Quite perilously, the situation with the Clinton Library--not the presidential one in Little Rock but the public one in the town of Clinton in north-central Arkansas--provides a microcosm of the federal debt-limit debate and the possibility of imminent global fiscal calamity.
I got interested in Clinton the town as an example of something bigger by reading the writings of Monica Potts. She's a native of the town who went away to The New York Times and came back to write a book. Along the way, she wrote an essay for The Times both lamenting and explaining the rural American voters' Trump embrace, using Clinton townsfolk as her example.
These are people who work hard for $40,000 a year. They believe their government ought to do as they, meaning stretch dollars. They grow resentful that government spending rages and government debt mounts while their wages linger at one level.
When the county cites the end of the gas-fracking boom and a harmful state change in the mineral income formula, and says a little millage levy is needed for a new library that these people were first told wouldn't require one, they get riled. Then, when asked to approve a simple extension of an expiring tax and use some proceeds for that remaining library debt, they approve the tax for a hospital and fire protection, but not for the library.
Some of the less-conservative people shake their heads that these resisters don't know what's good for them. The conservatives are insulted. The chasm widens.
So, how did that library and spending debate in Clinton get resolved? It turns out the library is fine and the quorum court is making an annual payment each January to service the remaining debt.
The county laid off some people during covid and covered the debt payment by not hiring all of them back.
The conservative opposition says, "See there. We told you government had the money all along." And the conservative opposition is right.
"Yes," say the government defenders, "but the community is going without so much more that it needs and could provide with that money." And the government defenders are right.
Cue, then, the tiresome brinkmanship of the federal debt-ceiling debate.
We've again reached the limit on the cumulative federal debt allowed by federal law. As long as we set such a ceiling, we will inevitably meet it because we are spending at a deficit rate.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says her department's ability to move money around and keep bills paid will run dry, maybe by June 1. After that, absent authority to keep borrowing up to a new debt limit, the United States would be in a position of defaulting on its debt. The effect of that is not clearly known, with nothing so seismic ever happening before. But it's quite possibly calamitous for anything tied to the global financial infrastructure, meaning everything.
Some conservative people are no doubt saying, in a way, just look at the library at Clinton. They say government has the money and that the politicians simply have to find a way to stretch that money. And they're not wrong. There is enough money flowing into the American government to provide a government, if of a lesser description.
Government defenders say the money we have is bound by appropriations made by Congress, and that, if you want to change those appropriations, the time to do that is not while with your fingernails creak on the edge of the cliff, but long before. And they're not wrong.
Conservative people say nothing will ever get done without the gun. And they probably are right on that, based on a clear pattern.
Republican House representatives say, sure, we'll pay what we owe if the White House will just sit down and negotiate with us on Republican legislation to return budgets to 2022 limits and limit discretionary spending growth to 1 percent with exceptions for the Pentagon, Social Security and Medicare.
On that, House Republicans are wrong in part because government ought to do its budget thoughtfully and responsibly, not on the brink. But they're right in that the general outline offers a start of a responsible negotiation.
The White House says it is not negotiable whether the United States pays its bills. The White House is right.
Then there's that center-right nominally Democratic senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, who says everyone ought to negotiate at least to this extent: We must accept that the White House is right that we don't negotiate spending as a condition of paying our due debt, but at least the White House should accede to the House provision calling for a bipartisan, bicameral commission that would be required to submit an actual deficit-reduction bill by a date certain to Congress.
I like the responsible and sane conduct of paying on the credit-card balance, then calling a household meeting about using the card less in the future, and then--and this is important--doing so.
Partisan bragging rights about winners and losers is somewhat less important than whether our creaking fingernails will hold to the edge of yet another cliff.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.