The government decided at a cabinet meeting to move ahead with steep cuts in civil-service salaries and entitlements, and to raise Greece's sales tax by two percentage points.
Several weeks ago I posted a long article on the federal budget. The simple truth facing the US is clear: once we're through this recession we have to do two politically unpalatable things: cut spending and raise taxes. One won't accomplish the task as it is insufficient to seriously cut the deficit.
I was watching a Sunday AM news program a few weeks ago when I heard David Brooks comment that now is the time when a third party is most viable. The reason he cited was dead-on accurate: Democrats won't cut spending and Republicans won't raise taxes. That is the political reality of Washington where fiction has become a way of life.
10 comments:
There are 5 states that receive more federal dollars than they pay back in Taxes,...a lot more, Alabama,Mississippi,
Oklahoma,Kentucky and South Carolina. All of these States have
Republican Senators and most cases
they all claim to be fiscally conservative.
Well "The devil is in the details", as they say. Specifically, I don't believe you addess this, whose taxes are going to be raised and whose federal tax dollars are going to be taken away. No party: first, second or third is prepared to consense on the answer that question.
Tom
This won't lead to a third party. What it will lead to is incumbents in either party getting kicked to the curb if they aren't willing to take this crap seriously. The reality is that our system is set up such that a third party is really screwed. Everything is rigged around a bipartisan politics, not multi-partisan.
If a third party were to rise, it would basically just be a refactoring of an existing party. The likely culprit being the Republican party as they are weakest at the moment and have no obvious direction other than to simply try to stop everything.
Oh and also, Democrats have cut spending. They aren't signing pledges to never cut spending, unlike Republicans who sign pledges to never raise taxes. Democrats are far more flexible and interested in actually governing (at least at this point in history). So a Republican party that got serious about dealing with the long term structural deficits would find an amenable Democratic party to work with.
Also, it's worth noting that our structural deficit is more complicated than simply cutting spending and raising taxes. A significant part of the spending problem is an out of control health care system which Democrats are the only ones making any serious attempt to deal with. If we fix the health care system in this country we will make a substantial improvement to our long term fiscal problem.
Oh, joy, the "blame the parties" game has spread to here. Look, a lot of this is smoke & mirrors. Both sides are blaming each other for all the problems, but honestly, it all comes back to one reason:
You.
OK, not you personally; I'm rhetorically talking about voting blocs. With the exception of a few partisan strongholds, elections are typically won with margins less than 10%. It only takes a few principled stands to piss away that kind of winning margin. Gutting Social Security, raising taxes, cutting military spending. . . it's all about entitlement, and targeting any of our most expensive programs in any meaningful way is political suicide. Just ask Jimmy Carter. You can't govern or give your special interests favors if your constituents vote you out because you acted on principle. It's much easier to just throw more debt onto the pile. People will grumble, but they'll still pull the lever for you every other November. As long as we're faced with that, expect the debt to only go up.
The biggest kickbacks in federal government, by an absolutely unspeakably obscene margin, are to the voters themselves. I hate it, but I also know why things are the way they are. Anyone making the deficit into a partisan issue is an idiot or a hypocrite -- that especially applies to the GOP right now.
With respect, it isn't Washington. The fact is that the public isn't willing to accept that there aren't magic fairy spending cuts that remain which aren't painful (defense, entitlements) and think a raise in any taxes is some sort of damaging awful thing.
It isn't Washington that does not contain grownups. They represent us -- and we've become childish.
The fact is that the public isn't willing to accept that there aren't magic fairy spending cuts that remain which aren't painful (defense, entitlements) and think a raise in any taxes is some sort of damaging awful thing.
Actually this is wrong. Ross Perot ran for President telling everybody that we were on the road to doom and he had a decent shot at winning had he not sabotaged himself by pulling out and getting back into the race.
What the electorate respects above all else is a sense that the candidate is genuine and honest. When Obama ran for office he made it abundantly clear that we had a lot of problems and that it was going to take some pain and sacrifice to deal with them. We can argue about how he's translated this into policy, but the electorate voted for him in droves because he was being straight up with us.
It's human nature to try to deal with the problem immediately in front of you rather than the problem off in the distance. Even if it ends up being a pound foolish choice, it's just how we work. We will deal with the deficit when that's the most critical issue we face, as we did in the mid 90's. Yes it would have been better had we left tax rates untouched in the early part of this millenium but it is what it is.
So tax rates will have to come up and benefits will have to be adjusted. Everybody knows that. Nobody expects magic fairy dust to save us. We will deal with it when we have to, but for right now we have other fires to fight.
Gutting Social Security, raising taxes, cutting military spending. . . it's all about entitlement, and targeting any of our most expensive programs in any meaningful way is political suicide
First of all the problem isn't social security. Social security is largely paid for with a few minor adjustments (i.e. expanding who pays into it or some sort of means testing). The problem is medicare and those costs are exaggerated by our screwed up health care system. Fix the system and that problem will be mitigated to a large extent.
Second, raising taxes has been done countless times in the past and hasn't always lead to electoral fallout. Reagan raised taxes and his corpse is rolled out every 4 years by Republicans as the embodiment of conservatism. Clinton raised taxes and we had one of the best economic booms under his watch.
I fully expect my taxes to be raised. If the choice is that my father's medicare is cut or I pay higher taxes, then tax me. However, I would argue that fixing the underlying system will ensure lower costs for me, and my father, and minimize the amount of taxes that need to be raised.
I promise you that in the next four years, taxes will go up. When they go up there will be no electoral punishment for those who do it. It will be seen as a necessary pain. The majority of the burden will be put on the wealthy, but this only makes sense as they were the largest beneficiary of tax cuts in recent times.
Actually, Washington represents rich people who don't want to pay taxes. Lee Atwater explained way back in 1981 how cutting taxes is sold to whites (especially in the South and in white-flight exurbs) as a way to hurt black people:
''You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' -- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
''And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me -- because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'''
Conversely the 5 states that get the least back for what they pay into the Federal system are...
New Jersey,California ( although this has probably changed).Connecticut,Illinois and Minnesota...Guess how many Republican senators in this bunch....none....
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