It's time for real sacrifice
Sen. Jon Tester’s take is that Congress needs to be deliberative and careful in pursuing budget cuts in the short term, and seriously scrutinize spending in all corners of government, including defense and entitlements.
We agree, but we also note regretfully that we wish Congress had been just as deliberative and careful before passing the record spending, borrowing and debt in the first place.
Nonetheless, it is important for everyone to acknowledge that Americans need to be prepared for the sacrifices that will come with reduced government spending — and maybe even for some tax increases.
But we don’t seem to be quite there yet. For the continuing resolution that would keep the federal government running in the short term, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is proposing just a freeze in spending.
Is that a sacrifice? Really? Remember, we are talking about freezing federal spending at the highest levels ever. That seems woefully inadequate.
The GOP House majority, on the other hand, wants to get busy with the inevitable task of scaling back an obscenely bloated, unsustainable federal government even in the short term, to set the stage for tougher decisions to come. Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner has proposed cutting current spending by $61 billion.
If a compromise between those extremes isn’t reached by March 4, the non-essential services of the federal government will shut down.
Maybe that would be a good idea, as it would give people a chance to see what is at stake if we don’t put our economic house in order. This is serious business.
Yet similar to the Reid budget plan, President Barack Obama’s budget proposal for the 2012 fiscal year is profoundly unserious in that it proposes a five-year freeze in discretionary spending, which is now 24 percent higher than it was when Obama took office. Moreover, that part of the budget comprises only a fraction of overall spending. The president’s proposal doesn’t even address the big money in entitlement programs.
Erskine Bowles, the Democrat co-chairman of Obama’s bipartisan debt commission, pronounced that the president’s budget proposal goes “nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our fiscal nightmare.”
House Republicans, meanwhile, say the 2012 budget proposal they come out with in April will have far more substantial spending cuts and it will seek to reduce spending in Medicaid and Medicare. That will clearly put Democrats in position to campaign against those who would dare to tamper with entitlements.
In other words, they will campaign for the status quo. But that may not work anymore with the American voters, who are smart enough to know the country is in serious trouble. The clear message to politicians: Do something about the budget deficit and the nation’s towering debt, and do it now — even if it causes pain in the short term. There is no other choice.