Babbling Bubbleheads

The deficit discussion in Washington has not gotten any more intelligent this week and, in fact, is actually deteriorating. We now have three plans being discussed, assuming that the “Gang of Six” plan is dead and that Obama has a plan. His last plan, remember, failed in the Senate 97-0.

Boehner’s plan calls for $850 billion over the next ten years, or $85 billion per year, which amounts to 0.05% of the current deficit. In other words, 2000 Boehner plans combined would balance the budget. Oddly, Eric Cantor has told the Tea Party to “quit grumbling and get behind” this plan.

According to Jay Carney, Obama’s plan is not on paper. He doesn’t want to put anything on paper because he doesn’t want to “polarize the discussion.” I think that ship has already sunk.

Reid’s plan is interesting. I call it the “vapor plan,” which fits in more ways than one because Harry Reid has always looked to me like he is about to have a case of the vapors. It bases the financial projections on a continuation of “surge level” spending in Afghanistan and on current military spending in Iraq and Libya, and then uses the reductions from those spending levels as a major part of its “spending cuts.” Is that clever, or what? It also bases revenue projections on GDP growth rates in the 4.6% range over the next three years. To call that optimistic would be an understatement, since it is about 2% now and declining. Despite all of that optimism, it only cuts $2.7 trillion in ten years, or about 1.5% of the current deficit. So it would take 67 Reid plans combined to balance the budget. Well, that and some Alice in Wonderland economics.

The media is not the place to look for clarity, either. Chris Matthews was horrified that Michele Bachmann would accuse legislators of having “anti-American tendencies,” and considered the accusation itself to be a violation of good taste and sanity, but he is accusing the Tea Party and many Republicans of wanting to see this nation “go off the cliff into financial chaos in order to destroy the President,” which is about as anti-American as a person could be. Apparently the accusation coming from him is okay.

Lawrence O’Donnell is proclaiming that Obama and the Democrats have been negotiating in no better faith than the Republicans and have not been serious with any of their proposals, putting them out only for the purpose of letting Republicans reject them and thereby look bad. Neither side is attempting to solve the problem, each side is merely trying to make the other side look bad, and he seems quite proud of how well the Democrats are succeeding with their deceit.

I think this game is being played the same way the “health care reform” bill was. They will yammer at it until the public is so angry and fed up, so disgusted with the whole stupid subject, that we will not even care what the actual resolution is. We will be so glad to stop talking about it that we will happily accept whatever shitty solution they finally pass.