First, it's not "the deficit", it's the GOP deficit.
After that, I'd suggest that what is needed is not a "bipartisan" approach. What is needed is a populist approach, because Congress is part of the problem.
The initiatives in this NYT Op-ed I added to the list of growing ideas out there to help the GOP out of the *current* fiscal nightmare they have created and now they want to blame on *future* spending and entitlements. I didn't find it completely serious because it (1) didn't address how to pay for the GWOT or the expanding size of the standing army and didn't mention the rising (skyrocketing, by some estimates) costs of military "entitlements" and (2) didn't address the GOP heft that is still behind a repeal of the estate/inheritance taxes.
By the way, I was intrigued to find out that the absence of a carbon tax was a "flaw" in the "current tax system" (not the more obvious, a proposal of something new - is this how one rhetorically dodges mentioning "new taxes"?). I wouldn't mention it, except that is the frame that the GOP regulars are using to paint-over the facts that not only did they not fix the system or strive for a fiscal discipline, but that the fault lies not in themselves ... it's "the system".
PRICELESS - DO NOT MISS THIS
Oh, and here is a page from history, just because, for once, the Democrats can say, "told you so":
ROBERT RUBIN: Well, in a nutshell, Margaret, I think ... [Bush's 2001 Tax Cuts are] a very, very serious error of economic policy. If you look back over the last eight years, we've had remarkable economic conditions. I don't think there's any question fiscal discipline has been central to this in terms of bringing interest rates down and keeping confidence up. And I think that the Bush tax cut as announced would undermine fiscal discipline. I think there's a high probability it would lead to deficits on the non-entitlement, that is to say the non-Social Security, non-Medicare side of the budget. And I think those kind of deficits could lead to exactly the kind of economic conditions that we had in the early '90s.
sullylink
