Both sides will have to give a little, and neither political party is in the mood to do that at all:
The wildly disproportionate fury and outrage which greeted both Bowles-Simpson and the Ryan plan from the left indicate that progressives have so far failed to come to grips with the fact that they are going to have to compromise: that while some of the gap is going to be closed by tax increases, some of it is going to be closed by spending cuts. And not just defense cuts, or seemingly trivial changes to physician reimbursement rates that we hope will snowball over time, but actual cuts in services that people currently want and expect to get from government–but do not want or expect to pay for.
Of course, I expect Democrats to fight as hard as possible for higher spending, since they think this will be better. But the overall level of dismay makes it seem to me as if reality is just setting in: they are negotiating with an opposition as determined as they are, and that opposition wants spending cuts, which means that they’re going to have to ultimately accede to some spending cuts, because this is one policy area where doing nothing is literally not an option.
To be sure, the Republicans do not seem to me to be in much keener touch with reality–Grover Norquist not only believes we can do it all without tax increases, but enforces that discipline on the politicians of the right. They too are wrong, and when push comes to shove, I’m pretty sure they’ll have to throw Grover over the side of the sled to the AARP wolves nipping at their backs. But at least now the GOP has staked out some territory from which they can begin negotiations . As of this evening, the Democratic policy plan consists of yelling “You suck!”
There is no “agree to disagree” on this: it is going to be a very painful process.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Because republican’s are power drunk? or because for the last 4 years, actually almost 12 the dem’s were?
As long as the dems could obstruct the “invalidly SELECTED not elected president,” they did, until you caught them out.
Maybe The ‘pubs should make that clear to the electorate, but too many are cowards. I favor a lot of primary challenges to ‘pubs, and new blood for the dem’s so we can get back to talking about what is best for the nation instead of what is best for the party.
The revolution has begun. The Tea Party has swung bhind the Republicans-for now. Should the old Republicans demonstrate that LBJ was right about the differences being twixt warm and cold drug test fluids… then the Republicans will find themselves obsolete and history.
America is broke. we have no money. More silly laws and regulations will not cure our ills. There will -always- be lots of worthy causes. However, they should be funded by individual citizens using tax break donations vs imposing a tax on -all- Americans. If we are -all- in this together then we need to have the 49% who pay nothing involved. A flat tax of 17-20% on all income from all sources for all tax filers would solve many of these problems.
Stopping the EPA make-up rules organization from imposing regulations that cripple businesses and drive up costs… So far, the Obama EPA has raised costs on business by over $ billion a year… and they haven’t even got to the evils of carbon dioxide. Course, making grants to enviro-groups who sue the EPA and get a judgment that expands the agency’s reach and scope should also stop… It’s a DC-thang that nobody talks about.
Why has DC avoided the whole economic crisis-? Higher house prices, lower unemployment, most new hires-? Cause they can and nobody is watching…
We are broke… $200 billion a year in interest alone plus principle still unpaid. What happens when we cannot rollover the T-Bills and/or the buyers start pegging the dollar denominations to gold lest we flood the market with cheap dollars and drive the value of the bills down-?
I would also-while I’m on a roll- like to see a million expressed as 10 X$100,000. A billion expressed as 1,000 millions and a Trillion expressed as a million million… Most folks have no idea that a trillion is a million million… Imagine if the stimulus had handed out a million bucks, tax free to one million tax payers at random… That would have been money better spent than the hiring of 200,000 people to monitor, enforce and grant money…