Collective Conscious

The elec­tion results already high­lighted the debt as the biggest issue on people’s minds. So given that we’re going to have to deal with it, bet­ter to do it now, for two rea­sons. First, Democ­rats still have big majori­ties, and it’s def­i­nitely a “use it or lose it” sit­u­a­tion for them now. Sec­ond, we have to do some­thing any­way, thanks to the Bush tax cut expiration. If Democ­rats let the debate be dom­i­nated by the expi­ra­tion of the tax cuts, they are going to lose the pol­icy and the pol­i­tics to cam­paigns like this one.

The best option is to set a Christ­mas dead­line for tax reform. Thanks to the Bush pro­gram, we are lit­er­ally forced to fin­ish this reform before the majori­ties dis­ap­pear, and plenty of ousted Democ­rats are now free to vote their hearts. So where does the debt com­mis­sion report (pdf) come into play here?

Ezra says it is sound and fury. Krug­man labels it unse­ri­ous. Benen calls it a waste of time. Chait says it “rat­i­fies Oba­macare”. CBPP shows how it soaks the poor and the elderly. Cowen has a bet­ter idea:

No one thinks this is the final deal.  I would say eval­u­ate this as you would a movie trailer: will it get peo­ple to take the next step of think­ing about a ticket pur­chase?  The top 23 per­cent tax rate is like the quickly cut scene with the rolling boul­der, the skimpily clad girl, the grin­ning enemy, and the face of the star.  “The Bowles-​​Simpson plan has a ratio of roughly $3 in spend­ing reduc­tions for every $1 in rev­enue increases…”  It won’t hap­pen in real life.  As a movie pre­view I judge this as “good enough.”  It basi­cally declares that some major deduc­tions have to be on the table and it gets us to the next step.

I agree with Cowen’s read­ing, despite Ygle­sias’ objec­tions. DeLong weighs in with per­haps a more rel­e­vant criticism:

Yes, the Enti­tle­ment Com­mis­sion Was an Unforced Error by the Obama Administration

Now, given that we’re going to have the debate and we’re going to have it now, I have to dis­agree. I think Benen’s crit­i­cism, while intended to be deroga­tory, is the most accurate:

Indeed, I sus­pect in a cou­ple of months, this com­mis­sion will have been almost entirely for­got­ten, men­tioned only as a point of ridicule for what not to do.

And I think that that’s exactly what Democ­rats want. Any­thing that spurs this much crit­i­cism from the lib­eral left while seem­ing totally rea­son­able to ex-​​Bush advi­sor Greg Mankiw is, I think, just pre­cisely the vil­lain that we want to be fight­ing against while we take advan­tage of this oppor­tu­nity to pass one last big reform. The only real ques­tion is how broad will the final bill be? Will it involve Medicare? Social Secu­rity? Cli­mate change? Will it be passed through rec­on­cil­i­a­tion? Okay, prob­a­bly not, but I’m just say­ing: Democ­rats have a hell of a lot of license here, and a very real dead­line loom­ing on them to use it. Let’s hope for the best.

(photo: Neu­bie)