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Focus on the deficit

This
morning, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and three budget experts opined on these
questions. And there was unanimity — our long-term budget course is not an
option. As David Walker of the Peterson Foundation stated, there is a new
four-letter word in Washington and that word is “math.” And as much as we may
try, the laws of arithmetic are stubbornly static.

Hoyer’s
remarks were stunningly direct. Nothing is off the table. Not even middle-class
tax cuts from the ol’ Bush days.

But
he made clear — you can’t row a boat with one oar, and a few partisan problems
confront us as we seek to solve this issue. First, the Republican Party has
become, in the words of Third Way’s Bill Schneider,
“political fundamentalists.” Any deviation from political dogma — for example a
single crumb of a tax increase on any person, place, or thing — is considered
heresy. Number two, their past record on fiscal discipline has not been, shall
we say, great. Every Republican president since I was first able to vote (that’s
1978 for those scoring at home) left office with a higher deficit than when he began his reign. Third, they are not the best economic prognosticators.
Everyone from the far right (Newt Gringrich) to the farther right (Dick Armey)
to the farthest right (Jim Bunning) predicted that the 1993 Clinton deficit
reduction package would lead to higher deficits and economic ruination. You can’t
get much more wrong than that.

But
here’s the problem. We need the Grand Old Party. We likely cannot reduce the
deficit without them. The president’s fiscal commission (is there some patron
saint to whom we can pray to help guarantee their success?) must achieve 14 of
18 votes to force Congress to act. And we cannot sacrifice investments in the
future and stimulus spending today to reach our budget targets. That means
Republicans have to say “yes.” And we need congressional Republicans to forgo
the pledge they made to their party for the pledge they made to their country
when they took the oath of office (paraphrasing Republican George Voinovich on
that one).

Yet somehow I am optimistic. The
nation is focused on the deficit again. So is the president. And let’s face it — when
there’s a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, progress on the
budget is generally made. Let’s roll up our sleeves.

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