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pnathan

My thoughts when reading these sorts of articles is that we are faced with essentially two choices:

* Keep building the house of cards

* Let it fall down

I don't see any points of view that advocate slow unwinding of the issues that got us here, and that's troubling.

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Obama and Boehner had the outlines of a 10 year, 4 trillion deal that had some pain for everyone. For about 24 hours.

Unfortunately, that would have been a victory for Obama (and the country, incidentally). So it's a no-go as far as the Tea Party is concerned, which meant Boehner had to back out. Nevermind that these are people who've been shrieking about the deficit since January 2009.

And that's the risk. The process looks like it's based on ideology. Ideology knows no compromise.

It will be interesting to watch.

It's not even ideology, it's fear, hatred and tribal identity.

Ideological conservatives would have leaped at that deal Obama and Boehner hammered out.

Agreed. It's not ideology, it's partisanship. It's the illusion that it's okay for the country to suffer now, because it will benefit my party and after the next election my party will make up for it with the great legislation we will be able to pass.

I'm trying to think of the last time this actually happened. Civil War?

Not if their ideology includes never raising taxes as a fundamental principle.

That's not really a conservative ideology though (at least in the traditional sense). For example, Reagan raised taxes a number of times. The whole never raise taxes thing is quite new and comes from the Tea Party, not Republicans or conservatives in general.

The never-raise-taxes thing was started by Grover Norquist and has been going since 1985/1986:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform#Taxpay...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist#Americans_for_T...

I don't understand how the politicians who subscribe to never raising taxes can function. Do they not understand how governments work? Would they like to propose how a zero-tax system would work?

There is a no reason a government has to increase taxes to function.

If a government is free to reduce taxes to pander to special interests and voters, but is unable to ever increase taxes, the result is an eventual ratcheting downwards in government taxation until you hit a crisis.

As an example I give you California. It is politically impossible to get any tax increase through, but not politically impossible to get tax decreases through. The result is that Arnold Schwartzenegger got elected on a promise to reduce the vehicle licensing fee. Ever since we've had a structural deficit that is about the size of the reduction in the vehicle licensing fee, and no way to fill it.

See http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/11/local/la-me-cap-budg... for verification.

You feel comfortable with that statement as a universal?

I don't think so. While many people have put forth proposals and claimed that they would cut half or more of the deficit, the largest cut in any of these proposals is less than $400 billion. We would need four times that to balance the budget.

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