Ask any Republican candidate or Congressman, and they will tell you that government is too big, spends too much, and needs to be reined in. They've been listening to their constituents, and their constituents are mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore.
But the anger and outrage is covering for a total lack of serious solutions. The GOP Pledge to America promises to cut taxes, but has no specifics when it comes to cutting spending. And when you ask Republican candidates for specifics, they come up empty.
Dana Milbank notes the following:
If Tea Party adherents were serious about shrinking the federal government, they would have put down their picket signs, abandoned their defense of Christine O'Donnell's phony résumé and crowded into Room 608 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building last week.
There, 18 Democrats and Republicans sat around a conference table to work on what may be the last hope for gaining control of government spending.
The problem with the anger and outrage driving the purported "wave election" for Republicans in 2010 is that no Republican can make an honest claim to solve the problems that fuel the anger and outrage. Kevin McCarthy, a key architect of the Pledge to America, couldn't identify a single program he'd cut to shrink the size of government. On NPR, McCarthy said Republicans would roll back the stimulus package passed through Congress in 2009. (That's the stimulus that has saved or created over 3 million jobs so far, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.) So, quite literally, the Republicans want to push the economy backward, into the proverbial ditch where they left it to go drink their Slurpees in 2009.
Back to Dana Milbank...
The good news: The members of President Obama's Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform are nearing agreement on a mixture of tax and spending policies that would put the country back on a path to solvency. The bad news: Nobody thinks their proposals have a chance of becoming law.
And if the Tea Party was serious about shrinking the size of government, they should be paying much closer attention to the bipartisan/nonpartisan Fiscal Commission created by President Obama and consisting of a mix of Congressmen (Democratic and Republican), budget experts, and business leaders. When Congress failed to deal with deficit spending, President Obama created the commission himself to provide recommendations and build consensus. And the commission, which has been meeting for several months now, is nearing the deadline for its final report.
President Obama said he was going to call the bluff of deficit peacocks on both sides of the aisle. As we head into the November elections, Obama is proving that he has a kind of fiscal discipline that has been sorely lacking over the past decade of Bush tax cuts (unpaid for), Bush wars (unpaid for), Medicare Part D (unpaid for), No Child Left Behind (unfunded mandate), Katrina, bank bailouts, housing bubbles, etc. President Obama, unlike the Republicans (and apparently, some Blue Dogs?), wants to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for those making $250,000 or more while extending the cuts for middle class families and the working poor. The size of the tax cuts was illustrated clearly this week by Austan Goolsbee, the new chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.
Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman rightly noted that never in the history of our Republic has our nation gone to war while cutting taxes. Nobel Prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz recently noted that the true cost of Bush's war in Iraq is around $3 trillion or more. The Tea Party (and especially older Americans, who overwhelmingly support Republicans in the 2010 elections) needs to realize that the true problem isn't stimulus spending that creates jobs and grows the economy. The true problem is that we cannot continue spending money without raising money to pay for our spending. In other words, our taxes are too low for the challenges and demands our nation is facing.
The Fiscal Commission, according to Milbank's article, has already decided to make spending cuts a priority, with 2/3 of the budget shortfall being managed through spending cuts and the other 1/3 addressed by eliminating tax loopholes and bringing in additional revenue. That ratio of 2:1 spending cuts versus tax increases was proposed by the Democratic co-chair of the commission, Erskine Bowles. But it appears that the Tea Party is too outraged about any tax increases to make a serious effort toward a balanced budget.
Reagan-era economic adviser Bruce Bartlett (hardly a liberal!) has said clearly that what's needed now is not tax cuts, but rather increased spending. The economy won't grow if we save more and tax cuts for the wealthy are the worst idea out there when it comes to creating jobs. (And that's not just me saying it - it's Doug Elmendorf, the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
It's up to us, as citizens, to inform ourselves, arm ourselves with the facts, and hold our elected officials accountable in November. One easy question to ask Congressional candidates is this: Will you allow an up or down vote on the proposals made by the nonpartisan Fiscal Commission?
The answer to that simple question will show us the difference between the contenders and the pretenders, and challenge elected officials to stop the posturing and start working toward serious solutions to our serious budget and debt problems.