More Tricks than Treats in Democrats’ Deficit Reduction Plan
The giveaway to this Kabuki dance is the simple notion that whatever Congress does, it can undo. If the supercommittee fails to reach agreement by the time Congress recesses for Thanksgiving, or if the Congress votes down whatever product emerges from their negotiations, the chances of Democrats allowing massive cuts in entitlements and Republicans allowing massive cuts in defense spending are as close to zero as you can get. Since there is no way to compromise on the supercommittee’s deal, it is likely that Ccongress will declare the deficit agreement dead and the business of creating more trillion dollar deficits in future years will continue apace.
But the proprieties must be observed, tradition honored, and the motions gone through. Hence, we have the unnecessary drama of the supercommittee meeting in secrecy all these weeks. No doubt they’ve created a secret handshake by this time and developed a secret decoder ring. The purpose of the secrecy is … well, it sounds cool. And it’s supposed to keep greedy lobbyists from gumming up the workings of the committee.
The Constitutional Convention met in secret but at least they were responsible adults who could be trusted to do a good job. Lord knows what these jokers have been up to for the last few weeks. What little that has leaked out has not been encouraging. Prior to this Democratic deficit reduction plan being proposed today, the position of the donks was set in stone: no cuts to Medicare. The GOP was apparently going them one better by refusing to abide tax increases while also making Pentagon spending sacrosanct.
The fact that the Democrats have proposed cuts in Medicare means that they are pretty confident the GOP will reject the deal and they think they will score huge points with the voters for appearing “reasonable.” Before you wonder how they believe such transparent tomfoolery will work, recall first, that politicians aren’t very bright, and secondly, neither are most voters. So when the deal goes south and Harry Reid, looking sad and forlorn, appears before the cameras to blame Republicans for the impasse, the voters are likely to give Democrats the benefit of the doubt. Large majorities believe the rich aren’t paying their “fair share” and breaking a deficit reduction deal because the GOP won’t raise taxes on anybody will not play well.
In the end, cutting $200 billion or so from the budget every year for 10 years is a drop in the bucket. Projected deficits that will exceed at least $9 trillion are forecast, and that’s under best case scenarios of low interest rates and low inflation. The supercommittee debacle — failing to cut less than 4% of total spending over the next 10 years — is more proof, as if any were needed, that Congress is beyond dysfunctional. It is regressing to infantile status because of its inability to meet the crisis as any grown-up would: with responsible action to save the nation from catastrophe.
Yeah, but when they don’t do anything substantive this time the bond rating agencies are threatening another downgrade for doing nothing, which in a normal economy would force interest rates up (everyone’s probably going to be bailing out of the Euro into US Treasuries shortly). Of course, the democrats don’t have to agree on anything, because doing nothing only means income taxes are going up in 14 months when they go back to the pre-Bush level (normally democratic nirvana, although the economy will probably be in the trough of another recession and the expiring Bush tax cuts could get another reprieve), but meanwhile it’ll be business as usual at current spending levels as the comedy goes on–unless the Senate and White House are no longer democratic bastions of blithering boobs sucking on the government teat–hardly likely with ten percent unemployment and rising.
Why don’t the Dems just have doctors take care of medicare patients for free? I mean, so what if they have 200k in medical school loans. They should be totally altruistic and live in Occupy wall street tents and take care of patients for free.
Between the WH control of the media, voter fraud, the messy smear campaign that Comrade O will most certainly run against his eventual opponent, the best way to ensure that he goes is to discredit him and his czars. That means going full force on Fast & Furious, Solyndra and any other scandals that can be proven to be connected high up in the administration.
You’re asking a lot of the GOP in congress. This is a good ole boy network if there ever was one. If they were interested in changing things in Washington, they’d already be calling for impeachment investigations. But with the exception of Issa and Grassley, nada.
I went to my bank and asked for a doubling of my credit card limit. When they told me I couldn’t afford the payments unless I cut spending, I offered to cut out one latte per month. They chased me out of the bank.
Obviously Congress doesn’t bank at the same place I do.
Rick, this article is so well written. Thank you, you’ve brightened my day!