Thursday's New York Times reports that many of the business people that bought and paid for the current crop of House Republicans aren't exactly satisfied customers. The problem is the Randian (Ayn or Paul, take your pick) belief that shutting down government is best for business.
Well, surprise, surprise, it doesn't always work that way. As Barney Keller, spokesperson (I'm sure they'd say spokesman) for the conservative Club for Growth laments, "Free market is not always the same as pro-business." Now, I don't exactly expect Mr. Keller to become a Democrat, but his comments do illustrate an important dimension of the problem the Republicans created for themselves when they decided to get in bed with the Tea Party. They didn't quite realize that the Tea Party carried a politically transmitted disease, of which Ayn Rand was the index case.
We love to bash the NYT around here, and we also love to bash business. And most of the time the targets deserve it. On the other hand, if businesses make stuff people want, pay fair wages, and provide decent working conditions, they can also be the means by which the individuals and households that make up our society earn their livelihoods. That's why the Republican candidates blather on about the "job-creators." They know that if this election is about the middle class, we'll win. So they pander to their 1% base while pretending they care about the rest of us.
But a funny thing is happening on the pander express.
In 2010 the Republicans were so good at electing free-market zealots that the House can't pass a routine transportation bill. So now highway contractors - arguably actual job creators - are looking at layoffs. Pretty soon over-the-road shippers will find their costs going up because the highways are in such disrepair, and it'll become that much cheaper to bring goods in from overseas. It isn't just the transportation bill. The Export-Import Bank has provided routine trade financing for US-based exporters since the Depression. The Randbots (and Eric Cantor, apparently) are looking to kill it, too. If they succeed, the Red Team will manage to shut down export deals that, in the words of a steel fabricator that just filled an order for a customer in Singapore, have nothing but winners:
“Think about all the winners in this transaction,” he said. “Ex-Im got half a point. Baltimore City steelworkers got extra hours. I got extra profits to meet payroll, and hopefully I got a client who will reorder from me.”
Simply put, our economy doesn't function entirely on a free market system. It can't. Think about the airlines. They're close enough to broke as it is, without having to build the airports or maintain the air traffic control system, TSA, and hospitals to treat pilots when they decompensate. The public sector provides those.
And where do workers come from? The Republicans want to strangle the schools and shut out the immigrants. Imagine (or, if you're old enough, remember) a nation where we give our children good educations at public expense, and welcome immigrants at a variety of skill levels. What a great workforce. What a dynamic economy they'll create. What a high standard of living. What a strong middle class...
Wait. I think I see the problem. The Republicans have set themselves on a course where the only prescription for maintaining any semblance of political power is to strangle the middle class and confuse the increasingly downtrodden masses with bread and circuses, and fear of hoodies and condoms. In the end, the NYT is right. Those business people that paid for the Tea Party Republicans got a raw deal. But as far as the powers that be in the Republican Party are concerned, that's just too damn bad. Maybe Bain Capital can buy them out as they fail, and squeeze the last drop of blood from them.