Sunday, August 21, 2011
Reduce, reuse, recycle
If I were the “bipartisan, bicameral committee on deficit reduction”, I would simply have my staff retype the Simpson-Bowles plan on committee letterhead. It would save a lot of time and a lot of money and produce an outcome at least as good as anything the committee will come up with in the next three months.
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3 comments:
I disagree here (there's a surprise, eh?).
The Simpson-Bowles Committee's output is an excellent place from which to start, because it contained spending cuts and a beginning of entitlement reform (which itself begins from a false premise--that there should be entitlements at all--but it's a start). But the output is fatally flawed, as it includes tax increases.
The "super committee" is best held in gridlock and all the Draconian across the board cuts implemented if there continues an insistence on increased taxes.
Increased taxes are just an excuse to keep spending, not putting the increased revenues toward paying down our otherwise unsustainable debt.
The Feds don't need more taxes, though they'll get more tax revenue from true tax reform and from getting out of the way of the economy so that it can grow and, through that increased activity, produce more revenues.
There are two ways that the Feds can get out of the way of the economy: 1) sit down, and shut up, including rescinding the latest batch of intrusive, inhibiting regulations (for a list of such regulations with which to start, see all those enacted since 20 Jan 2009). 2) Cut spending below current revenue levels.
Eric Hines
There are a lot of things to dislike in Simpson-Bowles. But I see no reason for the new committee to spend their time and my money reinventing the wheel. We have a bipartisan agreement already; we don't need a different one. Vote Simpson-Bowles up or down and move on from there.
Like I said, Simpson-Bowles is a good start. But if we're going to have an up or down vote on it without giving the super committee a chance to improve on it (which I think they will fail to do), then my vote is NO, and let's move on from there.
Eric Hines
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