Undertrying

I just heard something on the radio about the House of Representatives refusing to take up the tax cut for the rich "compromise that the President negotiated without the Democrats. Hooray for them, and I genuinely hope that the House of Representatives forces a legitimate compromise which will be sound policy for the conduct of our nation.

Thinking about the concept of compromise which has been exposed during the last two years of our government, it is clear that one needs to begin any negotiation from a position of ideals, and not from a calculation of realism. If one negotiates using the position one might have to accept, one of two things can happen; one has to give up even more of ones principles without ever having had the chance to get what one would like to have, or one is accused of intransigence, since there is nowhere to move in one's position, having given it all in one's own internal dialogue before one starts to negotiate.

In the case of this government, starting from a practical view of what should be ideological issues, the results which have been achieved may be important, but they are seriously flawed. Having to give tax breaks to the wealthy, who are doing very well in this recession in order to provide some defective social safety net to some of those who are doing poorly is the latest example An earlier example was getting everyone covered by health insurance that they will have to fend for themselves to obtain, rather than tackling the problem of how all Americans will have access to necessary health care no matter what their economic circumstance. Each of the moves to move our society forward in the current government has been marred by narrowing the discussion to something that is calculated to appeal to the other side.

The tax issue should have been linked to the recession/depression, and the goal should have been to reestablish a safety net for all citizens who have been hurt by the economy. This would be reinstituting "Welfare" for all Americans who are out of work, at least temporarily, as opposed to extending "Unemployment" to those who meet the criteria of having had a job at a particular time (remember that nothing is being considered to help those whose "Unemployment" has expired). It should have been identified that tax breaks for the wealthy will not lead to any more employment as long as demand is low and while there are cheaper ways of obtaining labor outside of the country. Link the actions of the rich to the economic problem at hand, In such a case, it would be part of the discussion that the well-being of all citizens must be included in our national compromise in addressing our economy and that is the ideological position that the cause will have to feed the effect. Stimulus in the form of discounted taxes (remember that the Bush Tax Rates were understood to be designed to divest our country of a surplus it had accumulated; it was never thought to be a sustainable system for funding the government) needs to be balanced by its effect of social welfare of the whole country as well as its effect on public debt.

Starting seriously from that harder position, one can easily see how those who represent the rich would be able to negotiate away their position on the extension of the lower tax rates for the uppermost tax bracket, and it could easily be that the extension of the lower tax rates on the lower tax brackets should be negotiated to be temporary. One could also see how it would be possible to extend "Unemployment" for the current recipients, and those who are not addressed in the current system would become visible in the debate (and would move closer to help).

Compromise is not about the position one will accept, nearly as much as it is about the trades one can make to approach one's ideological position. The reason the other side has not been willing to make concessions from their position is that our side has not been willing to force the give and take to be meaningful to them. We lose if we cannot govern effectively. They needed to lose if they stood in the way of effective government. Effective government should be understandable to both sides.