The Limits of Presidential Power & Influence

Sometimes we Americans act as if our presidents are kings, or at least dictators, who can effect change and impose their will without restrictions. The people who campaign for the office in our quadrennial elections do nothing to dissuade us from this misapprehension by promising us the moon. We tend to credit the president and his political party when things are going well, and blame them when things aren't. There are many things that are outside the control of the government, and even within the government, our system is such that the three branches of government are antagonistic to each other, rather than cooperative. In a parliamentary system, the head of government, usually titled the Prime Minister, is the head of the party that holds a majority in the legislature. In the United States the executive and legislative branches are often controlled by different parties, and even the two houses of Congress can have majorities from different parties. 

First let's look at the constraints imposed by the structure of the federal government itself. In order for a president to be able to transform his campaign promises into reality several conditions must be met. First, both Houses of Congress must be controlled by the president's party. Second, in the Senate, the president's party must have a filibuster-proof majority, currently 60 votes. The president's party's various factions must be in agreement about his agenda. Finally, federal judges, including the Supreme Court, must be in agreement that the agenda does not run afoul of constitutional restrictions. Right now, only one of those things is true. While the Democrats have a majority in both the House and the Senate, the majority is quite slim in both chambers. The Democratic caucus is also far from united. Senators Manchin and Sinema get a lot of press, but there is a wide gulf in ideology between the liberal/progressive wing and the conservative/moderate wing. There is by no means agreement within the Democratic Party regarding the direction that should be taken. We must also take into account an opposition party that seems uninterested in anything but obstruction on the national level. 

The very structure of the government written into the Constitution virtually guarantees gridlock. 

The second strain of impedimenta to a president implementing his agenda is the economic structure of the country. It's not enshrined in the Constitution, but the economic system that we operate under is regulated capitalism. I say regulated capitalism rather than free market capitalism because there is without a doubt involvement on the part of the government in the way businesses can operate. Minimum wage laws, safety regulations, environmental regulations, licensing requirements and more, all impact how a business can operate. Nonetheless, government does not dictate what business you can be in, does not set prices, does not determine levels of production, nor does it effectively limit how many business you can own, despite the existence of anti-trust laws. Inflation, when it occurs, is due to a number of market forces, as well as public perception that there will be inflation. While there are things that the government, in the form of the Federal Reserve, can do to combat inflation, often times government action has unintended consequences. 

Presidents usually don't have the luxury of enacting their campaign promises, but often end up dealing with unforeseen events. George W. Bush campaigned on domestic issues, relying on his executive experience as a governor of a large state, but didn't expect 9-11, which defined his presidency. Barack Obama, late in his campaign, realized that he'd be dealing with a recession, Donald Trump was riding high, bragging about a fairly healthy and recovering economy but was flummoxed by the arrival of the Covid pandemic. Joe Biden thought be could coast along as the economy recovered from Covid, but was surprised by a Russian invasion of Ukraine and rampant inflation. Nobody gets what they thought they were getting. 

I'm not at all upset that an American President can't always accomplish what he wants. (Of course I am appalled at all the anti-democratic actions that are being undertaken to continue rule by the minority, but that's another story) A president who always gets what he wants with only token opposition is what's known as a dictator. We had one a few years ago who thought he was one, but we voted him out. 

Another Blog Post About Social Security

Here's another is my series of blogs about the Social Security Trust Fund:

Every person who is currently working has payroll taxes deducted from their paycheck. This money goes into the Trust Fund.

Every person who is currently receiving benefits receives a check (or automatic deposit) that is drawn from the Trust Fund. 

Until recently the cumulative payroll deductions were greater than the benefits paid out, resulting in a surplus in the Trust Fund. 

Hold that thought.

The operating budget of the United States Government is funded by various taxes. Money goes out according what is allocated in the budget submitted by the president and approved, with any revisions, by Congress. In most years, the allocated expenditures exceed the tax receipts, this is the deficit. 

Congress has to make up the difference, which is done by borrowing money. The government, unlike private individuals, does not go to the bank to take out a loan. The government issues securities such as Treasury bonds, which can be purchased by individuals and businesses. The government pays them back (with interest) after a set time period. 

Let's go back to the Social Security Trust Fund.

At the end of 2020 there was a $2.9 billion surplus in the Trust Fund. 

This does not mean that there is $2.9 billion cash setting in a bank vault, or even a bank account somewhere. By law, the surplus in the Trust Fund is converted to Treasury bonds, which pay interest from the general budget to the Trust Fund, but are repaid upon maturity. 

This is where the general fund deficit and Trust Fund surplus cross paths.

If Congress needs to borrow money to fund the deficit (let's set aside for now the question of whether deficit spending is sound fiscal policy) it wouldn't make fiscal sense to borrow all of it from the public if there is government money being generated by Trust Fund surpluses. And that's what happens every year there is a Trust Fund Surplus - the ledgers at the Social Security Administration record a reduction in their cash account and an increase in their cash receivables account. 

What about all that money that Congress, or Bush, or Obama, or whoever, "raided" from the Trust Fund to pay for the Iraq War, or to fund the Contras or the Affordable Care Act? It's a myth, a misunderstanding of how the Trust Fund works. There is no cash to be raided from the Trust Fund and diverted to a president's pet projects. 

Of course it could be argued that a deficit was unnecessarily inflated, knowing that the Trust Fund Surplus could be utilized, but the Trust Fund Surplus was going to be converted to Treasury Bonds regardless, so it's not a very persuasive argument. 

So what's all this about there being nothing left in the Trust Fund in just a few years? 

Unfortunately, that's true. For all my talk about surpluses, the Trust Fund isn't running surpluses any longer. The surpluses were due mainly to there being more working people than retired people. For a few years, that has been reversed. Interest on the Treasury bonds has kept the prospect of an annual deficit at bay, but pretty soon the Trust Fund will be cashing in those bonds in order to pay out all benefits at current levels. It's estimated that all bonds will be cashed out in around 12 years. Does this mean that Social Security is out of money? No, but it is projected that the income from payroll tax will only be able to pay out benefits at around 70% of current levels.

This is a problem. Not only because Congress will have to take one or more of the following actions:

1. Decrease what Social Security recipients receive
2. Prop up the trust fund with tax revenue
3. Increase the payroll tax (including removing the upper limit on wages subject to payroll tax)
4. Increase the retirement age

But with the possibility of funding the deficit with Trust Fund surpluses removed the downsides of deficit spending (which I won't get into here) will be exacerbated. 

But bottom, line, Congress needs to take some kind of action, and soon. 

And by action, I mean something other than pointing fingers at the other side and misrepresenting their positions.

Book Banning, CRT and "Don't Say Gay"

The folks who whine the most about "Cancel Culture" have been doing quite a bit of cancelling on their own the last few years as Republicans abandon any pretence at governing or serving all of their constituents to prosecute culture wars instead. The politicians from this quarter have also always been the party of limited government and local control - now dictating from the state level what can be taught in public schools. The way they are selling these actions is by riling about their base, misrepresenting what they are actually banning. 

Florida recently passed a law that its opponents have referred to as the "Don't Say Gay" law. While it doesn't explicitly ban the use of the word "gay" in schools, it does ban any discussion of  sexual topics in grade K-3, and "age inappropriate" sexual topics in higher grades. If that was all you heard about it, you might be forgiven for thinking that the law was pretty innocuous, after all, why would you be discussing sex with First Graders? And wouldn't you want sex-related discussions to be "age-appropriate"? But this is where straw man arguments, and for good measure, goalpost moving comes in. Supporters of this bill would have you believe that public school teachers are "sexualizing" young children and having explicit discussions about sexuality with them, "grooming" them to become gay, and are even pedophiles, targeting little kids. Since this isn't actually happening, formerly everyday topics have been redefined as running afoul of the new statute. Books that contain references to same-sex marriages, children with gay parents, and even illustrations of rainbows and unicorns (yes, unicorns, I couldn't make this up). Simply acknowledging that Miss Smith may be married to Miss Jones, or Sally's parents are Bob and Frank...acknowledging that gay people exist is now redefined as in the same category as sexualizing children, "grooming" and pedophilia. We're seeing bigotry against gay people covered up by a thin veneer of supposed care for children's safety and poof!, we're back in the 1950's again. 

The hysteria about Critical Race Theory (CRT) is similar. CRT isn't being taught in any high school, let alone elementary school in the country. It is a scholarly discipline that examines systemic racism in the United States and considers the position that the foundations of our government and economy are in fact racist. State governments and local school boards have been busy banning the teaching of CRT, which they describe as requiring White people to believe that they are racist simply for being White, that children are being taught to hate the country and that Black and White children should hate each other. This is a misconception and exaggeration. But similar to the "Don't say gay" proponents, this isn't what CRT is, and it's not being taught in schools, so they goalpost gets moved where any reference to slavery, race-based discrimination, Jim Crow, or even colonialism gets redefined and banned as part of CRT. 

In both of these cases, the right beats the drum in opposition to something that isn't really happening, but which reasonable people might be opposed to if it were, then bait and switch whereby bigotry becomes legalized and encouraged, any discussion of bigotry is outlawed, and the persecutors redefine themselves as persecuted. 

What Happened To The Wall?

A certain segment of the electorate thinks that another segment of the electorate is for open borders, that our borders should be unprotected and that anybody should be allowed in. Funny thing is, no one can find that mythical person who believes any of that. 

It's inarguable that many people attempt (and a significant percentage succeed) to enter the United States outside of the legal avenues available. The right wing of the electorate focusses on that as the problem, when illegal entry is only a symptom of the problem. Or problems. The right wing would have you believe that the majority of people crossing the border illegally are criminals, when confronted with statistics showing that criminals make up a 1-3% of illegal entries, the goalpost is moved: the mere fact of coming in illegally makes them criminals, so therefore, according to this pretzelinian logic, they're all criminals. 

Problem number one is the situation  in the home countries of many hopeful immigrants. For a variety of reasons, crime and poverty are virtually inescapable if one remains at home. Desperation motivates people to abandon their homes, trek thousands of miles through strange territory, and finally risking multiple dangers to get across the border undetected. I how desperate would any of us be to make that move? I have heard the argument from some quarters that they should stay in their native countries instead of cowardly abandoning them, but I would wager that the same people who make that argument would do whatever it took if their own families were in danger. The truth is, few of us born in the United States have ever been faced with those kind of choices, and we have no basis upon which to judge those who are facing those very choices. So why aren't the people who are risking death by swimming rivers, climbing walls, crossing deserts, not to mention robbery, rape and other attacks along the way, utilizing the system by applying for asylum? Now we come to problem number two.

Applying for asylum is not a simple process. There has always been a low percentage of applications approved, and the waiting period is long. Many would-be asylum seekers, knowing that their prospects are poor, opt to simply jump the fence and come in illegally. The Trump administration made things more difficult by requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their applications were being processed. This was to address the so-called issue of applicants being released into the United States and never showing up for court. I say "so-called" because close to 90% of applicants do show up for court. A court system that is dysfunctional and difficult to navigate. Since they are not citizens, they are not provided with a court-appointed attorney, or even translators. The system is such a mess that it makes more sense for many to bypass the system and hope they don't get caught than it does to follow the law. The immigration system itself, due to its inherent failures, encourages illegal entry. 

What's the solution? There's isn't one simple solution. That's why The Wall was never an answer. Building a giant, border spanning wall, even if it were impenetrable and unclimbable, only makes it more difficult to get in, it doesn't account for the limitless ingenuity of humans when presented with a problem, a barrier to their goals. It also doesn't address the reasons why people keep trying to come here. Part of the problem lies somewhat outside our ability to influence. The situation in some Central American countries cannot be solved with more dollars, although withholding all foreign aid indisputably makes it worse. Even if our influence was able to achieve stability without fail, it could not do so overnight. So we are left with possible solutions that we can control. 

We spend a lot of money patrolling our border and catching people who attempt to cross illegally. We need to start spending money on expanding our services to asylum seekers, and indeed, making it easier for people to seek asylum, or even to immigrate for reasons other than fear of being killed. The processing must be made more humane and more accessible. Allowable ports of entry must be expanded, rather than continuing to create a bottleneck at the available crossings. The whole system must be redesigned to incentivize "doing it right", to change the paradigm where possibly dying in the desert or drowning in the Rio Grande is a better bet than applying for asylum. 

The Wall was never a solution. The Wall was an applause line that was mistaken for actual policy and crystalized bigotry and ignorance, rather than achieving anything. Unfortunately, I don't hear anyone, from any party, putting forth any real solutions. 

What Happened to Conservatism?

Once upon a time conservatives actually stood for something. Granted, not everybody liked what they stood for, but there was at one time a clearly articulated political and governing philosophy. Simplistically stated, the conservative philosophy called for individual responsibility vs. reliance on government, a strong military that we were not shy to use to support our interests, minimal government regulation (an outgrowth of their support for big business), and non-interference in local affairs. These positions usually manifested themselves as rollbacks of government assistance programs, corporate tax cuts, increased military spending and legislation weakening unions. The conservative judicial philosophy was best described as "originalist", in contrast to the "living Constitution" position typically described as the liberal view of the role of the courts. 

Like I said, plenty to disagree with. There was undoubtedly a bias toward the wealthy, and often racism lurked not far below the surface, but conservatives were once for something, and there were conservative politicians and thinkers who could make their case.

What happened?

Oh, conservatives still want to eliminate regulatory oversight and reduce taxes for the wealthy; they still want to eliminate, or at least severely reduce, public assistance programs (at least the kind that benefits poor people, corporate welfare is still okay), and they still loathe unions, despite claiming to be an advocate for the working class (at least the White guys among the workers). There's still a core of the Republican Party that has these goals, Senator Mitch McConnell foremost among them. But the Republican Party of the 2020s has abandoned any pretense at having a party platform (in 2020 their platform, literally, was "support Donald Trump"...seriously) or any kind of long range goals, other than  destruction, obstruction, and corruption. Their reason for being is to against what they claim are the evils of liberalism. Or at least the straw man version of liberalism. 

Liberalism in general elevates the individual, sometimes at the expense of the community, emphasizing individual rights and protections. This includes social programs that prevent people from starving, among others. It supports government regulation to protect workers' safety, consumers' rights and the environment. While a conservative touts the rights of an individual to do whatever they desire, a liberal wants to protect the individual from abuses from others. It sees the government as the guarantor and protector of the individual. 

Neo-conservatives portray liberalism in almost cartoonishly evil terms. They see, or least talk like they see, society as a zero-sum game. Equal rights to them are perceived as a negation of their own rights. They play on people's fears that they will be pushed aside by some vaguely defined "other". A national movement to stop the killing of unarmed Black men and women by the police is portrayed as nothing but thugs. Any program that might help marginalized people is tarred as socialism, government vaccination requirements (the new ones, not the ones that have been in place for decades) are further demonized as communism.  "Woke", a term that originated among Black people to encourage each other to open their eyes and be aware of what goes on in society, has been turned into a pejorative. Gay or transgender people and their supporters are painted as pedophiles. 

And that's what they run on.

Sure, there's a tiny nucleus of Republicans who have convinced themselves that they're still running things and are just using the yahoos to get and keep the power to enact their agenda. That tiny nucleus hasn't been paying attention since Trump became the face of the Republican Party. They apparently haven't been paying attention as Republicans who don't know what classic conservatism stood for and don't care are elected in greater and greater numbers. They obviously haven't been paying attention as these Trump Republicans gain more of a voice and become the new core of the party. Legislators who have no interest in legislating, but are more interested in holding press conferences, tweeting and making outrageous statements. They should have been paying attention as over half the Republican House members voted in effect to overturn the results of the last election, as the losing candidate is still claiming that the election was stolen a year later.   

The Republicans are, for now, locked out of accomplishing anything at the national level, but they have been very busy at the state and local level. 

Government has gotten big as the nation has gotten big. In addition to size, many areas are just too complex to be directly overseen by non-experts. Every government department has career civil servants who know their field better than anyone. The executive and legislative branches depend on these experts to provide the information upon which decisions can be made. It's not common knowledge, but once a law is passed the work only just has begun. The government departments then get busy writing regulations, policies and procedures to implement and execute those laws. One of the things that Republicans have been doing at the local level is removing the experts and other non-political people from any positions of responsibility and in their place, empowering partisan institutions, often comprised of believers in wacky conspiracy theories. Hence we see local election commissions supplanted by a partisan legislature, school boards being taken over by radicals who want to censor the teaching of history, and health departments' medical decisions being overruled by non-medical city council members. 

For all practical purposes what used to be conservatism has migrated to the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, personified currently in Joe Manchin. The modern Democratic Party houses a continuum of political views from Manchin's pro-business conservatism to Bernie Sanders' democratic socialism and everything in between and off to the side. There are legitimate debates taking place within the party, which makes it look like it's a chaotic mess, but it really looks more like America. The Republican Party, rather than the home of conservative politics is the residence of obstruction for the sake of obstruction, playing upon hatred and fear by sowing more hatred and fear, leavened with lies and disinformation. 

 

Clown Car

Referring to all politicians as corrupt is pretty standard, and sometimes it seems that way. Most politicians aren't avatars of Jimmy Stewart's character in "Mr. Smith goes to Washington". The truth is that most people who run for office do so to further their own interests. Sometimes those interests are altruistic - they want to improve the lives of marginalized people, or the environment. Other times it's to make the rich a little richer. Still other times it's to further a narrow agenda that self enriches. Sometimes the quest for elected office is to make changes: "Those bastards in power are ruining everything", sometimes it's to preserve the status quo: "We have to prevent those other bastards from ruining everything". The problem is, and always has been, that there's no absolute standard for what "best for the country", there's no consensus among Americans on anything. This wouldn't be an insurmountable problem if there was an attempt at compromise, if we didn't look at incremental change as a betrayal, and a large percentage of the electorate wasn't proudly ignorant. 

What the current crop of politicians has turned into, and it's primarily, almost exclusively, the politicians of the Republican Party, is a bunch of performance artists, specifically, clowns. 

Legislators and executives have a job that they were elected to do, and that's to run the government. The legislature writes laws and appropriates funds while the executive executes and enforces those laws and collects taxes. On a national level, the Democratic Party, whether you agree or disagree with their goals, seems to understand what their job description is. They are debating appropriate solutions to national problems, passing laws, conducting foreign policy while the Republicans seem to be content to oppose anything and everything that the Democrats propose. Of course there are going to be things upon which they disagree, but there is no attempt at finding middle ground, just obstruction. And it's not like anything was accomplished when the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency either...other than a huge corporate tax cut and pushing through sympathetic judges after digging in their heels during the tenure of a Democratic president. On the state level, when the Republicans have control there is some governing, usually in the form of voter suppression and fights over nonexistent unAmerican agendas in the schools. 

What Republicans have been spending their time doing is mocking other politicians on Twitter, attending White supremacist rallies, misrepresenting things like Critical Race Theory and generally serving as clowns to the circus that Washington, D.C. has become. Oh yes, and continuing to claim that Trump "really" won the 2020 election. Which brings us to the accelerant to the brush fire that is the Republican Party of 2022. Republicans have become the safe haven for racists, sexists and bigots of all descriptions for decades. Newt Gingrich set the tone for non-stop lies and personal attacks in the 1990s, and the unabashedly racist opposition to President Obama thinly disguised as a concern over government spending made it worse. But it's been Trump who poured gasoline on the smoldering embers and made it not only acceptable, but positively required to wear an aluminum foil hat and spew hate of all "others". 

And to top it all of, look who just emerged from obscurity: Sarah Palin. 

Religion & Politics

Religion and politics. We're apparently not supposed to talk about them, but with the advent of social media, we can. Not that it's a good idea, but the anonymity of internet makes getting punched in the face less likely. 

My memory might be faulty, but it seems like religious influence on politics got obvious in the eighties with the so-called Moral Majority. I can understand how some religious perspectives can intersect with politics. Whatever you think about the anti-abortion crowd, a lot of them, right or wrong, sincerely believe that aborting a fetus is killing a human being and should therefore be illegal. If you truly believe this, then it makes sense to push for anti-abortion laws. I disagree with their position and see their premise that a fetus is a human being, not a potential human being, as being religiously based, and therefore a poor foundation upon which to base laws that apply to all, but I see their point. But what we have seen in the last twenty years or so is using religion as an excuse to impose laws that are based on individual or group prejudices and biases. 

The law states that it is illegal to discriminate based up several criteria such as race, national origin, religion or gender.  Yet there has been a push, which is supported by "conservative" judges, to exempt religious groups from these laws and even to exempt individuals who claim religious objections to a wide range of laws. It used to be that a law had to impose an undue burden on religious expression for an exemption based on religious belief to be granted, but we are moving to a place where anyone can, without any basis, claim a religious objection to any law simply because they don't like it. Or just don't want to comply. Religion is being elevated to a position of primacy in our society. Or at least the dominant religion is. 

Even among adherents of the dominant religion, objections need not be based on anything actually found in a religion's holy book, creed, dogma or officially sanctioned pronouncements, but can simply be stated as "this is against my religion". We are seeing this most obviously in the widespread objection to vaccination requirements and mask mandates, often based upon the claim that they are taking away "our freedoms" (note the weird plural) when these people would be hard-pressed to find any documentation in their religion's sacred texts about unlimited freedom(s). If anything, it's the civic religion of "owning the libs". 

Unfortunately, due to an irrational dislike of Secretary Clinton and an over-the-top concern about emails we enabled Mitch McConnell to sew up his lifelong agenda to remake the federal judiciary. We now have a Supreme Court majority that views with sympathy these calls for religious nationalism, dominionism, and elevating spurious religious claims above the secular.