So Evan Bayh is out of the presidential race, barely two weeks after he officially almost got in it, to no one's great surprise. And he's getting a lot of credit for recognizing reality and dealing with it honestly. But before he got out, he offered fellow Democrats a reality check they'd do well to heed:
Evan Bayh is doling out tough love. When someone asks how he'd cut the federal deficit, Bayh says Democrats should rein in spending before rolling back President Bush's tax cuts: "We need to re-establish our fiscal responsibility." When another audience member asks how he'll persuade Americans to drive less and buy smaller cars to combat global warming, Bayh pushes back. "The key is not to ask for sacrifice for no reason," he says. "You've got to convince them the sacrifice will get the result they have every right to expect."
Republicans themselves have not been exactly fiscally responsible. If Democrats really did "rein in spending before rolling back tax cuts," I suspect even Newt Gingrich would be cheering from the sidelines.
Comments
Nope, the Republicans would hammer them for it. If they touched a nickel of defense or Homeland Security spending, no matter how wasteful, the Republican ad campaigns would be chock full of "soft on defense" messages. And that's a shame, because we spend as much on our military budget as the rest of the world combined -- even though we are becoming increasingly unlikely to see a traditional military in the field of battle. (Credit where credit is due: the unlikeliness is caused in large part because of our overwhelming military budget.)
The Clinton tax structure was pretty good for the economy and generated a small surplus (at least if you play along with the accounting tricks having to do with merging the Social Security fund with the general fund.) I say we start by re-instituting the Clinton tax structure.
Rolling back the huge drug benefit passed by the Republicans would also be a good start -- but probably all we'll get is permission for the federal government to at least negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical companies.
Doing something about the Medicaid budget would also be nice -- though I'm not sure what can be done other than tell poor sick people to go suck it.
it's about time someone gave Clinton some credit for the budget. I keep hearing that Bush Sr started that trend and Clinton got credit for it. And the deficit was caused by Clinton but Bush Jr got blamed for it. They even tried to blame Clinton for not doing something about Osama and that is why Bush Jr went to war. At least Bayh said it was better to cut spending then ask Americans to give back their pittance of a tax break. I hope to hell someone gets us out of Iraq soon. I just read an issue of National Geographic with some pretty grapic pictures of wounded soldiers who lost part of their skull and limbs. If we were actually accomplishing something that would be bad enough. But we're not and that makes it criminal.
Quote:
>"You've got to convince them [that they] will
>get the result they have every right to
>expect."
Let me be first to congratulate Mr. Bayh for publishing his personal promise that the people "will get the result" that we "have every right to expect."
Apparently our long night of imperfect results and unmet expectations will soon be over.