printMy maxim,“Government commissions are where accountability goes to die,” played out today when, as the Washington Examiner reports, “President Barack Obama’s deficit commission failed to forge consensus on what to do about an increasingly urgent debt problem …”
“The 11-7 vote in favor of the panel co-chairmen’s recommendations for a painful mix of spending cuts and tax increases foretells a bitterly partisan and possibly unproductive debate in the House. If there’s a deal to be had, it will likely be reached in the Senate. Fourteen votes were needed to officially send the plan to Congress now for quick action on it.”
“The Details” of the thwarted plan, have been distilled by The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein:
“The draft put out by the commission chairs has been released, coming in at 50 pages. The overarching goal, Simpson and Bowles write, is to achieve ‘nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction through 2020’ while reducing ‘the deficit to 2.2% of GDP by 2015.'”
“How they get there is going to be a matter of contention as other commission members have already stressed their displeasure with the suggestions. But here are a few of the more noteworthy suggestions.”
* Roll discretionary spending back to FY2010 levels for FY2012, requires 1% cut in discretionary budget authority every year from FY2013 though 2015;
* Fully offset the cost of the ‘Doc Fix’ by asking doctors and other health providers, lawyers, and individuals to take responsibility for slowing health care cost growth;
* Reduce farm subsidies by3 billion per year by reducing direct payments and other subsidies;
* Achieve100 billion in Illustrative Defense Cuts;
* Index retirement age for Social security to increases in longevity. ‘This option is projected to increase the age by one month every two years after it reaches 67 under current law, meaning the normal retirement age would reach 68 in about 2050 and 69 in about 2075.’ There will be a ‘hardship exemption’ for those unable to work beyond 62;
* Give retirees the choice of collecting half their benefits early and the other half at a later age to minimize impact of actuarial reduction and support phased retirement options;
* Reduce corporate tax rate to 26% and permanently extend the research credit;
* Gradually increase gas tax to fund transportation spending.”
[SNIP]
Think about it: The American president appoints a select group of like-minded officials tasked with coming up with a plan to tackle the deficit, the debt and the government’s long-term, looming liabilities. The commission completes its task by agreeing not to tackle the task. Meanwhile, the British PM has fired hundreds of thousands of state worker and slashed departmental budgets.
Of course. Republicrats will not raise taxes. Demicans will not cut spending. You can see it in the latest Congressional deal-in-the-works: Bush tax cuts get extended, for everybody, while 98-week unemployment benefit recipients get another year of getting paid to do nothing. Meanwhile cheap-labor illegals remain un-deported, de facto legal, and yet another job-outsourcing deal, this time with S. Korea is planned. These greedy, stupid swine do not miss a beat. ‘Tis all good, though: they are making the ultimate Crash all the more violent and hence conducive to Systemic Change.
Imagine an alcoholic, addict, or serial rapist appointing a commission on how to stop his behavior and you have the government and the debt commission.
Vastly more powerful than the Hoover Commission (1947), Grace Commission (1982) Gore’s “Reinventing Government (1993) would be following the 28 word report from the Myron Pauli Debt Commission – namely, this timely advice from the Founders:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Anyone that seriously believed this commission was anything other than a pointless exercise should probably be institutionalized.
The group’s primary mission? To fool the American rubes into believing our government would understand the problem, then do something meaningful about it. Their recommendations are too little, too late, and are being consigned to obscurity. Politicians will do what they always do: kick the can down the road. Extend and pretend.
Time to face facts. We are in for a very hard landing. The standard of living in this country is going to suffer like very few can possibly imagine. Our elite, in their quest for power, are turning this once great country into a banana republic.
If you are not actively preparing for the crash, you frankly deserve what’s coming.
Spending cuts and tax increases…50-percent right is quite well for Congress.
Frankly I’m worried about Steve Hogan. He sounds like me. I hope someone’s keeping an eye on him. These “groups” are a complete farce. They meet to come up with solutions to problems after being instructed by Obama about what not to cut. (Obamacare anyone.)
When necessary, Congress forgets the apotheosized:
“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”
– John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference
“Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964
Listening to various Senators and Congressmen comment on this report reminds me of the health care reform debate. The salient features are: the problem is so bad we MUST do something NOW and this plan is not perfect but it is better than nothing. The goals of the plan are hardly stretch goals. 10 or 20 years out we will be almost down to current levels of spending.
Must we govern this way? One large, all encompassing, hard to understand bill which is of necessity a compromise? We need to stop and think about why compromise, is this situation, is bound to yield a less than good or maybe even bad result. I you and I each weigh the same brick and I get 2 pounds and you get 3 pounds, do we “compromise” and say the brick weighs 2.5 pounds? No, we figure out who made an error and weigh the brick again the right way because if we are going to build a building and use our compromise weight the building will either fall down or be over-constructed. I’d rather see us use the ideas in this report as a guide to a legislative plan that develops over the next several years combined with guidelines for new spending that converge towards reducing the deficit.
Jeff, your analogy doesn’t work. The people in question don’t know how to weigh bricks. They know nothing about bricks or anything else for that matter. To expect that they’ll figure out who is making the mistake, admit it, and change their ways is not going to happen. We’re talking about politicians here, not rational, intelligent, humble people.
It should be obvious to everyone: our government is out of control. The people running it, with very few exceptions, have never had a legitimate job before. They are ignorant about the constitution, the law, economics, finance, history, logic, or morality. They can’t fix an economy, because the economy cannot be centrally planned. Since they don’t know how wealth is produced, how can anyone expect them to somehow stumble across the solution?
The solution is for them to get out of the way and allow the market to function. They’re too stupid and stubborn to permit this. Thus, they seem intent on turning a recession into a sovereign debt crisis, followed by a hyperinflationary depression.
When that happens, the empire ends (finally!), the social safety nets vanish, and our standard of living gets crushed. The good news: they’ll be a lot of unemployed public sector workers with worthless pensions.
Michael – when JFK spoke that, the tax rates were either 70% or 90% on high income people and the budget was close to being in balance. There was no Medicare/Medicaid/Bushcare/Obamacare – and only a very small elderly population. To think that cutting taxes further when the deficit is already $ 1,400,000,000,000 each year is going to kick start the economy is rather silly.
The uncertainties of defaults, foreclosures, bankruptcies, hyperinflation, and massive debt is a sword of Damocles hanging over all investments. That – and not 20% capital gains tax rates – is what is causing the mess – and addition debt will not solve it.
” Fully offset the cost of the ‘Doc Fix’ by asking doctors and other health providers, lawyers, and individuals to take responsibility for slowing health care cost growth” BUT leave in Obamacare? No way in Hell will that work.
“Imagine an alcoholic, addict, or serial rapist appointing a commission on how to stop his behavior and you have the government and the debt commission” You forgot to mention that the commission is also made up of ‘Alcoholics, Serial Rapists, etc. How many rabbits do you need to guard the carrot patch?
At the time of the Mellon comment, the top tax rate had gone to 70%
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3015
And the top tax rate in 1962 was 91%.
But the “cut taxes and increase spending” [e.g. the bipartisan approach] was tried all through the Republican Bush hegemony years of 2001 – 2007 with little growth and doubling of the national debt. Middle class income even declined slightly while home prices got inflated.
Now the bipartisan compromise is – keep tax rates low (good if spending is low)
and increase unemployment benefits while keeping on wasting a trillion $$ a year on the Global Empire. In other words – KEEP LIVING BEYOND OUR MEANS.
If this country wants to make war all over the globe, then it should pay for it! Meanwhile, a captial gains rate of 15% or 20% is hardly going to stop someone from investing money the way a 91% rate would be likely to.
Concerning Mellon and Kennedy era tax rates: I am perplexed as to the significance of the actual tax rates during the 20s and the 60s. Whether the rates were 15, 70, or even 90 percent for corporate or personal income, it still remains too much.
With regards to tax cuts and increased spending: It’s supposed to be tax cuts as well as spending cuts.
Lastly, in response to America’s World Democracy Tours, I agree; withdrawing all troops from foreign soil would not present an existential threat.