This week’s (June 9) “Northside Sun” just arrived in which was a letter from a Ms. Camille Wright. She is outraged that three members of our Congressional delegation voted NO on the recently passed debt ceiling increase. So am I. A NO vote was a YES vote to wreck the economy, as Ms. Wright explained in her letter. She concluded the three of them must be insane. I completely understand her outrage but I don’t agree that Senators Wicker and Hyde-Smith and Congressman Guest are insane. In fact, I’m pretty sure all three are firmly in command of their faculties. Therein lies the problem. Actually, their NO votes might be excused if they are out of their minds. That begs the question what were their motives for voting NO.
We humans make choices in our own best interest most of the time. (For some notable exceptions see what some psychologists and behavioral economics have to say. I recommend Kahneman and Thaler, respectively.) We make the best choices we can given the goals we seek, the constraints and incentives we face, and benefits and costs as we see them. Assuming the three lawmakers are sane, their NO votes reveal something about them much more troubling. They revealed who they really represent and it’s certainly not Mississippians, other than themselves apparently.
If voting NO to raise the debt ceiling was against the best interests of citizens they were elected to serve and they are sane, then they voted solely in their personal best interests. They must have concluded a NO vote would cement their seats in Congress by currying favor with some constituency other than the citizens of Mississippi they see as necessary for keeping their seats. And/or it would in some other way aggrandize them. Furthermore, however unwittingly, by voting NO the three imperiled our great democratic, republican experiment by joining forces with those who seem intent on destroying it.
One doesn’t need a Ph.D. in economics to know default would have been a national, perhaps world-wide, catastrophe, a cataclysm in which Mississippi would have been at the epicenter. Our state drinks deeply at the federal government’s trough. Among the states, we are the third most reliant on federal money behind only New Mexico and West Virginia. For every tax dollar Mississippi sends to Washington we get back $2.60. Had the U.S. defaulted Mississippi would have lost that federal largess not to mention the salaries of the state’s many federal employees and military personnel. Oh, and Social Security and Medicare payments, it would have probably been bye-bye to them too.
You may question the assertion that some members of our Congressional delegation are prone to vote against our interests. If so, open your computer and surf over to justfacts.votesmart.org. It’s a non-partisan resource where you can find how all Congress members voted on any bill. Check out bills that appear to have been of benefit to Mississippi on which members of our delegation voted NO. Congressman Guest is particularly fond of voting NO when YES would seem to have been best for the 3rd Congressional district. In fairness, he does vote YES occasionally, sometimes when YES voted to undo some aspect of public policy that might be beneficial to Mississippians. One example of his YES vote that many Mississippians might have opposed called for repeal of some clean water regulations. Many of us enjoy water sports, fishing, boating and such, not to mention clean drinking water.
Some of the issues on which he has voted NO dealt with matters of public health, public safety, infrastructure, access to the ballot box, education, environmental protection, consumer protections and other matters that might help improve the quality of life for all Mississippians. Wouldn’t you like to know what he thinks is the role of government? Let’s ask him at his next public Q&A session. No, wait . . .
When is the last time you knew of a town hall meeting any of them held? Other than during election seasons when we get the usual electioneering drivel, we hear very little from any of them to help us know for whom it is in our interest to vote.
Are we going to hold our legislators accountable for how they vote? Our only recourse, vote for their opponents the next time they are running. If you are a person of means, you may also use your purse to persuade them to vote in your interest by either opening it for opponents or closing it for them. Senator Wicker and Congressman Guest are up in 2024.
Patrick Taylor lives in Ridgeland.
