Isn't It Fantastic?
Bob Herbert: "Great sacrifices will have to be made if the U.S. is to get its act together, and those sacrifices will have to be shared. We can start now, or we can wait and continue to fantasize about an eventual triumph in Afghanistan, or about cutting budgets with some magic cleaver until they’re finally balanced and all’s right with the world, or whatever other impossible dream is floated by the chronically dissembling political class to blind us to the real world."
The Constant Weader comments:
Please, the reason "we can’t find the courage to make some really tough decisions about warfare, taxes, public investment, etc.," is that the American people don't want to do that. Republicans have been repeating the Reagan fantasy of cutting taxes to increase revenues for so long the American people think it makes sense.
Besides, we're used to it: as Eugene Steuerle of the Brookings Institution wrote recently, "... for close to 15 years now, all major congressional actions have basically been giveaways." We haven't paid for anything. Even before the financial market meltdown, a huge percentage of Americans paid no income tax. Now that more people are out of work, even fewer pay taxes. Almost half of American households paid no income tax in 2009. But, hey, we're spending more to make up for it.
This isn't an American dream. It's a nightmare. How to get out of it? Why, that dean of Washington pundits, David Broder, suggested last week that the best way to get us out of our economic hole was to start getting ready for a war with Iran.
This is the kind of thinking that passes for brilliant in Washington. And it turns out there is some validity to Reagan's trickle-down theory. Economic good times don't trickle down, but ludicrous ideas sure do. Americans think their taxes -- you know, the ones they don't pay -- should be even lower, at the same time they think we have to be strong on defense and go over and "kick some ass" in Iran.
Now may be an excellent time to speak truth to the public. As long as American homeowners thought they could keep spending more than they earned & "make up the difference" by taking out more & bigger home equity loans, there was no reasoning with them. But when home values plummeted, many Americans came up against stark reality in their own experience. Maybe they're ready for politicians who will show them the stark realities we face as a nation.
The problem is, of course, that politicians who still have their jobs haven't the courage to risk losing them by telling the truth. Since Republicans now control the House, and the House controls the purse strings in the House, it appears Republicans will have to be the first to summon some courage. How likely is that?