Okay, he gets in a soft punch at Democrats, but David Brooks' main target is the do-nothing members of his own party.
The Bipartisan Policy Center and the chairmen of the fiscal commission released big plans for reducing debt and reforming government. This has set off a deluge of interesting commentary about how we should govern ourselves in the coming century.
But is any of this going anywhere? Are any elected officials actually going to follow through on these plans? Has anybody discovered a political formula to get spending cuts, tax increases and other reforms through the Congress?
I’ve spent the past few days calling Congressional leaders and other budget mavens to get an answer to that question. The answer is No.
Nobody has a political strategy for getting anything like this passed in the short term. There is very little likelihood the political class as currently constituted will address the looming fiscal disaster soon.
Some Republicans have been talking honestly about cutting entitlement spending, but almost no Republican seems willing to accept tax increases as part of a bipartisan budget deal. You could offer Republicans a deal that was 80 percent spending cuts and 20 percent tax increases and they’d say no. They’d say no to 90-10, too.
Ronald Reagan raised taxes 12 separate times during his presidency. But “No New Taxes” has become the requisite for membership in today’s G.O.P. Without a tax increase there will never be a bipartisan deal and without a bipartisan deal there will never be a solution because no party will ever take sole responsibility for the brutal spending cuts that are also required to reduce the debt.
Democrats can be blamed, not for refusing to negotiate but for not standing firm. Republicans are being blamed for being spoilers in any effort to govern the country. But then, it was also their fault we developed both our high deficit and the perpetual indebtedness that led up to it. They doubtless think that if they keep distracting the country with "no, no, no!", Americans will forget the harm their party has done. But we won't.
Republicans don't offer any hope. We just have to outlive them.
