"There are age-old truths in Washington that transcend the passage of time, the predictability of politics and even the churning of White House administrations.
These constants define Capitol Hill debates and White House policies whether the city is run by Democrats or Republicans. These bitter truths also help explain why America continues slouching toward an economic cliff and a catastrophic fall.
The first of these truths is that Washington always wins. Always.
The federal government always gets bigger. The federal workforce always grows. And the federal budget always expands. Ronald Reagan’s $1 trillion debt became Bill Clinton’s $5 trillion debt, which became George W. Bush’s $10 trillion debt, and that is becoming Barack Obama’s $20 trillion debt.
The second time-tested truth of Washington is that policymakers skew the rules to ensure Wall Street always wins.
In the 1990s, we heard panicked appeals for bipartisanship from Clinton and Newt Gingrich for the 1995 Mexican bailout plan. We learned later that the bipartisan effort was actually a bailout of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin’s Goldman Sachs. Today, Wall Street stands stronger than ever, three years after bringing America to the brink of financial collapse.
Then, as now, Washington made sure its allies’ profits were privatized while political contributors’ losses were covered by the state.
The third ugly truth is that the city’s political gears are always greased for war. The most recent Republican administration showed an unnerving propensity for war, and the current Democratic White House has expanded troop levels, increased the Pentagon budget and made larger the percentage of the U.S. economy being spent on weapons systems and hot wars"...........READ MORE
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