Another Brick in the Deficit Wall

I've talked about both our deficits and our taxes before. I wouldn't say I've necessarily had any change of heart but there are new things that I'd like to bring up that recent events have seemed to underscore. As a generally left-leaning kind of guy, I tend to look at things from a liberal perspective; however, I do try to look back and see the big picture on occasion.

The truth is, there is politics and then there is reality. The great rule of governance is that, ideally, we can't let politics get in the way of the realities of policy. This is something that the left and the right, and to some extent the center, don't seem to grasp in any sense. The Democrats have recently shown that they are little more than what the Republicans originally painted them as: spoiled rich kids that throw money at every problem. The Democrats recent state aid bill was a perfect example of this. In order to save a load of state jobs (such as those of teachers and cops), the Democrats sent the states a nice aid package. Sure it will likely save the jobs of the teachers but... it doesn't solve the many problems that we are facing. The education system in this country is fairly terrible, meanwhile its been proven over and over that simply throwing money at the teachers won't solve anything. And again, we are still facing huge deficits that are not being solved by throw money at everything politics.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side of the aisle, we find politics and reality colliding in a just as destructive way. Ideologically and philosophically, I can understand the reasons behind extending the bush tax cuts in times like we have now. I wouldn't have understood them at the time but now it kind of makes sense, at least from the view of a supply side economist. Times are bad, businesses need investment and capital expansion and all of that stuff, so investment by the rich wouldn't be a bad thing. Okay. Deficit Hawks (other than Ron Paul, maybe), however, need to be realistic. If we are going to cut down social security in order to make it fiscally viable, if we are going to gut health care reform and reform medicare, then we cannot continue this path of ridiculous defense spending either. The deficit, undoubtedly, has some of its roots in entitlements; however, the massive deficits that we have today that built themselves over the last eight years were not due to entitlements. 9/11 caused something like a total doubling of the defense budget in this country. It is no wonder we now have a deficit like never before.

You want to be a real deficit hawk? Alright, let's make the retirement age 70, let's limit social security's reach to certain income brackets (we're not socialists after all!), but let's also get out of Iraq completely, get out of Afghanistan completely rather than trying to fulfill the foolhardy mission of rebuilding a nation. If Republicans believe, ideologically, that the government cannot fix the United States, why would we be able to fix another country?