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News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

More tea, anyone?

This isn't going to be pretty or end well:

President Obama's fiscal commission held its first meeting on Tuesday, hearing testimony from Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, OMB director Peter Orszag, and two former directors of the Congressional Budget Office. Although the commission has not yet gotten around to discussing specific proposals, panel members and the experts they heard from agreed that any real solution to a problem as large as the country's fiscal imbalance is going to hurt. The nation's red ink hit a record $1.4 trillion last year.

[. . .]

Former CBO director Robert Reischauer, who now heads the Urban Institute, told the panel that there are no easy solutions.

“Don't waste time looking for silver bullets or new approaches to hold out the promise of painless sacrifice,” said Reischauer. “You're going to have to raise taxes. You're going to have to cut spending. It's going to have to hurt.”

In the most recent ABC News-Washington Post poll, Americans by 56-40 percent said they preferred smaller government with fewer services, almost exactly the average for the past 26 years, so we know which option the voters prefer. But by a vast 77-15 percent  margin, the though President Obama pergers the opposite, which shows they know which option is really going to be pushed. But they also blame President Bush more than Obama for the deficit, 59-25 percent, so they're not overly partisan when considering how we got into this mess.

Comments

littlejohn
Thu, 04/29/2010 - 7:04am

Be honest. You know who got us into this mess, although I understand why you don't want to talk about it.
However, an easy step toward solving it - which is what really matters - is to undo one of the major causes. Let's end those two useless wars in the Middle East. The money saved would (after a few years) rebalance the budget and pay for health care to boot.
This wouldn't stop future presidents from embarking on ill-advised foreign adventures, but Mr. Bush's damaged reputation might at least make them think twice.

tim zank
Thu, 04/29/2010 - 9:07am

Let's follow LittleJohns lead and using his logic place the blame legitimately where it belongs, on the founding fathers.

Had they not rebelled and formed this awful nation, none of these bad things would ever have happened.

Point being, there is always someone that did something yesterday that you can blame for your own stupid decisions made today.

Bob G.
Thu, 04/29/2010 - 9:11am

Tim:
Bravo....bravo....!

(especially the last paragraph)

;)

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