Henry Clay is Not the Man for Our Times

The United States Senate has proven again the maxim that a camel is a horse designed by committee.

Thank you centrists Collins, Nelson, et. al., for this: $40 billion for state fiscal stabilization eliminated.If Governor Paterson's record of rolling budget slashing is any indication, this compromise puts us all on a toboggan ride to fifty third-world states.

Paul Krugman, whose Novel Prize in economics has not yet amplified his voice to audible levels on the Senate side of Capitol Hill, is getting snarky in his impatience:

What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?

A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.

Fair enough. And who to blame?

All in all, the centrists’ insistence on comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted will, if reflected in the final bill, lead to substantially lower employment and substantially more suffering.

But how did this happen? I blame President Obama’s belief that he can transcend the partisan divide — a belief that warped his economic strategy.

Also probably fair enough. After all, most of those on the other side of the partisan divide are signatories to Grover Norquist's "National Taxpayer Protection Pledge," as are a number of so-called "centrists." And that pledge would be...?

ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and
TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

That would be Hooverism on steroids. Or as Norquist himself famously put it, shrinking government to the size where you can drown it in a bathtub. 172 Representatives and 34 Senators in the 111th Congress live in Norquist's pocket. Including "centrists." Even after Katrina.

How does one compromise with people who believe this? Henry Clay was known as The Great Compromiser, but his greatest compromises didn't accomplish much. At best, they only delayed the civil war. Clay is not a role model for our time. This is not the change America voted for.