Democrats Push for Plan to Cut Deficit
The administration has not signaled what specific proposals it might make, but Mr. Orszag’s challenges are formidable: the chief sources of significant deficit reductions — savings in government health programs and tax increases on the rich — will have been tapped to offset the cost of a health care bill if it is enacted.
Health care taxes won't just hit "the rich," as we well know. Everyone will pay them. And savings in government health programs is a pipe dream. Basically, we have an administration that has gone on a spending spree over the last 10 months and wants to jam an overpriced, underproducing health care "reform" package down the collective American gullet, then argue how we need to increase taxes and suck it up to pay for the "inherited" financial crisis. Most reasonable people aren't going to buy this argument anymore, as Obama's slipping approval rating indicates.
The place to save will be cutting services, something Democrats are loathe to do, since their entire base is made up of leeches desperate to suck the blood out of everyone else.
The laugher in this silly article comes here:
Mr. Conrad favors something like the successful commission to close military bases, another decision that lawmakers found difficult to make because of parochial and political considerations.
What successful commission to close military bases? The one that has politicized base closings, punishing bases located in the opposition's territory? As someone who lived through the closing of Carswell A.F.B. (which was reopened as a Joint Naval Reserve Base), I can tell you that the effects on the local economy can be devastating. And back in 1995, President Bill Clinton bragged about taking a base off the closing list more than a month before the list was supposed to be released. There are clearly political considerations in base closings and I don't think that it is the process to look at deficit reduction.
|