Issue: Summer 2013 | Posted: June 4, 2013

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Union Forum speaker: Celebrate Washington gridlock

Americans should celebrate gridlock in Washington rather than seeing it as an obstacle to progress, especially when nation faces a staggering amount of debt, according to FOX News contributor Stephen F. Hayes.

“I’m thrilled that the discussion now is focused on our $16.7 trillion in debt,” he said. “These are issues, in my view, that are exactly what we should be debating.”

Hayes made his comments at the spring Union Forum, as part of the 14th annual luncheon lecture series that brings national commentators to Jackson and the Union campus.

Hayes is also a senior writer at the Weekly Standard and author of two New York Times bestsellers.

“The reason I think the sequester fight matters so much is because it’s a fight about a lot more than the sequester,” Hayes said. “This is the coming together of these two divergent views of how American government should relate to its citizens—of the role of government in American life.

“I think the White House correctly understands that if it loses this battle, it makes the case for activist government even more difficult for it to make,” he continued. “If you can cut 5.3 percent of domestic discretionary spending, and most people get along, what’s the case for adding more and more and more, particularly when it’s adding to the debt?”

The gridlock in Washington, Hayes concluded, means that politicians can’t worry as much about peripheral issues.