| The Detroit News writes an editorial this morning that is nothing more than obvious bait to the rest of the establishment media, intended for digestion by centrists. The message out of the White House, dutifully repeated by the press corps, is that the GOP's stubborn refusal to compromise on President Barack Obama's balanced approach to attacking the budget deficit is what's holding up a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff. To the president, compromise apparently means capitulation, and balance means nothing but tax hikes will do. He'll be in Detroit Monday to continue selling that theme.
The idea is to get centrists and practitioners of High Broderism to start bellyaching that both sides must come to the table and negotiate in good faith. Compromise is more important than actually addressing a problem. Lets be clear here ... the GOP hasn't come anywhere close to acknowleding the real increase in revenue necessary to address the national debt. The Bush tax breaks are the single largest driver of our deficit, and anyone serious about the deficit would acknowledge doing away with them, and probably ratcheting up the capital gains tax, cuts to which are stimulative in the short-term, but otherwise worthless as long-term policy. What they've proposed is essentially window dressing. It's not worth compromising with, and it's not anything to be used as a basis to start calling for deep cuts to entitlements (which, by the way, people pay into). What the News is advocating here can be summed up nicely with the parable of the man with the sore throat. One doctor suggests developing a bacterial culture, and if it comes back positive a course of antibiotics; the other suggests that testing is unnecessary and that things could be treated by eating broken glass. What the News says ought to happen is that the guy ought to address with sore throat with both antibiotics and broken glass. |
