Some Republicans and Democrats, including Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, are proposing a bipartisan committee to consider how to address the exploding federal deficit as a condition for increasing the debt limit beyond its current $12.1 trillion, which the government will exceed around mid-December.
And the Obama administration supports the idea as a way to “bring Republicans and Democrats together to make tough decisions about how to cut costs and raise revenue in areas including Social Security, Medicare and taxes,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Here’s an idea: If the President is serious about “bringing Republicans and Democrats together”, how about not shutting Republicans out of important negotiations and decisions?
This is the pattern we’ve seen for nearly a year. Obama talks one game while simultaneously doing exactly the opposite. And the media shamelessly let him get away with these contradictions time and time again.
For example, the president recently unilaterally imposed a 35 percent tariff on Chinese-made tires to please his union backers. Then he went to China and extolled the virtues of more free trade.
Now the administration thinks a bipartisan panel could look for ways to get spending under control. And yet Obama and the congressional leadership virtually ignored bipartisanship when it came to:
- The $787 billion stimulus package;
- The president’s new budget;
- The cap and trade legislation that passed the House;
- Both the House and Senate health care reform bills; and
- The Senate’s new financial reform package.
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg where spending is concerned.
- Democrats are considering spending billions of dollars on a new jobs bill, since the success of the last one has been questionable at best, creating or “saving” more government than private sector jobs.
- And the president has endorsed the House “doc fix”—to stop a 21 percent cut in Medicare’s reimbursements to doctors—at a cost of $210 billion.
The president doesn’t need a bipartisan committee, which would only give him political cover, to consider how to deal with the exploding deficit and unsustainable entitlement programs. He just needs to stop the spending—now.
Today’s TaxByte was written by IPI resident scholar, Dr. Merrill Matthews