Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency – Robert C. Byrd

Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency – Robert C. Byrd, Norton, 2004, 269 pp. (S) ***

When a man having the distinction of having served more than a half century in the United States Senate hits the wall and decides to write a book, you know there must be serious trouble in America and that his constituents would do well to listen. As the longest standing member of the Senate appropriations committee, Senator Robert Byrd has had his finger on America’s fiscal pulse for decades – enough time to see that the Bush budget doesn’t even come close to passing the smell test and adding up. When America slept, this man, a copy of the Constitution in his pocket, and his lone voice was there, pleading for sanity and reason as an administration high on power jumped the tracks and democracy began its slide into fascism. His written words are as eloquent as those he delivered on the floor of the Senate in those dark days of early 2003 preceding the invasion of Iraq. But the focus of the work is not simply perhaps this gravest of errors by the Bush administration, but rather that near sacred duty as mandated by the Constitution to the legislative body, the power of the purse. He begins with memories from the Depression, before describing the strong-arm methods of the Bush administration that shot-gunned the 2001 tax-cuts through Congress as its first priority of business, introducing what Byrd describes as certain “budgetary Armageddon” in later years (ostensibly when Bush would be close to leaving, or out of office – 2007 to 2014). The contrast between the resourceful frugality so necessary to survival during one of this country’s most trying chapters and an initiative to feed the wealthy with more tax breaks led by a man who has known nothing but privilege his entire life, shows two worldviews in such stark relief that the difference could be best simply stated as one between prudence and profligacy. Prior to Bush, Byrd writes of how he along with five other U.S. legislators, went to court over the “line item veto” which was then oddly championed by Republicans. (To imagine a Democratic Senator going to court against a sitting Democratic President in these days of rigidly enforced party loyalty within a one party framework, almost makes one nostalgic for events only five years past!) But Byrd rightly reserves his severest criticisms for the administration that hasn’t shied from doing its most to usurp Congressional fiscal authority. “I believe that under the guise of creating a new Homeland Security Department the President has succeeded in limiting Congressional oversight and removing limitations on executive power,” he deftly observes of the legislation that was co-sponsored by Senate colleague Joseph Lieberman. Whether giving a heads up on “Patriot II” legislation, warning of the dangers of DOD slush funds when he writes of the $20 billion Iraq reconstruction package that, “Grand schemes were afloat in Washington to remake the Middle East. A cool $20 billion, spent far from prying eyes, could make a heady stew of mischief,” or describing how an obstinate Tom Ridge came to stonewall before the Senate appropriations committee, Senator Byrd in writing this book has performed yet again a critical public service. For a seasoned statesman to boldly proclaim, “Hubris, thy name is Bush,” only to later observe that “A muscle-bound nuclear power that can all but destroy the planet without risking U.S. troops on the ground must never become complacent about the harsh realities of war,” are words that should surely give us all pause.