Thoughts Political on Reducing the Deficit

Since the Republicans won a couple of weeks ago I've heard all sorts of things about reducing the deficit. As I said in an earlier post, I find it odd that the Republicans want to extend the tax cuts which will greatly add to the deficit. But here's something from the Washington Post that clears that up:

Republicans are less concerned about adding to the debt through tax cuts, despite criticizing deficit spending.

I guess the question has to be if the tax cuts don't revive the economy at what point in time do you get concerned about them.

Another thing I found interesting is the call to cut the federal work force by 10 percent. I understand that from the point of view that that will reduce spending by the government. The question is would this be just a blanket get rid of 10 percent of the workforce right away or do it over time. The smart thing seems to be to do it overtime. Otherwise you have a huge group of people that don't have jobs. They'd be drawing unemployment which some level of government would have to pay for.

One additional thing about federal employees is the call by Senator DeMint to reduce the salaries of federal employees by 10 percent. I found it interesting that the Senator didn't talk about reducing his salary by 10 percent nor all the staff on the Hill. Seems to me Congress is part of a bureaucracy as well. And shouldn't these guys be leading by example?

Then there is the bipartisan deficit commission which came out with some preliminary recommendations this week. Talk about dropping a bomb. Talk about that just about everyone from every political persuasion could find something wrong with. I think that in and of itself is a good sign.

This sums up my thoughts on it exactly:

It's time for both conservatives and liberals to "put up or shut up," says Jon Cowan, head of the centrist-Democratic group Third Way, which praised the bold new proposals and urged politicians to show courage. Republicans failed to produce their often-promised deficit reductions when they controlled the government, Cowan said, and Democrats refuse to acknowledge that entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare must be trimmed.

Some of the suggestions make perfect sense to me. Over time raise the retirement age for social security. Also means test. The more money people make the lower their benefits should be. The report also takes aim at other government entitlements:

Entitlement programs would not go untouched. Step four calls for cutting farm subsidies by $3 billion a year, reducing benefits for government retirees from both the civil service and the military, docking student-loan subsidies and using a new, stingier measure of inflation to calculate increases for programs government-wide.

One wonders if any of these recommendations will survive. For that matter, if they are even approved by the commission itself. 14 out of the 18 commission members have to approve the plan before it will be passed on to Congress and the president. It will interesting to see what happens. Because this report is a very serious look at what has to be done. I'm not sure the politicians we have in office now (both Democrats and Republicans) are up to that challenge.