Fresh in my inbox is a statement from Jon Tester following his vote in favor of creating a deficit reduction commission:"For a decade, both parties have swept America's debt problem under the carpet. And like most Montanans, I'm fed up with the mess.
"The only way to get our fiscal house in order is to put politics aside and work together to create good-paying jobs, making Wall Street work for Main Street."
"That's why I crossed party lines to vote against the bailouts of Wall Street and the U.S. auto industry. And that's why I voted today to create a bipartisan panel to recommend spending cuts." I know Jon well enough to know that this stuff is heartfelt from him. He really isn't a fan of the massive deficit we've racked up. And I don't even really have a problem with this commission, except that I don't really see how it works.
The basic idea is that most of the real solutions for dealing with the deficit -- bending the health care curve, raising taxes, or seriously rethinking the defense budget -- are politically difficult votes. That's why a health care bill that does two of those three is currently stuck in Congress with some small chance left to pass. On the third issue -- the defense budget -- it means actually building some sort of willingness to stand up to military contractors, their significant lobbies, and the "weak on security" storylines that they and their Congressional lackeys will spin if you seriously evaluate their spending.
How does any of this get easier with a bipartisan commission whose recommendations require a super-duper-pooper majority? It doesn't.
Reality is that fixing America's fiscal outlook isn't at this point a policy problem. We have a bill in Congress that will seriously reduce the long-term deficit. We can write additional bills tomorrow to do the same. The problem is that Judd Gregg, for all his hemming and hawing about budget deficits won't do anything about it. The problem is that Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln crow about deficits but continue to vote for massive tax cuts that will worsen the long-term deficit picture (Jon has cast some of these votes, as well).
Governing is occasionally about making hard choices. Those hard choices are compounded by a press corps whose understanding of the federal budget often seems downright abysmal. But there's no reason to believe that a blue ribbon panel will convince a single GOP member of Congress to vote for a tax cut or meaningful health care cost controls or the kinds of defense cuts that don't really threaten national security.
For now, anyone seriously interested in long-term deficit reduction should be acting to get the health care bill moving again. If that means reaching across the rotunda and pledging to work with House members on sidecar provisions to move through budget reconciliation or publicly or privately stepping up pressure to get something passed, that's what it will take to get this deficit reduced.
Virtually everything else is basically a game of kick the can. |
