What Can't We Do?

It's bad news when a prestigious member of your own party and a former Secretary of Defense calls you out on your intransigence and stupidity.  Yet that is what happened on Monday when it became clear that talks by the - and here's a funny term - "supercommittee"(as though there is anything super about Congress) fell apart.

The talks were never going anywhere in the first place.  It isn't a secret that Republicans think they can use stubbornness and stupidity to win next year's elections.  It's bad politics and it's bad for America, but it's the Republican plan.  But now their intransigence isn't only preventing an economic recovery, it could very well be endangering America, and on Monday, as talks collapsed, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen called Republicans on their dangerous game.

Due to the failure of the supercommittee to reach a compromise - a failure that, like most recent failures, can be blamed on Republican refusal to give an inch to gain a mile - an automatic $1.2 trillion in cuts is set to take place.  Of course, Congress is full of people - in both parties - who are wholly incapable of holding themselves accountable, so those cuts are not scheduled to take place until 2013.  Nonetheless, as of today, the cuts will go into effect since no deal was reached, $600 billion of that $1.2 trillion is to come from the Pentagon's budget.

Put simply, because Republicans refused to compromise, they are now responsible for budget cuts that would "truly devastate our national defense" according to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.  Cuts that would devastate our national defense over higher taxes for millionaires, many of whom are strong proponents of higher taxes on millionaires...disgraceful and embarrassing, a display of cowardice and incompetence by a group of people who are truly unfit to lead.

The issue of closing the budget isn't going away despite the fact that it should have been the secondary issue from the get go, but each successive failure to reach a deal on the deficit cements its position as the leading issue of the day.  The most recent failure obviously does nothing to alleviate the problem - Congress will probably find a way to avoid enacting the cuts - but it does highlight the incompetence of our legislators (one group of them in particular), and it is ominous that even when our national defense is on the line, we still cannot reach simple compromises.

Polls show that most Americans believe the nation is on the wrong path, and until recently I did not count myself among them, but now my faith is wavering - there is a way forward but it seems as though our government is not interested in traveling that road.  I never thought that Republicans would go so far as to gut national security to protect millionaires, but I was wrong.  It is time for a serious national gut check because it is now not only our fiscal house that is in trouble, it's our security system as well.