What will happen next in the (artificially crafted) crisis in DC?

As we track events in Washington, so far, it seems that my prediction -- which few others shared and that many called "blue sky" -- appears to be unfolding almost precisely as it was 
laid out here…

…and here…

Details develop though, so let me elaborate.  After Senators Reid and McConnell finish their current dickering, both a Debt Limit Raise and a clean CR (government funding continuing resolution) will pass the Senate and will be sent to the House.  (The sticking points at present include how long to make the extensions last; the GOP wants a long CR and a brief debt ceiling raise and the Dems want the opposite, for reasons that are hard to summarize here.)

 Included will be sketched-outlines of a plan to recommence negotiations over a Grand Bargain on the budget that will include a replacement of the bludgeon Sequester slashes with deliberated alterations in entitlement programs to make them more efficient and adjusting them to longer life-spans. For the Democrats there must be provisions to also reduce deficits with some additional revenue to be derived from elimination of absurd, fat-cat tax subsidies (e.g. to rich oil companies.) These targeted tax-subsidies are as-yet unspecified, though it is clear what many of them should be, and those resisting their removal are blatantly corrupt persons... period.

Significantly, there will be no mention of Obamacare, at any level, way shape or form. 

All right, Obamacare may be mentioned in some tiny way. There is talk of including an adjustment in qualification rule enforcement for the ACA, a tweak of an actual flawed-loose end that the dems had agreed to already. But it will allow the GOP to have a face-saving "victory" to crow about.  Republicans will also attempt to put lipstick on this GOP disaster by claiming that their tactics "forced the Democrats to come to the bargaining table" on the budget, even though the House-Senate Budget Resolution Conference Committee (where these things have been resolved for 230 years) has invited the House side to meet on twenty occasions in the last ten months - that's twenty - with the GOP refusing every time.

Specifically, one version of a possible deal was on the table a year ago. See the Simpson Bowles Plan that was wrought by genuine statesmen who (alas) were under the mistaken illusion we still lived in an era of common-sense negotiation.  I do not know if the Senators who are now wrangling a deal will mention Simpson-Bowles, but any deal is likely to at least generally be based upon it.

== Okay ... and then what? ==

After the Senate acts, the locus of activity will move to the House of Representatives, where some of the adults in the room have started trying to lay the ground for an exit strategy from this wholly artificial and theatrical "crisis."  

On Monday, NPR's Melissa Block spoke with Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma about the state of the Republican party as the government shutdown continues and the debt ceiling looms closer. Rep. Cole is deputy House whip, in charge of counting and cajoling votes from his fellow Republicans. 

The interview is spectacularly revealing, in that Cole backpedals so hard I would worry about sonic booms. "Who me? Us? We never provoked a shutdown or debt limit crisis! Obamacare? Never heard of it!  Oh, you mean that law that's settled and we should offer some modest amendments later to help it work better?"  All right I am (accurately) paraphrasing. 

If only such pragmatic realists were influential. Alas...

== ... alas... ==

... alas, the Tea Party is all- powerful in the House of Representatives because cynical Red State gerrymandering had two main consequences, one planned and the other calamitously unexpected:

1 - Gerrymandered districts became safe so Congresscritters could ignore the general election and especially snub the national mood. (Last year, 55% of Americans voted for a Democratic House, but gerrymandering gave us a GOP dominated one. Congratulations on a theft well-played. It may not last.)

2 - Gerrymandered districts become dominated by one party's radicals. (And this applies too -- though less volcanically -- in Demo-gerried districts in Illinois and Maryland.) Even just 5% in a district - if fanatical enough - can swarm the party's primary and terrorize any representative who even hints at compromise with the hated Communists… I mean satanists… I mean Demoncrats.  

This radicalization has a solution!  This worst aspect of gerrymandering can be lessened considerably by a trick that citizens themselves can pull, en masse, without needing any court cases or changes in law!  I'll talk about this solution online, soon. But until then, we are stuck with a House of Representatives that, thanks to party discipline, is run by its 20% craziest members.

Till a year ago, the House GOP Caucus took its orders (obeyed with a discipline not seen in the republic since the 1860s) from Roger Ailes, daily parroting every talking point that he issued from on-high. For a year though, loyalties have swerved away from Fox, deeply worrying Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. The caucus has instead veered to Sen. Ted Cruz and to Grover Norquist. And neither of them want to see a Senate compromise pass.  

Cruz is gambling that both an extended shut-down and a full-tilt default will blow consequences his way and make him Master of the Right. Heir presumptive to the 2016 GOP nomination, and more. 

Norquist is Savanarola of the cult that is fast taking over the entire right in America. One that seeks only one goal...

... to ensure that "government of the people, by the people, for the people SHALL perish from the Earth."  

If you think I exaggerate, even a little, then you do not know the man or his cult, nor have you followed Tea Party postings, as I sometimes do. In this, the New Confederacy seems to have dropped all pretenses. It truly is re-fighting the Civil War.

== Where does all this leave us? ==

The Senate will act quickly, with plenty of GOP Senators joining to cloture any filibusters. They will pass the clean CR, the borrowing limit extension, and a resolution outlining a series of budget aims to be achieved before the CR expires in January or so.  

These will be sent to the House, where Speaker John Boehner will have to decide… will he break with the Tea Party Caucus and throw the whole thing open to all members in an open vote?  If so, he can step back and let the Democrats provide most of the votes, with just two dozen GOP members joining them, allowing the vast majority of Republicans to report to the Tea Party back home: "See? I fought to the bitter end! If that dag-nabbed Boehner hadn't caved..." 

If they are pragmatists, they will grab that face-saving way out and never mention that they could have bullied Boehner into hanging tough.

Crucial in this will be money. The Koch brothers will have to slip cash to those two dozen GOP sacrificial lambs and promise to help in their primaries to fend off Tea Party challenges.  They must give LOTS to Boehner, since he might lose his speakership. If they channel a lot more for him to personally dole out to members, he might even keep his job. At this rate, the Kochs will pass the BILLION dollar level in cash spent manipulating American elections, before the 2016 campaign even begins. We have entered the era of Crassus. Get used to it.

== And there you are ==

Of course the problem with predicting? It NEVER works well!  Even with my sterling track record and a wiki that fans maintain, listing dozens of right-on forecasts from EARTH and other novels and from The Transparent Society -- I am easily wrong as often as right. (Which is - actually - rather a brag!)  So no, I won't bet my house on any of this.

All I've done is lay down a sequence that was already described - in less detail - a week ago. A plausible near-future sci fi extrapolation.  So far, it seems to be unfolding this way.  

We had better hope so.  Because if it does, it will mean there are still some adults in Washington DC.

How the government shut-down will likely end

Before I get to my forecast of how the Great Big US Government Shut-Down of 2013 will end... let's start with this surprising commentary. Yipe. The following is from Fox News. It is harsh, factual, on-target... and did I mention it's from Fox, of all places? Could Rupert be asking "what have I done?" and seeking a way out?  --  begin quote:

"'Compromise,' to these demagogues, is to mandate that Democrats scrap President Obama’s signature domestic legislative accomplishment, which was passed by Congress, signed into law by the president, upheld by the Supreme Court and ratified by voters who returned its architect to the White House last November."

"Senate Democrats, of course, had been begging for a budget compromise for months – ever since the Senate passed its budget last spring. But Republicans rejected this attempt at compromise 18 times, refusing to allow the Senate and House of Representatives to go to a budget conference to hammer out a deal that would have put an end to this cycle of continuing resolutions," writes Julie Roginsky.

To be clear, what this means is that the House-Senate Conference Committee on the budget was invited to meet 18 times since April and it was always the GOP that refused to attend and negotiate. Every single time. And to be clearer, the House Senate conference committee on the budget is exactly where ALL of this was, is, and always should be thrashed out, as budgets have been across the history of the American republic, instead of via loony threats and shut-downs.

Moreover, the deal that was on the table, ready to be hammered out in the conference committee, was clear, bipartisan and probably what Speaker Boehner will ask for, next week.

(1) An end to the sequester and shutdowns and debt limit threats.

(2) A substantial set of reforms to make entitlement programs more efficient and -- in a few ways -- more tight-fisted. The big Democrat concession.

(3) Repealing a set of maybe forty outrageous tax breaks for fat cats and specific profitable industries that never needed subsidies (e.g. oil companies) allowing some revenues to rise without raising tax rates.

(4) Perhaps just a smidge of electoral reform? Reducing the tsunami-plague of money in politics?

It is a deal that the vast majority of moderate Americans would back and we know this from huge responses in past opinion polls.  Economists estimate that it might even bring the budget toward balance, at last. Only Tea Partiers who have signed the Norquist Pledge have been so enraged by the thought of increased revenue that they blocked the deal, declaring they do not want to return to the Clinton Era surpluses... what they want is to strangle government in principle.

Hence my ongoing prediction.  When the heat on Republican shenanigens grows too great, the Speaker will abruptly announce that President Obama has "caved" and Democratic Senators have "allowed" the budget conference committee to meet "at last!" And because of that huge democratic "concession," Boehner will now allow a vote on the continuing resolution on a straight up-down basis instead of under tight party (Tea) discipline, ending the shutdown and the threat of a debt ceiling crash.

And Fox will sigh with relief, then peddle Boehner's message verbatim... though without the well-deserved and apropos finger-quotes.

Sigh.  Like all forecasts, this one has odds against it.  I merely deem it the topmost possibility. Or am I snagged by wishful thinking, alas?

== Oh how we miss the wisdom of Lincoln ==

Old Abe may have said it best in February 1860, while initially running for President. Bear in mind: today's Republican Party is largely based (regionally and thematically) in regions that were in those days Democratic, and vice versa.  In a speech to New York's Cooper Union, Abraham Lincoln said:

"Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events. [...] Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action?"

"But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!" [...]

"A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. "

Now combine this (as I suggested last time) with Lincoln's later Gettysburg Address, calling on Americans to ensure that "government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth."

Roll that over the tongue, and ponder how bitter it must taste to the New Confederates, who recite the Fox Nostrum that "government" is evil in principle, and under all conditions! (Despite having supported it blindly when the blithering incompetents in charge were from their side.)  Men (mostly) who ignore the declining deficit, or the fact that US federal tax rates are at their lowest levels in 70 years. Or that the US Federal government's current portion of GDP is the lowest since 1940. Or the lesson of 60 centuries that most oppression came not from civil servants but owner-oligarchs. Or that our political maps -- made more foul by the vicious crime of gerrymandering -- show at a glance that we are mired in another phase of the American Civil War.

Just as a million poor whites marched foolishly (albeit bravely!) to fight and die for their feudal overlords in 1861, so do millions now obey mantras dished out by Rupert and his petri-prince co-owners, despising any class or cadre (e.g. scientists, teachers, civil servants and so on) who might possibly stand in the way of a new feudal order.

Ever since the fall of the outrageously evil-despicable Soviet Empire, I have seen no greater threat to the republic that I love, and the renaissance it helped engender. We need Lincoln. Or at least shall we gird ourselves to be worthy of him?

Pondering Pax Americana and the government 'shut-down'

While Americans await the recoil of their government's impending shut-down, I recommend, for light reading/listening, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, especially the last sentence, which is a tonic for those who have been taught the koolaid mantra that "all government is vile, all the time." Ask yourselves what our parents in the Greatest Generation would have said to that noxious oversimplification.

And, mind you, I say this as the only science fiction author ever to deliver a keynote to a Libertarian Party National Convention... back when the "L-word" had not been hijacked, before healthy skepticism of bureaucratic over-reach mutated into bilious hatred of an entire system that has worked well for U.S. citizens, for generations. Listen to Jeff Daniels recite the Address for you. Then re-dedicate yourself to what Lincoln meant, spurning the cynics seeking to re-ignite that civil war.

== On American Exceptionalism… ==

Aw heck, that makes a perfect segue to Jeff Daniels again... now in the hit HBO show "Newsroom." The show can be dramatic, fascinating, smart, on-target... and occasionally too smug in its mainstream liberalism not to deserve a wince or two.  Or maybe an occasional "yeah, true enough, but you left out...." spray-shouted at the TV. (Oh, I am so much fun to be around!)

In this clip, Daniels responds to a student's question, "What makes America the greatest country in the world?" The first two panelists on the stage give pat (strawman) answers -- diversity, opportunity, freedom and freedom. Daniels ventures into somewhat indignant territory, but his answer is worth pondering. Indeed, I discussed this issue in "American Exceptionalism vs What has Made America Exceptional"...

And yet, at risk of offending both left and right in my contrarian way, I must demur. Daniels' response blatantly ignores many things.  Like why the United States has spent so much more money than any twenty other nations on defense. He deems it a mark of shame, but it has been a burden that largely saved the world.

Perspective time. The reason is because we were the world's Pax Power and that in itself is a type of "greatness."  Across history, most pax empires (e.g. Pax Romana or Pax Sinica) were oppressive, but generally there was a huge upside to living under or near one; cities were safe from rampaging hordes and people were free to build their lives in peace. The alternative of fractious warring states could have advantages too… there was never a more fecund time than splintered Classical Greece or Colonizing Europe, but the fragility and brittleness of those times were a terrible price and most "warring states" periods did not even have such fecundity.

Without question, Pax Americana was the best and least hated of all grand paxes. (Try reading what non-Roman peoples grumbled about Rome, even while benefiting from the peace. Or what Gandhi said about Pax Brittanica, even while admitting it was the least immoral empire seen up to that point.) In fact, all of them -- including PA -- committed crimes. Dig this well -- we are human beings and when we get some power our egos get carried away with it. You try being king, sometime.

If you want to hurl a list of bad PA actions, from police enforcement for United Fruit Co. to Mossadegh in Iran and Allende in Chile, I will thump my chest and cry "nostra culpa!" for each one. You'll not get mealy-mouth excuses or shrugs from me. Indeed, clear-eyed criticism of such crimes -- or disastrous-hubristic meddlings, like Vietnam  -- is part of the duty of an aware American citizen. And dig this, boy are we trained to criticize with abandon!

Still, by comparison, and weighing the pile of good next to the bad -- and partly because of the habit of self-criticism -- Americans exercised more restraint and responsibility with that temptation than any other nation across all of time. In fact, I'd ask you to name a people who ever did better when tempted by power.  (You who are fuming right now, consider. Are you part of the national habit I am describing? Are you honest enough to name the tsunami of films and other propaganda that made you such an eager critic?)

Back to specifics, the U.S. defense umbrella has, since 1945, allowed most nations to spend far, far lower fractions of national income on warriors than at any time in history, allowing them to divert more to education and development.  Look up the stats and be amazed!  And Steven Pinker's proof that violence has plummeted under the era of Pax Americana. Further, do go ask folks in Poland and Korea, before you dismiss all this "pax" stuff.

== A word hated by the left and horribly misused by the right ==

Alas, no American gets any of this! In part because Americans avoid knowing anything at all about history. For their part, Republicans love the glory of imperium  - its pomp and preening-doofus "Yew-Hess-Hay!" pride… and thus they have plunged us into wasteful, horrendously-futile and self-defeating wars in search of it… while never admitting the grown-up obligations and accomplishments of Pax Americana -- especially the vital and unprecedented habit of self-criticism.

Liberals, in contrast, are so obsessed with seeming "grownup" that they never mention the fact that PA was flat-out necessary and mostly good for civilization, especially in comparison to the mess wrought by every preceding great power.  This despite the ultimate irony, that Democrats nearly always have managed America's pax responsibilities vastly better than Republicans ever did (except Ike.)

Vastly better.  Want it laid out clearly and decisively? How Democrats and Republicans Wage War.

No. Go watch Jeff Daniels's rant . He tells truth… but only half of it. The surly, grouchy half, which is just as limited a liberal dumbness as "Yew-Hess-Hay!" is insipid troglodytism on the right. In fact, the Pax period since 1945 is serious history that our descendants will study in books for 10,000 years. It has been far more positive than negative, but in part because of our reflex of despising empire, not glorying in it. This calls for perspective, not uni-directional reflexes.

And thus, the Daniels rant -- his narrative -- is, in fact, a poison.

== Another perspective ==

My friend the popular economics-investment pundit John Mauldin recently showed his added class by attending the World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio and revealing himself to be an uber-fan. He also publishes economics insights from what might be called an "Eisenhower Republican" perspective -- rock-ribbed and skeptical of debt, but also well-distanced from the Murdochian Madness that has hijacked today's GOP. John's latest report appraises how a combination of rising oil and gas production in the US, Obama Administration policies and a rapid return of high-tech manufacturing to US shores is already having huge effects upon the American balance of trade, a deficit that has spanned a human lifetime.

A deficit that - by the way - I call deliberate, and one of the most important contributions of Pax Americana to world history. A deficit that propelled export driven growth across the world, uplifting generations first in war-torn Europe and Japan, then Taiwan, Korea, Singapore… and so on until US trade is now the chief force lifting China and India at the same time. 

John shows how the trade imbalance appears to be going away more rapidly than anyone expected: "With the US current account deficit continuing its fall, we need to be alert for the next crisis abroad. It is very difficult to predict exactly when, where, and how markets will panic, but taking US dollars out of the trading system is akin to losing a chair in a game of musical chairs. Someone is going to be left out. It could be Europe or Japan – but more likely it will be emerging-market countries loaded with a lot of external debt denominated in US dollars who struggle to keep a seat at the table."

Another outcome. When the US is no longer shipping tsunamis of dollars overseas, the countries of Asia will need another currency to trade with each other. China is already preparing to set up its renmimbi (yuan) as a new reserve currency to stand next to the dollar. This will be accelerated, so long as China does not collapse because America is buying fewer Chinese goods. It can get complicated. For example the impact any China slow-down is going to have on commodities like metals, on countries like Canada, on countries like Australia.

It probably is time for the development teat of U.S. trade deficits to start shutting down. It was fun, buying trillions of dollars worth of crap we never needed, so that manufacturing jobs would cycle through the planet leaving new middle classes rising in their wake -- perhaps far more fun than "foreign aid" is supposed to be... though also vastly more effective than any other form of wealth transfer or aid ever attempted. But America needs to attend to finishing the latest phase of its ongoing civil war and that's going to take a while, before we can go back to helping move the world forward.

== A final note on that civil war we're in ==

You want my own quirky, contrarian take on the insane lemming charge toward a shut-down of the U.S. government?  Well... all right. So long as you are ready for more contrary insights. Here are some peeks behind the curtain.

Key is the Hastert Rule, under which all Republican House members have vowed to always and absolutely obey the majority of the House GOP Caucus, no matter how slender (or crazy) that majority might be. This means that 51% of the 51% can utterly control the agenda and proceedings and output of the United States House of Representatives. This, plus gerrymandering, plus Fox News, compose all the explanation anyone needs for the current made-up "crisis."

Despite all the pundit-ravings about a "civil war within the GOP," The 21st Century Republican Party remains (for now at least) the most tightly disciplined political force we have seen in American political life since the "solid south" of the old Dixiecrats, seventy years ago. Pundits tell us that discipline and the Hastert Rule are maintained by fear of Tea Party insurrections in next spring's GOP primary.  Don't you believe the pundits.

In fact, nothing happens in the Tea Party without say-so from Fox News. Fox is co-owned by Rupert Murdoch and several Saudi princes who have made their agenda clear. The government of the United States of America, which has functioned -- overall -- far better than anything else the world ever saw , helping to lead a consortium of other free nations and peoples to transform civilization for the better... that government and even the concept of "government" must be undermined, discredited and ultimately destroyed. It is the core, consistent narrative and one that a third of U.S. citizens now swallow as eagerly as babes do mother's milk. And hence, amid this re-ignited civil war, it is only proper to evoke Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, one more time. Recite it to your neighbors enthralled by the Murdochians. Watch them wince.

So. Do not let the appearance of internal GOP strife fool you.  All -- (or nearly all, so long as the Hastert Rule applies) -- is choreographed.

Were these sane days, it would take just twenty House GOP members to break off and form a Grownup Conservative Caucus -- taking their chances with the inevitable Tea Party vengeance in their district primaries, next spring -- in order to negotiate with moderate democrats, as used to happen all the time, back in the 20th Century. They would do this for the sake of the nation, out of courage and love of country… and love for a version of conservatism that Barry Goldwater might recognize. (A deal to make entitlements more efficient, in exchange of elimination of some fat-cat tax breaks, has been on the table for two years. Those twenty are all it would take.)

Alas, Rupert Murdoch and his partners have made clear their agenda to destroy Goldwater Conservatism in America… and thereupon all meaningful discourse. God help us if the Democrats ever become likewise dominated by their loony fringe. (And you better believe they have one - as feeble as it currently is!) If that ever happens -- (and a vanishing Middle Class just might drive such radicalism) -- then our only escape will be Canada… or space.  And Pax Americana will be finished.

Which has been the aim of Rupert & Co., all along.