Deficits: Liberals are howling about the latest Simpson-Bowles
deficit plan because, they say, it's too right wing. It's hardly that.
But the plan does expose how fatuous President Obama's claims about the
deficit have been.
To hear the left tell it, the updated plan from Alan Simpson and
Erskine Bowles — the bipartisan team that headed Obama's debt commission
three years ago — is a sop to Republicans, proposing far too much in
spending cuts and way too little in tax hikes.
Jonathan Chait of New York magazine, for example, decried it as "a
marker of the sheer power of Republican obstinacy." Kevin Drum
complained in Mother Jones that "they've apparently decided that
conservatives should put a whole lot fewer of their sacred cows on the
table." MSNBC's Steve Benen grumbled about how it "leans heavily —
almost self-consciously — in one party's direction."
Please.
To start with, the new plan has something like $3 in spending cuts
for every $1 in tax hikes. But just three months ago, Obama bragged that
his so-called plan had $2.5 in cuts for each $1 in new taxes, so it's
close to the mark.
And can someone explain to us just how is it that a deficit-cutting
plan that proposes another $600 billion in tax hikes, on top of the $620
billion Obama got at the start of this year, to say nothing of the $500
billion in new ObamaCare taxes, is too Republican?
Given that our deficit problems are entirely on the spending side, new taxes should be off the table entirely.
Meanwhile, Simpson and Bowles are far too timid when it comes to
reforming Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. And in their urgent
call for "bend the health cost curve down," they fail to point out that
ObamaCare will massively bend it up.
But for its many flaws, what the latest Simpson-Bowles plan does do
is expose how misleading Obama has been about the nation's deficit
problems, and how misguided his own proposals are.
First, and most importantly, they call the lie on Obama's
oft-repeated claim that the job of deficit cutting is nearly complete,
pointing out that whatever deficit cutting has taken place is "far from
sufficient to put the debt on a downward path."
Simpson and Bowles also correctly advocate tax reform that lowers
rates. But Obama's overriding interest is to raise taxes still higher on
the "rich."
They argue for entitlement and tax reforms that "encourage work and
savings," while Obama pushes programs designed to maximize
cradle-to-grave dependence on government.
And they urge a growth agenda that will "promote work, encourage
innovation, improve productivity, and bolster investment in the future,"
while Obama's mix of tax hikes on investors and businesses, massive new
regulations, and huge deficits will continue to produce the opposite
results.
Obama hasn't released his own budget plan yet, and won't for several
more weeks. But unless something miraculous happens in the White House,
we don't expect any of this to change.
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