Commentary by Eugene Paslov: We're still in trouble

I started this column the day after House Speaker John Boehner walked away from negotiations with President Barack Obama for a solution to our debt/deficit/tax/spending problems. Boehner's done it before. His action was a major assault on the middle class, allowing a default on "the good faith and credit" of the United States for the first time in our history. Boehner has set a path to unraveling government, businesses, middle-class programs, programs for children, the disabled and the elderly. All were in danger of dissolution.

Reasons were unclear: Black, intellectual president? Partisan rancor? Ideology?

On Aug. 1, Obama, Sens. Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi found a solution to the debt limit. Though we can now pay our bills, it's bad for a majority of Americans. Nothing for jobs. The super-rich contribute zero.

We appear to have lost the ability to solve complex problems through the normal political process. Although the United States has always had difficult issues to resolve, in the end, we have been able to compromise, to create jobs and help all who need it. But current politics have become intransigent.

There are two factors:

First, anti-government sentiment is endemic. Grover Norquist and his organization, Americans for Tax Reform, are at the heart of it. His recent piece in the New York Times ("Read my Lips: No New Taxes," July 22) brags about the 238 current House members (Boehner's core but also his bêtes noire) who have signed Norquist's "no new tax" pledge. This pledge condemns elected officials to ideological doom, only cutting government services. No compromise. "Make it (government) so small you can drown it in a bathtub," rages Norquist.

Spending cuts alone only increase unemployment. We needed balance (spending cuts and tax increases) and fair compromise. Congress achieved neither.

Second, our country has put its trust in our educational system to move citizens out of poverty, to be upwardly mobile and to support a skilled work force. For the past 40 years, however, the middle class has eroded (disparities between rich and poor have grown exponentially, a dangerous trend) and our educational system has fallen behind our competitors. Past and current right-wingers have been attacking public schools, teachers and universities. They are choking off the middle class. What ideological right-wing policy makers call educational reforms are, in reality, policies designed to make education less effective. Ignorance is costly.

Without effective government, absent visionary schools to help the middle class and those who aspire to it, we will lose all that has made this nation great. That is what this argument is all about. The good guys better win. They're not winning.

• Eugene T. Paslov is a board member of the Davidson Academy at the University of Nevada, Reno, and the former Nevada state superintendent of schools.