There are few things that business dislikes more than uncertainty.
Recall the rollercoaster ride the stock market has taken this year as investors weighed the ‘will they/won’t they’ questions of domestic deficit reduction and European debt default.
The European situation remains in flux but the path is now clear on the domestic front. With the collapse of the congressional ‘super committee’ approach to bridging the nation’s deep political divide, we’re faced with an all too certain future — we’ll have a full year of gridlock on debt reduction until the election ballots are counted next November.
That’s an ugly kind of certainty, largely because of its ripple effects.
Here in Connecticut, those ripples extend to major employers like Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky and Electric Boat and the hundreds of thousands who rely directly or indirectly on paychecks tied to military hardware. If the massive cuts — $1.2 trillion over 10 years — are triggered in 2013, the anticipated $600 billion in defense cuts will make it a bad year for many here.
Similarly, deep cuts in various social services programs could turn 2013 into a life-threatening situation for thousands of Connecticut’s less fortunate.
Only a budget deal — like the one President Obama couldn’t broker over the summer — can head off an economic mess of epic proportion. There’s still time for cooler heads to intervene. But what’s the motivation to compromise? Republicans have risked the defense budget; the Democrats have risked the social services budget, each convinced the “trigger” can’t be pulled in a way that wounds their sacred cow. Obama, for his part, is staying firm in the position that it must be pulled.
And so the three players strike a pose for the electorate and wait for a signal on Election Day, leaving Connecticut’s economy twisting in the wind along with a lot of other bits of collateral damage.
Clearly this is no way to do business, no way to run a nation.
There is a certain appeal to various draconian measures being floated. We’re intrigued by the one that says if you didn’t do the work we sent you to Washington to do, you can’t run for re-election.
But the solution here isn’t as simple as ‘throw the bums out.’
We are a deeply divided country with a media/marketing technology that’s long surpassed our ability as voters to separate important information from noise. Some of that is our own fault — we’re not always as focused on our civic responsibilities as we should be, as the pitiful turnout for the recent local elections amply displays.
We need to turn down the volume, ease back on the rhetoric, celebrate what unites us and see if we can work through what separates us. To the candidates who can deliver on that recipe, we reserve the title statesman. The question is whether in this climate any statesmen can survive the electoral process.
Little short of our economy and the future of our nation rests on the answer. If you haven’t found a reason to get involved yet, you have it now.
Audit revelations
A state audit of what had been the Department of Environmental Protection has revealed that the agency — now recast as part of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection — left more than $5 million on the table in recent years by failing to claim money it was owed from the federal government.
Apologists point to dwindling manpower — staffing is at a 15-year low — and say a new computer database should avoid a repeat.
Really? Seems more like a management failure that neither an acronym transplant nor a new piece of software is likely to fix.
Sen. Edward Meyer, a Democrat from Branford who co-chairs the Environment Committee, called the audit “a major wake up call for me.”
Let’s hope it’s one for the agency, too.
