(ThyBlackMan.com) To use a football analogy, it’s the end of the 4th quarter. The United States of America is out of timeouts. Our leaders are either filled with ideas or completely out of ideas depending on your perspective. Everyone in the crowd is standing on their feet – and experiencing the full gamut of emotions: fear, anger, confusion, depression, frustration. We need someone to step up. We need a big play; and we need it right now. This is our two minute drill.
We are in week number three of an unnecessary, nonsensical government shutdown. Americans from many different walks of life are suffering mentally, physically, professionally, patriotically, financially, even relationally. In case you haven’t noticed, America’s financial markets have already begun falling. Economists and leaders of the global financial markets are hoping for the best even as they prepare for the worst. Here’s the official doomsday scenario. This
country was still recovering from the Great Recession of 2008 – the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. If we do not pay our nation’s bills for the first time in our history, we will enter into truly unchartered territory. No one knows precisely what will happen. No one knows how much damage will be inflicted upon our economy. No one knows what will become of all the international money markets so interconnected with America’s. The one thing we do know – the one thing which is beyond spin-doctoring and debate is this: it will be bad. Perhaps bad to the one-hundredth power.
If we default, many American companies, corporations, and small businesses will surely be harmed financially. Once those entities are harmed, the inevitable result will be the loss of jobs and benefits. Those losses of jobs and benefits will hurt hard-working, tax-paying, law-abiding Americans. How will they pay their bills? How will they be able to put food on their tables for themselves and for their families? How will they manage to keep a roof over their heads?
The debt default would sentence every single American to higher fuel costs, higher food costs, and higher interest rates on everything from mortgages to credit cards to car loans – even as we would all be subjected to lower interest rates on our bank accounts, stock investments, and retirement annuities. Translation: even in such a dire crisis as this, the rich would get richer while everyone else gets poorer. In light of the current state of our terminally dysfunctional government, there is no possibility of any sort of stimulus this time to jumpstart economic recovery. There is no priority for Congress to actually focus on job creation right now. The vast majority of our Senators and Congressmen are far too busy worrying about somehow keeping their own jobs in 2014 or 2016 to even think about your job.
Since before President Obama assumed office, the various factions of the Republican Party vowed to fight him tooth and nail on every single one of his initiatives and his laws. The GOP has spent much of the last 5 years trying to establish the narratives that big government was the root of all evil, the greatest jobs killer known to mankind, and stealing from the makers in order to give to the takers. Christian common sense instilled in Americans from childhood informs us that it is never, ever appropriate to negotiate with the devil at any time on anything. Is it any wonder then that the right wing has persisted in trying to depict Mr. Obama as the devil, the Kenyan colonialist, the second coming of Hitler? Here’s the problem, though. Once you’ve spent so much time, treasure (money), and talent branding the President as evil, how do you then turn around and ask him to have a conversation, Speaker Boehner? How do you sit down and work out a deal with the boogeyman on reopening the government and avoiding a financial implosion of biblical proportions? Tea Partiers hate the U.S. government; and are more than thrilled it has been shut down. Any attempts to reopen it will quickly incur their wrath.
Here – at the precipice of financial ruin – the Republicans are still demanding concessions on the Affordable Healthcare Act. They seek to deny Obamacare to all White House and Congressional staffers; some of whom make less than $30,000 a year. How draconian. The GOP don’t even want The President to be able to sign up for the healthcare law which bears his name. Call them Ishmael. AHA remains their white whale.
In football’s two minute drill, the team with the ball runs its very best strategies. Its players know that everything’s come down to this: victory or defeat, success or failure. America’s out of time. Who’s going to step up? How does this calamity end? The entire world is watching.
Staff Writer; Arthur L. Jones, III
This talented brother is a local Minister, weekly featured Democratic Op-Ed columnist, non-profit advisor, and sees the Braves winning it all this fall. Rev. Jones welcomes your comments! Please email him directly at: tcdppress@gmail.com.