Redscape - View topic - Off A Cliff - From Republic to Empire

Off A Cliff - From Republic to Empire

Page 1 of 1

Author

Topic

Pigmalia
Dignitary

Sun Jan 17, 2010 1:08 pm

I offer George Will's commentary just for those who would like to go off more than just the opinion of a Paulista.

Quote:

January 17, 2010
Off-The-Cliff, But Catching On
By George Will

WASHINGTON -- You know the foreboding you feel while watching the steamier Greek tragedies, when dynasties are falling and sons are marrying their mothers and everyone is behaving badly and you are thinking: Really, things cannot continue like this.

Washington feels that way on the rare and fleeting occasions when it really thinks about the nation's looming crisis of public finance. The crisis, which is obvious and inevitable, combines unfulfillable entitlement promises and unsustainable budget deficits. So Washington is succumbing, yet again, to an idee fixe, which is usually, and in this case, scary.

The awful idea is for Congress to divest itself of the core competence that the Constitution vests in it -- the power to make the taxing and spending choices that shape the nation. This power would be given to an 18-member panel assigned to solve the budgetary crisis.

Under legislation drafted by Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Judd Gregg, R-N.H., and endorsed by 33 other senators, the Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action would be composed of 16 members of Congress (four each selected by the House speaker and minority leader, and the Senate majority and minority leaders) plus the Treasury secretary and someone the president selects. The panel would propose spending cuts and tax increases to put the government on a glide path to solvency. The menu of proposals would be guaranteed an up-or-down vote -- no amendments permitted -- in both houses of Congress.

This is patterned on the commissions that were charged with deciding which military bases -- more of 300 of them, it turned out -- would be closed after the Cold War, a problem deemed too threatening to local sensibilities for Congress to cope with it. The Conrad-Gregg task force is the latest iteration of the "let's-all-hold-hands-and-jump-off-the-cliff-together" school of government, with this difference: Closing bases is small beer compared to the task force's sweeping mandate.

There are two objections -- each is sufficient -- to the task force. One is procedural, the other is substantive.

Regarding procedure, consider a sentence in a Fiscal Times story in The Washington Post on the task force idea, a sentence that seems bland only because of this city's advanced state of constitutional decadence: "The White House has been talking to Congress to try to craft a proposal that would not wholly relinquish congressional control over major decisions on taxes and spending." Wholly? The oath of office for representatives and senators does not commit them to partially or occasionally or when convenient "support and defend," and bear "true faith and allegiance" to, the Constitution and "faithfully discharge the duties" of their offices.

Substantively, the task force would be a means of conscripting Republican participation in huge tax increases. There are precedents. The 1983 Greenspan Commission that "fixed" Social Security permanently (permanence is not what it used to be) involved large and immediate tax increases and small and delayed trims to benefits. The year after the 1990 budget summit, which resulted in President George H.W. Bush's renunciation of his "no new taxes" pledge, the budget deficit almost doubled.

Were the Conrad-Gregg task force to come to a consensus, it almost certainly would be that Congress must make the supposedly "difficult choice" of spending more of other people's money. Fortunately, the task force probably would be paralyzed by the requirement that its proposals must be endorsed by at least 14 -- 78 percent -- of its members. Given the difficulty of getting 60 percent of the Senate to agree on anything important, a 78 percent consensus on raising taxes and cutting entitlements will be extremely elusive.

Year one of the Obama administration was devoted to deliberately exacerbating the fiscal crisis. The gusher of spending, combined with the new multitrillion-dollar health care entitlement, is half of liberalism's plan to radically and permanently increase government's grasp on the nation's wealth. As a response to the crisis, the task force would produce the other half.

Armies on the march are supposedly no match for an idea, especially a bad one, whose time has come. But what armies cannot defeat, monetary incentives might. So, the Gregg-Conrad legislation should be amended to include this language:

"During the life of this task force, which will perform Congress' fundamental duties, all senators and representatives will be considered on vacation and will not be paid. If the task force's recommendations are accepted by Congress, there will be no congressional pay until 2050."

This would be a Madisonian measure, altering incentives in order to encourage responsibility. Let's vote.

I know people tire of my oversimplification of things, but wouldn't it go a long way to resolving all of this if government had to spend what it had? In essence the government also side stepped the market system by not accepting the limitations that would have been naturally placed on them by the financial crisis. Why would we expect Wall Street or the government to fix anything if they are allowed to side step the consequences of the market. It works for them after all. Congress won't even grant itself the authority to have powers to give full audit to the Federal Reserve.

Without Congress controlling the purse strings of the nation and writing all of it's laws, then we lurch to a future where there will no longer be a Constitutional Rule of Law. We will increasingly rely more and more on the POTUS, central planning, and extra-Constitutional entities like the Federal Reserve.

Isn't the seismic shift occurring in the Massachusetts Senate race indicative of the People rejecting the mandate of the entire government?

posts: 4729 | location: Autonomous Inland Empire - Occupied | joined: 02 Feb 2006

Jaundiced Jaffe
Ambassador

Sun Jan 17, 2010 1:35 pm

The scary thing is that I mostly agree with Pig and Mr. Will, as it relates to fiscal irreponsibility and our Government's inability to come to grips with the problems that it has created. Unlike Pig though, I don't forsee some sort of Constiutional Crisis. Rather, I forecast the economic decline (collapse?) of the U.S., and the impact that will have on the U.S. in particular and the entire world in general.

I'm a pragmatist, and I am not against the Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action if it could succeed in substantially reducing spending, even if a small to moderate amount of tax increase was necessary to get there.

JJ

posts: 1215 | location: Massachusetts, USA | joined: 08 Jun 2000 | medals: 6

Pigmalia
Dignitary

Tue Jan 26, 2010 6:27 am

Quote:

WASHINGTON – The latest congressional budget estimates due Tuesday predict a $1.35 trillion deficit for this year, a top Capitol Hill aide says.

_________________
“I enjoy crushing bastards.” Assange

posts: 4729 | location: Autonomous Inland Empire - Occupied | joined: 02 Feb 2006

Pigmalia
Dignitary

Wed Jan 27, 2010 8:50 pm

Economic Crisis in 2010 and Beyond

posts: 4729 | location: Autonomous Inland Empire - Occupied | joined: 02 Feb 2006

Pigmalia
Dignitary

Mon Feb 01, 2010 10:47 am

Quote:

The result is a budget plan that would give the country trillion-dollar-plus deficits for three consecutive years. Obama's new budget projects a spending increase of 5.7 percent for the current budget year and forecasts that spending would rise another 3 percent in 2011 to $3.83 trillion.

I get that unemployment, food stamps, and medicaid cost more due to the economic situation, and I wouldn't want to deprive people of those expected benefits, but the rest of it all just seems ridiculous. I mean why does the government need to spend if the Fed is already pumping trillions of dollars into the economy?

I could appreciate the concept that we want to reinvigorate the economy because of our concern with the GDP/debt ratio (if the GDP contracts too much the ratio of debt goes up), but still that would seem that private sector stimulus (easy money, tax cuts, money directly in people's hands) is the way to go as increasing public sector costs (the size of government) and unfunded entitlements only means that we fall further behind in our GDP/debt ratio in the long term.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.....ublic_debt

posts: 4729 | location: Autonomous Inland Empire - Occupied | joined: 02 Feb 2006

rickyp
Statesman

Tue Feb 09, 2010 5:27 am

pig said

Quote:

could appreciate the concept that we want to reinvigorate the economy because of our concern with the GDP/debt ratio (if the GDP contracts too much the ratio of debt goes up), but still that would seem that private sector stimulus (easy money, tax cuts, money directly in people's hands) is the way to go as increasing public sector costs (the size of government) and unfunded entitlements only means that we fall further behind in our GDP/debt ratio in the long term.

Not necessarily. In the early 90's Canada's federal gov had a debt to GDP ratio of 94%. It got down to 34% after 14 successive surpluses and a generally expansivce economy. recent stimulus has reveresed that course, but experience shows that an expanding economy and a disciplined surplus sustained over time can reinvigorate an economy.
The US might require some structural changes however... Food for thought.

Quote:

More bad news: The U.S. health system, already far and away the most expensive on Earth, has taken another terrible cost jump. In 2009, Americans spent a total of 17.3% of national income on health care, up from 16.2% in 2008. Most other advanced countries spend between 8% and 11%. Second-place Switzerland spends about 11.5%.
These numbers bounce off the head, I know. So here are some comparisons.
If U.S. health-care costs dropped to Swiss levels, it would be as if the United States suddenly got its entire military budget for free, with enough change to equal the entire economy of South Africa.
If U.S. health-care costs dropped to Swiss levels, the US budget deficit would vanish as soon as the U.S. economy emerged from recession.
If U.S. health-care costs dropped to Swiss levels, the United States could afford to cut income tax rates by 80% or abolish its entire Social Security payroll tax system.

posts: 4768 | location: Oakville, Ontario, Canada | joined: 14 Aug 2000

Pigmalia
Dignitary

Tue Feb 16, 2010 5:39 pm

U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion

posts: 4729 | location: Autonomous Inland Empire - Occupied | joined: 02 Feb 2006

Page 1 of 1

You cannot post new topics
You cannot reply to topics
You cannot edit your posts
You cannot delete your posts
You cannot vote in polls
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum

Jump to: