social security | Back in the Black

No one is satisfied with the “fiscal cliff” legislation that was born at the turn of the year. Specifically, the federal government’s financial obligations are not satisfied, and a new budgetary booby trap has been set; there is no question that the ballooning public debt must be addressed again in short order.

So what happens next? How do we get out of this bleak place?

Washington policy watchers are caught in an intellectual vice – or actually, three of them simultaneously. To sketch out a “grand bargain” on the basis of the behavior of the last decade and a half is totally unrealistic. But without an unrealistic, fundamental change of Washington behavior, this potentially malignant problem does not get solved.

Over the last 72 hours, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has done a messaging tap dance. First he made comments about the political behavior of former President Ronald Reagan and also his own father, former President George H.W. Bush. But then Governor Bush made a more-current substantive statement: that he would accept a deficit-reduction deal that included ten dollars of spending cuts for every one dollar of tax increases.

For that, he was immediately castigated by members of his own party. Among them, Republican activist Grover Norquist criticized Governor Bush by saying that “…he thinks he’s sophisticated by saying that he’d take a 10:1 promise. He doesn’t understand — he’s just agreed to walk down the same alley his dad did with the same gang. And he thinks he’s smart. You walk down that alley, you don’t come out. You certainly don’t come out with 2:1 or 10:1.” Norquist’s organization, Americans for Tax Reform, posted a statement saying that “When bipartisan deals are struck promising to cut spending and raise taxes, the spending cuts don’t materialize but the tax hikes do.”

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