Battle4Liberty

The debt reduction super committee must decide by Wednesday how to cut $1.2 trillion over the next ten years or face automatic reductions that include a hefty cut in defense. However this turns out, the upcoming week will remind us that the Democrats are simply unwilling to address the spending problem and the Republicans aren’t willing to go deep enough

The current impasse is largely about taxes. The Democrats want the “rich” to pay more as a big part of the package while the Republicans want to cut spending, mostly in non-defense areas. The Republicans are essentially correct here. The current debt is a result of profligate spending, not tax cuts for the wealthy. Nonetheless, there are two deeper problems here.

First, this committee only exists because Obama and the Congress couldn’t get the job done in the first place. Boehner blinked and both sides agreed to kick the can down the road once again.

Second, $1.2 trillion over ten years is only $120 billion a year. Not only is this much less than Obama wants to spend in his recent “jobs” proposal, but it represents less than 10% of the projected deficit anyway. Besides, the only cuts that matter are those that are in the present.

The key point here is a simple one. If the best negotiators in the Congress and Senate can’t agree on $120 billion in annual reductions, then any real cuts will be impossible without a strong shift to the right. Bi-partisanship won’t get the job done, and the problem is too big to grow our way out of. Keep this in mind as you sort through the group of Republicans seeking the nomination.