Debt Talks Proved Dems Are Lax When it Comes to Spending Cuts

Both sides claimed we must deal with the debt issue, but I do not think you can expect the average American to understand how dangerous our deficit and debt are.

When people can look around and see federal funds wasted on boondoggles like high speed rail, solar power, wind power, ethanol, and Tom Barrett’s trolley it would be natural to assume these are not actions of a government facing a serious fiscal crisis. In addition to these, we see many programs that have some value, but clearly a country that needs to borrow 40 percent of what it is spending, is over $14 trillion in debt, and over $80 trillion in unfunded liabilities should not be funding these.  These programs include things like the Public Broadasting System, the National Endowment for the Arts, Amtrak Subsidies, Community Development Fund, Department of Energy grants for weatherization, etc.  At this point we have not even got to the cuts that hurt like dealing with entitlements or defense.

The GOP proposed the Ryan Plan which would have been a good start by combining a pro-economic growth strategy while saving $6.2 trillion over ten years. The Ryan Plan would produce  more savings after the first 10 years from actually having a plan to deal with Medicare making it sustainable. Granted, it probably did not cut enough in first ten years, but Obama and Democrats accused the GOP of “ending Medicare as we know it.”  Nevermind that Obamacare already does that and everyone knows we can’t keep Medicare the same without having a debt crisis.

With debt ceiling vote and facing a debt downgrade the House passed “Cut, Cap and Balance.” What did Obama and the Democrats do? They called it extreme and tabled it in the Senate.  They initially rejected the Boehner plan because they wanted a larger deal with more debt but bogus spending cuts like claiming savings from ending wars scheduled to end anyway.  Yet the Democrats have gone over 800 days without passing a budget in the Senate but rejected every responsible plan form house. The best plan they had was more of a doodle than a plan as the CBO told Obama they can’t score a speech.

Listen to Democrats on any cut and they'll find a reason not to cut it. Take PBS for example. They say things like we need PBS for news like NPR, really, like CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and that most newspapers do not provide enough left- biased media.  Suggest cutting all discretionary programs to 2008 levels and you hear the National Weather Service will not be able to warn of storms, students will not be able to go to college… you get the picture.

The problem is that both parties have been for bigger government, Bush created the prescription drug program for seniors, Obama creates a plan for government takeover of healthcare. The only difference was how fast government would grow.  Now with the Tea Party and mainstream conservatives wanting fiscal sanity, the GOP has many in congress and a base that will support cutting spending. The Democrats base is built on getting government goodies, or Liberals who want government to try to fix social problems so they can feel good that they tried even though the programs make things worse.

Worse yet, you have some Democrats actually thinking we should spend more on “creating jobs”. They did not seem to care about jobs in 2010 when they worked hard to stop the rebound in the economy by passing Obamacare, Dodd-Frank Financial bill, threatening Cap &Trade, EPA gone wild, subsidizing unemployment, or right now with NLRB suing Boeing. 

Democrats want more taxes, which is like giving whisky to a drunk.  If you give more money to a person with a spending problem they will not deal with root cause. Taxes may need adjustments at some point, but let's get serious about spending first. It should be clear by now that if we want to fix debt and the economy the key is 2012 elections. About 30 to 35 percent of voters are awake on this issue, but 30 percent are still comatose. We must wake up enough of the rest to elect a conservative President and Senate.