Urgency ought to have invaded the meeting rooms of the new congressional “Super Committee” on Friday. The zero increase in jobs shocked Team Obama and the markets, and hopefully the Gang of 12.
“Go big or go home” is a cliché and advertising slogan making the rounds on the Left, as various voices there urge the president to demand a second stimulus package.
If the Gang of 12 really wants to accomplish an economy-reviving breakthrough, however, it won’t go hard left or hard right. And it won’t “compromise” by adding some spending cuts to some tax hikes and calling it a day.
What the Super Committee could do is provide a series of much-desired wins for many key interest groups.
For pro-growth conservatives, a permanent extension of the Bush income tax rates, a permanent burial of the death tax, and a slashing of the corporate tax rate.
For liberals, an immigration regularization that allows the 12 to 15 million illegal aliens to stay in the country permanently, though without a path to voting citizenship, coupled with the iron-clad commitment to finish the fence across the roughly half of the 1,969 mile border where it makes sense.
(“Regularization” need not be amnesty, and it ought to depend not on written regulations but on individual interviews, preferably conducted by the sorts of people long used to judging character and capacity – say retired colonels from all branches of the military. Give the new green-card referees general guidelines: Families and hard-working people get to stay, but criminals and grifters need not apply. It will work.)
For those serious about national security, no cuts in weapons or force strength or the benefits the military receives, but an authority to reduce the civilian workforce of the Pentagon dramatically and quickly.
For homeowners, a one-year opportunity to use their retirement funds to pay off or pay down their mortgages without penalty or loss of the tax-advantaged status of the funds. Allow people to save their homes by using their savings.
For the stimulus-proponents, a general permission for Americans to withdraw some portion of their retirement savings without penalty and without taxes –a huge boom to the economy that won’t require a single dollar of outlay.
For the housing industry, which tends to lead real recoveries, a short-term tax credit for the purchase of a home, designed to revive the market in 2012.
For Americans under 50, a reform of Social Security that guarantees its solvency by increasing the retirement age to 70 over the next 20 years, while means-testing its benefits and changing its cost-of-living formulas.
For the states, a block-grant of the authority and money to run Medicaid.
Then there is Medicare.
Read Tevi Troy’s “The Fog of Mediscare” in the new Commentary Magazine. It is the domestic policy equivalent of Dr. Jeane Kirkpatrick’s “Dictatorships and Double Standards” from the November, 1979 issue of the same magazine.
Medicare’s budget shortfall this year alone is equal to Greece’s sovereign debt, notes Troy, and it is getting worse. Obamacare didn’t fix it. The debt negotiators didn’t really even graze it.
Troy also notes correctly that Democrats believe that Medicare is their political ticket out of the wilderness. If the wealthy and self-interested elites of the Left, led by the president, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, believe that Medicare is their only hope in 2012, they won’t allow its repair it in the Supercommittee.
So leave Medicare aside and explain that this is what the elections of 2012 will be fought over: Medicare reform or the massive tax hikes necessary to pay for the program as it exists.
That’s a deal—and a debate—worth having.
