It’s at times like this I’m ashamed to admit I live
inside the Beltway.
Well, that’s probably not specific enough, since I’m
usually ashamed to admit I live inside the Beltway.
Still, the second you try to explain the stupidity
of this “fiscal cliff” fiasco to a normal person, it makes William F. Buckley’s
famous declaration that he’d rather be governed by the first few hundred people
listed in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard seem all the
more reasonable.
While there are some responsible politicians and policymakers
in Washington, if you look at the whole place collectively, Uncle Sam starts to
look like a junkie. [Frank Sinatra as the “Man With
the Golden Arm”?] The logic of addiction dictates that you make a deal
that allows you to avoid all of your problems now and enjoy a quick high in
exchange for a painful confrontation with reality down the road.
Almost exactly a year ago, during the famed
debt-ceiling negotiations, Speaker of the House John Boehner boasted that he’d
forced tough concessions from the Democrats, achieving the first real cut in
government spending in ages. He claimed his “real, enforceable cut” amounted to
$7 billion for fiscal year 2012. The Congressional Budget Office objected,
saying the real savings were closer to $1 billion.
“Which of these numbers is accurate?” asked
columnist Mark Steyn at the time. Answering his own question, he wrote: “The
correct answer is: Who cares?”
And he was right. At the time, the U.S. was spending
$188 million of largely borrowed money every hour of every day. [Don’t you just love the Chinese, so ready to be The
Middle Kingdom, so ready to accept the power that is their due after the
humiliations of the last thousand years? “Ah, we have regained the Mandate of
Heaven”, or so they think.] So, going by the CBO number, if you started
watching the official Godfather trilogy box set right after the deal was cut, the
government would have burned through its “savings” before Fredo went on his
last fishing trip. If you went by Boehner’s math, you could actually watch the
whole trilogy about four times before the “savings” ran out.
America already has a more progressive tax system
than Europe, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development. The Democrats insist that the rich need to start paying their
“fair share,” which means even more progressivity. The Republicans,
meanwhile . . . agree! The difference is that the GOP wants
to eliminate loopholes and exemptions while keeping rates where they are.
Democrats would prefer simply raising the rates. [Except
for Rep. Gomert, Forbes and the rest. They are calling for a flat tax, a tax in
which Buffet’s secretary would pay the same percentage as he. Guess that’s just
too simple.]
Now here’s a distinction that the first few hundred
people in the Boston phone book would probably grasp better than the folks at
Harvard (or in Congress): A tax increase is a tax increase. If I make the same
amount of money as I did last year but pay more in taxes, then my taxes have
gone up. If I pay less, my taxes have gone down. Whether the numbers moved this
way or that because of closed loopholes or rejiggered tax rates, the result for
me is the same. That doesn't mean tax simplification doesn't make sense, but
dodging a rate hike isn't the same as dodging a tax hike.
So the Republicans are, in fact, in favor of raising
taxes by the rules of the real world. In exchange for doing this, they want the
Democrats to deal with the real problem: spending. You could confiscate 100
percent of income over $1 million, and it would cover about a third of the
deficit (and crush the economy in the process). You’d still have to deal with
spending, particularly entitlement spending.
But the Democrats want to
do . . . nothing. Or at least that’s the position they
seemed to be taking this week.
The White House and the Democrats have been floating
the idea that we can worry about entitlements later, if ever. [Been there, done that in the Reagan, Bush, and Bush,
administrations and it never works out. Dems promise cuts, sometimes large
ones, but they never put out; would you still buy jade finger rings for such a
puta?] The urgent thing is to raise taxes on the wealthy as soon as
possible. When asked what he was prepared to cut, Senate majority leader Harry
Reid said Wednesday, “Now remember, we've already done more than a billion dollars’
worth of cuts. We've already done that. So we need to get some credit for
that.” [And such cuts are?] Okay, here’s the
credit: That is about .09 percent of the deficit. Take .09 percent of a bow,
Harry.
Meanwhile, the GOP seems to be obsessed with
Talmudic interpretations of Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge. You see, if the
Bush tax cuts expire, we’ll all pay a lot more in taxes. But letting them
expire wouldn't violate the pledge, while voting for a smaller net tax increase
would.
As Republicans sort all that out, the guy who
actually won the election by claiming he had a better plan hasn’t proposed any
plan at all. That’s life inside the Beltway for you.[Meanwhile
the first nuclear carrier Enterprise
is being retired, after 44 years. Is she being replaced, refitted, who knows,
not our Great Helmsman, he’s made statements about horses and bayonets but that’s
as far as it goes.]
— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. You can write to him by e-mail atJonahsColumn@aol.com, or via Twitter @JonahNRO. © 2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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