Faced with anxiety in financial markets about the huge federal deficit and the potential for it to become an electoral liability for Democrats, the White House and Congressional leaders are weighing options for narrowing the gap, including a bipartisan commission that could force tax increases and spending cuts.
But even the idea of a panel to bridge the partisan divide has run into partisan objections. Many Democrats, including in the White House, are loath to cede such far-reaching decisions to a commission and doubt Republicans’ willingness to compromise. And most Republicans remain adamantly opposed to tax increases, leaving the prospects for any bipartisan approach limited at best.
The proponents, however, are pressing for a Senate vote this month. “If we have the same process and the same people, we are going to get the same results,” said Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, who recently met with Mr. Obama to discuss the idea. “The Democratic Party wants to spend more than we can afford; the Republican Party tends to want to cut taxes more than we can afford. So we are stuck.”
Concerns about the deficit are building even as the White House and Congress continue to add to it with tax cuts and spending to stimulate a still-fragile economy. Yet those one-time costs do not trouble most economists and market analysts.
Here is a simple way to balance the budget.
1. Eliminate the Congressional COLA and any form of automatic salary increases.
2. Raise the Congressional (both houses) salary to 300,000 a year, across the board, by direct legislation and in accordance with the 27 Amendment.
3. Require that it be paid out of government surplus.
I am not holding my breath.
Histroy will probably repeat itself.
The capital acquisition and operation & maintenance portions of the Defense Budget will be seen as a ‘cash cow’ that can be ‘milked’ to meet the idealized utopian dreams of Congressional social activists and our defenses against nuclear and conventional war will be further decreased.
Our enemies, and they exist out there folks, and our potential enemies will, at some point, see our weakened ‘will’ and our weakened military capability as an opportunity to achieve a ‘fait accompli’ in some corner of the world or even worse, ‘black mail’ us into submission by the threat of their superior military capability, possibly by a threat of the use of their nuclear capabilities.
If you don’t think that these things can happen, read your history books.
Become literate in international political-military history. The reading list is long but the lessons are starkly clear and simple. This history starts somewhere back when the first city-states appeared, let’s say back in pre-Sumerian times.
#1 – I admire the sentiment behind your idea but those guys could all work pro bono and it still wouldn’t change things – they’d just be that much more on the take.
Color me skeptical.
It may be a few years away. But the tsunami of debt and freshly printed money is going to roll in at some point. Buy commodities and foreign securities (non US Dollar denominated stocks and bonds).
Er…cutting the deficit? The most recent health care bill has a $1.2 TRILLION price tag. BTW, Ad Orientem is correct about the inflation tsunami heading our way. Furthermore, the OTC derivatives market remains unregulated, so the collapse of 2008 is likely to be repeated.
Actually, because nobody is spending, we still have to worry about deflation. Only when there is more confidence in the markets will inflation become an issue. At that point, the Fed simply raises interest rates, targeting inflation.
Anglican First, given that we spend more on the military than the entire world combined, if we can’t defend ourselves, the military is doing something wrong. It is, perhaps, an example of the government not knowing how to curtail costs, and the best example of government bureaucracy.
But perhaps not the worst. Ever since the government started creating no-bid military contracts, expenses went up. We loved privatizing government military contracts, which meant the taxpayer could get screwed. A great combination of wanting a strong military, and a privatized economy. We forgot that people can be corrupt.