http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35077901/ns/politics/
The Senate on Tuesday rejected a plan backed by President Barack Obama to create a bipartisan task force to tackle the federal deficit this year, despite glaring new figures showing the enormity of the red-ink threat.
The special deficit panel would have attempted to produce a plan combining tax cuts and spending curbs to be voted on after the November elections. The measure went down because anti-tax Republicans joined in opposition with Democrats wary of being railroaded into cutting Social Security and Medicare.
The vote to kill the deficit task force came hours after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted a $1.35 trillion deficit for this year as the economy continues to slowly recover from the recession.
The anti-taxers didn't like the possibility of tax increases and the Democrats didn't want their entitlement programs limited... so together they killed the panel.
Here are my thoughts. We've had tax cuts in the past... Obama is about to let a bunch expire, in fact. What we have NOT tried is spending cuts... at least, not seriously. So we need a mechanism, SOME mechanism, for implementing serious cuts in spending.
Democrats... I'm not sorry to say that any serious spending cuts WILL include your precious entitlement programs. It's unavoidable, because they are such a large part of the Federal budget.
Let's see some spending cuts, SOME commitment to reducing our vastly over-inflated mess of a budget, and we can decide LATER if we also need any tax increases. But let's get that spending down, let's get that borrowing down... and THEN we can talk.
We need to cut approximately $1.5 trillion in spending... so let's get BUSY, Congress!
Obama must be losing his touch. Otherwise he would have just appointed a “Deficit Reduction Czar” and been done with it.
ReplyDeleteI think I read that both Alabama senators voted against this legislation.
Based upon his actions in dramatically increasing the deficit in one year and planning on similar deficits for his entire term, you don't think he REALLY cares about deficit reduction, do you?
ReplyDeleteIt takes more than a Congressional panel to implement deficit reduction, it takes a President who won't propose massive spending increases in order to fulfill an ideological agenda!
I was just saying that Obama seems to be straying from his habit of appointing Czars to handle his business for him.
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't think he worries about deficit reduction. I think his policies promot even more deficits.
Yes, I agree that he does like to create unaccountable Czars to run things, but I don't think he will do that here. For one thing, deficit cutting is popular, and so he wants to take personal credit for it.
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