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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (118927)	8/20/2009 11:27:16 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542054

Bob, I think that everyone on this thread shares a concern for the rising deficit and the tendency of our politicians to expand spending. Having said that, I'd find your concern over the potential effect of health care reform on the deficit more convincing if you applied the same level of concern to say, for instance, wasteful defense spending. I appreciate the fact that you're calling for an honest debate on the big picture questions of taxing and spending but I wonder why you think that's so critical now with Obama newly in office, the economy barely breathing after years of tax cuts and increased spending, and a long history of your guy in office throwing money down a rabbit hole with spending that bought us nothing but grief? My preference is to discuss a priority of mine and most Americans...health care reform...in terms of how best to do it and what it should look like without leaving it hostage to a deficit problem that will admittedly require years of sacrifice to resolve. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to discuss the deficit but I'm not willing to consider it a non starter for comprehensive health care reform that covers all of us, even those of us who are not "productive" enough to afford our expensive medical care on our own. The truth is that I'd like to see the deficit reduced dramatically. I'd like to see a huge decrease in government spending with the defense procurement budget dramatically reduced. I'd like to see an end to corporate welfare in the form of special tax breaks and farmland subsidies. I'd like to see government waste reduced and I'd like to see the federal government adopt a pay as you go policy that would require politicians to make hard tax and spend decisions that required prioritizing expensive alternative programs. In times of economic instability like these, however, it's more important that we not rock the economic ship with the tremors that would shake the economy if we were to cut defense spending dramatically, gave corporate America a radically changed set of rules and tie our hands with respect to our ability to deficit spend and increase demand when the fed has expended virtually all of it's monetary bullets. So when you say Obama is not "honest" about the macro view you may be right. An "honest" politician speaking the truth to the American public wouldn't be a politician for long and he knows that. (I wonder if you wouldn't be delighted to hear him suggest that taxes will eventually have to be raised on all of us and that defense will have to be cut in order to right our economic ship of state?) But there are times when, if you really want to change things, honesty is not the best policy. That's why I opposed your suggestion that the American people only needed the truth to clear their heads of a lot of misinformed views. When you have a substantial percentages of voters who will turn on you in a microsecond if you suggest that their taxes might rise or that the big guy that protects them might get a smaller budget, and when the country is so polarized that a small percentage change will result in a change of leadership, you must present the truth very carefully, and sometimes not at all. Maybe you were offended by my references to those who refute the facts of evolution, believe that every word of the bible is true, still believe that there were wmds in Iraq, refuse to accept that Obama was born in the US, suspect that our government was behind 9/11, and allege that death panels are in the proposed health reform legislation. Maybe you don't share any of those beliefs, but those people vote and Obama knows that if he wants to really change this nation he can't give them traction to scare the hell out of others. No, the truth will not set us free. We have to navigate through the truth very carefully so that one day we can say, "This is what we did. It was scary but it worked." That's the real world. Ed