Saturday, March 23, 2013

Senate Democrats and the politics of Clownsville

In a vote late last night, Senate Democrats passed their first budget for four years. Reading the details, it's become abundantly clear that they're living in Clownsville.
 
You might think that the word budget suggests at least some degree of consideration for fiscal reality. An expectation many Americans would probably share. Unfortunately, when it comes to this budget, fiscal reality is nowhere to be found.

Let's consider the details. The Democratic budget increases taxes by $1 trillion - and does so by reinforcing the Democrats deluded and mathematically unsustainable obsession with taxing the rich. Further, the budget does so little to restrain the growth of entitlements that it's truly laughable. Instead, it plays around the edges of Federal spending and finds a pathetic $900 billion in discretionary cuts - primarily by allowing 50% of the DoD sequester to go into effect. Thus we see it's essence. A hyper-partisan morass of mathematically absurd and strategically defective political delusions. It would gut the military in order to continue our national zombie walk into the fiscal abyss. This budget represents not just the willful ignorance of fiscal reality, but the absolute rejection of any semblance of fiscal reality. In short, it's a joke.

It's true, the GOP budget which passed the House last week is also highly partisan. But there's one major, foundational difference between the Democratic and Republican budgets. The GOP budget actually addresses our national deficit and our debt. And it does so in a trend stable way. For me, those two factors are the crucial litmus test for any budget. At a basic level, they illustrate a serious acceptance of fiscal reality. In terms of specific savings - where the Democrats find about $2 trillion in 10yr savings, Ryan's GOP budget finds $4.3 trillion. And for all the liberal whining that Republicans won't negotiate - Ryan has stood alone in his evident willingness to entertain serious compromise. (Beyond Congress, the President deserves some credit for his recent outreach to Senate Republicans. We'll see if he's serious or if he's playing more games). 
 
For my personal budget plan - Go here.

 Video which illustrates scale of debt crisis. Strangely, the production of a left wing group.

2 comments:

  1. You're renaming your blog to Clownsville?

    The only budget that matters is this year's budget, because you can't tie the hands of the next Congress. History says that Republicans will happily spend us into oblivion.

    If you recall, and if you are even slightly conversant about these issues you should, G.W. Bush was handed a budget surplus. Between fear-mongering from Alan Greenspan about paying down the deficits too quickly, and the quasi-official Republican political stance that "deficits don't matter" as articulated by Vice President Cheney, G.W. fashioned a set of budget cuts that moved us from surplus to massive deficits - while massively increasing entitlement spending. Poor Paul Ryan sincerely regrets his role in running up the deficit - crocodile tears run down his face....

    Meanwhile much of the present crisis emerges from the fact that the economy tanked under Bush's watch.

    You want to play the partisan hack? Great. It's your blog. But try to come up for air from time to time.

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    1. You are right about the fiscal record of the previous administration. But you neglect the economic recession, the dot com bubble and 9/11. Much of the present crisis is the result of our terrible tax code, business confidence depreciation in face of the looming entitlement explosion and a regulatory heavy environment. + poorly targeted stimulus spending.

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