As they say, "you know you have a good deal when nobody is happy with it", and that is exactly what we have this morning with the passing of the fiscal cliff deal's winners and losers.
I'm glad that this nonsense with the fiscal cliff is over (for now) but am disappointed that more wasn't done to address revenues and spending cuts, which have been kicked down the road until the end of February as a result.
By backing off his campaign pledge to extend the Bush Tax cuts for only those making less than $250K a year and raising the limit to $400K for individuals ($450K for joint filers), President Obama made a huge concession that nearly cut in half the projected revenue that he campaigned on and the american people overwhelmingly supported. As for entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, I don't believe that they are adding to or driving the deficit, per say, as much as conservatives say they are. As in the past, these programs can be tweaked without much pain to ensure that they are solvent and are around for a very long time.
It is the recession that was brought on by unsustainable defense spending, driven by a military industrial complex and the chicken hawk members of congress, who wasted hundreds of billions of dollars fighting two, largely unpaid for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past 10 years, that are the real culprit that has lead us to the (perceived) debt crisis of the past few years. Can you imagine where we would be at today if the war in Iraq never happened?
Now everyone will be looking towards March 1st and the big showdown that the President and Congress will have over spending and entitlement cuts and the raising of the debt ceiling.
No comments:
Post a Comment