Deficit Rhetoric vs. Action

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Two articles came to my notice today concerning the deficit.

The big news was that Obama’s bipartisan commission on the deficit released their report on cutting the budget deficit:
Panel Weighs Deep Cuts in Tax Breaks and Spending

The lead:

A draft proposal released Wednesday by the chairmen of President Obama’s bipartisan commission on reducing the federal debt calls for deep cuts in domestic and military spending starting in 2012, and an overhaul of the tax code to raise revenue. Those changes and others would erase nearly $4 trillion from projected deficits through 2020, the proposal says.

The recommendations are dead, dead, dead.

Why?

The plan would reduce Social Security benefits to most future retirees — low-income people would get a higher benefit — and it would subject higher levels of income to payroll taxes to ensure Social Security’s solvency for at least the next 75 years.

Italics are mine.

These are the tough choices that country faces, and this is a serious proposal to fix what’s broken. Politically, however, it’ll never fly.

The plan calls for a simplification –and tax cuts across the board– by cutting many popular tax loopholes. The overhaul of the tax code would net a projected $80 billion in 2015.

On the other hand, the Tea Party poster boy, Rand Paul, can’t specify exactly what he would do to slash the deficit:

In Tense Interview With Spitzer, Rand Paul Can’t Name Specific Cut To Balance Budget

Spitzer asked Paul to name specific programs he would cut from health care, Social Security, or defense. But Paul demurred, explaining that he would offer a balanced budget in the next Congress — over 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 year increments, but was still unsure of what to cut to get there. At one point, Paul even suggested that rather than pressing him for specifics, Spitzer should invite liberals and ask “how do you continue to have these programs?”

In other words, complete and utter bullshit.

Serious debate about the deficit is important, but for the Tea Party crowd, allegedly fueled by their deep concern about the deficit, have absolutely no plan to make things better.

It reminds me of the Monty Python skit, “How To Do It”:

Simplistic solutions to complex problems with no understanding and no hard work — that’s the stock and trade of the Tea Party and the Republicans who are trying to channel their activism to continue their campaign to reward the wealthy.

Bolstered by their midterm wins, there’s little hope that the Tea Party Republicans will negotiate in good faith to address the deficit.

Many of them have expressed publicly and privately that they do not want Obama to have a legislative win that he can run on in 2012, so they are quite content to do absolutely nothing and block everything.

We’ll see how it plays out, but it doesn’t look promising.

-Chris

Related Articles

• Is Anyone Serious about Cutting the Deficit? (cbsnews.com)
• Deficit Panel Calls For Social Security Cuts (oliverwillis.com)
• Ira Glasser: Calling the Republican Bluff (huffingtonpost.com)