Posted by
Bill Crawford on Saturday, June 04, 2011 8:41:39 PM
The Tea Party exists because of the debt. The debt from WWII wound down every year with the post war economy, and after the OPEC embargo in 1973, it ballooned back up. It waxed and waned under six Presidents after that, but stayed within a range.
People were uncomfortable with TARP in late 2008 because it went well past that established range, but enough were convinced that it was the more constructive choice. I was one of them.
Then Obama went and used this new debt as a baseline, and all hell broke loose. This is the issue that brought him from being a consensus figure in 2008 to a pinada two years later. That is where we are now.
And where is that? A few months after the conventional wisdom was having the debt limit extended because ultimately, it was the responsible thing to do turns into a 300+ House vote to not play the game, until there are more spending cuts.
Which brings us to Paul Ryan, and his lightning rod budget. The Dems didn't even try to put one up last year, they just announced their spending levels "deemed as passed". The interesting thing about the Ryan plan is that many in the GOP are wondering whether or not to get on board with it. This is happening with the Presidential hopefuls as well.
Well, here's the future for you, if anyone cares. First, the only chance for Obama to win and his party not to get shellacked worse than last year is to preempt Ryan and come up with some competetive numbers that can be worked into a coalition. Unfortunately for them, this will not happen. It is not where their hearts are.
Any Republican Presidential candidate who gets on board will jump in the polls, and they will find fund raising much easier than they ever thought.
Third, Paul Ryan is not the final answer, and neither is his budget. He has set a framework, and the numbers he proposes are going to end up being in the neighborhood of reality, from the spending side at least. This is way too big an issue to be decided by one man, or a Congressional Comittee. This issue will properly decided by the 2012 election.
The point being (seque back to Tea Party), tax increases will have to remain off the table until the government shows it can actually cut spending. Congress screwed Reagan on this in '86 and Bush in '91, and people have long memories of this.
Here is the big shocker: if good progress can be made in spending cuts and that isn't enough to tackle the debt, we will all voluntarily take a hit in taxation. The size of the hit will astound people, and the fact that Tea Party types will be out front for it will as well.
Until the spending cuts happen, though, nothing else can be on the table. It is the consequence of eighty years of constant growth.