Tag Archives: Mike Pence

Bring in the Clowns

Bring in the clowns? As the song goes, “don’t bother, they’re here.” We’ve elected them.

Rational people of all political stripes know that the last thing the fragile recovery needs is a government shutdown, but every time the Republicans and Democrats seem to be making progress toward an agreement, the GOP’s Tea Party wing throws a tantrum and demands that the goalposts be moved. As Steve Benen reported this morning over at Political Animal, the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity held a rally yesterday across the street from the Capitol.  Several dozen people gathered to listen to speeches from Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Reps. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), and others. The Republican voters chanted, “Shut it down!” during the rally, and every other sign at the rally urged the GOP to shut down the government.

In fact, Indiana’s own clown, Pence, has been prominent among those urging a shutdown–ignoring the effect on our fighting men (whose pay would be affected), seniors (Social Security would stop processing applications) and public servants (who would be furloughed without pay during the shutdown) among many others. He also seems indifferent to the problems a shutdown would cause state governments, including Indiana–evidencing the depth of his concern for the state he proposes to run.

The clowns who populate Congress and state legislatures pontificate endlessly about a constitution they rather clearly haven’t read. They spout nonsense about government spending, displaying an appalling ignorance of economics and the difference, for example, between operating costs and capital investments. (A reader sent me a graph showing U.S. investment in infrastructure as a percentage of GDP since 1950–that investment has declined from 1.4% to barely two-tenths of 1%. The closest analogy would be a person who spent the mortgage money on a trip to Vegas.) They are contemptuous of any science or empirical evidence that is inconsistent with their ideologies, and they sneer at those “elitists” for whom evidence matters.

Depressing as it is to watch these un-self-aware clowns, it is more depressing to remember that the American people elected them.

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Why It’s Harder Than It Looks

I was listening to NPR as I was driving to work this morning, and heard a (pretty typical) news item that seems to me a perfect example of the perils of public policy–or why, as I continually tell my students, “it’s more complicated than it seems.”

The U.S. Defense Department has cut funding for an engine  being developed by Rolls Royce and G.E. Robert Gates, Defense Secretary, has called the project a waste of taxpayer money. But some 400+ Indiana jobs are directly tied to the continued development of that engine, and–predictably–scrapping it has generated opposition from both Andre Carson and Mike Pence.

I have no information that would allow me to comment on the merits of this project, but it is a textbook example of the problem we face cutting public budgets. Even apparent “no brainers”–attempts to cut programs that are self-evidently unnecessary or wasteful–run headlong into the reality that the cuts will cost some people jobs or money. Those people vote. They make campaign contributions. Thus the protests from Carson and Pence.

Pence’s objections are particularly illuminating: he has been a reliable opponent of government spending, even spending that most of us would consider appropriate. He talks incessantly about the need to make the “hard” decisions. But when those decisions affect his constituents or donors, his tune changes considerably.

Pence is not alone. We have legislatures filled with folks who want to make the “hard decisions”–so long as those hard decisions don’t require them to make any sacrifices or take any electoral risks.

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