Well, we’re in the third year of the
first century of a new millennium and we’re still hearing the same
noise that didn’t work over the last two centuries of the old
millennium. Some of the positions that Republican and conservative
Democratic politicians are taking are so stupid, so harmful to the
economy – with huge amounts of data to prove it’s the wrong way to
go – we wonder if those politicians (and even some union leaders)
pulled a Rip Van Winkle during the 80s and early 90s.
At the outset, I find it necessary to genuflect to President Bush’s
(the Younger) handling of the war effort. Even though we have not yet
captured or killed Osama bin Laden, the manner in which our powerful
military defeated the Taliban and al Quaeda (Afghan forces President
Reagan and George Bush the Elder helped create to defeat the Soviets
in Afghanistan) was superb, and proves that President Clinton did not
weaken our military the way that President Bush and other right wing
nuts have charged, as it is the military left by Clinton less than one
year prior to the commencement of the war that has defeated the
Taliban and al Quaeda.
Having genuflected, it appears to me that the proper name for the
current President Bush is Rerun. We have a war in the Middle East, tax
cuts for the wealthy, deficits created out of surpluses and ever
higher unemployment with a resulting recession. We even have loud
bravado about no tax hikes. Sound familiar. It is familiar. Just like
dad. And it didn’t work then and it’s not working now.
President Reagan cut taxes in the early 80s and the result was that
deficits tripled. Over the Reagan/Bush years (1980-1992), the deficit
that our great country created until 1980 tripled. The result was a
recession. The only way out of the recession was the tax hike of 1993.
That tax hike caused the Democrats to lose control of both Houses of
Congress, but created the greatest peacetime economic expansion ever,
with the lowest unemployment, in history – while creating surpluses
and causing the deficit to actually decline. This led to stable
interest rates, as government borrowing declined, causing interest
rates to drop.
All of this was clear and took place on our collective watch. When
President Bush called for tax cuts primarily for the wealthy in his
campaign, everyone thought he was out of his mind – and he lost the
popular vote by over 500,000 votes in the election. Nonetheless, when
he became President it became clear that wealthy Republicans and
conservative Democrats were actually going to give themselves and
their friends lucrative tax breaks — and the economy went in the
crapper. The result – the same as when this was done in the 80s and
early 90s – recession, higher unemployment, lower surpluses which
will clearly become deficits. It’s hard to believe we actually
followed this failed course again. But Rerun was able to take care of
his friends.
Amtrak privatization is another one of those issues that has
clearly failed and should never again be resurrected. Whether it’s
the freights again running passenger service, or other Balkanized
private companies attempting to run high speed rail, intercity
passenger service, the model has failed – failed in the U.S. and
failed abroad. But that doesn’t stop the morons on the ARC
(including several Democrats) from attempting to slime their way to a
federally funded privatized operation for providing high speed,
intercity rail passenger service.
In days of old when knights were bold, the freight railroads ran
intercity rail passenger service. The costs of intercity rail
passenger service was one of the major reasons many of the freight
roads were either unprofitable or marginally profitable. One of the
major reasons for the wreck of the Penn Central was the cost of
providing intercity rail passenger service. That was the prime reason
Amtrak was created – a recognition that intercity rail passenger
service must be separated from the freight railroads and had to be
subsidized – the same way it is subsidized in all other countries in
the industrialized world.
The lesson was so clear that in the early 1980s, Congress required
Conrail to shed its commuter lines, spinning them off into publicly
funded commuter services. Metro North, SEPTA, New Jersey Transit and
other commuter operations resulted from this legislation. This was
done in recognition of the fact that Conrail could not be a profitable
operation if it was required to operate commuter services.
Amtrak has been inadequately funded during all of its existence and
has still provided intercity rail passenger service throughout the
United States. It has undergone several total changes of its
management, the latest occurring in 1998. It is the most efficient
provider of intercity rail passenger service on the earth –
obtaining a larger percentage of its operating costs from the fare box
than any other rail passenger service on the earth. Yet it is
constantly under attack from morons like the majority on the ARC who
have no knowledge about how to run a railroad or a passenger railroad
– people who are willing to see the destruction of intercity rail
passenger service in order to prove new ideas about how to provide
such service. And the ideas they have put forward have failed all over
Europe.
The time has come to get real. Tax cuts for the rich and
privatization of Amtrak are ideas that have failed. Those ideas have
devastated the economy and weakened our ability to provide high speed,
intercity rail passenger service in the United States. Let’s act
like grown-ups and remove these ideas from the national debate. We’re
really not interested in a Rerun of failed ideas. |