Deficit hawkery

Even if health care reform manages to get passed, I see the whole process as another example that we need serious institutional reform.

Getting the American public to accept the idea that our political system needs big changes will take years, much less deciding on what those changes should be.

What is more likely is that people will intuitively sense the system is broken, but not understand how to fix it so they will do the only thing they know how: vote the current party out of power, and then feel discouraged when nothing changes fundamentally.

I hope that not only the Peterson Foundation but you bring some attention to ideas to change how campaigns are financed (after health-care, of course). Awareness is the first step for change.

I think "deficit hawk" is a misnomer. Most Congressional members interested in becoming known as deficit hawks invest in the label, not in reality. Furthermore they place an emphasis on cutting the expenditure of money, not on getting a good deal. John McCain, 'deficit hawk' that he is, is huge supporter of the unfunded Iraq and Afghanistan wars and a hostile opponent to health care reform.

These people want to cut taxes for people who think the least about getting a good deal because they already have more money than they need. That is their primary motivation. Secondary to play to those Libertarian, simpleton, chumps that never think with anything beyond their reptilian brain.

I would much rather have a responsible Senator like Bernie Sanders who focuses on the good deal, the money well spent, than the so-called deficit hawk, the hypocrite always on the prowl for a penny ante cause while he supports every one of his many costly, exceptions to his rule.

Ironic, isn't it? Socialists complaining about the political process they've been instrumental in fostering.

Did you ever wonder, Klein, over the import of the following quote?

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship." -- Alexander Tytler

Have fun voting yourself health care out of your neighbor's pocket. You're killing America.

Unfortunately for us all, Alexander Tytler, whoever he was, apparently lived in an alternate universe where monied interests had no political power. Would that elected politicians in *our* reality were half as sensitive to the economic needs and wants of the voters as Tytler imagines!

rt42, there are no coincidences, there are no contradictions. Tytler lived in the same world we do, but he was somewhat more perceptive than you and Klein. Your "economic needs" have no place in any politician's sensitivities. It is the wish that they reside there that is the first step down the path to ruin.

As that wish is now wholly ingrained in what's left of the American psyche, it's perhaps relevant to make the point that there is no way to back out. There is no way to vote ourselves out of the situation, which grows worse at every election. As people I admire began saying last year, "You've been voting for the lesser of two evils for so long, all you have left, now, is evil."

Feel free to gibber inanities back and forth at one another.

Of course, too, Ben Franklin said the same thing as Tytler, when he spoke of the Republic, and "if you can keep it".

The great challenge of the freedom that the founders claimed for themselves and all the country's citizens is in not succumbing to the temptation to vote oneself something out of one's neighbor's pocket. Too many people have now failed in that challenge, making the future a foregone conclusion of chaos, strife, and rampant misery.

And Klein, who cheered TARP and Cash for Clunkers and humongously horrible health care reform flaps his lips in worry over the deficit. The agency of our doom lives in the slack faces of such idiots.

msoja, here is a good place to cut:

$626 Billion for "defense" for 2010, when we do not face any large, armed enemy or hostile force of significant strength.

What if...Republicans filibustered this massive budget-busting defense bill?

heh...sounds too good to hope for, right?

http://findingourdream.blogspot.com/2009/12/republicans-filibuster-626-billion.html

--"What if...Republicans filibustered this massive budget-busting defense bill?"--

If they succeeded in killing it, the Dems would turn around and spend all the money on paying incompetent teachers triple what they're worth, instead of double, etc.

What's your point? Both parties are corrupt? I'll concede it.