some attempt at proposing constructive solutions to the problems we face instead of merely opposing the Democrats’ proposals, calling them liberals, hippies and socialists, and making transparently bad-faith counterproposals that are intended solely to score political points — is it any wonder I’ll be voting Democrat, and supporting the leaders, like Ritter and Obama, who are at least trying to grapple with the insanely intractable and difficult problems we face? Not because I agree with them or their proposed solutions, necessarily, but because they are the only functioning political party in this country right now whose actions reflect any intent or desire to actually govern.