For years I have written about the Defense Power Games — front loading and political engineering — as they are practiced by the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex. My 1990 pamphlet on this subject was written to explain why the end of the Cold War would not result in a lasting peace dividend — a prediction that has come true to a degree that astonishes me.
As I explained in Section II of the pamphlet, “front loading is the practice of planting seed money for new programs while downplaying their future obligations. This game, which is a clever form of the old-fashioned “bait-and-switch,” makes it easier to sell high-cost programs to skeptics in the Pentagon and Congress. Political engineering is the strategy of spreading dollars, jobs, and profits to as many important congressional districts as possible. By making voters dependent on government money flows, the political engineers put the squeeze on Congress to support the front-loaded program once its true costs become apparent. Front loading and political engineering are about increasing the flow of money; the former starts the money flowing while the latter tries to lock the spigot open, and in American politics, control of the money spigot is power.”
My discussion focused on defense procurement programs, which are by far the most developed and ritualized form of the games , but the central ideas behind these power games — a bait and switch operation to set up an extortion operation — apply to all government taxing and spending programs. In fact front loading and political engineering are now ubiquitous practices that are openly celebrated by cynical political operatives — the fact that they are destroying the idea of using a system of checks and balances to hold the peoples representatives accountable in a democratic republic does not seem to matter. Their effects, for example, can be scene in the corruption federal accounting systems.
To those readers who think I am taking this idea too far, I recommend the attached article, which is a good statement of where the effects of the rug merchant politics shaped by front loading and political engineering power games take us.
Chuck Spinney
Published on Friday, December 3, 2010 by Think Progress
Bush Officials Celebrate Tax Cut ‘Trap’ They Laid Nine Years Ago
by George Zornick
As debate rages in Washington over the Bush tax cuts, set to expire at the end of this year, the Bush administration officials who initiated the steep tax cuts are celebrating what they see as an apparent victory, since signs point to a temporary extension of all the cuts. The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz interviewed Dan Bartlett, Bush’s former communications director, and Andy Card, Bush’s former chief of staff, among others, and they were pleased at how the expiration debate has played out:
“We knew that, politically, once you get it into law, it becomes almost impossible to remove it,” says Dan Bartlett, Bush’s former communications director. “That’s not a bad legacy. The fact that we were able to lay the trap does feel pretty good, to tell you the truth.” […]
Gregory Unruh