A SINFUL EPISODE

Imagine. A person comes up to you and asks you for a loan. You're in a good mood and say, okay; how much do you need? Whatever the amount, you loan the person the money and then time goes by. Enough time elapses that the debt is due and the person hasn't paid you back. You know enough about the person to know he or she can pay you back, but obviously has decided not to do so. Under such conditions, is that person behaving in an immoral way? I think so and I suppose you do too.

On our national political scene, we have just witnessed the political party, or a segment of it, that has fancied itself as the God-fearing party, do two things: one, it has led the government to a shutdown and two, it has threatened to effectively obstruct the legislation that would allow it to raise a self-imposed debt limit and, by doing so, prohibit the government from paying its debts. In other words, through their action, they decided the government need not keep its promises to pay back the loans others have extended to it.

Now, who owns that debt? A significant amount is owned by foreign entities (about 33 1/3 %), most notably the Chinese (about 7.8 %). But most of it is owned by Americans, either by government accounts – such as the Social Security trust fund – or by individuals and private institutions.¹ Perhaps you own some of that debt yourself. Do you own a US bond or US Treasury note or does your 401K have these types of investments in its portfolio? If that's the case, then you do own some of this debt. In effect, if you do, you are the lender I described above, a well-intentioned person who made a loan. You loaned the money with every expectation that you were going to be paid back, especially if the government has the where-with-all to do so. One can judge that promise as a moral commitment. And yet the party that makes a point of how religious and moral it is led the way – and there is some very convincing evidence that this whole episode was a thought-out, if not effective, plan – to either default on this debt or make us believe it would be all right to shirk from the moral obligation these loans reflect. Yet the national punditry has not picked up on this lack of morality.

Now, if I were in charge of running campaigns against these politicians who caused this disruption,– a role I have no business doing – I would, especially in the South, emphasize this immorality. I would point out that many voters probably own some of this debt and that the disruption caused some people real harm, but that wouldn't be what I would emphasize. For one thing, I would bet that the average citizen will not make a distinction between the shutdown and the threatened default. These two elements of our recent crisis will probably be melded together in the minds of voters. So I wouldn't overly harp on those who were inconvenienced or seriously affected by the shutdown. To extreme conservatives, these affected people either shouldn't be working for most of these government programs to begin with – although I found it quite interesting that selected discontinued government services were highlighted as unnecessary interruptions, such as having access to monuments – or they are seen as beneficiaries of illegitimate government handouts. But if campaign language focused on the morality issue – that is, that these officeholders' actions, in effect, broke a promise – and if challenging candidates decry the lack of honesty and integrity a default would have meant, then I think the office holders in many of these safe districts would find their skulduggery exposed in ways that would be salient to those who define themselves as true Christians.

I would also make sure I wouldn't communicate the idea that their representatives were trying to make it more difficult for the government to borrow money. This could very well have been the aim of these extreme conservative pols. But southern voters can view such actions as attempts to discourage investors from lending the money to Uncle Sam or to make interest rates so high the government will find borrowing too expensive. By doing so, these pols would be seen as forcing the government to spend less, possibly resulting in a contraction of governmental services. That is exactly what these voters want. Perhaps the more recent shutdown will convince enough voters that government services are important and provide benefits to many, from children who need medical procedures to veterans wanting to visit the World War II monument. I will be particularly interested in seeing how this whole episode will play out with voters in a state such as Utah. A usually very conservative state, it turns out the US government is the largest employer in Utah and the shutdown found a lot of people on furlough and a lot of local businesses highly affected by the shortage of tourists to the national parks within that state. But to those who have adopted an ideological commitment to scaling back government, such experiences are probably not enough to change their perspectives. Sin sells as an issue and one can make a convincing argument that the threat of default can surely be seen as sinful.

1Lauter, D. (2013). Los Angeles Times, October 16, see http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/ la-pn-national-debt-facts-20131016,0,7261833.story