11/28/2005: "The Czar, Congress, and the Talking Horse"

One dark day in Russia long ago, the Czar and his magnificent entourage entered a small village. The village was inhabited by a renowned horse trainer – a horse trainer so skilled that word of his accomplishments had reached even the Czar himself.

Summoned into the Czar's presence, the horse trainer bowed deeply and asked how he could serve His Worshipfulness. The Czar asked if indeed he was a horse trainer. The man admitted that he was. Had he some skill? the Czar asked. The horse trainer boasted that nowhere in Russia was there a trainer as skilled as he with horses.

"In fact," he said (perhaps unwisely), "I can teach a horse how to do anything!"

"That is well," the Czar replied, "for I want you to teach my favorite horse to talk!" As the trainer stood there, stunned, the Czar called out to his guards, and a beautiful stallion was quickly brought into their presence.

After a moment, the trainer, bowing deeply, told the Czar that he would do any service the Czar asked of him, and so of course would teach the stallion to talk. However, he added, it is a very difficult task, and so will take a very long time.

"To teach the stallion to talk," he said, "will take twenty years."

The Czar smiled, said he was sorry to lose his favorite horse for so long, but that it would be worth it. The trainer rode quickly home on the stallion's back, and told his wife what had happened.

"But my darling," she said, "the Czar surely will have your head, for everyone knows one can't teach a horse to talk – even such a beauty as the Czar's stallion. Why did you do it?"

"Well," the trainer replied, "as for losing my head, I would have lost it anyway had I refused. And as for teaching the horse to talk – why worry? In twenty years, the Czar will have died. Or I will have died. Or the horse will have died."

And there you have the current domestic policy of the United States, encapsulated in one little fable. In the most remarkable headline I have read in many years, the lead story on November 6, 2005 in the Seattle Times on the front page was titled : "Experts: U.S. is spending its way to financial ruin." And then, in bolded, sub-headline text were the words "Analysis: Congress Dodging Issue"; "Benefits, tax cuts, defense untouched."

"The facts are not partisan, and they're not ideological," The Seattle Times quoted David Walker, the nation's comptroller general, as saying. "Walker, along with budget experts from across the political divide," said the article, "believe Congress is shifting deck chairs on a sinking financial ship. Lawmakers are making symbolic spending cuts while skirting the real drains on the federal budget. In addition, Republicans intend to make tax cuts permanent, which would drain $70 billion in revenues through 2010 – more than the spending cuts Congress is struggling to find."

The Seattle Times suggested as thinking of America's financial future this way:

A large family goes to a restaurant and stuffs itself on a full-course meal with drinks and dessert. The waitress then hands the bill to the babbling infant in a high chair. Budget deficits make today more enjoyable, but future generations of Americans will have to pay the bills."

Or, as the Seattle Times suggested later in the article, "It's like falling off a 30-story building. For the first 25 stories, it doesn't seem so bad."

Now you would think that this kind of headline – and this kind of release of information from such a respectable, non-partisan source as the Nation's comptroller general – would cause Congress to stop short, and take a long cold shower. No such luck. (A friend of mine who read this article before publication commented at this point: "Why should they care when they will not be in office in twenty years for the most part, and when most Americans buy the Administration's pablum. It's terrifying.") To take merely one example, with the recent demise of President Bush's plan for privatizing Social Security, one Congressional leader recently suggested it will be 2009 (after the next Presidential election) before the problem stands a reasonable political chance of being addressed again. The imbalance between income and payouts needs to be resolved, and the longer it takes to resolve it, the more draconian the solution will need to be. Personally, I oppose privitization and favor keeping the tax rate the same but removing the maximum rate above which income isn't taxed. But whatever the solution, we need one.

Some of the causes of the coming financial debacle aren't partisan; some are. The Republican administration of President Bush inherited a balanced budget from President Clinton. (Didn't we even have a surplus then?) Since the Bush Administration came to into power, Congress has granted huge tax cuts to the wealthy. And the costs of the hugely-expensive Iraq War won't have escaped your attention. (Whether the Administration intentionally misrepresented to Congress and the American public the case for war is a separate, deeply troubling subject – especially the revelation that the Administration knew its germ-warfare claims were based upon unreliable and unconfirmed intelligence reports from a single source. See http://www.latimes.com/ , November 20th article "How U.S. Fell Under the Spell of 'Curveball', at http://www.latimes.com : "The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq.")

But the cost of the Iraq War is, in fact, relatively painless in financial terms for now. (Of course, the families of the 5 U.S. servicemen who died the day I drafted this article, of the thousands of U.S. soldiers dead already, of the many other Coalition soldiers also dead and of the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have died so far in the war wouldn't agree that the cost has been "relatively painless.") Some might also disagree that a cost so far of something like $222,584,692,000 is "relatively painless." See http://www.costofwar.com . (The cost is rising so quickly – about $1,000 per second – that it literally is impossible to write down exactly.) But in financial costs for the war, we're getting by, so far. And if your party can deliver huge tax cuts to the wealthy (one of its main bases), with painless consequences (so far) to your other bases of support, electoral success is not surprising. The problem of course, is that the tax cuts are only relatively painless for now.

Like the horse trainer who put off the consequences of his misrepresentation to the Czar for twenty years, the real cost of the disastrous financial policies of Congress and the Republican Party won't come due in terms of dire consequences for some years yet. And by then, the reasons for the coming ill fortunes for our Nation will be shrouded by the mists of time in the short memory of the voting public. Certainly neo-conservatives are good at shaping the debate, and getting their candidates elected. But at governing? Not so much.