Solution

The Bush tax cuts, which have so devastatingly plunged us into debt -- debt, by the way, over which teabaggers and the RWS™ and every R in Congress are apoplectic -- are set, by design, to expire at the end of this year. By design. By law. The way George Bush, guided, as we now know, by God, intended.

Congressional Rs are determined to stop any and every action Obama and Ds propose. They're even planning to replay Newt's greatest hit, the shutting down of government. How can we address the deficits if Rs continue to raise alarums about it but steadfastly refuse to take action? What's a Congressional D to do?

Answer: nothing.

NOTHING. Why all the machinations about Obama's plan, Bush's plans, getting something done, when doing nothing takes care of the whole ball of tax? Go home, run for reëlection, spend your time running away from health care and President Obama. Don't do a damn thing, and everything will be okay, just the way G and G planned. It's perfect. They, it turns out, were perfect. Because by doing nothing -- at which Rs have become absolute experts -- taxes revert to those of the Clinton era, deficits disappear. Gone in the trash, tossed like a breakfast teabag. And, like teabaggers after Glenn Beck, budget balance will follow without a further thought.

So, what's the problem? All Congress has to do is not a goddam thing.

Fare And Balanced

Bob Packwood, former Senator from my former home state, had an editorial in the NY Times Sunday. More famous, at the end of his career, for his (mild, by modern standards) sex scandal than for being Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and despite his Republicanism and his indirect role in the failure of my dad's nomination to the federal bench, I found the piece much in line with my thoughts:

"Some people might assume that we could afford the maximum amount of government largess and still avoid pain for most taxpayers by simply collecting more taxes from the “rich.” Not a chance. Let’s assume, based on historical patterns and President Obama’s suggested spending, that at some point, the spending of all governments in the United States, federal and local, could add up to 40 percent of G.D.P. Mr. Obama proposes to increase the tax rate on income over $250,000 to 39.6 percent. The billions of dollars a year raised by the higher rate won’t begin to cover the trillion or so a year in increased government spending. Nor would current state and local taxes support their share of that spending. Therefore taxes would have to be raised on Americans making less than $250,000...

....we simply cannot raise enough money in taxes from the rich to pay for the programs the president wants.

So we basically have two options: raise taxes on the middle class, or demand that federal, state and local governments spend less."

Although he takes no stand on the dichotomy he raises, I'll assume that's where we part company. I'm guessing he'd opt for the less spending option. I've said here, and to anyone who'd listen, that I think the tax-cuts in Obama's budget are ill-advised. Maybe, in these times, they're justifiable in the short run, although the economists I trust say tax cuts are less stimulative than direct government spending. But this amount of imbalance isn't sustainable, as everyone agrees.

I don't have a problem with the plan to return taxes on the wealthy to the levels they were when the economy was soaring; they'll still be way less than under Republican presidents previous to Clinton. But if we're going to provide health care for all and make college more affordable -- things which, in the long run, will help our country prosper -- the costs are going to have to be spread to more than those making two-fifty kay.

And let's not forget: if taxes go up to pay for those things, family expenses will go down by a similar, if not greater, amount (in fact, that's a part of the debate that rarely gets coverage: if we have a "public" health plan, the money that currently goes from businesses and individuals in the form of premiums will go there instead. Right?) It gets back to that idea of priorities, and what really makes for happiness and security. Senator Packwood (I didn't realize he was still alive!) properly raises the question, and so far President Obama is dancing around the answer.
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Not Impressed

It's not as if I couldn't do with a hundred million bucks. But when President Obama said he'd be announcing budget cuts this week, I was expecting a little more. I don't think he's afraid of controversy: in the last few days he's released the torture memos, said he won't seek prosecution of those who did it, shook hands with Hugo Chavez, loosened Cuba policy. He's willing to disappoint or anger people at both ends of the political spectrum to do what he thinks is right. For that, I admire him.

But for the enormous deficits we face, atmospherics won't cut it. I suppose any start is a good start, but I don't see the point of raising expectations of tough love ahead, and coming up with something as paltry as this. Better, in my opinion, either not to have made a big deal of it, or to waited until it was time really to take a whack.
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Rock. Place (hard).

The deficits run up by George Bush and his Republican congress, even before the so-called bailout (more properly: the unfettered giveaway, with no strings, to the usual beneficiaries of Republican fiscal policy, disregarding the greater good, continuing the discredited delusion -- even Greenspan finally figured it out -- that "markets," ie fat cats, will do the right thing) are appalling. The last two years haven't been much better. Balanced budgets, as a matter of principle, are a long-term necessity, far as I can tell. "Families must balance budgets," we are told, "so why not government?" Despite the fact that the two -- government and family -- are in no way comparable, I agree.

Except now.

Other than dead-enders like Boehner and McConnell (obstructionists for its own sake, it would appear) and Sanford, out of whose cold dead hands Reagan mythology will never be pried, virtually everyone agrees some sort of mega-stimulus is required in these times. Details, a few billion here or there, are rightfully in dispute. But not the central idea. So the question is, ma nishtana ha government ha zeh michol ha other governments? (Apologies to anyone who actually knows Hebrew: I'm taking a wild swing here.) Why is the federal government different from other governments?

What's going on in state governments is instructive. Most require, by state law, balanced budgets. No exceptions for exceptional times. Thus we observe, in California, the nub of the problem: they're screwed. It's about the same, but to a lesser degree, in my state, and in virtually every state with budget requirements so mandated. In hard times, it's the very programs most likely to help turn things around that get cut: education, help for the needy, infrastructure. Yet raising money via taxes seems similarly counter-productive. What are governors to do? Make things worse, through no fault of their own.

Already, there are consequences, with more on the way, undoubtedly.

To my eye, Ronald Reagan screwed us when he was alive, and he's doing it still, from the grave: California never recovered from Prop 13. States that bought into his philosophy (more likely, that of those who whispered into his hollow ear) are now reaping the sour harvest. If it's right, under dire circumstances, for the federal government to spend more than it has, why isn't it so for the states? Even those valued families, when the chips are down, have to. Hard times call for hard times.

From what little I know, a significant part of Obama's stimulus will be in the form of money given to states; maybe not exactly in the form of cash, but in grants for specific "shovel-ready" (look for that one on end-of-year lists of phrases whose disappearance is hoped for) projects. Isn't there a certain amount of charade in that? If states can accept such money -- printed money adding to the amount we all owe to the future -- why the fiction of balanced budget? In effect, it's a pretense that "conservative" economics still are a worthy construct. "Cut spending," said Sanford, above. "Screw 'em," is what he means.

If it's true -- I don't know myself, but I'm easily impressed by Nobel Prizes -- that the idea of low taxes and deregulation and (theoretically) less government as the answer to every economic question is now thoroughly discredited, then why is there this residue across the states? Stuck in the middle with no good answers, governors are having to choose between two wrongs: cut services essential to recovery, take money out of people's hands by raising taxes. All in the name of failed economics.

If my surgical practice had been carried out like the economic practices of the last few decades, not changing when the data demanded it, I'd have been defrocked long since. Sued into submission. Run out of town. My errors would have been shouted in the halls of every hospital whose corridors I'd trod.

But then, surgery is about reality. Not to mention helping people; getting things done.

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The War On Terror

On this blog, and on my previous one, I've stated more than once that I think (although I didn't put it exactly this way) the central front in the "war on terror" is in the hands of law enforcement. In saying it, I also noted that John Kerry, when he ran in 2004, was laughed off the stage by the wingnuts when he said as much. From which, based on how often those voices have been wrong on pretty much everything including war, economics, and terrorism (as well as science, religion, energy, climate...), one might have instantly concluded that Kerry was absolutely right. Which he was, of course. Another blogger reinforces the concept.

I wonder how long the boys in the back room worked on the title. War on Terror. Given their affinity for style over substance, they must have taken a while to get it right. If your aim is to mandate unending war powers to a president while getting the populace to fall into line, you surely don't want a closed-ended moniker. We gotta give the guy permanent license, after all. Even "terrorism" could, conceivably, have an end-point. But terror -- TERROR!! -- who could argue that'll ever go away?

It'll be interesting to see what happens to the "war" (as opposed to the "wars") in the Obama administration. Even Donald Rumsfeld, at one time anyway, seemed a little uncomfortable with the name; so did others on the inside. I think it might take a while before Obama feels able to call it like it is. After a campaign in which he was cast as an America-hating, terrorist-loving, closet Muslim, for him immediately to point out the real nature of the response to terrorist threats would be to invite craziness from the right. But at some point one would hope it'll happen. For at least two reasons.

If we're engaged in a War on Terror, we'll never stop being a "nation at war." Which has been the engine for the Bush/Cheney takeover of government in which Congress, and the rest of us for that matter, have been complicit. ("I'm a war president.") And it's been a central justification for deficit spending way before Wall Street went South. We need to get real. When (if!!) we're able either to disengage or change the missions in Iraq and Afganistan, it'll need to be clearly stated: we'll always have to make significant efforts to protect ourselves from terrorism, but it'll not be primarily a military effort: not with invading armies, anyway.

Which gets to the meat of it: when (if?) the economy gets back on track, it'll be time to attend to gargantuan budget deficits. Nothing ought to be off that celebrated table. Angst ought to be engendered from both ends of the spectrum. Entitlements. And, for the right wing, military spending. This War on Terror, as ginned up and executed by Cheney/Bush, has been nearly the financial death of us. I hope Barack Obama will be able to address military spending; to do so, he'll have to make the case and convince the electorate what is and is not sensible in making ourselves safe. No military economist, I; but I'd say there are billions and billions to be saved.

[Update: The NYT weighs in.]