Dems & GOP Pass the Buck on the Deficit
We should be ashamed of the majority of Senate Republicans today. For all of their carping about the president's outrageous spending habits and the completely ludicrous and totally unsustainable deficit run up by the Bush and Obama administrations, the Senate failed to pass one of the few financially responsible ideas that have been considered since God only knows how long ago. Today, the Senate failed to pass a plan to create a bipartisan commission to address the nation's colossal budget deficit. President Obama will instead have to create the commission himself via executive order.
The commission would have had much needed and exceedingly broad powers to recommend changes to the tax code while also recommending spending cuts on outrageously expensive and unfocused entitlement programs. Its recommendations would have been due directly after the November elections (thus giving Congress the political cover to act responsibly for about two months) and these recommendations would have been guaranteed an up or down vote before the year was out. Pathetically, the measure mustered only 53 votes in the Senate, seven short of the tally needed to overcome a filibuster. Not surprisingly, Republicans objected to tax increases, while Democrats whined about cutting entitlement programs.
The most appalling thing about all of this is that this vote comes directly on the heels of the CBO's latest deficit projections, which predicted a clean $1.35 TRILLION deficit. Many members of the Senate were apparently unfazed by this figure.
Judd Gregg, one of the only fiscally responsible members of the Senate from either party, summed it up: “These numbers are just staggering, and it appears that the sky is the limit for this tax-spend-and-borrow Democratic majority. Despite all of the dire news about our mountain of debt, the spending spree continues, and only lip service is being paid to the issue of debt reduction."
As Gregg notes, the hypocrisy of members of either party – but particularly Republicans -- who excoriate the president's nauseating spending in public but, when the time to vote rolls around, can't muster the guts or the political will to do something about it, is palpable and offensive. But this is far from an isolated incident. Today's failure is just a symptom of a much larger problem that dates back to the Reagan years, when conservatives abandoned their desire to balance budgets and began cutting taxes irrespective of the effects that such cuts might have on the budget deficit. Coupled with Democrats’ propensity to spend money on entitlement programs like drunken sailors, we have reached a terrifying point. Most frustrating of all, though, is that every person that has the ability to add and subtract understands what must be done to address the terrifying deficit. We have to raise taxes and spend less money. Republicans need to get over tax cuts. In fact, we need to begin to realize that we are going to have to support raising taxes in certain circumstances. And Democrats need to get over their absurd defense of indefensible entitlement spending. These programs are going to get cut. Deal with it.
History suggests that my words will fall on deaf ears. Instead, Congress will continue to drive the country straight toward the cliff of financial Armageddon if both sides don't change their modes of thinking in a hurry.
Don't hold your breath.