Congressman Mark Walker will be visited by three spirits this Christmas season. The first, the Ghost of Christmas past, will take him back to the time of his birth when America had great ambitions. The country believed in a more egalitarian nation. The bulk of the tax burden was carried by the wealthiest citizens, the people who had benefitted most from our great experiment in freedom and a free-market economy. Companies and corporations felt an allegiance to their workers and wages tracked productivity. Back then, CEOs made about 22 times more than the average worker. We had decided that the people who worked hard and played by the rules should not die in poverty so we provided them with Social Security and Medicare.
The second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, will show Walker the country of today when that child has grown up to be a Congressman for North Carolina’s Sixth District. The people he represents are still struggling to recover from the Great Recession and the loss of manufacturing jobs to trade deals and automation. Economic and tax policies have disproportionately benefited the rich. Income for middle America has largely remained flat while CEOs now make 277 times the wages of an average worker. Companies and corporations now favor shareholders over workers, reducing benefits for workers while increasing profits for investors.
Republicans in Congress are on the brink of passing a massive tax reform bill that would greatly benefit the richest Americans and continue to shift the tax burden onto the middle class. Tax cuts for the wealthy will stay permanent but those for the middle class will expire in a decade, leaving a majority of Americans with higher taxes. Walker is head of the conservative Republican Study Committee, a group that has long been critical of the rising national debt and deficit spending.
The spirit shows Walker making a deal with the Republican leadership. Sacrificing his principles, he’ll support adding $1 trillion to the debt as long as Congress ends Obamacare Cost-Sharing Reductions (CSRs) subsidies to insurance companies. According the both insurance companies and the Kaiser Family Foundation, loss of CSRs are responsible for skyrocketing premiums for Obamacare. Walker, though, seems to care little about the impact of the policies on his constituents, instead telling reporters that, in return for his and the Republican Study Group’s support, Speaker Ryan has promised to take up “deficit reducing legislation,” a euphemism for cutting Social Security and Medicare.
The third spirit to visit Walker, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, takes the Congressman ten years into the future. In this America, once-gated communities have become sprawling gated cities with armed guards patrolling entrances and perimeters. Inside are business parks, high-end grocery stores and private schools, heavily subsidized by the government. Beyond these cities is a country with a crumbling infrastructure where once middle class families live paycheck-to-paycheck with little safety net to support them in the economic downturns that happen frequently in our boom-or-bust economy. Social Security and Medicare kick in once people reach age 70. Premium increases finally brought an end to the Affordable Care Act and 20% of the population lacks health insurance. Life expectancy is slipping for people making below the medium income and rising rapidly for those in the top 10%.
Congress is debating a bill to extend the tax cuts for the middle class that are due to expire. Republicans argue that we can’t afford to add more to the deficit and that any extension should be coupled with further cuts to Social Security and Medicare. We can’t ask the rich or corporations to pay more or we’ll damage our growing economy. If we just keep money flowing to job creators, eventually wages, which have now been flat for over 40 years, will start growing. The Republican Study Committee has pledged to support the deal as soon as Walker gets back from the Trump Tower Pyongyang where he joined President-for-Life Trump in the the eighth anniversary celebration of the historic alliance that Vladimir Putin brokered between the US and North Korea.
WAKE UP, MARK WALKER!
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Keep in mind though, that outside those city walls will be people with nothing left to spend — and nothing left to lose. The reality of a demand side economy is that the rich will cease to become richer once the consumer is forced from the marketplace. Which will leave them left with no one to suck dry but each other. And in that moment anything could happen.
Of course it’s probably more likely that the lesson forced upon the rich and their lackeys in Congress will be the one presented by Neil deGrasse Tyson: “The great thing about science is that it’s true whether you believe it or not.” And their echoing denials of science will be the funeral dirge of our entire species (and most others we currently know).
Mark Walker is, and has always been, a Bible-beating homophobic “conservative,” dedicated to the service of gated community elite one-percenters that bought Lexus’s from him, back when he was a car salesman. He owes much of his success to rampant gerrymandering, and to the dedication of “Christian” zealots who share his views on abortion. In his wacky weekly “newsletter,” he has claimed that gutting health care wouldn’t be any big thing because, hey, would HE be in favor of THAT if it would hurt his own poor, elderly mother? The guy is a textbook case of a card-carrying member of the “Christian Taliban,” in the style of Roy Moore.
Very nicely written, but Ebenezer Scrooge was ultimately capable of shame and remorse. There is no evidence that the current crop of “conservative” politicians are capable of either. I find the centerists’ and liberals’ expectation that they are, disheartening and dangerous.
You should add, Thomas, that while these Christmas ghosts are visiting Congressman Walker, he is getting his enormous paycheck (the most money he has ever made, right?) from the taxpayers of North Carolina. Unlike his voters, Walker has been getting raises in his salary and expenses, and for his staff and offices over the years probably amounting to millions of dollars. Who really knows?
Perhaps someone among your readers will volunteer to research this and add up what Walker is costing North Carolina taxpayers, for this year and since he was first elected. I’ll bet it is a ton of money. That is the first thing I would do if I were running for Congress. This should be done for ALL of our Congressional representatives. And, all of those dollars are being spent by Walker to fight against the interests of his voters. I suspect the ghost of Scrooge is already rattling his chains in delight at this irony.
The Republican Study Group–that Walker chairs–principal thrust is that they hate government and believe they were elected to Congress to take it apart and destroy it. All the while, these guys are living on the government’s dime (our taxes) and promising to reduce the deficit and the national debt. Hypocrisy, thy name is the Republican Study Group and the Republican congressional delegation from North Carolina. How will they reduce the deficit and debt? By taking away our Medicare and social security that we earned. This GOP smugness and inability to read election results, public opinion polls and citizen demonstrations in their own offices, smacks of irrationality and irresponsibility.
But, be of good cheer, citizens, for the 2018 elections will turn this around. Walker and the rest of the GOP caucus believe their tax legislation is going to help them with the voters. Sure, just like Roy Moore’s costuming himself in a black (!) cowboy hat, boots, with a revolver in his pocket, trying to ride a recalcitrant horse, fooled the voters of Alabama. And, of course, all GOP elected officials will have to carry Trump on their backs for another year until the 2018 change election hits them.
By the way, who is paying for Walker’s Christmas cards?