MARK SHIELDS: On revenue.
The reality is this, that every single group, whether it’s Simpson-Bowles, whether it’s Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici, whoever it is — semi-serious, we probably should have said — yes, there have to be budget cuts to deal with the deficit problem and the debt, but there have to be revenue increases.
It’s become a dogma with Republicans now that anybody who votes for a tax increase is no longer a member of the club or the party….
MICHAEL GERSON: I think — I think Democrats are being equally unreasonable on the issue of entitlements.
This is our long-term spending challenge. It’s not that we tax too little. It’s that we have expensive entitlement commitments, an aging population, and health care inflation that have made that portion of the budget completely unsustainable….
In brief: Michael Gerson (or some others I could name) should be the permanent replacement for David Brooks. I like David Brooks, he is an often engaging cultural critic, but he is both a political moderate and a mild-mannered foil for Mark Shields. Shields, on the other hand, is consistently tough and pro-Democrat/pro-Obama/anti-Republican. So the News-Hour’s idea of balance is zingers from Shields followed by agreement or some mild response, often on a different subject, by Brooks. Gerson–and I watched this when it first appeared–was persistent and factual. He knows his stuff and has thought at least as deeply as Brooks about democracy and religion.
Both Brooks and Gerson are intellectual conservatives. Shields is more of a journalistic liberal. It’s often a bit of a mis-match, but it seems to fit the New Hour format very well.
I posted this in part because it was a rare example of a reasonable fair statement of the views of both “sides.” Alas, such is an increasingly rare sight these days.