WP's Matt Miller eviscerates Erskine Bowle's deficit logic

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/28/AR2010072803466.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

A spending goal too small for aging America

By Matt Miller
Wednesday, July 28, 2010

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In little-noticed remarks a few weeks ago, Bowles suggested that the long-term goal the commission should adopt for federal spending should be 21 percent of gross domestic product. This sounds like a bookkeeping matter. But Bowles' goal would end progressive ambition, ratify America's declining competitiveness and bury the American dream.

Why? For starters, federal spending under Ronald Reagan averaged 22 percent of GDP. Under Bowles's view, therefore, the outer limits of the Democratic Party's 21st-century aspirations would be to run government at a size smaller than did a 20th-century conservative icon.

What's more, Reagan ran government at this size at a time when 76 million baby boomers weren't about to hit their rocking chairs. In 1988, 32 million retirees received Social Security and 33 million were on Medicare, our two biggest domestic programs. By 2020, about 48 million elderly Americans will receive Social Security, and 62 million Americans will be on Medicare (then the numbers really soar).

As a matter of math, if you run the government at a smaller level than did Ronald Reagan while accommodating this massive increase in the number of seniors on our health and pension programs, you have to decimate the rest of the budget.

Here's a nice companion piece from the Guardian discussing Miller's column further

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2010/jul/29/usdomesticpolicy-obama-administration-deficit-taxes-future

Michael Tomasky
The deficit and the dead-end future

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That is, we're spending more now. Mostly because of retirees but because of other things as well, and those other things are very bipartisan. The wars, the national-security apparatus and the prescription drug benefit were all in the first instance GOP ideas.

But: the GOP didn't pay for them, because the GOP will not increase a single tax a single penny under any circumstances. So the wars were financed off the books, and the 2003 drug benefit was unfunded. Heh, it'll be somebody else's problem later.

It's now pretty close to later. And it'll be every American's problem (except the top 1% or 2%, who are the Americans the GOP really cares about anyway; the rest can be easily entertained with the usual gay-bashing, Muslim-bating, etc.).

Again, we return to one of my themes, Republicans and taxes. This commission will recommend no tax options at all. Democrats have to stand up to this, which I and others have been saying for years, but that day really has to come fairly soon.

[JCMach1]

1. Easy solution for the demographic problem...

How about some large-scale legal immigration?

Just a *modest* proposal...

[DarthDem]

2. Bowles Is Not A Hero of Mine

He gave us six years of Plasticwoman as a senator-in-name-only from North Carolina, was also responsible for the election of the great Richard Burr two years later, and was just generally one of the worst, weakest campaigners ever. Ugh. I'm afraid I am not terribly inclined to listen to what he has to say.