The [Deficit Reduction] report from the chairmen lists some of the best ways to raise revenue and cut spending. But it comes with no enactment strategy. In this climate, asking politicians to end the mortgage deduction and tax employer health care plans and raise capital gains taxes and cut benefits for affluent seniors is like asking them to jump on a buzzing sack full of live grenades. They won’t do it.
So we continue on the headlong path toward a national disaster. And along the way our dysfunctional political system will leave all sorts of other problems unaddressed: immigration, energy policy and on and on.
Yet, I’m optimistic right now. I’m optimistic because while our political system is a mess, the economic and social values of the country remain sound. My optimism is also based on the conviction that serious, vibrant societies don’t sit by and do nothing as their governments drive off a cliff.
Over the past few years, we have seen millions of people mobilize ”” some behind President Obama and others around the Tea Parties. The country is restive and looking for alternatives. And before the next round of voting begins, I suspect we will see another mass movement: a movement of people who don’t feel represented by either of the partisan orthodoxies; a movement of people who want to fundamentally change the norms, institutions and rigidities that cause our gridlock and threaten our country.
beautiful words, but not very realistic. still, one can have hope.
“Like the chairmen’s report, this movement could demand that Congress wipe out tax loopholes and begin anew. It could protect federal aid to the poor while reducing federal subsidies to the upper-middle class.”
This kind of talk is so inaccurate. I know Brooks is probably categorized as a “moderate.” But calling a tax deduction for mortgage interest a subsidy for “the upper middle class,” is just wrong. It is nothing more than a lessening of taxes on people who work and earn money. Subsidies are for not working – they are gifts.
One more point: Taking money away from the working folks, including the upper middle class, is not going to help rid the country of the loss of its work ethic, the restoration of which is what is needed to keep or push our country back to its pre-eminent position in the world. A welfare society like France is never going to become a leader in the world. And we are going faster and faster toward it. Workfare was the term coined during Clinton’s presidency, forced on him by the ’94 Repub revolution. Obamacare has done away with the work requirement and we are back where we started.