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12/2/2010
Deficit commission moves forward – I’m thrilled

Friday I was really down in the dumps, absolutely bummed at the seeming failure of the debt commission to come up with anything – anything that would get this country moving on addressing its spending, deficit and debt problems. (Yup, I was whining about it.)

Yesterday I had the luxury of spending a couple hours in the kitchen and on the couch, cooking and knitting my way through Christmas gift projects, all the while with the TV on – switching back and forth between C-Span 1, C-Span 2 and Fox News.

I saw history in the making, often with my mouth agape. Senator Durbin (D-IL) offering up his agreement to an age 69 retirement for Social Security – in 60 years. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), an exemplary, unwavering, staunch conservative acknowledging that something had to give.

Today’s Washington Post does a good job capturing my surprise – and I suppose one could say, giddy joy. Weird I guess.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), one of the panel's most influential liberals, embraced a proposal to raise the retirement age to 69 in 2075, calling it "not radical" and "acceptable to me" - a rebuke to the progressive groups, labor organizations and advocates for the elderly that have criticized the idea.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Tex.), a leader of the GOP's conservative wing, said he could live with a proposal to cut military spending and increase overall federal tax collections as long as income tax rates were lowered, spending cuts were enforced and Democrats agreed to reexamine the growth of spending envisioned under the recent health-care law.

And Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.), one of the Republican Party's most respected voices on budget matters, came close to signing on to the package, saying, "This problem is so real, Tom Coburn can't have everything he wants."

Commission co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson were everywhere, talking with anyone who would listen. They got the word out: This will be tough. Tough. But folks, it must be done.

As David Broder wrote today (a similar thought echoed by many others), “Something historic has happened in Washington.” And Erskine Bowles: The era of deficit denial in Washington is over.”

Indeed. It’s about time. Many many hills still to climb. But dang it, it’s a great darn start.

Jo Egelhoff, FoxPolitics.net

COMMENTS

Totally agree Jo...it will be interestig to see how this is followed thru on my Congress and the President.

JB (Thu Dec 02 07:35:26 2010)

Krugman on Bowles-Simpson:

>>>Yep, It’s Regressive
Jon Chait takes another look at Bowles-Simpson, this time with numbers from the Tax Policy Center, and is disillusioned. As I surmised, it redistributes income upward: the bottom 80 percent of families would pay higher taxes than they did in the Clinton years, while the top 20 percent — and especially the top 5 percent — would pay less; not what you’d call shared sacrifice.

The only twist here is that the ultra-rich, the top 0.1 percent, who get a lot of their income from dividends and capital gains, would be hit by having these gains taxed as ordinary income. Even so, they would face a smaller tax increase than the bottom 60 percent.

This wasn’t the plan we’ve been looking for; on taxes, what on earth were they thinking?<<<

From a later post;

>>>Bowles-Simpson, the revision, is out. It has not improved.

I think it is worth pointing out that like so many proposals from that side of the political spectrum — for this is, very much, bipartisanship as a compromise between the center-right and the hard right — this one involves a fundamental piece of strange logic. Namely, it argues that in order to head off the dire prospect of future cuts in Social Security benefits, we must … cut future Social Security benefits.<<<

Dean Weichmann (Thu Dec 02 08:33:41 2010)

>>> "...it redistributes income upward"

Dean, the wealthy fund the campaigns and the poor people don't. That's the way it is. And all conservatives (and their families) will have to be wealthy or suffer the consequences. What could be more fair?

Jack Lohman (Thu Dec 02 08:44:29 2010)

Seems like the commission is taking it out on taxpayers, seniors, instead of eliminating overall government which has to be cut severely.
In 2005, about 7,000 government workers were making $150,000 of more per year. Now there are over 82,000 making that much. Over half of Congress are millionaires with a median wealth of $2.38 million. Speaker Pelosi's net worth soared nearly double to $21.7 million in one year. Defense Department had 9 employees earning $170,000 per year in 2005. When Obama took over, there were 214. Now 994!
Including benefits, the government employees make nearly double what the private sector makes for similar jobs. Benefits for federal workers average near $32,115 while private sector is less than $10,000.
Something has to change as Obama has increased the government job holders about the same as he has ballooned the deficit!
Let's be cutting the funding to PBS. Strictly a liberal slanting radio and TV. They don't need it!
Why has the federal government a federal office for each state.
Have all paperwork in one language.
Cap all funding for Congressional travel to their homes or junkets, free lunches, office funding, assistants, etc. Make themn pay into their health and retirement programs. No pork projects.
Then it gets a little harder.
Like only every other day postal delivery to residential and small business. Could eliminate nearly 1/3 of workforce and increase junk mail fees. They now have 600,000 postal workers making on average $35.00 an hour.
Cut foreign donations to those we really have to have.
Cut the military forces in foreign countries in half.
And eliminate the Departments of Transportation, Education and Agriculture.
Turn prisons over to private industry.
There are 15 Executive Cabinet Departments, 70 Independent Agencies and hundreds of sub offices and agencies. Nearly 3 million workers not counting CIA, NSA, FBI and Secret Service. Cut the number of offices and agencies and eliminate at least 1/4 of all workers in govermeent. Those making $150,000 and over increased from near 7,000 to 82,000. Tenfold! Under Obama, 214 over $170,000 to nearly 1,000!
Then we will get somewhere! Cutting Social Security and Medicare as the first priority is ridiculous. Taking it out on Seniors and the poor.
Back to the drawing board.

John Hyland (Thu Dec 02 09:20:10 2010)

Nearly all of the suggestions have some merit and we are so fortunate that serious, smart people spent their time to try to help this country. Now all the statements by all of the interest groups come out and the press plays them up and my heart kinda starts to sink. Will the politicians actually "man up" or will they roll over?

One example: The mortgage interest deduction costs the US Treasury 131 BILION dollars a year--that's a lot of dough. Same article pointed out that housing and realty groups spent over 51 million dollars on the politicians' campaigns most recent cycle. Wow--that's a LOT of dough! They will throw their wieght around without mercy. God help the pols that want to do the right thing.

JeanMarie (Thu Dec 02 09:20:46 2010)

By the way, Postal service lost 8.5 Billion last year!!!

John Hyland (Thu Dec 02 09:24:23 2010)

John, the postal service has been hit by technology advances, as so much of our economy has. You and I are using email and PayPal and the web instead of first class mail.

They should flip the finger to UPS and FedEx who delivery truckloads to them to deliver to areas that they do not service. They should cut deliveries to three times a week (M-W-F and T_T_S) and give HALF their delivery staff 6-day weeks and lay off the other half.

Of course the private FedEx and UPS will have to punt, or increase their rates and match the USPS 100% delivery geography. And the right-wingers who send packages will have to increase their budgets.

That's the way it is. But I like your list.

Jack Lohman (Thu Dec 02 10:13:30 2010)

The first part of raising the Social Security retirement age is to make people understand that Social Security was never intended to be a sole means of support for retired people.

People have been encouraged over the years to think it is their retirement account, a blatant political ploy, IMNSHO. Not encouraging the citizens of this country to rely on their own savings gives them more reason to rely on "government" to take care of their needs on our way to a socialist hell.

I do think 69 is rather high for a retirement age if you're a manual laborer. I've known people who worked well into their 80s but, for the most part, they weren't "totin' dat barge and liftin' dat bale".

I know many of us don't want to see Social Security lowered but I think it's the only responsible way to go because it looks to me as though job benefits (labor union and teacher's union bennies) and Social Security are sucking the most money out of the taxpayers' pocket.

I would like to see non-essential spending slashed across the board and I don't want to see that the first thing slashed are police and fire workers positions. This is always the bugaboo with which to scare the citizenry and it's absolutely bogus.

There is no department in government that couldn't stand a good housecleaning and I recommend a bonus be given to people who find wasteful spending in their departments. That would work at least on 2 levels. First, the workers in the department are close enough to the problem that they know what it is. 2nd, they can be the cost-cutting heroes with money in their hands.

The new info to come out about TARP funds having been given to not only U.S. companies, but companies around the world is mind-blowing. Is no one watching the store at all? We need overseers watching over the overseers, too.

AND NO MORE 2,000 PAGE BILLS!

Someone also has to be in charge of throwing a lasso around the Fed, Fannie & Freddie. Enough of these unelected entities having the freedom to throw our money around like Tinker Bell with fairy dust!

C. R. Stevenson (Thu Dec 02 10:20:55 2010)

>>> "... non-essential spending slashed across the board???"

C.R., politicians spend money because they are PAID to spend money by the Fat Cats that want in our pockets. Only public funding of campaigns will stop that.

Jack Lohman (Thu Dec 02 11:30:23 2010)

Jo, I hope you could read this by Ben Cohen, I just found his blog.

Krugman's Warning on Economy
by Ben Cohen
Part of why I write this blog is to try and synthesize complicated ideas into understandable, compact posts so that busy people can keep up to date with the current events. It's part selfish as it helps me to clarify what I actually think about things (not always immediately evident), but overall, I like to think I provide a useful service.

When it comes to economics, most of the population has been walled off from the 'science' because it sounds far too complicated. As someone who isn't particularly gifted at math or economics (I dropped it at college as it almost put me to sleep), I can tell you that it actually isn't that hard to understand. Economics is called the 'junk science' for a reason: it isn't a science, and it doesn't require a scientist to understand it.

Paul Krugman is one of the rare economists able to translate the mountains of indecipherable jargon into understandable English (although even he is guilty of assuming his readers understand concepts like 'liquidity traps' and 'unconventional monetary policy'). And in his latest column, he spells out why we must, at all costs, not revert to conservative economics even though the economy seems to have gotten through the worst of the recession. By this, he means that we should not obsess over deficits (the debt built up by government through spending money it doesn't have), and should focus on spending more to create jobs and build infrastructure for long term growth. He writes:

Spending money now means a stronger economy, both in the short run and in the long run. And a stronger economy means more revenues, which offset a large fraction of the upfront cost. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the offset falls short of 100 percent, so that fiscal stimulus isn’t a complete free lunch. But it costs far less than you’d think from listening to what passes for informed discussion. Look, I know more stimulus is a hard sell politically. But it’s urgently needed. The question shouldn’t be whether we can afford to do more to promote recovery. It should be whether we can afford not to. And the answer is no.....

Dean Weichmann (Fri Dec 03 10:21:34 2010)

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