共和党人的骗局误了选民也骗了自己

Op-Ed Columnist
Republicans Against Reality
By PAUL KRUGMAN August 08, 2013
专栏作者
共和党人的骗局误了选民也骗了自己
保罗·克鲁格曼 2013年08月08日
Last week House Republicans voted for the [要查看本链接请先注册并登录] to repeal Obamacare. Like the previous 39 votes, this action will have no effect whatsoever. But it was a stand-in for what Republicans really want to do: repeal reality, and the laws of arithmetic in particular. The sad truth is that the modern G.O.P. is lost in fantasy, unable to participate in actual governing.
上周，众议院共和党人进行了第40次投票，以推翻奥巴马医改(Obamacare)。就像之前的39次投票一样，此次行动不会产生任何效果。但它却体现了共和党真正想做的事：推翻现实，尤其是算术法则。而事实非常可悲：现代的共和党完全沉浸在幻想之中，无法参与实际的国家治理。
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about policy substance. I may believe that Republicans have their priorities all wrong, but that’s not the issue here. Instead, I’m talking about their apparent inability to accept very basic reality constraints, like the fact that you can’t cut overall spending without cutting spending on particular programs, or the fact that voting to repeal legislation doesn’t change the law when the other party controls the Senate and the White House.
先说明一点，我并不是在说政策内容。也许我认为共和党所有的政策重点都是错误的，但这并非问题所在。其实，我说的是他们似乎无法接受最为基本的现实局限，比如，不削减具体项目上的支出，就无法削减整体开支，再比如，在另一个政党控制着参议院和白宫时，在众议院投票推翻某项立法并不会对该法律产生任何影响。
Am I exaggerating? Consider what went down in Congress last week.
我在夸大事实吗？想想上周在国会发生的事吧。

First, House leaders had to cancel planned [要查看本链接请先注册并登录], because not enough representatives were willing to vote for the bill’s steep spending cuts. Now, just a few months ago House Republicans approved an extreme austerity budget, mandating severe overall cuts in federal spending — and each specific bill will have to involve large cuts in order to meet that target. But it turned out that a significant number of representatives, while willing to vote for huge spending cuts as long as there weren’t any specifics, balked at the details. Don’t cut you, don’t cut me, cut that fellow behind the tree.
首先，众议院领袖们不得不取消对一项交通提案进行投票的计划，原因是没有足够多的众议员愿意投票支持该法案中大幅削减开支的内容。而就在几个月前，众议院的共和党人刚刚通过了一项极端的紧缩预算案，要求全面、大幅缩减联邦开支——而为达到该目标，每一项具体的议案都必须有大幅削减开支的内容。然而，事实证明，有相当多的众议员，尽管愿意投票支持巨额开支削减计划（只要它没有具体内容），却在面对具体的削减举措时退缩了。别削减我的开支，也别削减你的开支，削减树后面那个家伙的吧。
Then House leaders announced plans to hold a vote [要查看本链接请先注册并登录] in half — a demand that is likely to sink the already struggling effort to agree with the Senate on a farm bill.
接着，众议院领袖们宣布，计划进行表决，将食品券开支削减一半。这个要求很可能让其试图与参议院就农业法案达成共识的努力前功尽弃，而双方的相关谈判在此前已是步履维艰。
Then they held the pointless vote on Obamacare, apparently just to make themselves feel better. (It’s curious how comforting they find the idea of denying health care to millions of Americans.) And then they went home for recess, even though the end of the fiscal year is looming and hardly any of the legislation needed to run the federal government has passed.
之后他们又对奥巴马医改进行了毫无意义的投票，似乎只是为了让自己感觉好一点。（他们觉得拒绝向数百万美国人提供医疗保险，能对自己起到怎样的安慰作用？我想不明白。）然后他们就休会回家去了——即使这个财政年度即将结束，让联邦政府继续运行下去所需的法案几乎一个也没通过。
In other words, Republicans, confronted with the responsibilities of governing, essentially threw a tantrum, then ran off to sulk.
换句话讲，面对管理国家重任的共和党人，发了一顿脾气之后，就愠怒地跑开了。
How did the G.O.P. get to this point? On budget issues, the proximate source of the party’s troubles lies in the decision to turn the formulation of fiscal policy over to a con man. Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has always been a magic-asterisk kind of guy — someone who makes big claims about having a plan to slash deficits but refuses to spell out any of the all-important details. Back in 2011 the Congressional Budget Office, in [要查看本链接请先注册并登录], came close to open sarcasm; it described the extreme spending cuts Mr. Ryan was assuming, then remarked, tersely, “No proposals were specified that would generate that path.”
共和党是怎样落到今天这一步的？在预算问题上，该党遭遇麻烦的大致原因是，它将制定财政政策的任务交给了一个骗子。众议院预算委员会主席，众议员保罗·瑞安(Paul Ryan)一直热衷于“神奇的星号”（magic asterisk，星号用于标记脚注，而脚注中的小字常常藏有玄机。——译注），这种人夸下海口说自己有削减赤字的方案，但是却拒绝透露任何至关重要的细节。在2011年，国会预算办公室(Congressional Budget Office)在[要查看本链接请先注册并登录]，差一点公开讽刺。评估中先是描述了瑞安提出的极端的开支削减，之后又言简意赅地说，“没有具体阐述能够产生这种路径的提议。”
What’s happening now is that the G.O.P. is trying to convert Mr. Ryan’s big talk into actual legislation — and is finding, unsurprisingly, that it can’t be done. Yet Republicans aren’t willing to face up to that reality. Instead, they’re just running away.
现在正在发生的事情是，共和党正在试图把瑞安的夸夸其谈转变为实际的立法。结果在意料之中：他们发现根本办不到。然而共和党非但不愿意面对现实，还开始转身逃跑。
When it comes to fiscal policy, then, Republicans have fallen victim to their own con game. And I would argue that something similar explains how the party lost its way, not just on fiscal policy, but on everything.
谈到财政政策，共和党已经被自己的骗局骗了。而且我认为，某种类似的情况能够解释为什么共和党不仅在财政政策上，而且在所有事情上都迷失了方向。
Think of it this way: For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party’s base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities — deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.
从这个角度想：长期以来，共和党凭借欺骗该党的铁杆选民而为所欲为。选民会像意识形态斗争中的士兵一样被动员起来，只要向他们警告，自由派会把美国拱手让给跟同性恋结婚的恐怖分子，选民们就会激动起来，更别提把他们辛辛苦苦赚来的美元送到那些人的手里了。之后，一旦选举结束，共和党就会开始推行自己真正的要务：放松监管、为富人减税。
At this point, however, the establishment has lost control. Meanwhile, base voters actually believe the stories they were told — for example, that the government is spending vast sums on things that are a complete waste or at any rate don’t do anything for people like them. (Don’t let the government get its hands on Medicare!) And the party establishment can’t get the base to accept fiscal or political reality without, in effect, admitting to those base voters that they were lied to.
然而当下，共和党已经失控。与此同时，共和党的铁杆选民还是相信他们听到的故事。例如，政府在完全无意义的项目上耗费巨额资金，或者这些项目无论如何都不会帮助他们。（不能让政府碰联邦医疗保险[Medicare]！）实际上，共和党无法让其铁杆选民接受财政现实和政治现实，除非自己对选民承认，他们被骗了。
The result is what we see now in the House: a party that, as I said, seems unable to participate in even the most basic processes of governing.
其结果就是我们在众议院见到的景象：就像我说的，共和党似乎成了一个连最基本的治理程序都无法参与的政党。
What makes this frightening is that Republicans do, in fact, have a majority in the House, so America can’t be governed at all unless a sufficient number of those House Republicans are willing to face reality. And that quorum of reasonable Republicans may not exist.
让这一切令人恐惧的是，共和党确实在众议院占有多数席位，因此，除非有相当数量的众议院共和党人愿意面对现实，否则美国就会陷入无法治理的状态。而规模足够大的理性共和党人群体可能并不存在。