Trouble Brewing

Uh-oh, buckle up, debt limit talks are predictably snagged over disagreements on spending and taxing.  BREAKING NEWS!


Yesterday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor withdrew from budget talks over the issue of tax "hikes." This is probably more of a ploy to get President Obama and John Boehner involved in the negotiations than it is to actually jeopardize the process, but with the August deadline for raising the debt ceiling getting unsettlingly close, the impasse is a bad sign.  


It seems as though the two sides have been able to agree on quite a few spending cuts, presumably this means that Democrats have made more substantial concessions that Republicans, but that is only an assumption.  But we are faced with a huge deficit and only in Republican fairy land are we able to eliminate that deficit without raising taxes.  No one is asking for or pushing for huge tax increases, and truthfully, letting the Bush tax cuts expire isn't a tax hike so much as it is a reversion to the 1990's norm, and let us remember that the 1990's norm was a booming economy (one in which Clinton RAISED taxes and still presided over growth) and that even in the 1990s, taxes were still comparatively low.  


So then I find the following quotes very troubling:


President Obama needs to decide between his goal of higher taxes, or a bipartisan plan to address our deficit. He can't have both


Tax hikes are off the table.  First off, raising taxes is going to destroy job. 


These statements represent the Republican point of view that is both hypocritical and ignorant.  If Obama wants a bipartisan plan to address the deficit then it should include raising taxes, otherwise it is not bipartisan but rather a Republican construction that will presumably slash important spending with little regard, similar to previous Republican proposals.  It is hard to come off as being fair when you criticize the other guy for accepting all of your ideas but not being allowed to insert some of his own.  Maybe that is the definition of cooperation being embraced by the current manifestation of the Republican party.


But hypocrisy aside, Republicans are determined that "tax hikes are off the table." While this is probably posturing, the fact that Republicans are mathematically incompetent is a problem when dealing with an issue like the budget.  But their woeful lack of knowledge extends into other realms as well.  Raising taxes is going to destroy jobs...well maybe in the current economic climate it would.  And I've said before that I don't think raising taxes now is the right idea even though the notion that taxing the uber-rich more would somehow inhibit job growth is ludicrous.  But raising taxes is going to destroy jobs?  Taxes were far, far higher in the 1950's a decade that saw booming growth.  President Clinton presided over nearly a decade of growth while RAISING taxes during the middle of the boom. John Boehner was actually one of the Republicans swept aside after Newt Gingrich's foolish decision to hold the welfare of the country hostage for political gain in his standoff with Clinton.  One would think maybe Boehner would remember that.  Apparently that is giving him too much credit.


So now we have reached an impasse and it is up to the President and Boehner to fix it.  I would prefer that they had been involved from the beginning as I actually feel as though the two of them have developed some kind of bizarre rapport. Nevertheless, if Republicans want to talk about bipartisanship and if they want to get serious about deficit reduction then they need to stop holding the America's economic welfare hostage, they need to stop living in mathematical dream world, and they need to be wiling to accept the same types of sacrifices that they are demanding from Democrats.