Time to Close a Deal
This gets tiring after a while, watching politicians on the left and the right using the upcoming deadline over raising the federal debt limit to score political points with their respective bases. The idiocy of the Right’s “no new taxes or revenues ever ever ever” position against the Left’s preposterous “we’ll give everyone everything they ever want forever forever forever” — what a choice, huh? It isn’t even as if the politics behind the bickering are even very sophisticated; it’s basically “I’m keeping what I got, and so what if I blow up the economy for the second time in three years, at least I’ll win my next primary.”
Pathetic. Juvenile. Sad.
I give President Obama credit for being willing to compromise. While the Left howls in “he’s-sold-us-out” indignation, he’s doing the statesmanlike thing: placing interests of the country as a whole ahead of those of his political base. Sadly, the Republicans only see this as weakness, an ironic projection, probably, of their own political cowardice.
Any eleven randomly selected, moderately intelligent and knowledgeable, relatively politically neutral individuals could get together in a room and cut a deal in a day. It takes some tax increases (yes, some increases in addition to just loophole-cutting) and some spending cuts (yes, for some “third rail” programs, not just low-hanging fruit, most of which has already been picket). It takes serious adults putting the long-term national interest ahead of their short-term political interests.
It’s time to close a deal. But reading my last sentence above makes me extremely doubtful that will happen. Courage seems in very short supply in Washington.
