Is America governable?
A Sri Lankan perspective
For the second time in recent years, the US government shut down many of its key departments, this time for sixteen days (October 1-16), laying off (furloughing) 800,000 federal government employees from work. With controversial issues unresolved, this will recur again in January 2014, as the federal budget was approved only for three months. People in Sri Lanka accept the idea that trade union strikes could temporarily shut down some branches of government, as Sri Lankan trade unions are very strong unlike in the USA where the government, responding to corporate interests, have mostly destroyed workers’ unions. But this is the only country where the government shuts itself down due to bickering politicians. Is this an ungovernable country, despite having the world’s largest economy (correctly, debt-based economy) and the world’s most powerful military to dominate other nations as the only super-power?
There are two structural issues that make America ungovernable today.
(1) America, like almost all nations, has always been governed by a very small ruling class consisting of a small coterie of its super-rich. As long as the rest of the population can be persuaded to accept this condition as a feature that ensures the common weal, everything works well. When this unwritten social contract is broken, the system will fail.
(2) The American constitution, unlike the parliamentary system, has established fixed terms of office for elected legislators, irrespective of whether the ruling party can legislate and govern. The legislature cannot be dissolved to make way for a fresh election and new choices if the governing party cannot govern because its major legislative proposals are defeated.
For all the bombastic rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln (Government of the People, For the People, By the People), all governments are run by a small coterie of people as this the only practical way, whether these are democratic, communist, monarchical or dictatorial. The USA was first governed by slave owning landowners, then by robber-baron industrialists and financiers and now the billionaires and multi-millionaires that own the mega-corporations that dominate the world economy. But in this age of many educated and enlightened citizens, the majority has to be persuaded that this is for the common good. In the past, the ruling class relied on traditional staples to gain acceptance: nationalism/ patriotism (and foreign wars) and religion. Two of the world’s greatest examples are Emperor Asoka of India in the 4th century B.C. and Emperor Constantine of Rome in the 5th century A.D. Today, we also have the mass media for propaganda, invariably controlled by the ruling class, and educational systems that extol the virtues of the nation and its political system. There is less need to resort to repression, as repression will not work.
The fact is that, uniquely among Western democracies, the USA political system is uniquely corrupt. Massive and sustained political propaganda through the expensive mass media and staged political dramas are the only path to elected office and only big money can buy this. It is the mega-corporations and its billionaires and multi-millionaires who fund these and elect legislators who will advance their interests. The last Presidential election cost the two contestants a total of US$ three billion. Every seat in the Senate and Congress costs several millions of dollars. In any other democracy this would be ruled unconstitutional but the US Supreme Court even ruled that corporations can fund unlimited sums to politicians and political parties and not even disclose these. Hence the numerous instances of the Congress taking measures that the majority of the public disapprove: foreign wars, iniquitous taxation, cuts in social benefits, etc. Public approval of Congress now stands at 10% but power lies with the Congress or, more accurately, those who sponsor its members.
At the same time, the greed of the ruling class in the USA has reached staggering proportions at a time when unemployment and poverty in the USA are at an all-time high. Four hundred members of the US super-rich earn 23% of the total annual income and own 48% of the national assets. One fourth of the mega-corporations do not pay taxes because of available tax-loopholes, and others, including the billionaires and multi-millionaires, pay an average tax of 8-13%, while paid workers pay 35-37%. At the same time, many large corporations, including the environment polluting oil companies and arms manufacturers, receive government subsidies. Corporations hide two trillion dollars in tax havens abroad and the government will not take remedial measures on any of these.
The USA has the most effective system of brain-washing from childhood. Every morning at the start of school sessions, students salute the flag, take an oath of allegiance to the country and sing the national anthem. No other country does this though some may begin school work with a common prayer. In some schools in Sri Lanka, prayers from all four major religions are recited by one pupil during morning assembly.
John Kenneth Galbraith in American Capitalism in 1952 expounded the theory of countervailing power. He theorised that American capitalism, with its enormous power over markets, only survived because of the counter-balancing power of trade unions, government regulation and citizens’ organisations. Today, the power of the American mega-corporations worldwide is based on near total control of the American political system, ownership of the major media networks for mass propaganda and its ability to buy over or emasculate organisations that would limit corporate greed. At the same time, the so-called countervailing powers – trade unions, government regulators and citizens groups – have been successfully marginalised. With a power in America and abroad, unmatched in history, corporate power has breached the social contract between rulers and ordinary citizens.
Among current US politicians, President Barak Obama, a very intelligent man, understands the importance of maintaining this contract. Coming into power with the support of billions of corporate funds, like all others, he forsook all the major campaign pledges he made to the voters: closing Guantanamo prison, abolishing torture in prisons, ending the never ending US wars, regulating out of control corporations, preserving Social Security, Medicare and social benefits, taxing the super-rich, creating a more open society, etc. This betrayal was inevitable if he was to survive in the corrupt system. There were mass protests against corporate control of the political system through the Occupy Wall Street movement all over the country for more than a year but the government violently dispersed peaceful protestors, arrested hundreds and, with the controlled media, ignored the public agitation. But President Obama knew there was a need to placate the poorest, whose ranks have swelled, and the Affordable Health Care legislation was his answer. Currently, 48 million Americans cannot afford health insurance in the country with the world’s highest healthcare costs. Insurance companies rule the market and many plans have caps on payments and will not insure persons with serious pre-existing health problems. President Obama’s bill was a gigantic compromise document of 900 pages that sought to accommodate the demands of the insurance companies, drug manufacturers, hospitals, doctors and other profitable stake-holders in the business. Yet it provides some relief for those deprived or denied services. After much lobbying and concessions it was passed a year ago. Still, the opposing Republican Party stalled the annual budget this year by demanding that the health care bill, already law but not to be implemented till 2014, be defunded. Without budgetary provisions the government ran out of spending money, closing most government departments from October 01 to 16.
That such a strange thing could happen is because the US constitution, which is unlike the parliamentary system in Sri Lanka which was built on the British model which is prevalent in all countries claiming to be democracies, is built on practices that give little weight to public opinion. In a normal parliamentary democracy, major legislation is prepared by the Legal Draftsman under government guidance and first published as a White Paper available for public reading and criticism or, as often in Sri Lanka, mass public agitation. The bills are usually hotly debated in parliament across the House floor. If an important bill is defeated, the government resigns and a new general election will determine public opinion through their choice of the new parliament.
In the US legislative bodies, the Senate (100) members are elected every four years and the House (435) members are elected every two years. The legislative houses are not dissolved if major legislation like the budget is defeated, or for any other reason till the fixed terms expire, making for new elections. White Papers are not available to the public but legislators will be discussing legislation with corporate representatives and power brokers (there are 35,000 lobbyists working on them!). And unlike in any other organised council meeting, legislators can tag on unrelated amendments to a piece of legislation and hold up a bill till they are accommodated. For example, a bill to allocate $100 billion for a set of military planes may have an amendment requiring subsidies for pig farmers in Iowa. And unlike any other legislative chamber in the entire world, there is no direct debate on the House floor. The allocated member holding the floor speaks to an almost empty house and the picture is transmitted to the public who care to listen on PBS TV channel. It is a comical scene of a speaker gesticulating and haranguing empty seats. Only at voting time will the members’ office staff get the members to rush to the House for voting.
It is the extreme right-wing of the extreme right wing Republican Party that does not seem to understand that breaking the unwritten social contract between the ruling class and the citizens will destroy the bond that allows the few to exploit the masses. It is a dangerous situation for that country.
Thepanis Alwis
Baddegama, Sri Lanka.
05 November 2013.