too delicious not to post.
By offering up their joint recommendation last week for balancing the budget, the co-chairmen of Barack Obama’s fiscal commission didn’t solve our deficit problem once and for all, or clear a path through the political thickets facing would-be budget cutters. But Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson performed a valuable public service nonetheless: the reaction to their proposals demonstrated that when it comes to addressing the long-term challenges facing this country, the Democrats, too, can play the Party of No.
Last week’s media coverage sometimes made it sound as if Bowles and Simpson were taking the same amount of fire from left and right. But the reaction from Republican lawmakers and the conservative intelligentsia was muted, respectful and often favorable; the right-wing griping mostly came from single-issue activists and know-nothing television entertainers. The liberal attacks, on the other hand, came fast and furious, from pundits and leading Democratic politicians alike — starting with the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who pronounced the recommendations “simply unacceptable” almost immediately after their release.
Liberals defended this knee-jerk response on the grounds that the commissioners’ vision, ostensibly bipartisan, was actually tilted toward Republican priorities. And it’s true that Bowles and Simpson proposed more spending cuts than tax increases over all. But most of the programs and tax breaks that they suggested trimming — from farm subsidies to Defense Department bloat and the home-mortgage tax deduction — represent the American welfare state at its absolute worst. And the duo went out of their way to avoid balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. (Social Security, for instance, would be strengthened through a mix of tax increases and benefit cuts for wealthier seniors; retirees close to the poverty line would see their benefits increase.)..
it’s illuminating, and very depressing, that Democrats were so immediately outraged by a plan that reduces corporate welfare, makes Social Security more progressive, slashes the defense budget, raises the tax rate on millionaires’ summer homes — and does all of this while capping the government’s share of gross domestic product, not at some Scrooge-like minimum but at the highest level in modern American history.
Needless to say, none of the liberal lawmakers attacking the Simpson-Bowles proposals offered alternative blueprints for restoring America’s solvency. The Democratic Party has plans for many things, but a balanced budget isn’t one of them...
Liberals sometimes justify this vision by arguing that government has to permanently subsidize the middle class and affluent in order to maintain public support for any safety net at all. (Most voters won’t support a system of basic social insurance for the poor, the theory goes, unless they’re getting something out of it as well.) And they defend the ever-rising tax rates required to finance these ever-expanding entitlements by noting that America thrived economically in the wake of World War II, when income-tax rates were much higher than they are today.
The first argument ignores the lessons of liberalism’s usual teacher, Western Europe, where governments have successfully reduced spending on their pension and entitlement systems without compromising their commitment to their neediest citizens. The second argument ignores the fact that the postwar United States didn’t have any serious economic competitors (the rest of the globe having been brought to its knees by total war), whereas today, an overtaxed America would struggle to compete with China and India and Brazil.
But the deeper problem is that the entire approach treats Americans as moral midgets, incapable of providing for the elderly and indigent without being bribed with giveaways and propped up with subsidies. The alternative sketched by Bowles and Simpson last week has its weaknesses, but it has this great virtue: It treats Americans not as clients but as citizens, and not as children but as adults.
i fail to see how a home mortgage deduction represents an american welfare state. that aside, i do think it's a mistake to automatically take anything off the table. this is quite a partisan little piece, however, not unexpected from you.
i fail to see how a home mortgage deduction represents an american welfare state. that aside, i do think it's a mistake to automatically take anything off the table. this is quite a partisan little piece, however, not unexpected from you.
:lol: yeah, i got it from that hyper-right-wing rag: the New York Times
Its an op-ed piece, and if you believe its a partisan source why does it suddently make it more accurate of a story?
do you think that the quotes it is citing are inaccurate?
You mean the one quote? That's singular not plural. Its also a quote of just two words, "Simply unacceptable" in reference to a deficit reduction plan issued by a committee created by Barack Obama. So its one Democrat, Nancy Polesi, telling Barack Obama, another democrat, that his committee's report is unacceptable.
and she wasn't alone.
but the entire Democrat Party isn't standing there yelling "no" on this issue; the 'plan' to use this to 'split' the Republican Party seems to have backfired rather beautifully
“The chairmen of the Deficit Commission just told working Americans to ‘Drop Dead,’” said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO
it's also rather hilarious to watch ya'll try to twist away from his label.
As I understand the mortgage idea, it will not affect most of us.LibLady, I agree with you. The home mortgage deduction is no more representative of an American welfare state than is the deduction for personal exemptions. Further, to tinker with the home mortgage deduction, when real estate is still circling the drain, is a reckless thought.
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