SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2010 DAVIDS.BRODER
Fiscal sobriety check W
hat Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson have given America is the equivalent of a cold shower
after a night of heavy drinking. It’s sober-up time. The co-chairmen of the president’s
commission on deficits and debt, in outlining the steps they said would be necessary to eliminate red ink and re- store the budget to health by 2020, accomplished one great achievement: They made it impossible for anyone to pretend that there are relatively easy or painlessways to dig out of themonumen- tal fiscal pit we have fallen into. For a full decade, our politicians have
pretended to offer solutions to the bud- getary dilemma that were no solution at all. Even before the Great Recession struck, Republican Congresseswere play- ing charades with the approval of Presi- dent GeorgeW. Bush, and the nation was sinking deeper into debt each year. President Obama came to office vow-
ing that he would not just kick the can down the road to his successor.When he said this at a pre-inaugural meeting with Washington Post reporters and editors, I believed that hemeant it — and he did. Bowles, a former ClintonWhite House
chief of staff, and Simpson, a Republican former senator from Wyoming, never doubted that Obama was serious about the charge he had given themto clean up this mess. When I interviewed them in Boston last summer, they made very plain that theywere going to lay outwhat it would take to solve this problem, in all its gory detail. Some of the other members of the
18-person commission, charged with rec- ommending action to Congress by Dec. 1, sounded shocked at what Simpson and Bowles had put before them. They should not have been. Everyone and every institution will
have to contribute — no, genuinely, sacrifice—if we are to repair the damage to our economic health. No area of government spending will be spared. Not
KLMNO
EZ RE
A23 DAVIDIGNATIUS Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson lift the deficit debate
the Pentagon, not Social Security and Medicare, not a single agency or bureau. The tax system will change and collect more fromthe people than it does now. As this message sinks in, I think there
is a chance that a realistic dialogue will occur inWashington. And oddly enough, divided government may help it along rather than interfere with its growth. As the Bowles-Simpson recommenda-
tions are debated within the commission for the remainder of this month, we will learn two things: first, which of themany uncomfortable options are most objec- tionable to the most people. Those will have to bemodified. And second, is there a core constituency anywhere prepared to step up and face the challenge? The co-chairmenwill hold people’s feet
to the fire. They have said that every time they are told “I can’t support that,” their responsewill be, “So,what’s your alterna- tive?” What is likely to emerge from that
dialogue is a revised agenda that may come closer to commanding amajority in this divided Congress. No Democrat can believe, looking around, that he or she can protect all the programs passed since theNewDeal and Great Society days.Not with all those Republicans and Tea Partyers sitting there with their knives out. And no Republican, no matter how
ideologically isolated, can believe that the Democratswhose voteswill be needed for any package will permit all the sacrifices to be made only on the spending side — especially in the low-income programs. I expect weeks and even months of
protest and gnashing of teeth. But unlike others, I think that in the end reality will force accommodations and that when it does, there will be genuine reason for celebration. What is happening right now in Brit-
ain, where Parliament is debating an austerity budget, will happen here as well. The new day of sobriety will begin.
davidbroder@washpost.com
POST PARTISAN
Excerpts fromThe Post’s opinion blog, updated daily at
washingtonpost.com/postpartisan
RICHARDCOHEN
Leading Marines past ‘don’t ask’
TheMarines need one goodman. That
would be a commandant who sees his job as implementing the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and integrating openly homo- sexualmen and women into the Corps. As it is, the current commandant,Gen. James F. Amos, has indicated that he is not up to the job.He can’t distinguish betweena gay man and a sexual predator. In the general’s telling, the coming end
of this discriminatory policy could pro- duce sexual havoc in our nation’s barracks and battlefields. The Marines have a mission. They have to consider unit cohesion. There are two wars on, not to mention countless embassies abroad to be guarded.What if aMarine in front of, say, the U.S. Embassy in Paris was gay? I shudder. London? I shudder somemore. This shuddering is not shared by most
enlisted men and women. To them, the all-but-certain end of the policy — either the courts will find it unconstitutional (the Supreme Court ruling Friday was far from the last word on this) or Congress will “man up” on this issue—does not fill them with dread. The Post published leaked details thismonth fromthe Penta- gon’s yet-to-be-released survey on the issue: “More than 70 percent of respon- dents to a survey sent to active-duty and reserve troops over the summer said the effect of repealing the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy would be positive,mixed or nonex- istent, said two sources familiar with the document. The survey results led the report’s authors to conclude that objec-
tions to openly gay colleagues would drop once troops were able to live and serve alongside them.” Still, Amos has his doubts. Enlisted
Marines do not get single rooms. They have to double up and this, Amos warns, could cause trouble if one of the men is gay and the other is not — or if both are. “There is nothing more intimate than young men and young women — and when you talk of infantry, we’re talking our young men — laying out, sleeping alongside of one another and sharing death, fear and loss of brothers,” Amos said. “I don’t know what the effect of that will be on cohesion. I mean, that’s what we’re looking at. It’s unit cohesion. It’s combat effectiveness.” Given the law of averages, I was
undoubtedly in the Army with gay men. We shared the same barracks and slept, on the occasionswhen I could not avoid it, on the ground. We showered together and used the lavatory together — the Army is just wonderful at stripping away all dignity—and I never knewof an incident. I was not, I acknowledge, a Marine, and the Marines have a somewhat different culture. Still, the military is the military, and leaders are expected to lead. If gays are integrated into the services, there will surely be incidents—this is humannature — but they can be handled. Enforcing discipline is what officers do. Amos was rebuked for his remarks by
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen. “I was surprised by what he said and surprised he said it publicly,”Mullen told reporters. If and when the policy is changed,
President Obama ought to see to it that Amos is not tasked with implementing it. At the very top, the Marines need one goodman.
Getting past our gridlock
States is a country in decline, with a weakened political and economic system. That view of a blunted America is likely to grow after the midterm election results, unless pol- iticians find a way to work together and make decisions. Consider the recent evidence of
W SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
President Obama exits a ChevroletVolt after a groundbreaking ceremony for Compact Power's advanced battery factory inHolland,Mich., in July.
GEORGEF.WILL
Toxic shock from the Volt
“Every single great idea that has
marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and gov- ernment incentive.” —Joe Biden, Oct. 26
G
eneralMotors, an appendage of the government, which owns 61 percent of it, is spending some
of your money, dear reader, on full- page newspaper ads praising a gov- ernment brainstorm — the Volt, Chevrolet’s highly anticipated and prematurely celebrated (sort of) elec- tric car. Although the situation is murky — GM and its government masters probably prefer it thatway— it is unclear in what sense GM has any money that is truly its own. And the Volt is not quite an electric car, or not the sort GM deliberately misled Americans into expecting. It is another hybrid. GM said the
Volt would be an “all electrically driven vehicle” whose gas engine would be a mere range-extender, powering the Volt’s generator, not its wheels: The engine would just main- tain the charge as the battery ran down. Now GM says that at some point when the battery’s charge de- clines, orwhenthe car is moving near 70 mph, the gas engine will power the wheels. The newspaper ads proclaim,
“Chevrolet Runs Deep.” Whatever that means, if anything, it does not mean the Volt runs deep into a com- mute or the countryside just on elec- tricity. At the bottom of the ads, there is this, in microscopic print: “Volt available in CA, TX, MI, NY, NJ, CT and Washington, DC, at the end of 2010. Quantities limited.”Well. Quantities of everything — except
perhaps God’s mercy, which is said to be infinite—are limited. But quanti- ties of the Volt are going to be so limited that 44 states can only pine for Volts from afar.Good, because the federal government, which evidently is feeling flush, will give tax credits of up to $7,500 to every Volt purchaser. The Volt was conceived to appease the automotive engineers in Con- gress, which knows that people will have to be bribed, with other people’s money, to buy this $41,000 car that seats only four people (the 435-pound battery eats up space). Mark Reuss, president of GM
North America, said in a letter to the Wall Street Journal: “Theearly enthu- siastic consumer response — more than 120,000 potential Volt custom- ers have already signaled interest in the car, and orders have flowed since thesummer—give us confidence that the Volt will succeed on its merits.” Disregard the slipperiness (“signaled
An emerging but fragile China T
BY JIM HOAGLAND hong kong
he extraordinary power and wealth that China has accumulated in just 30 years are evident in its pulsating
streets, giant shoppingmalls and ostenta- tious military maneuvers. But less-visible insecurities linger from its recent chaotic past and drive this country’s politics. Chi- na’s strengths, and its weaknesses, should bemeasuredwith care. Facing a major generational change in
their own ranks in two years, China’s leaders have engaged in a year of living assertively: They have bludgeoned Japan into releasing a bellicose Chinese fishing boat captain from seemingly justified ar- rest, repeatedly berated the United States over economic anddiplomaticdifferences, and threatened retaliation against Euro- peangovernments thatdare to sendrepre- sentatives to the Dec. 10 ceremony award- ing the Nobel Peace Prize to a Chinese citizen. When China overtook Japan recently to
become the world’s second-leading eco- nomic power, officials seemed to take delight in projecting an even greater eclipse to come for its old Asian rival. “China and Japan have never been strong at the same time in history,” Deputy For-
eign Minister Fu Ying said with evident satisfaction at an international discussion group I attended. But she also fretted that “double anxi-
ety” still exists betweenChina,which fears “being imposed on by the developed world,” while industrialized countries worry that power is rapidly shifting to China. “What ishappening is adiffusionof power, not a shift,” she asserted. China today operates on two tracks:
Even while flexing their new muscle, Chi- nese officials have been careful to main- tain discreet channels to other govern- ments and international organizations in ways they have not bothered to use in the past. Their unusual damage-control effort has been described tome by several senior Chinese officials in similar words: “We listen to what others have to say. But we nowinsist on being listened to aswell.” It would be surprising if President Hu
Jintao and his associates did not choose to throw their weight around to show their citizens how important they all have be- come. But the occasional shrillness and spitefulnessof theirpublicoutbursts—the Nobel Prize denunciations are a prime example—betray a fragility that is usually missed in America’s appreciation of this country’s supposedly inexorable rise. “The leaders have to make sure the transition to power by their understudies
interest” how?) and telltale reticence (how many orders have “flowed”?). But “on its merits”?Why, then, the tax credits and other subsidies? The Automotive Engineer in Chief
— our polymathic president — says there will be a million plug-in cars in America by 2015. This will require muchhigher gasoline prices (perhaps $9 a gallon) and much bigger bribes: GM, which was expected to produce asmany as 60,000 next year,nowsays 10,000 for all ofNorth America. GMsays that, battery-powered, the
Volt has a 40-mile range. Popular Mechanics says 33. Thomas R. Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Insti- tute, the trade association of the electric utility industry, is, under- standably, a Volt enthusiast: This supposedly “green” vehicle will store electric energy — 10 to 12 hours of
The Volt is not quite an electric car, or not the sort GMdeliberately misled Americans into expecting.
charging on household current — produced by coal- and gas-fired pow- er plants. The federal government, although
waist-deep in red ink, offers another bribe: Any purchaser can get a tax credit of up to 50 percent of the cost (up to $2,000) of an extra-powerful (240-volt) charger. California, al- though so strapped it recently issued IOUs to vendors, offers a $5,000 cash rebate for which Volt buyers are not eligible but purchasers of Nissan’s electric Leaf are.Go figure. InApril, in a television commercial
and a Wall Street Journal column headlined “The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full,” GM’s then-chief execu- tiveEdWhitacre said “we have repaid our government loan, in full, with interest, five years ahead of the origi- nal schedule.” Rubbish. GM,whichhasreceivedalmost$50
billion in government subventions, repaid a $6.7 billion loan using other federal funds, a TARP-funded escrow account. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Io- wa) called this a “TARP money shuf- fle.” A commentator compared it to “paying off your Visa credit card with yourMasterCard.” Meretricious accounting and de-
ceptive marketing are inevitable when government and its misnamed “private sector” accomplices foist state capitalism on an appalled coun- try. But those who thought the etha- nol debacle defined outer limits of governmentfoolishness pertaining to automobiles were, alas, mistaken.
georgewill@washpost.com
foreign disrespect for America: Chi- na downgraded its credit rating for American debt last week; South Korea refused U.S. pressure for a newtrade deal; European andAsian nations joined in protesting the Federal Reserve’s plans to print more money to stimulate growth. What the world sees, I’mafraid, is
a weak U.S. president who isn’t solving domestic economic prob- lems, let alone global ones. But that’s more a symptom than a cause. What’s happening at a deeper level is a breakdown of the U.S. political system’s ability to find consensus and make decisions. Washington doesn’t work, as critics from the Tea Party right to the progressive left keep insisting. The message of the past two
elections is consistent, if you take a step back from the seeming left- right oscillation: Voters are angry about a Washington process that they believe favors elites and ignores Main Street; they’ve lost trust in government and they want change. The two parties try to bend this message to their own purposes, which onlymakes the partisan dead- lock worse. It’s a kind of political doomsday machine: The more voters say they want to break with Washington’s culture of insiders, the more power- ful privately funded special interests become — with a corresponding freeze on Congress’s ability to legis- late. Take any of the issues that people say they care about — immi- gration, the deficit, tax reform, cut- ting military and other spending — and you will find evidence of this immobility. The Fed’s controversial move to
stimulate the economy by buying up Treasury bonds through “quantita- tive easing” (a highfalutin way to describe printing money) is itself a product of this political gridlock. I’d bet that Chairman Ben Bernanke wouldprefer a fiscal stimulus target- ing money at areas that would pro- vide a quick return, such as spend- ing for infrastructure. But when your political system is broken, those fiscal remedies are off the table—so the Fed has to go it alone with a risky monetary strategy. The Fed’s unilateralism upsets
other countries, understandably. They had hoped that after the Bush years, the United States would re- turn to normal order — working through its traditional alliances and global institutions to nurse the glob- al economy back to health. Our trading partners shouldn’t be sur- prised that Bernanke decided to put the interests of American workers ahead of those in China orGermany. But there’s a cost in appearing so clearly to put our own welfare first. Other countries will do the same. Let’s return to the core problem,
which isWashington. An interesting commentary is “Mad as Hell,” a new book by Scott Rasmussen and Doug- las Schoen, which explores the roots of the populist anger expressed in the Tea Party movement. They argue that the revolt is deeper and in- cludes the left as much as the right. Here are some worrying numbers
will come off smoothly in2012. So theywill show no outward weakness, no submis- sion tomeddlingNobel juries or currency- revaluation demands,” says one well-con- nected entrepreneur here. “And Japan’s weak government is an easy target for chest-thumping.” The strident external voice is mixed
with a relatively lighter touch at home—if onlyby the violent standardsof theCultur- alRevolution of the 1960s and the Tianan- menmassacre of 1989—especially here in this prosperous, still politically tolerant ex-British enclave reclaimed in 1997. Economic and financial sophistication
remains impressively high, and there is vigorous and positive discussion of Liu Xiaobo’sNobel among university students I met. Business professionals here vow to cultivate “a civil society” to counter the dictatorial rule of Beijing. “The rulers havemade an amazing [for
them] discovery. They don’t have to crack down for the place to run efficiently. Our freedoms poseno threat to them,” says one intellectual. “Butwe knowtheywould not hesitate to repeat Tiananmen if they felt it necessary.” Themight andwealth of the newChina
are projected outward by its increasingly savvymedia and diplomats and amplified byimpressionable foreignscribes.But that one-dimensional image obscures the age-
old grace and gentleness of many of Chi- na’s people, as well as the positive energy and optimismamong university students. It also ignores the sharp vulnerabilities their leaders still feel and address through their periodic outbursts. It can be hard to keep the two strains in focus, as President Obama recently demonstrated. At his news conference immediately
afterhisparty’s electoral “shellacking” this month, Obama held up China’s high- speed-rail network as a model for the American future. His remark was consis- tent with a certain gee-whiz quality the president and others have voiced before about China’s economic prowess and its technological “green” industries. Yet word is emerging here that China’s
Ministry of Railways is rethinking its am- bitiousplans toexpandthehigh-speed-rail systemafter experts found that it is dread- fully expensive and already deep in debt and cannot be efficiently connected to the rest of the country’s transportation infra- structure. No wonder China’s leaders fear that
historydoesnotmarchinastraight linefor the world’s most populous and infinitely mysterious country.
Thewriter is a contributing editor to The Post. His e-mail address is
jimhoagland@washpost.com.
from “Mad as Hell”: According to Rasmussen’s polling, 86 percent of the elite believes that the country is “heading in the right direction,” compared with 19 percent of the mainstream; a plurality of the elite thinks that the economy is improv- ing, while 66 percent of the main- stream think it’s getting worse; 74 percent of the mainstream say that the political system is broken, while 77 percent of the elite say it’s not. Rasmussen’s polling has been criti- cized in the past, but surely these numbers reflect real trends. The question for 2011 is whether
this populist anger can achieve its apparent goal — of making real change in how Washington oper- ates. This means beginning to solve hard problems such as budget defi- cits that rightly worry Tea Party activists. The leaders of the presi- dent’s bipartisan commission last week outlined a path to fiscal health — just the thing those mad-as-hell voters ought to rally behind. If Republicans and Democrats could unite to make the tough deci- sions needed to carry out at least some of the commission’s reforms, this really could be a moment for change. That’s what voters want, not more Washington tantrums and trauma. But making change re- quires strong leadership and a healthy political process — two things America badly needs right now.
davidignatius@washpost.com
hen traveling abroad, I in- creasingly hear foreigners speculating that the United
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