(Host) Congressional leaders are already looking past November’s
election to the challenge of what’s been called "Taxmaggedon" after
January 1st. But it will be a lame duck Congress and if there’s any hope
of avoiding going over the "fiscal cliff", history teacher and
commentator Vic Henningsen says they’ll have to depend on zombies.
(Henningsen)
Come January 1st, two enormous changes threaten to create another
financial crisis that could halt economic recovery and send us back into
recession. First, the Bush tax cuts will expire, raising taxes for
almost all of us. Second, we face some $110 billion in automatic
spending cuts, ensured when a legislative "supercommittee" couldn’t
agree on an alternate deficit-reduction strategy after last summer’s
debt limit showdown. Estimates of the total cost of these events range
from $600 billion to a whopping $7.5 trillion in tax hikes and spending
cuts – enough to put a serious dent in any economy, let alone one as
fragile as ours.
Posturing in Congress has already begun.
Democratic Senator Patty Murray warned that her party is ready to drive
over the "fiscal cliff" if Republicans don’t abandon opposition to
higher taxes for the rich. Although this is meant to push Republicans to
compromise, it’s hard to see how that will work in an already
highly-charged election year.
But although we’ll witness a lot
of verbal grenade-throwing between now and November, nothing will really
get going until the lame-duck Congress reconvenes after the election.
At that point we’ll have just over a month to resolve something
Republicans and Democrats have been dueling over for years.
That
has some people really worried. Democratic representative Jim Cooper,
of Tennessee, warned The Boston Globe in May about what he called a
"zombie Congress." "We’ll have 55 members who have already announced
they’re retiring or seeking a different office," he said, "and we’ll
have everybody who loses reelection. So they’ll literally be the living
dead, except they’ll be back in Washington and have voting cards."
Cooper
and others believe that these so-called zombies will line up with their
parties and vote by remote control. How could it be otherwise, they
ask, in such a sharply divided country, where so much money has been
spent making us hate each other? Come November, says Cooper, half of us
will be sore losers eager to get back at the winners in any way
possible. Compromise? No way.
But wouldn’t it be wonderful if those about to leave Congress were finally free to behave like mature adults?
No
longer threatened by retaliation from their party leaders or the
voters, they’ll be in a position to make tough choices regardless of
political cost; to broker a true compromise. And they’ll be numerous
enough to control majorities in either house. Couldn’t people like
Olympia Snowe, Richard Lugar, Joe Lieberman and other soon-to-be
retirees pull together a "zombie caucus" to control the debate and bring
about genuine fiscal compromise?
It is possible. Congress has
risen to the occasion before. But one thing’s for sure. The election
will be thrilling enough, but the real show will begin when the lame
duck Congress reconvenes – an actual zombie jamboree.