A G.O.P. BREAK-UP?

The GOP is on the brink of a break-up, as many news reports are pointing to this morning, solely because its lower rank that consists of the Tea Party members, who have been recently elected to Congress in the last lame duck session period in November 2010, plus the ultra right-wing of the party, on one side, versus those who are more experienced veterans in Congressional procedures, on the other, are vying for nothing less than power to determine the party's future.

This has been seen to be long coming during the debate over the limit of borrowing by the United States Government, which has to be raised in order to allow it (government) to deal with its financial obligations, and to be able to cover all expenditures that have been incurred over a certain span of time.

President Barack Obama has said that the exercise, which was known as "raising the debt ceiling", must be initiated ahead of a deadline date of August 2nd. 2011, or else his administration would default in making its payments that were due. That would indicate America's failure to meet its fiscal essentials for the first time in history.

The national debt itself is gauged by how much the government owes to its International debtors, like China and Japan, which is presently standing at a whopping $14 + Trillion dollars; yet, it has to go up by another hefty $2 1/2 Trillion dollars more for payments to be made to those debtors.

It has become a problem for both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party for a compromise to be reached between the two on how the situation must be handled, so that it would not jeopardize an economy that has been struggling to come out of a recession, since the transfer of power to the Obama administration from the latest Bush government.

The Republican Party has maintained that the run away spending of President Obama was standing in the way of raising the debt ceiling, and therefore cuts must be made to reduce the spending.

The Democratic Party has also insisted that if any cuts were made, they should not affect entitlement programs, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, to the extent of weakening them. Elderly citizens and the poor happened to be the recipients of those programs, and that they would find themselves at the end of the stick, if drastic measures were directed against them (programs).

The Obama administration therefore suggested that revenues should also be raised in the form of taxes on wealthy citizens, to make up for the differences that the deficit reduction would bring about. Without that, it would be seen as making only the elderly, the sick and the poor paying for balancing the deficit reduction; and that would seem unfair.

The Republicans would not want taxes on the wealthy in a recession, or permit the government to close some loopholes in the tax system that favored corporations and other businesses. They asserted that raising taxes would cause the unemployment rate to increase.

The debate over the two topics, "deficit reduction and the raising of the debt ceiling" has been going on for several months between the White House and Congress; until last night, when it was rumored that the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mr. John Boehner, has decided to withdraw from the debate.

What might have happened was that there has been a rift within the Republican Party, with its leadership wanting a compromise to be reached in the impasse that has developed between the White House and the Republican Party. The quintessential Tea Party element was making matters worse for both sides, as the talks progressed, with a dogma to stand firm and to push off any ideas by the government.

From all vicissitudes, they (the Tea Party members) have come on the Congressional scene, on the premise that they should oppose the Obama administration on any proposal, whether good or bad; and especially, when it came to government spending, they should not budge an inch.

They were therefore sticking to their guns, instead of allowing a breakthrough to find a common ground on every issue the country was facing; but they would say "NO" to any solution, because it was stated by the government to be an optional exit. That was some kind of attitude to take on their part.

Presently, all the president could do, would be to find another way out of the nation's predicament; as a default would farther exacerbate the dire straits the fragile economy found itself in. He has to act in the interest of the United States as a whole; and who could blame him; for he was assigned to do so under any circumstance, when he was elected president.

As for the GOP, it has a whole lifetime to settle its squabbles; but who could tell what the outcome would be; however, they should not do so at the expense of the nation. Look at all the time they have wasted, to arrive at the decision to withdraw from important talks that would put the country first and resolve its problems. As civil servants, have they failed in their responsibility to the United States? You decide.

P.S. Read "TEA PARTY'S DILEMMA", from yesterday, July 22nd. 2011.