Check please!
September 30, 2021
Another in a series of observations of life as I know it.
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
-Gore Vidal
~~~~~
It’s raining, again. As a result, my mind wanders. A nap would be enticing, but, I just got up an hour ago. I am therefore consigned to practicing the art of avoidance. As in, try not to flip to the Op Ed page of the Washington Post. Or worse, the front page. Too dire. Another day, another government shut down. Maybe I should check my retirement portfolio. Oh dear god.
Shutdowns mostly impact the company town of Washington DC. But like a pebble thrown in water, the pain echoes outward. How well I remember a conversation that I had with a cashier at the Harris Teeter grocery store near my home in Arlington, VA. She said that business was WAY down during one of the GOP shutdowns during the reign of the fat orange guy. Government workers, who make up a high percentage of the DC metro population, did not have enough money to purchase groceries. Big ticket items like meat and trendy veggies went by the wayside. People needed diapers and milk. Pasta, the store brand, was supplanting Coho salmon on marketing lists. Bread. OJ, that could be watered down to stretch the number of servings. Restaurants in my ‘hood were listless. Friday night pizza at the Lost Dog was sacrificed to PB and J at home after soccer games. “Essential workers”, an elite and ill-defined category of employee, snuck out of their garages under dark of night so as not to upset their unemployed neighbors. It was bleak.
All of the above makes me glad that I am no longer a DC denizen. I don’t miss it, at all. It’s a manufactured political mess. A game of inter-party sumo wrestling. Citizens suffer until one of the two parties blinks. Personally, I think it should be decided by pitting law makers against one another in a game of Texas Hold ‘em strip poker. Would anyone in their right mind want to see Mitch McConnell nekkid? Precisely my point. One or the other side would cry Uncle before Mitch got down to his tighty whities. It’s a vision no one wants etched forever in memory. Ick.
So here’s the thing. I have been balancing my checkbook since I first opened a bank account at age 16. It wasn’t much, but I faithfully did the math. When I was down to mostly zeroes, I knew that it was time to tighten my belt, find another paying gig, and fatten the account. Simple? Yes, yes it is. I realize that government spending involves slightly more than I currently carry in my balance but the same elemental principles of addition and subtraction apply. Why do we have to do this periodic dance of death? For all his myriad faults, Bill Clinton understood profit and loss. “It’s the economy, stupid.” And between trysts in the Oval Office, Mr Hope Arkansas balanced the budget. Boohyah, good buddy! Now, of course, twenty odd years later, and I do mean odd, our debits far out weigh the credits. We are leveraged to the hilt. In debt to the Chinese, for pete’s sake. They offered a nice ‘initial interest rate’ on loans, which of course, ballooned exponentially. As did the low rate. Lawmakers treat our national purse like Monopoly money. If they need more, they just print more. At the current moment, if we want to erase our pitiful negative balance, it will take until 2100, and that’s only if we don’t borrow more. In the meantime, Congress is going to vote today. Legislators, and I use that term loosely, have two options. Extend the debt discussion until December. Then rinse and repeat. Or, shutdown. Again. Point fingers and blame the other party. Members of the Senate, the whitest and richest deliberative body in the world, will happily saunter down to The Palm, that mahogany-paneled,leather banqet-upholstered eatery, and watch the little people scrounge for crumbs. It all smacks of Dickens. You want MORE, Oliver? No more gruel for you.
Today we wait. I’ve got a primo seat near C-Span to watch this most primitive of Kabuki productions. I will start placing bets with Vinny, my bookie in Swampscott, as to how long this avoidable nightmare will last. Anyone care to lay down a few C notes? The better question is, does anyone have anything larger than a five to lose? Me neither.