On 12 February President Obama delivered his State of the Union Address to a joint session of the US Congress.
The address is an annual ritual where the president gives members of Congress and the American public his assessment of the nation’s current condition, as well as his legislative priorities for the coming year. Coincidentally, February is also the month when many Americans like to gather in front of their TV sets and participate in another annual ritual: the Golden Globes, Grammys and Oscars awards shows. Now I usually don’t think these annual rituals have much in common other than the fact that they are always televised and they always occur in February. But this year I did notice another very subtle similarity.
Eighty years ago a song from the movie The Gay Divorcee, about a new Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire dance step called ‘The Continental’, won the very first Academy Award for Best Original Song. The song’s opening lyrics were: “Beautiful music, dangerous rhythm/It’s something daring, the Continental/A way of dancing that’s really ultra-new/It’s very subtle, the Continental/Because it does what you want it to do.” Well, by the time you read this column, I think many Americans will likely be watching and listening to their political leaders in Washington DC while these politicians perform the latest political dance step. I call it ‘The Sequestration’, and I’ve written my own lyrics to the same tune: “Cowardly process, insane policy/It’s total nonsense, the Sequestration/A way of governing that’s difficult to undo/It’s never subtle, the Sequestration/Because it does what Congress can’t agree to do.”
If you are now wondering why America’s political leaders decided to perform such an awful dance in the first place, maybe I can explain. ‘The Sequestration’ was originally developed in the summer of 2011 as a way to tap dance around the hard budgetary issues Congressional Republicans and Democrats couldn’t agree on. At that time America was in danger of defaulting on its international debt obligations because Republicans didn’t want to raise the nation’s debt ceiling unless Democrats also agreed to big spending cuts.
In order to force a budget deal after the 2012 elections, both sides agreed to across-the-board spending cuts, or a sequestration of $1.2trn of federal spending in 2013. Because the proposed $500bn in defence spending cuts were just as anathema to Republicans as the $700bn in discretionary spending cuts were to Democrats, political leaders from both parties thought this would force both sides to eventually agree. They thought no one in Congress would be insane enough to allow such indiscriminate budget cuts to ever take effect. What we now know is that when it comes to partisan politics, insanity is the rule rather than the exception.
While President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress do share some blame for the current budgetary impasse, it is Congressional Republicans’ Tea Party-fuelled opposition to a combination of revenue increases and spending cuts that has put ‘The Sequestration’ at the centre of America’s political stage. By doing that dance, Republicans can show their supporters how courageous they are by standing up to Obama and forcing these spending cuts.
Those same Republicans are also dancing around the fact that while they are ‘courageously’ cutting spending on worthwhile programs like those that fund meat inspections, air traffic control and special education, they are doing nothing to reduce spending on the entitlement programs like Medicare that are driving up the country’s debt. I could be wrong, but I believe many of these Republicans will eventually cave in and agree to a budget compromise after their constituents realise that many of these spending cuts are senseless.
One thing of I’m certain, however, is that if there ever was a political party that needed to learn some new dance moves, it is the Grand Old Party. If the only strategy they have – shutting down the federal government – didn’t work in 1995, why do they think it will work any better in 2013?
Charles Laffiteau is a US Republican from Dallas, Texas who is pursuing a PhD in Public Policy and Political Economy. He previously lectured on Contemporary US Business & Society at DCU from 2009-2011.
