Let’s Play a Pretend Game

Let us play pretend it’s 2015 again, looking into the future 

Let us pretend we know what happens over the next two years while the Republicans have control of America’s House of Representatives and the Senate as well. Let’s pretend that they continue passing bills in the House to provide only token funding for anything President Obama tries to do, either by veto or by executive order. Let’s pretend that rule changes occur regularly in both chambers. Rules prevent Democrats from funding any initiative that would provide more opportunities for the rich and poor alike, strengthen and reinforce the tattered safety net, and glue back together our crumbling infrastructure to keep things working and moving until a new infrastructure can be designed and built. We also behave as though we will disregard environmental concerns to pretend we are creating jobs through tax cuts for the wealthy and less oversight on both beneficial and harmful activities, especially focusing on problematic environmental and safety regulations. Yes, let’s pretend by a crooked hook they get everything they want, and more.

What will happen when they attain their goal of privatizing every single government function? Is it the end of government waste and fraud, pretending to save the taxpayer billions of dollars every year? Is this how we achieve a lowered tax rate, but continue to live and prosper in the greatest nation ever made in the history of Earth, the third planet from the star Sol in the Milky Way galaxy? No, it has not. But that is exactly what the Republicans will pretend. What I do not know for sure is just how many Republicans believe that their agenda, if implemented, will create the greatest nation ever made in the history of Earth and how many know it is a game of pretend.

So what happens? The meager improvements in the actual unemployment figure will diminish and by the end of the two years turn negative, just like in 2008. The persons whose wages have been stagnant lately will see their wages decrease, and those already suffering lowered wages will see their pay plummet. We will see prices drop as demand entirely disappears.

You may have heard that recently, Mitch The Turtle McConnell is giving the credit for our limping, but improving economy to the Republicans and people being thrilled about the Republicans gaining control of both Houses. He knows any improvements have been despite Republican obstructionism, but that does not matter. By 2016, he and the rest of the Republicans will turn in either direction. If things go well leading into the 2016 elections, the story will be that it is the Republicans who did it. If things turn sour (most), he can say that Obama’s veto pen, executive orders, and the Democrats in Congress obstructed all Republican initiatives. That story does not require truth to impede its telling; the media will report as a “he said/she said” argument. But since we pretend the Republicans get their way, then I am fairly certain that the economy will tank, and the Republicans have already sown the seeds just for that outcome.

One can see now that the Democrats were powerless and, more importantly, deaf and blind to what the Republicans were up to.

But I call this pretend because there are options open to the managers of the American economy. And the economic managers work for the executive branch. There are signs that some, particularly Senators Warren and Sanders, are forcing the executive branch to look for alternative answers. Warren’s blocking off another Wall Street guy to Treasury, and Sanders naming a leading Modern Monetary Theory advocate to be the minority economic adviser to the Senate Budget Committee. Together on two separate fronts, these two are making it clear to the administration and the American people that the ruin that Republican economic policies will create does not have to happen. And all their maneuvering to get their way will end up as an exercise for some future professor to say to her class, let us play pretend.

And, of course, the tools were available, but nobody listened or even looked at ideas, and instead an insufficient status quo became the American people’s aim.