The-Ave.US

Did we all just miss something in the political boxing matches?

It is beginning to look as if Obama has been taking lessons from Muhamed Ali!

  Ezra Klein at the  WASHINGTON POST makes an amazing point … if the Democrats simply accept the triggers resulting from last weeks Super Committee crash, the result is a deficit deal that has “more than $3 in tax increases for every $1 in spending cuts, assigned most of those spending cuts to the Pentagon, and didn’t take a dime from Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare beneficiaries.”

The result is FAR bigger even than the proposal of the Simpson Bowles Committee … a total of $6,000,000,000,000  in deficit reduction WITH new taxes!  The commitments created by the  congressional agreement (actually a law that was signed by the President) now means an extremely progressive spending cuts worth $1.2 trillion goes off on January 1, 2013. The lapse of the Bush tax breaks in 2012 mean we will have also have an progressive tax trigger worth $3.8 trillion that goes off, again, on…January 1, 2013.

The combination means  $6 trillion in deficit reductions … with no changes in entitlement programs (other than those funded by the military).

Taxes go up, defense is cut, and entitlements survive,  Given the balance of power in the Congress and the presence of Obama’s veto threats, the Republicans can’t pass an alternative without cooperation .. BIPARTISAN cooperation!

Of course, reality … never a strength amongst politicians …. must be considered.  The draconian changes exploding in Jan 2103 might well kill any US recovery.  Middle class taxes would go up, unemployment compensation would fade, infrastructure investment stop … just when the economy needs all these things.  Longer term, a failure to address social security and medicare means increasing deficits and huge problems for the Obama healthcare reforms.Higher ed and science will suffer long term consequences

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if these realities forced an honest debate in the 2012 election?