I know you like structural means of changing things, but I think it biases you to see any structural change put in place for the purpose of bringing down deficits as important; when this new commission isn't and even the non-watered down version would not be very significant.
The efforts we have to not oppose are actual efforts to cut spending or keep new spending from occurring, not setting up talking groups.
And if any supposed solution, strong or weak, is biased towards tax increases over spending cuts (either intrinsically in how its set up, or as part of the partisan bias in who has power in the group, or in the way it applies theoretically neutral rules in a context that means applying the rules will allow all sorts of spending increases, but even maintaining current tax rates has to be "paid for", or by some other mechanism) than I'll oppose it.
You want a paygo, fine make it include every additional dollar of spending, including increased spending in entitlements, as an increase that has to be paid for, and make it count current tax rates as the baseline rather than an increase, and I'll be all over it.
You want a commission? Well they seem more a distraction, something that enables politicians to say they did something about deficits without actually decreasing deficits, but create one the democrats don't control, and that it set up in such a way that there is no other form of bias to tax increases, and I won't oppose it. |
