Red, Right and Blue - Bi-partisan, Hi-partisan

In the last few years, “bi-partisanship,” “compromise” and “working across the political aisle” have become phrases endowed with special power.

This is reasonable in an era when the American political climate seems defined by intense political controversy and antagonism. Yet, they are also phrases which often seem empty and hypocritical, spoken out of a wish to convert the “swing voters,” rather than come to a true consensus.

Last Thursday, the College Republicans were lucky enough to be able to bring Paul Atkins, the former commissioner for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Committee and a current member of the congressional oversight panel for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), to Middlebury to give a lecture on the financial crisis and the future of the American economy.

He began his speech with the comment that he did not believe his work to be partisan. It is the wish of every Democrat, Republican and Independent to have a strong and viable American economy on which they and their children and their children’s children can depend.

No party wished for the continuation of the economic crisis; they agreed that the economic crisis was a problem that needed a solution, and they understood the problem in a similar manner. They understood the problem in a bi-partisan manner.

The congressional oversight panel is by its very nature a non-partisan organization made up of three Democrats and two Republicans. They work to keep companies, whose failure would have a massive impact on the rest of the American economy, from going bankrupt.

However, the real issue lies not in the propping up of individual companies, but in the handling of the economic downturn in such a way that the regulators do not have to pick winners and losers.

The companies called “too big to fail” are a problem because their size seems to imply that they can never be losers. That is left for the little-enough-to-fail companies. Consequently, the controversial government bailouts cannot be a permanent fix to this problem.

They are mere Band-Aids, meant to tape the already broken pieces together.

And on this issue, according to Atkins, there is across-the-aisle agreement — the market must become more transparent. If the problems and securities of the companies within the financial service industry are made public, companies will do their own research rather than relying on FDIC ratings and put their money in the hands of more secure agencies so that sudden failures and economic collapse will not suddenly appear threatening to cause a nationwide credit crisis.

Because the left and the right agree on the problem, they agree on the solution.

The opposite condition exists in the controversy over the healthcare bill. Republicans and Democrats can both agree that there is a healthcare problem, but they do not agree on the character of the problem. We can agree on solutions such as tort reform, cross-state competition, enhancing heath savings accounts and allowing dependents to remain on their parents’ health care policy.

However, despite recent news reports and press releases, the current healthcare bill is not a non-partisan effort because it is not the answer to the health care problem that a majority of Americans recognize.

The Pelosi-Obama bill broadens the entitlement programs and introduces new rights, when the majority of the people fear that the country cannot afford the entitlement programs it already has.

While concessions have apparently been made to the opposition, they are not the work of bi-partisanship. There is no agreement that the most pressing problem, or even the most pressing health care program, is universal coverage. Instead, this is a partisan minority view.

To return to bi-partisan government, we need to return to a bi-partisan understanding of the problems confronting America. This demands consulting the people, who are, in their corporate wisdom, bi-partisan.