What is behind the debt ceiling conflict? Who stands to benefit and who stands to lose? Since it is clear that the moderates and centrists are far and few between and the issue of the debt ceiling has become, miraculously, the most important issue in politics, it is clear that something has changed recently in the landscape of American governance.
The clues may be found in the recent election of Tea Party legislators and Governors, representing racist and large corporations [with the help of ALEC]. As they got to work, upon being elected, to shrink city and state governments, lay off workers, bust unions, strip funding from basic services, hire emergency city managers who nullify elected commissioners' participation, they simultaneously began to eyeball parts of public property and functions which could be "privatized" and outsourced to large profit-making corporations whose motives are decidedly not in the public good.
Over the past several years the language of business has permeated government policies. Leaders speak about efficiency and fiscal responsibility as if balancing a budget is the main function of a government, instead of providing services and protections from unscrupulous business interests, and if they provide a few services if there is any money left over, it is just more "fat" to cut out. Allegiance to "stakeholders" is mentioned frequently, instead of responsibility to its "citizens". The danger of considering constituents being stakeholders is that it implies that one with more stake in a particular issue is one that has more property, money and power, instead of each citizen having one vote, which is actually watered down by the electoral college, another function of business much like "shareholders" votes.
"Free market" is so enshrined in our psyche that it has come to mean that market forces are as inevitable as a natural disaster rather than being viewed as transactions which must have limits in order to prevent excesses, abuses and exploitation. Any attempt to regulate the wheeling and dealing of markets, Wall Street and big business is considered treasonous even as these forces are destroying the fabric of the US which used to represent the best and highest quality of life in the world to date.
To what end would a group or entity promote this deterioration of our culture? Who would stand to benefit if the US government failed? Who picks up the pieces of the US economy after it has hit bottom? The representatives of the corporations who sit in our legislature today are undaunted because they have very powerful forces behind them, with a promise of reward at the end of this downward trail.
If the government fails to resolve its budget crisis, the forces which are intent on privatizing everything public will be in a position to take over. This has already been happening in several states where Tea Party Governors and legislators have slashed funding for everything public and hired emergency managers to run the civic budget into the ground. Then they offer up pieces of public services and property for sale to the highest bidder. It is somehow believed that these profiteering companies can manage public resources better, on less money, more efficiently than the government can. The fatal flaw in this thinking is that public wages and benefits are reduced and/or cut, public services are reduced and the company siphons off the difference as a profit...i.e. "proof" that it can do a better job.
