When You Hear the Phrase "Bipartisan Solution," Check Your Wallet
There's an old saying: "I try to stay cynical, but I just can't keep up."
So the Obama administration convenes something they're calling the National Debt Commission -- headed by former Republican senator Alan Simpson and former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles. They're saying the right things about the debt:
"This debt is like a cancer," Bowles said..."It is truly going to destroy the country from within."
Simpson said the entirety of the nation's current discretionary spending is consumed by the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs.
But why do I have the distinct feeling that what they're really doing is softening up the audience to prepare us for tax hikes? You know, "bipartisan" tax hikes. "Necessary" tax hikes that "responsible" people have to accept during this "crisis."
I think that's the way it's going go -- taxes go up, incremental changes on the entitlement side, everyone pins medals on each other and goes home.
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May '10
Re: When You Hear the Phrase "Bipartisan Solution," Check Your Wallet
We can all get on board with the debt-is-like-a-cancer simile, but I wonder whether Erskine and friends realize that increasing taxes will be like prescribing a bigger leech to cure the disease?
Jun '10
Re: When You Hear the Phrase "Bipartisan Solution," Check Your Wallet
Spending is the cancer. Debt is just the resulting tumor.
May '10
Re: When You Hear the Phrase "Bipartisan Solution," Check Your Wallet
For some time now my definition of "bi-partisan" has been "vichy Republicans doing what the Democrats want..."
As far as the Debt being a cancer, as Rob stated, we know that the prescription will be more taxes. But raising taxes with out addressing the spending addiction, is the equivalent of providing an addict more of his drugs/alcohol/etc in the hopes that the addict will be come inured, and once again become functional without actually addressing his problem.
Jul '10
Re: When You Hear the Phrase "Bipartisan Solution," Check Your Wallet
Like every governmental program, this commission will run through set phases:
1-Euphoria
2-Depression
3-Apathy
4-Search for the guilty
5-Punishment of the innocent
6- Praise and honours for the uninvolved.
May '10
Re: When You Hear the Phrase "Bipartisan Solution," Check Your Wallet
Not sure Republican cooperation on tax increases is as inevitable as this commission hopes. This is where the "own goal" of the jam-down of Stimulus and Obamacare may haunt Dems: There's so much resentment by Republicans at the Dems' shutting them out of those processes that Republicans might not go for, say, a VAT, which they otherwise could have supported had they felt partially responsible for creating those behemoths.
Republicans shouldn't--and I bet won't--support a bipartisan "fix" of what is perceived by voters as a partisan screw up.
May '10
Re: When You Hear the Phrase "Bipartisan Solution," Check Your Wallet
Good call, Devereaux.
I have that list hanging in my cubicle!