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JANUARY 19, 2011 |
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By Matthew Continetti |
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COLD OPEN |
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One day this spring, America's red ink will reach the debt ceiling. When this has happened in the past, Congress has raised the debt ceiling to avoid default. But this time is different. Raising the debt ceiling is unpopular. The public is worried about government spending. The Tea Party is a major influence in the GOP-controlled House. Some Republicans say the debt ceiling shouldn't be raised at all. Others say any increase should be predicated on spending cuts. Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, a 2012 presidential candidate, says Congress should pass a law "sequencing" payments so that the government avoids default. That way the threat of default could be used as "leverage" to extract spending cuts from the president.
I think Pawlenty and company are living in Fantasyland. They are walking into a trap. In the end the debt ceiling will have to be raised. It's true that the Treasury has some tricks up its sleeve to postpone the inevitable. But budget experts say it's impossible to avoid a debt ceiling increase, because to do so the government would have to eliminate the entire deficit (more than $1 trillion last year) and stop lending programs like student loans. How do you think that would play in Peoria?
Obama, moreover, will be happy to play the austerity game by calling for more cuts in defense spending. And don't forget that the executive always has an advantage in this sort of showdown—think Clinton in 1995, and indeed Pawlenty in 2005.
America is reaching the debt ceiling because it has spent too much money in the past. And this is why the debt-ceiling debate gives me the blues. It's a fight over the past, not the future, and Americans are a future-oriented people. They don't want finger-pointing. They want to know what you are going to do to improve things in the days ahead.
Solving America's debt crisis involves practical changes to entitlement programs. It involves bringing future expenditures in line with projected revenues. It involves a debate over a welfare state that provides basic security for those who need it the most, while giving able-bodied adults the responsibility and freedom to provide for their families.
A shouting match over who caused an impending default does nothing to address these challenges. It's typical partisan posturing. It's a waste of time and energy. So let's raise the debt ceiling, and give Republicans in Congress the opportunity to shape the American future. |
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LOOKING BACK |
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"Recently, I conducted my own field comparison between dodgeball-playing old P.E. and New P.E.-influenced classes. At Windy Hill Elementary School in Owings, Maryland, I fall in with Letty McNulty's fifth-graders. Without a D.A.R.E. shirt or cargo shorts, and with my 100-pound weight advantage, I find it difficult to pass. No matter. I haven't come to make friends, but to participate in a dodgeball exhibition as the prototypical bully. I plan to whoop and holler, to intimidate and scourge. If memory serves, and I still possess the true aim, cat-like reflexes, and bloodlust I believe I had as an 11-year-old, I will stalk the basketball-court perimeter and peg these little punks like human Lite-Brites."
—Matt Labash, "What's Wrong with Dodgeball?", from our June 25, 2001, issue.
Remember you get full access to THE WEEKLY STANDARD archive when you subscribe. |
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FROM THE DESKTOP |
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Rudyard Kipling's Vermont retreat
John Hood: "The States in Crisis"
David Brooks and the social animal
Joseph Epstein remembers John Gross
Do Americans hate the rich? |
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK (SO FAR!) |
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"Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. It's great to be back here playing the wonderful Athens Gymnasium. I just got back from spending a month in Sparta over the weekend. Boy, they don't call them Spartans for nothing. They sure live simple in Sparta. My room there was so spare, it was a spare room! That's what I call a minor premises. The kids there are so tough they steal the horses off moving chariots. But they're boring. A good time on Saturday night in Sparta is going downtown to watch somebody get a haircut. No, but seriously, we only kid the Spartans 'cause we hate them so much. I kid my family, too. Take my wife, Xanthippe. To Macedon!"
—From "The Socratic Monologue," by Tony Hendra and Sean Kelly, reprinted in Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great (2010), p. 129. |
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LOOKING AHEAD |
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Here's what's coming up in THE WEEKLY STANDARD: Michael Dirda will review a new book on W.B. Yeats. Joseph Bottum will examine a streetside bookseller's wares. Heather Mac Donald will report on how the Department of Justice mishandles racial profiling investigations. And our contributors will comment on the upcoming State of the Union, the health care debate, the battle to restrain government spending, and more. |
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PARTING SHOT |
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On February 14, Jeopardy! will feature an unusual contestant: the IBM supercomputer Watson. What happens on the show will say a lot about the future of artificial intelligence—not to mention the future of humanity.
Watson is no ordinary supercomputer. It is capable of understanding whole language and can draw on dispersed fields of knowledge. When you watch the promotional video (available here), you are struck by how efficiently Watson mimics the complicated reasoning processes involved in playing Jeopardy!. Its voice also sounds eerily like HAL9000, the insane supercomputer from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The most famous supercomputer to date, the chess-playing Deep Blue, was still a numbers-cruncher. The game of chess, with its rules and permutations, is one giant math problem. Deep Blue understood this problem better than anything on earth—or almost anything, since in several games Garry Kasparov was able to beat Deep Blue or force it into a draw.
Watson promises to be something different. It is programmed to compete at Jeopardy!, but its powers could be used in a variety of other applications. It also seems capable of a higher level of human interaction than Deep Blue. You could imagine having a conversation with Watson or one of its descendants. That is, until Watson found you boring.
Americans spend a lot of time thinking about China. Do we spend enough time thinking about the machines we're building?
See you next week. And don't forget you can write me at editor@weeklystandard.com.
--Matthew Continetti
P.S. Remember, to change the email address where we send this newsletter, click here.
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