As theinsurance industry's Nurse Ratched lurks in the background, congressionalDemocrats cower in the corner, fearing the phantom menace of their own shadows.Standing next to the window, suicidal Republican leaders rant about "deathpanels" and threaten to splatter their electoral prospects onto thepavement below. Nearby, White House officials struggle withmultiple-personality ailments as they mumble contradictory statements about thepublic option. Meanwhile, tea party protesters lie on the floor in a fetalposition, soiling their hospital diapers as they throw incoherent tantrumsabout everything from socialism to communism to czarism to Nazism. And, notsurprisingly, Washingtonreporters just stare off into the distance, having been long ago lobotomized inthe wake of their Watergate heyday.
Clearly, theinmates in America'spolitical sanitarium are each struggling with different maladies. However, theyare all suffering from Selective Deficit Disorderan illness whose symptoms canbe particularly difficult to detect.
When we seetea party activists bemoan deficit spending or watch rank-and-file senatorslike Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) say, "I'm not going to vote for a (healthcare) bill that's not deficit-neutral," it is easy to think these poorsouls are perfectly healthy. When President Obama promises to "not sign a(health) plan that adds one dime to our deficit" and then New York Times writers such as DavidBrooks praise this "dime standard" as the epitome of "pragmatism"and "fiscal sanity," these victims seem absolutely sane.
Yet, SelectiveDeficit Disorder is a sickness of omission.
Attacking theneural synapses that maintain rudimentary logic, it presents itself not in whatits carriers say and do, but in what they refuse to say and do.
Where, forinstance, were conservative organizations marching on Washington when President Bush vastlyexpanded the deficit with his massive tax cuts for the wealthy? Where was Sen.Lincoln's concern for "deficit neutrality" when she voted to give$700 billion to the thieves on Wall Street? Where was Obama's "dimestandard" when he proposed a budget that spends far more on maintainingbloated Pentagon budgets than on any universal health care proposal beingconsidered in Congress? Where were demands for “fiscal sanity” by Brooks andother right-wing pundits when they cheered on the budget-busting war in Iraq? Wherewere any calls for raising taxes from these supposed “deficit hawks” when theybacked all this profligate spending? And where were the journalists asking suchpainfully simple questions?
They werenowhere, because those plagued by Selective Deficit Disorder (as the namesuggests) are only selectively worried about deficits.
When it comesto spending on priorities like health care reform that would help ordinaryAmericans, the illness's victims scream about deficits and overspending. Butwhen it comes to handing over trillions of dollars to financial firms, defensecontractors and other corporate interests, deficits suddenly don't matter tothe disease-addled politicians, protestors and journalists underwritten bythose interests.
Luckily, whilealmost every significant voice in politics is stricken with Selective DeficitDisorder, the majority of the country's citizens are not. That doesn't meanAmericans love unbalanced budgets, of course. It just means we know there issomething very wrong with those who decry deficit spending on health care formillions of people, but ignore far bigger deficit expenditures on giveaways toa tiny handful of fat cats.
Now, all wehave to do is stop flying over the cuckoo's nest and start breaking into theasylum…
© 2009 Creators.com.
