The US Deficit and Debt

I’m not certain what 20 trillion dollars looks like. I think it is $20,000,000,000,000 but it might be plus or minus a nought or three. 20 trillion is the estimated American debt for the end of the current fiscal period, which I understand is 31 December, 2018. Put simply, at the end of the year, this is what America’s federal government and its citizens will owe the rest of the world. Put another way, assuming there are three hundred million Americans (I know there are more but the math gets too difficult) every single American man, woman, child and baby owes in the region of $70,000 and this amount rises daily. I am no economist but how is this debt sustainable? What happens if the bond market decides America has become too big a risk or can it be too big to fail?

Congress and the Chief Executive keep “kicking the can down the road” when it comes to the budget. The current Continuing Resolution to keep the federal government open expires on 5^th March and the President is zealously threatening that there will be no more CRs. Without an agreement, including a deal on new immigration laws, the federal government will shut down.

I have to ask myself, what the hell are these people doing? Here we have the wealthiest country in the world borrowing vast sums from the rest of the world to sustain a standard of living. It’s like Rockefeller borrowing a few bucks from his workers to keep the lights and heating on in his mansion. Yes, totally crazy.

If Congress approves the Trump budget, the deficit, i.e. the difference between the federal tax take and government expenditure, is an estimated and eye-watering one trillion dollars. In times of strife, war or economic depression, governments need to borrow. Less than a century ago, Roosevelt borrowed the country’s way out of the Great Depression, creating numerous agencies and programmes along the way to put the nation’s men back to work. But FDR was not a deficit spender and he sought to balance the budget as soon as he could. Forty years ago, Republican President Ronald Reagan ran huge deficits to boost military spending and restore America’s No 1 world position. Reagan was a colossal deficit spender but Reagan believed he had huge US assets to borrow against and seemed unconcerned by both deficit and debt.

The current Trump budget is both a message and a wish list but it contradicts and breaks many campaign promises. For example, during the campaign Trump promised he would not cut Medicare or Medicaid. The current proposals include cuts of $554 billion to Medicare and $250 billion to Medicaid. The middle classes and poor will feel the cuts the most.

Another Trump promise was he would balance the budget “very quickly.”  Last year, the self-proclaimed “king of debt” laid out a plan to balance the budget in 10 years. This year he has not bothered. Trump accepts annual deficits in excess of $1 trillion as the new norm. It is worth recording that Trump also promised to get rid of the national debt by the end of his second term. That one has clearly gone by the board.

In 1999, then Texas Gov. George W. Bush denounced a House Republican plan to save $8 billion by deferring tax credit payments for low-income people. “I don't think they ought to balance their budget on the backs of the poor.” While Trump has never claimed the mantle of “compassionate conservatism,” his budget validates several of the negative stereotypes that Bush tried to shed. For example, Trump wants to cut $214 billion from the food stamp program in the next decade, a reduction of nearly 30 percent.

However, the President is not calling for a reduction in the size of government. He seeks to spend $4.4 trillion next year, up 10 percent from last year. He’s calling for spending less on the home front to cover a massive military build-up. Trump wants $716 billion in defence spending in 2019, a 13 percent increase. “The Trump plan provides more money for just about everything a general or admiral might desire,” Greg Jaffe notes. “The United States already spends more on its military than the next eight nations combined.” More to the point, military spending is at the expense of the poor and middle classes.

Trump proposes to slash the State Department’s budget by 23 percent. He will justify this act as part of “clearing the swamp.” Should there be ensuing foreign disasters, Trump will no doubt excuse himself and blame another factor, in the same way that he blames the Parkland school shootings on mental illness, not guns. Yet this is the same man who signed an Executive Order easing restrictions on the mentally challenged buying weapons.

Alongside this massive budgeted expenditure are the tax cuts. This is solid Reaganomics. Cut taxes and the tax take will go up, thus paying for the massive expenditures. For example, the administration hopes that by reducing corporation tax from 35% to 21%, the amount of tax actually paid will be increased because corporations will not try to avoid or reduce the tax they pay. For me, this is pure Disney, fantasy without the music and the warm, mushy feeling.

Where are the legislators in this mess? It seems the Democrats have given up on the deficit and the debt arguments and opposition this year in exchange for a debate on immigration laws that save DACA and the Dreamers, those children born outside US but brought to US by their parents who were illegal immigrants. Why did the Democrats not continue to fight on all fronts? Do they approve deficits and debt? As for the Republicans, these are the same people who denied Obama funding on several welfare programmes and, in 2013, shut down the federal government on terms of “not a cent more.” The sheer hypocrisy of the politicians at the heart of American government is breath-taking.

In my younger days, I loved my many visits to the United States, whether for business, research or just visiting. I found out that the special relationship between Brits and Americans did indeed exist, although mainly at the grass roots level. Now, the lack of progress in America on any meaningful gun control, the sheer flippancy when it comes to the economy and the apparent dominance of the ‘me’ society, not the ‘we’ society, makes me fear for the future there. I sincerely hope I am wrong.

 

 

Gun Control: An Oxymoron.

This is not a blog I want to write but I feel compelled to do so. Who among us could not have been horrified by the killings in Parkland, the school in Broward County, Miami, when seventeen children were shot to death? There has been outcry and condemnation from all over the States. “Blood is being spilled on the floors of American classrooms, and that is not acceptable,” said ­David Hogg, a senior at Parkland. Following this mass shooting, something new stands out. This time, the survivors of the rampage, as well as their parents, are demanding to know why the adults who run the country have not done more to prevent it. This is a good question.

Dan Gelber, the Mayor of Miami Beach, sent a message to all residents on 15^th February. He wrote about the steps the city was taking to protect residents. “I would like our City to do more. So much more needs to be done. I would like to outright ban the possession and sale of the assault rifle that was used in the Parkland murders. I would like to create gun free zones in our City. Regrettably under current law these and other measures cannot happen because in 2011 the Florida Legislature passed, and our Governor signed, a bill that fully ‘pre-empted’ the ability of local government to regulate in any manner firearm usage and sale. Courts will not enforce such measures and public officials that even try to implement them are subject to fines and penalties including removal from office.”

I cannot imagine how it must feel to be a parent or sibling of one of the seventeen murdered yesterday. The habitual outpouring of grief, regret and anger is heart-rending but like the mass gun murders on numerous other occasions, such as Las Vegas and Sandy Hook, I regret to say that nothing will happen to stem the outrages. I will try to explain why America is paralysed and unable to stop, lessen or control guns. This will be familiar to my American readers but my British followers might not understand the politics, law and money involved.

Let’s start with the US Congress, the law-making body for the United States. Provided the House of Representatives and the Senate are in agreement on the nature of a new law, one would think that legislation is simplicity itself. These days it’s a tall order to find any agreement across the aisle of these two parties who play partisan politics to the hilt. It is worth bearing in mind that the minority party in the Senate has the power of filibuster and can talk out a bill. Passing legislation through Congress is very difficult unless there is political will on both sides to get something done.

Additionally, lobbying in D.C. is big business. The gun lobby, led by the National Rifleman’s Association, has access to vast amounts of money and is incredibly powerful. Florida’s Senator Rubio is reported to have received in excess of $3 million in donations from the gun lobby. Unsurprisingly, he does not support gun restrictions. Furthermore, any US Congressman or Senator can find himself or herself in difficulties at election time when an incredibly well financed gun lobby candidate stands in primaries and the election.

So getting a meaningful gun law passed is a pretty tall order. Let’s assume this is achieved. The next hurdle is the President. He may approve the legislation but if he does not, his power of veto can only be defeated by the passing of an override motion, when two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate are needed.

If the President approves the new law, is that the end? Not a chance. The gun lobby will field an army of lawyers in the federal courts, seeking to reverse or ban the new law. The case will probably travel speedily through the Court system, ending with the Supreme Court who will likely deliver the final judgment. The role of the Supremes is to rule on whether a law is constitutional. In the case of gun legislation, the Court will consider whether the new law is in conflict with the Second Amendment which states: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

On countless occasions over the years, the Court has struck down all manner of gun control legislation as unconstitutional. For those interested in the details, Google will provide. The essential point is that the Supremes continually find that the Founding Fathers intended all Americans to have the right to own not just guns but automatic and semi-automatic weapons.

I very much doubt that the Court will change its stance as a result of Parkland, especially as the current balance leans towards a strict construction of the Constitution. Until the Second Amendment is construed differently, there is no possibility of meaningful gun control legislation coming into force in America. Even checks on individuals before they buy guns have received short shrift from the courts.

The Constitution has provision to change its terms. An example is the Prohibition amendment passed in 1919 and expunged in 1933. The latter was achieved very quickly after FDR’s election because the mood of the country made it a vote winner. It comes down to politics and money. If legislators as a whole see an issue as a vote winner and can raise the finance to advertise and promote the arguments, thereby getting a groundswell of opinion of voters in favour, all well and good.

I cannot pose all the variables should the Second Amendment be changed. For example, outlawing all automatic and semi-automatic weapons, as well as munitions, is needed but a new law cannot be all-embracing. The police and the armed forces will demand such weapons. Furthermore, there are innumerable federal and state gun laws whose removal and replacement will take years, not months, to achieve.

I am sorry to write in such a defeatist fashion but I regard the gun issue in America as insoluble. America seems to have a gun culture unknown elsewhere in the West. How does one change something embedded for centuries?

 

 

Riveting: The Story of Rosie and American Women in World War II

Recently, The Washington Post published an obituary of Naomi Parker Fraley who died in January, aged 96, in Washington State. She was the model for “Rosie the Riveter”, an enduring World War II symbol of American feminism. The poster, by the artist J Howard Miller, depicted a female worker, wearing a blue shirt and red polka-dot bandanna, flexing her left bicep, with the caption "We Can Do It!" The poster eventually became an icon and nowadays can be found printed on all kinds of merchandise including T-shirts, mugs and fridge magnets. However, whilst Fraley’s image became ubiquitous, she was left unheralded and anonymous.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, in 1942, 20-year-old Fraley went to work at the Naval Air Station in Alameda and it was in the station workshop that she was photographed for the Acme photo agency. When the picture appeared soon afterwards alongside an article in The Oakland Post-Enquirer, Fraley cut out the article and kept it for 70 years, while America misidentified another in her place.

In 2011, at a reunion event for female wartime workers, Fraley saw the Rosie poster displayed alongside her photograph. The woman in the photograph, according to the information, was named as Geraldine Doyle. "I couldn't believe it," she told The Chicago Tribune in 2016. "I knew it was me in the photo."

These days, Fraley would have been encouraged to bring massive law suits for using her image without consent. “Rosie the Riveter” represented so much more than just a World War II iconic image. Until 1940s, Americans ideologically regarded gender in a separate sphere. The public sphere was for men and the world of business and politics. The private sphere was for women and the world of home and domesticity.

Arguably, the most significant shift in the status of women in US came during World War II. Certainly, the war in US had less impact than in Europe and Russia. US women were not in danger of imminent attack nor did they have to endure civilian-like problems experienced by women in other countries at war, such as rape and other physical assaults. The US domestic economy benefited, witnessing the end of the Great Depression. There was far more employment for women compared to the 1930s because men were now in the armed forces in their millions. Tens of thousands of jobs were available, especially in war-associated industries.

The Hollywood movie, “Swing Shift Maisie”, produced by MGM in 1944, is dated and contains much WWII propaganda. The issues it dealt with covered work and gender roles. When Maisie first goes to the factory floor, she is wolf whistled and leered at. There is a woman supervisor but many men are there and she has to earn their respect. Significantly, there are no black workers. The film portrays US women at work and their role in a wartime setting.

Women have to be seen “doing their bit.” It was easy for women to get a job, especially in the growing munitions industry. Finally, there was a direct threat to jobs traditionally filled by men. Women were cheaper labour and, possibly, better. Different work practices were resented by men. The movie panned male factory workers, comparing them unfavourably with fighter and bomber pilots and the men who fought in the war. The movie challenged separate spheres ideology.

It is argued that one of the biggest changes in American society after 1945 was the status of women. At the commencement of war, women were needed in the workforce and this continued after it ended. However, there is a counter-argument that World War II made little difference for women. It was not a consequence of the war that women attained new status and enjoyed new opportunities. Feminism would not resurface until the 1960s. Then, Betty Friedan’s book, “The Feminine Mystique” challenged the continued role of women in the home. Thus the war was a temporary aberration for women’s advancement.

Last week saw the celebration here of the 100^th anniversary of the success of the UK Women’s Suffrage movement, winning votes for some women, those over the age of 30 who owned real property. It is astonishing that some 73 years after the end of World War II, women in both US and UK have yet to achieve equality in the work place on issues of pay and in the way they are sometimes regarded by male colleagues. The Weinstein scandals, followed by many others, are evidence that more progress is needed to achieve equality of opportunity and respect for women. Maybe a resurgence of Rosie the Riveter posters is needed with the altered caption, “We Women Can Do It” or “Don’t Mess With Us.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Smells Like Nixon

Last week, President Trump cleared publication by Devin Nunes, the House Intelligence Committee chairman, of a four page memo claiming bias inside the FBI against the Trump administration in relation to the Russian electoral interference enquiry. In 2016, an FBI surveillance warrant was approved by the Justice Department to monitor Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser. It is alleged that to obtain the warrant, the FBI relied on material from a dossier compiled by a British spy. The dossier was partly funded by Democrats but this was not disclosed when application for the warrant was made. The President and his administration are now hoping to use this revelation to undermine the work of Robert Mueller and side-line or stop his enquiry into Russian involvement aiding Trump in the 2016 election.

I have no evidence to say whether the Republicans are right or wrong when alleging bias. Is the President justified in authorising publication of a document which is protected by national security interests? Is the FBI justified in denouncing the President’s action? Certainly, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, demonstrated his fury when he told his agents: “Talk is cheap; the work you do is what will endure. We speak through our work. One case at a time. One decision at a time.” It cannot be denied that at extreme levels, the FBI agents expose themselves to mortal danger. This cannot be said of the administration which stands accused of politicising national security. Of course, the Republicans are making the same allegation against the Democrats. However, even if the Nunes memo was taken at face value, it’s a big stretch to move from one part of the FBI wiretap allegation relied on someone politically motivated against the President to Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion and whether Trump obstructed justice is wrong.

This is not the first time an administration has clashed publicly with its security services and the Justice Department. Dick Cheney, George W, Bush’s Vice President, was outraged when in 2003, Joseph Wilson, a diplomat and the husband of CIA agent, Valerie Plame, published an op-ed article in The New York Times, casting doubt on the then President’s claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa. The timing was significant as the United Nations was in session, discussing whether action against Iraq was warranted to remove weapons of mass destruction.

A week later, Washington Post journalist, Robert Novak, published an article that Plame was a CIA agent and had been instrumental in sending her husband to Chad to investigate the uranium claims. Subsequently, the administration was forced to admit that Novak had been told of Plame’s employment with the CIA by a state department official, Richard Armitage. In outing Plame, many other CIA agents and their sources found their lives in peril. Eventually, Scooter Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, fell on his sword and took responsibility. He was imprisoned but soon reprieved by Bush.

Arguably a better analogy of unwarranted administration interference is the so-called Saturday Night Massacre in October, 1973, when President Nixon fired Attorney General Elliott Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Rucklehaus for refusing to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Cox had been appointed by Nixon in the aftermath of the Watergate break-in and ensuing scandal. During the Senate hearings into the affair, the Oval Office taping system was disclosed. Cox issued a subpoena, asking the President for copies of some tapes. Nixon refused to comply, claiming executive privilege, but he offered a compromise – the Stennis Compromise – where US Senator Stennis would review and summarise the tapes. Cox rejected the offer for reasons which included the fact that Stennis was virtually deaf.  

The following day, Nixon ordered Cox’s firing. When Richardson and Rucklehaus refused the order, the Solicitor General, Robert Bork, carried it out. Subsequently, Nixon was forced to appoint another special prosecutor who chased after the tapes. Their eventual disclosure nailed Nixon. As for Bork, he was nominated by Reagan for a vacant seat on the Supreme Court. The Senate rejected him. What goes around, comes around.

I distinguish the Cheney and Nixon events from Iran Contra under Reagan where there was no cover up, although there were strong grounds to impeach the President, and Clinton’s Whitewatergate and Lewinsky, where again there was no cover up, the President seeking to protect disclosures about his private life.

The common features in the Cheney and Nixon events is administrations seeking to denigrate a story that it perceives as detrimental and to cover up wrongful and illegal acts. Those Presidents and Vice Presidents initiating the unlawful acts were vindictive and believed the rule of law did not apply to them. I know I should not judge the Trump administration yet for its current actions about the Russian business and that comment is fruitless until the eventual outcome is known. However, there is a bad odour in D.C. When there is a bad smell, you ignore it at your peril.

 

President Trump aka Dopey has ordered a military parade. Will Disney advise the Joint Chiefs of Staff as to content? Maybe it will be led by Mickey Mouse, a close relation of Dopey.

 

 

 

State of the Union, Trump Style

If ever a comparison was needed between the presidential and parliamentary systems of government, I saw it this week. On Wednesday afternoon, I watched Prime Minister’s Questions from the House of Commons. Mrs May was in China so her place was taken by David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister. Protocol demanded that Mr Corbyn’s not appear and his substitute was taken by the redoubtable Emily Thornberry, the shadow Foreign Secretary. The House of Commons chamber was its usual rowdy, noisy and unruly self and the finest example of people behaving badly.

Speaker John Bercow tries humour to regain order but it might help if he ordered the removal of some of the elderly schoolboys from the Commons chamber for their boorishness! It would also help were he to admonish those answering questions to do that very thing. For decades, no Prime Minister has had his or her feet held to the fire by this mockery of the democratic process.

Earlier, I watched the State of the Union address, delivered to a vast Congressional audience of America’s great and good, half of whom applauded and stood up pretty well every minute. It gets to be fun when the House and the Senate are held by different parties. The Vice President and the House Speaker sit next to each other behind the President and as one stands smiling, the other sits, frowning.

This year, the Democratic politicians, military chiefs of staff and Supremes listened to the speech mostly in stony silence. Mind you, there were some ungentlemanly and unladylike muted Democratic hisses and boos when the President lauded the destruction of Obamacare and the “deal” on immigration.

Back to the speech. It cannot be denied that Mr Trump looked Presidential and spoke presidentially. However, he adopted a ploy first used by President Reagan, pointing to and speaking about people seated close to the First Lady. Trump told sob stories of their bravery and sacrifice. With respect, the stories have no place in a speech about current and future political policy. This is something that plays well to the American television audiences. We Brits dismiss it as unworthy of the ceremony.

Throughout the speech, faces on the Democratic benches were pictures of sourness. Nancy Pelosi looked like a shrivelled prune as she glared for more than an hour. Bernie Sanders sat grim faced as if he was auditioning for a place on Mount Rushmore. Chuck Shumer’s body language was a plea to leave the Chamber as soon as he could. On the Republican benches, men named by the President rose and smiled broadly as if the President himself had rubbed their tummies in praise.

The problem really arises when you examine the substance of the speech. Trump fell woefully short. He laid out no new policies for the coming year. Instead he spoke about immigration, energy and infrastructure, the same policies he advocated in his campaign, while virtually ignoring healthcare. He combined the First Amendment right to religious freedom and the Second Amendment, which relates to the right to bear arms. Do he and his speech writers not know the Bill of Rights? He wants to detain terrorists and enemies of America in Guantanamo Bay yet he spoke of America’s freedoms and respect for law.

Contradictions abounded. On immigration, he reached out to both parties, proposing citizenship for Dreamers and others if they pass a twelve year test. However, he made the deal conditional on the imposition of very strict, harsh and seemingly unfair immigration laws. How is that reaching out? He seeks laws that are anathema to Democrats and some Republicans. Where is there room for compromise?

On energy, Trump praised clean coal, which any mining engineer will tell you does not exist. On infrastructure, he wants $3 trillion spent, half by the federal government, the rest by the states, cities and private partnerships. Anyone who studies America’s history knows that projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Interstates were rife with corruption, yet Trump made no mention of avoidance of boondoggles. Mind you, he did not mention Fire and Fury writer, Michael Wolff. Trump missed an opportunity to demand the outlawing of Fake News.

A while ago, the United Nations general assembly delivered a stinging rebuke, voting by a huge majority to reject Trump’s unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, despite Trump's threat to cut US funding to countries that did not support US recognition. Trump repeated the threat in the speech, having first told the assembled throng that America was the most generous of nations on foreign aid. In fact, the per capita generosity table is headed by Sweden.

 As all the American news media, except Fox, has pointed out. The speech was littered with false claims - some of which I have listed – platitudes, and indifference to America’s laws. What finally made me gag was the ending. Trump said:

 “Americans dreamed this country. The people built this country. And it is the people who are making America great again. As long as we are proud of who we are, and what we are fighting for, there is nothing we cannot achieve. As long as we have confidence in our values, faith in our citizens, and trust in our God, we will not fail.”

Not even the much loved President Reagan could get away with this sentimental clap-trap until his second term. In Trump, the words were hollow. For me, the speech was written by Disney. I could add it was delivered by Dopey except Dopey was mercifully the silent dwarf.