We're all in this together

Reagan's Budget Director David Stockman and former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich have both sharply criticized the budget proposed by Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan. Stockman was on NPR's "On Point" this morning explaining how we all need to share the sacrifice and essentially that supply-side economics won't work anymore (though he didn't actually admit it that blatantly). He admitted that we need to focus some on revenues (restoring taxes to pre-Bush levels). And he was pretty emphatic that we need to be realistic and pragmatic about austerity. We can't just continue to postpone/borrow our way into not worrying about deficits. He even recommended drastically reducing military spending.

Gingrich on the other hand started backpedaling after being chastised by fellow conservatives.

Stockman's still no Keynesian, but I have tremendous respect for his serious and mature take on the mess we're in. Bottom line, right-wingers are intractable on the dogmas (they've gone way beyond doctrine at this point) of opposition to taxes and insistence on cutting everything but defense. On the other hand, the establishment Democrats (that is, those in power, notice I didn't call them left, liberal or even progressive) keep saying that there's nothing really wrong and that all we need to do about the debt ceiling and the impending problems for entitlements is to bring in more smoke and mirrors to help us rearrange numbers. 

You might be surprised to hear me agree with a Reaganite, but I've been a deficit hawk long before it became politically expedient for Republicans to be. I say bring back PAGO (the pay-as-you-go rules in Congress). I may like John Maynard Keynes a lot more than Ayn Rand, but I'd almost go so far as to think of myself as relatively conservative fiscally. 

It's time for both sides to let go of tribal and partisan tenants of faith and hash tings out together. We're ALL in this together. Eliminating all the tax loopholes corporate and otherwise is a great place to start. 

I was talking to a friend about this kind of thing recently in regards to school funding here in Iowa. Sales taxes hurt consumers and renters (poor & working class), property taxes hurt home owners and  farmers (middle and upper-middle class), and commercial taxes supposedly hinder business and growth. Somehow we ALL need to share the burden. Before he backed down under party pressure, Gingrich characterized the Ryan plan as "social engineering," something that Republicans are constantly accusing Democrats as conspiring to do (Socialism- eek!). Gingrich was spot-on. If giving corporations the same rights as individuals while taking away the rights of organized labor, and dismantling the social safety nets isn't systematically maneuvering to establish a more oligarchical than egalitarian arrangement- then I don't know what it is.

I think that the right has gone so far toward the extremes of either corporatism and/or libertariansism, that those of us who used to be centrists are painted as "liberal." I've never advocated for Marxist revolution and I doubt that I ever will, but for God's sake, isn't it about time that we returned to a a little common sense? Should a Democratic president really have to stretch way over to the corporatist side just to appear as if he's trying to find some common ground? Whenever there are calls for compromise and bipartisanship it basically means that the Fraidy-crats are caving in to the Crazy-cans again.

Stockman's most important sentiment is that we all need to grow-up and get to work on fixing things instead of constantly seeing who can appeal most to voters' basest fears.