The Evansville Courier Press has a couple of interesting editorials today. The first, and most enjoyable (because space is awesome), notes that Voyager 1 is still going despite what, by today’s standards, seems like primitive technology. The Voyager 1 space probe has entered interstellar space. “Its next space rendezvous will be with a dwarf star in the constellation Camelopardalis — in 40,000 years.” (As Bill Bryson pointed out, “Space” is aptly named.)
Voyager carries an eight-track tape recorder to store its data, has a computer that The New York Times calculates has a fraction of the memory of a low-end iPhone and sends data using a 23-watt transmitter, which the Times compares to a refrigerator light bulb.
The second discusses the fracturing of House Republicans this year over the federal debt situation. “House Republicans seem to have splintered into more factions than the Italian parliament, only slightly lighter on the histrionics.”
The factions described by the editorial are those who want to pass continuing resolutions to allow continued funding of the federal government with provisions that forbid funding the health care reforms passed by Congress some years ago. This would shut down the government as the President and the Senate would never go along with that. Closer to mainstream, other parts of the House (notably speaker Boehner) would like to tie the continuing resolutions to “tax reform” including “entitlement” cuts that most Democrats wouldn’t go for. This is a closer call but still looks to be a recipe for government shut down.
Politically, the calculus seems to involve whether the President would cave, how the public would react to a federal government shut down, and/or who would take the blame. Longer serving House Republicans still seem to be scarred by the stand off in the Clinton years where they took a beating when the government shut down and the House Republicans took the blame.
I think the dynamics have shifted somewhat since the Clinton years. Debt seems to be a bigger issue now than it was then. The problem the House Republicans face is that many of them opened the check book to George W. Bush and subsequently have opposed just about every initiative President Obama has favored. If those things weren’t true, they would have a better chance of taking a hard line on debt without looking like mere obstructionists. Also, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
The further lesson on spending we can take from Voyager 1, not that anyone in Congress is likely to take note, is not to be penny wise but pound foolish — some spending yields incredible returns on investment. Where are we dumping money unproductively and where are we refusing to spend money that would be very useful? That’s the kind of narrow bore spending discussions we should be having; but will not because it’s hard to get voters emotionally engaged with specific, detailed policy questions. Instead the discussions are more like “grr, debt bad” or “you monster, how could you vote to starve grandpa?”
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