| I was one of about 65 participants at Saturday's budget session here in Missoula. Cowgirl wrote it up earlier -- and it has received attention elsewhere. But after participating, I want to note that even if Pete Peterson's intention was to start a national drive to undermine Social Security and Medicare, he may have just done precisely the opposite.
Let me note that I was at a pretty ideologically diverse table. Our group included a few Missoula non-profit types like myself, a successful businessman who lives in the Bitterroot, a retired teacher, and several people who I think can be fairly called "tea party" activists, including one fairly prominent leader in Western Montana.
Despite those divergent viewpoints, the process, the facts, and our discussion led our table to what I think was a pretty forward-thinking approach to the long-term budget difficulties our nation faces. Namely, we supported a carbon tax, significant comprehensive tax reform (end deductions, lower rates, simplify the process, and pay down the deficit), a financial transactions tax, cuts to defense spending, the removal of the income cap on social security payroll taxes, and a few other measures.
Showing my trademark optimism, I predicted that the new health care bill would work better than CBO predicts to rein in federal health care expenditures on its own (meshing with a long history of CBO scoring items in a conservative way, as they should).
But long story short, a bunch of people showed up to a 6 hour budget discussion, evaluated a whole bunch of options, and nationally voted overwhelmingly for really positive solutions.
I left pretty convinced of a few things. First, that we should be organizing more events to educate people about the state of the budget and challenging them to find solutions -- at both the state and the federal level. Second, that it really is still possible to have meaningful political dialogue with people with pretty divergent views -- especially when there is a common task to be achieved, not simply a debate to be had.
The full national results are here. I don't think they read like a lefty wet dream of how to address our common challenges. But I do think they represent a pretty reasonable set of principles we can move forward with. I can quibble with some of the specifics -- I'm not inclined to raise the retirement age on social security, at least not across the board. But the broad sweep isn't bad. And for a set of compromises reached across the nation by 3,500 people, I'm actually fairly impressed.
Finally, Congress should take heed -- when this group was asked whether the federal government should take more immediate action to reduce unemployment, even if it increased the near-term deficit, the answer was a strong "Yes!" Give the Senate's recent inaction, folks in DC should pay a bit more attention. |
