Second, somewhat positive thoughts about the Catfood Commission

Actually, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles may have done us all a favor by laying out exactly what has to happen if we’re to sink the deficit without raising taxes on the rich and the affluent upper middle class and without making significant cuts in defense spending (their recommended 15 percent is half of what needs to be done) and without telling the Big Banks and the Big Business Interests they have to stop playing with the economy as if it’s their personal board game.

Simpson and Bowles have drawn up a responsible conservative Republican plan for tackling the deficit.

The thing is there are no responsible conservative Republicans in Congress because the American people don’t want responsible conservative Republican government.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean they want responsible liberal Democratic government instead.

They want Tea Party government whose philosophy can pretty much be boiled down to “Everything for me and none for thee.”

As digby has been quick to spot, the Washington Insiders are already rallying round the idea that the reason this Very Serious Proposal for ending the deficit made by Very Serious People won’t get to do the Very Serious Job that all Very Serious People know has to be done is that unserious people on the extreme right and extreme left are going to get in the Very Serious People’s way.

But, leaving aside question of to what degrees  liberals and true conservatives are at the extremes of their respective parties, the only responsible and serious plans for cutting the deficit are coming from the far Right and the not quite as far left Left.

Those on the Right want to cut everything to the point that we’d pretty much be left with a federal government that does nothing but guard the borders and put out forest fires.

That’s horrifying, and a little nuts, but it’s serious and responsible in that we wouldn’t be enjoying services and benefits we weren’t paying for.

Those on the Left, liberal Democrats, want to sink the deficit by raising taxes back to Clinton era levels, reining in out of control Medicare costs, making meaningful defense cuts, and increasing revenue by creating more and higher paying jobs.

The people who aren’t serious are establishment Republicans and so-called moderate Democrats.

Establishment Republicans, which is to say the ones who will control the House and lead the minority in the Senate, only want to cut taxes on the rich, de-regulate Wall Street and Big Business, raise not lower defense spending, and screw the poor and the blue collar middle class in ways that don’t inconvenience their own white collar middle class voters.  Their only “serious” plan to cut spending is to take nickels and dimes away from people for whom nickels and dimes are the difference between paying the rent and buying groceries this week.

“Moderate” Democrats are Democrats who think that their only hope for saving some liberal programs is to convince establishment Republicans to start acting like responsible conservative Republicans and then compromising on everything with them.

The result of this brilliant strategy is a Democratic President seeming to propose major cuts in Social Security!

Comments

[actor212]

Hand in hand with this, and I suspect there's some collusion involved, the Obama administration has signaled it will not oppose an extension of the Bush era tax cuts.

You know, the ones that did nothing for our nation?

[Linkmeister]

I've concluded that if Obama goes along with this not only is he not a liberal, he's not even a Democrat, and by winning in 2008 he successfully pulled off the biggest con job in American political history.

[Jim 7]

They can give me the Social security that I've paid for since 1983, or they can pay my room and board after I rob a bank. It's their call.
Want to join my gang?

[Lee]

Shorter---> we are so screwed.

[redactor]

I don't see this so much as a serious proposal as rather setting the agenda. From now on, there won't be any discussion about raising taxes on the rich; the only question is how much we'll lower them. There won't be any discussion about how to help the middle class and working class stay in their homes and stay afloat; it will be about how much they have to sacrifice to get the country moving again.

And the inevitable compromise will demonstrate once again why after Watergate, after Iran-Contra, after impeachment, after Katrina, after the financial debacle, after Obamamania, Democrats cannot neither hold onto a majority nor govern effectively when they have one.

Which is basically a longer way to say what Lee said in 4 words.

[Batocchio]

Actually, I'd raise taxes to pre-Reagan levels, with some more tax brackets at the top, among other things (I'll defer to the honorable experts on the details), but yeah. Spot on as usual. It's painful, but there are really no responsible adults in the Republican Party, not on the national level. That decline started seriously with Reagan, then Gingrich, Bush the Younger, that grifter Palin, Boehner...

[Bill Altreuter]

There are no liberal Democrats in Congress. Suggesting that this chimera might have a hand in scuttling reform is absurd.

[julia]

You know, growing up in New York, it was one of the formative decisions of my political life that I was never going to vote for Nelson Rockefeller.

Now, between the primaries and the general, I've voted for two different Nelson Rockefellers*, and I ended up with the Nelson Rockefeller who still thinks the American Conservative Union will stop being mean to him if he lurches to the right a little harder.

Personally, I've decided to personalize the issue and blame David Axelrod, who gifted us with both of the new Nelsons. And go figure - he's decided that the reason things went all pearshaped is that the White House didn't compromise cravenly enough with House Republicans. Because people facing homelessness who don't know how to feed their children are on the barricades agitating for John Boehner's amour propre.

*This may not be fair to Nelson 1, who, unlike his political stepchildren, was unambiguously pro-choice.