A POLITICAL ERA ENDS
Two days ago, Joseph Biden spoke before a much pared down House and Senate audience in the House Chamber. It was, effectively, his first State of the Union Address. That hour long speech to that very limited in-house audience had real meaning. It meant that the political era which had its formal beginning with Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 could finally be coming to an end.
The Reagan presidency highlighted a reverse revolution that had its beginning with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968. That revolution was really an attempt to reverse the New Deal programming put in place by Franklin Delano Roosevelt back in the early thirties. The New Deal in its time was revolutionary in that it was an attempt to allow the federal government to help ordinary people directly.
It effectively took from state governments the power to leave their citizens at the mercy of an economic system which had utterly failed them. It meant that the federal government was, for the first time in our history, trying to alleviate the damage done to ordinary citizens by the collapse of a system of unrestrained capitalism.
The New Deal’s success did mean that the business community after War II continued to find itself restrained by federal regulation and by active labor unions. The Reagan Revolution was an attempt to weaken federal control and to return that regulation to the more pliable states.
That attempted return has occupied elected Republicans in Washington for the last forty years. One part of that effort has been the constant emphasis on lowering tax rates. For Republicans taxes can only go down! It is pretty much their only program (that was certainly true for the Trump presidency).
By lowering tax rates, largely capping off social spending, and simultaneously increasing military spending, the real problem becomes the federal debt. Republicans have then been able to argue that, given the debt, there just is not money for new social programs. They have been able to, as they say, “starve the beast”.
Every Democratic president elected during the last forty years has been assured that the debt is so awful, so horrifying, that the kind of programs he was elected to create simply had to be set aside until the great dragon of debt has been slain. So, Bill Clinton, elected with a series of programs in mind, had to give them up and spend the heart of his time in office struggling with the debt.
And Clinton succeeded. He was able, aided by a boom in the economy, and by forsaking his own legislative goals, to balance the budget and even create a surplus. Then, right on schedule, George W. Bush came in, lowered tax rates and the big deficits began once more.
Barack Obama felt forced to go though the same dance. Through heroic effort he managed to get enough money from Congress and the Fed to begin to work us out of the great housing bubble recession of 2009. Again, with most new programming delayed, the economy was put back on track. Then Donald Trump was elected and once more G.O.P legislators lowered tax rates (Donald Trump’s only major legislative success). Incoming Joseph Biden faced once again the revived debt monster!
Except this time the newly elected Democratic president is not going to play. Faced with a deadly pandemic and the resulting challenge to the economy, the very experienced Joseph Biden decided to go for broke. He may also have been motivated by his own age. At 78 he perhaps felt more urgency for instant results more than would have a much younger candidate.
Biden also benefited because the Trump administration had forsaken any interest in controlling the debt in order to put in place its huge 2017 “tax reform” (read rate cuts) for the very well off. That has meant that their criticism of the new Biden spending has been both muted and ineffective.
The details of the massive Biden administration programs and the roughly six trillion dollars in spending they involve can be dealt with elsewhere. The details concerning the political challenges that the Administration faces in a nearly evenly divided Congress can also be dealt with subsequently.
What this does mean is clear. The Biden goal is to bring the political era that began with Ronald Reagan in 1980 to an end. It will be, for this political system, a massive challenge because the normal progress toward modernization before 1980 was interrupted (Richard Nixon would have been far too open to change to ever have been nominated by this current Republican Party.).
The conservative revolution wasted what could have been forty years of progress. The European economies have gone on ahead despite the much greater challenges that they face with Russia looming in the north and waves of immigration from the south. In terms of citizen health and happiness protected by government we are viewed with something approaching pity.
Still, for Joseph Biden it must be a truly exciting time. And, it should be a challenge for the rest of us. We have the size, the resources, and the potential for an educated involved citizenry that can make very swift progress possible. With real things to do, real growth to be part of, people can be energized and happy.
One real resulting benefit: If Americans become energized and occupied then silly distractions like Qanon and all those Trump related conspiracies may quickly fade away!
H.J. Rishel
4/30/2021
