Pay a Little Now or a Lot Later

Thanks to yet another move by the Republicans to firmly reinforce their status as the Party of No, the extension of the Bush tax cuts is finally being worked on this weekend. The GOP declared that they would not allow anything else to be voted on until these were resolved, so that means no overturning of "Don't Ask/Don't Tell", no voting on the Dream Act, maybe even no vote on the New START treaty with Russia. Instead, we have been treated to another dose of Grade A political theater.

Oh sure, there are apparent bipartisan negotiations going on over the tax cuts since the so-called "Slurpee Summit" at the White House, but while this is happening, Democrats apparently are ignoring these negotiations and trying to get their plan to pass. The Democrat plan allows the tax cuts on those earning below $250,000 to continue, while in effect raising taxes on those who make more than that amount. This once again pits the middle class against not only the wealthy but the small business owners who will get hurt by such a tax increase as well. Vice-President Biden declared that the continuing iffy economic news was a sign that only the middle class tax cuts should be extended, signaling a disconnect in the White House about whether or not these bipartisan negotiations are also just for show.

The House Democrats passed the middle-class only plan on mostly partisan lines, then the Senate promptly came up 7 votes short of being able to bring the plan to a vote. Now the Democrats are left with two options, if they really want to just say the hell with bipartisanship (as they have done time and again the last 2 years): they can either REALLY make the GOP angry, declare reconciliation, and pass the House bill with 51 votes... or they can take their ball and go home, declaring the 111th Congress over and in so doing, let all of the tax cuts expire come January 1.

Now I'm normally all for hashing things out, negotiating, and reaching a fair compromise, but this is not the time for that. I'm going to come off looking like a tax-and-spend liberal here, but I'm truly not. I'm going to press my case for true fiscal responsibility... by stating once again that ALL of the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire.

The all-too-sobering report from the bipartisan debt commission is the reason. This may be news to some of you, but we currently have a staggering national debt of $14 TRILLION. We are going to have yet another vote next year about raising the debt ceiling so that we can avoid a default, and rumor has it that the new Tea Party congressmen may try to block the raise from passing. But back to this debt commission report: they have declared that what we need to do is drastically cut spending, including military spending (as I have advocated), raise the Social Security retirement age, raise taxes in non-harmful ways (like gasoline taxes... let's face it, gas prices are already rising due to the Fed's monetary policy, what's another 15 cents a gallon at this point), and fix our bloated entitlement programs. The recommendations have actually earned the support of a majority of the key panel of congressional co-chairmen, but only 11 out of 18, and 14 votes were needed to advance the recommendations to a full House-Senate vote.

And since the recommendations actually managed to make fiscal watchdogs out of a majority of these key politicians, the Left was bound to come out swinging against it. Most notably, that waste of a Nobel Economics Prize, Paul Krugman, who still seems to believe that because the debt ranks low on Americans' list of important issues, we can continue making a run at becoming the next Greece or Ireland. Not surprisingly, he blasted the calls for cuts in spending, before the full recommendations were even released. He couldn't wait to tell America that the solution is not balancing the books and avoiding the issues that plague the entire Eurozone right now, the solution is to continue to run up the debt, pass the debt ceiling measures, and (apparently) pray that China needs the jobs that our companies provide so much that they don't say the hell with us and stop buying our debt. He pretty much claimed that this was not a bipartisan debt commission at all, and that the Dems on the panel may as well be DINOs (Democrats In Name Only), when he proclaimed that the bipartisan compromise was between "the center-right and the hard right".

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post was right when she said there are two different conversations going on right now. You have the debt commission and others fretting about the size and unsustainability of our debt and the draconian measures that need to be taken to fix everything... and on the other side you have the Congress debating whether to add $3.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years, or $4 trillion. Interestingly enough, when Marcus said that on "This Week", Krugman had no response. Interesting... so he's for playing politics over debt measures? Actually, that wouldn't surprise me, based on the fact that he couldn't care less about the mounting size of the debt.

I'm not the only Republican calling for the end of the Bush tax cuts on everyone, by the way. David Stockman, former budget director for President Reagan (who, need I remind you, raised income taxes at one point in his presidency), is also for this method of helping to cut down our debt. I understand that in most circumstances, tax cuts lead to higher tax revenues. This is indeed true, but you have to wait a few years for that to come about. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of time. So I would recommend that in addition to the deficit commission's recommendations, we have to all deal with higher income taxes for a while until we balance our books. If we continue to watch this debt blimp up, we will eventually have no choice but to raise taxes even higher, crippling our economy (if you don't believe me, look at Ireland and Greece right now).

Nobody wants to believe what is happening, and there are too many political points to be gained, so we get the same old rhetoric from Democrats (raise taxes but leave spending as is... or raise it) and Republicans (cut spending - but only a tiny bit... and definitely not defense -and cut taxes) alike. We have a generation of Baby Boomers (and the Gen-Xers who followed them) who have always had everything handed to them or consumed in excess. They have never had to endure real sacrifice. In this sense, the Tea Partiers are not unlike the people in France who were rioting over the retirement age being raised to (*gasp*) 62. Well, it's time for them to pay the piper. The rest of us will have to pay as well; if anything, it might reinforce the trend in younger generations toward saving more and being more fiscally conscious.

We have two options: feel a little pain now or a lot of pain later. There are no other options. Let all of the tax cuts expire.