In a shocking policy statement released last week, Democrat Jason Kander—who is running for US Senate to unseat Republican incumbent Roy Blunt—announced that he supports a Balanced Budget amendment to the US Constitution.

That is a very odd policy position for a Democrat. Usually, this balanced-budget stuff is the bailiwick of Republicans, who claim that it’s a more responsible way to run government. Democrats usually oppose this kind of policy. Here are some of the reasons behind their opposition, from a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution:

• Budget deficits are sometimes beneficial, not just in times of war but also during economic slowdowns.

• A balanced-budget amendment brings the threat of political extortion by a congressional minority. Requiring a super-majority to run a deficit “is a veritable summons to political extortion by an intransigent minority” and could trigger a constitutional crisis.

• It is unwise to lock into the Constitution an economic variable of limiting government spending to 18 or 20 percent of economic output, since that level may need to change based on facts and circumstances.

And conventional [Democratic] wisdom says that the whole notion of a balanced budget is just a code-word, cover-story for making sure that, when the budget has to be balanced, cuts will come from social programs and the safety net, not from military spending, or from tax advantages for the wealthiest.

So, what is Kander thinking here?

Maybe he thinks that supporting the balanced budget concept will co-opt Blunt, who has co-sponsored such a measure many times during his tenure in Washington DC. In this line of thinking, Kander’s support for the amendment “takes the issue off the table” in the campaign. He has said that a national constitutional amendment would merely take its cue from similar balanced-budget measures in many states.  [Yeah, but what if balanced state budgets are a bad idea, too? Not a very good example. The federal government should be smarter than the states.]

Or maybe he thought that his supporters wouldn’t notice. It’s sort of an obscure issue, after all, and probably not top-of-mind for most people. But if that’s the case, why send out a tweet about it? Why make it an issue at all?  Why not do what most real Democrats do, and oppose it.

Sorry, Jason. I liked you as Missouri Secretary of State. And I was just about to sign up to volunteer for your campaign, on the recommendation of a friend whose opinion I value. But now that you’ve announced this policy, I’m less likely to help you out. This is exactly the kind of stinkin’ thinkin’ that other Missouri Democrats have engaged in as a ploy to appeal to Republican voters. Prime example: Robin Carnahan, another former MO Secretary of State tilted rightward in a previous election, sullying her previously stellar reputation, alienating many supporters, and failing to swing any Republican voters her way, and, of course, ultimately losing the election.]

When will these cowardly Democrats learn? In Missouri, you’re not going to grab any Republican voters by pretending to support conservative ideas. If they want a Republican, they’re going to vote for one. You’re not fooling them.  You can’t out-Republican Missouri Republicans. But what you are doing is alienating Democrats.

What we need are not Republican-light Democrats. We need progressive Democrats—Democrats who are not afraid to work for liberal policies. When Democrats pull this fake conservative bullshit, what they take off the table is the progressive message.  And that is really sad, because a lot of people may call themselves conservative, but expect to receive the services brought to them by progressive ideas [Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, TANF, fully funded police and fire services, infrastructure—to name just a few.] They just don’t realize it. They should be reminded. That’s a really important job for Democrats. And that’s why I have zero patience for Democrats who support terrible, right-wing policies like a balanced- budget amendment.

I await an explanation from Kander.

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There are some outside the Republican camp who want to believe that Rand Paul may be a little bit of fresh air from a party that is considered to be either stodgy or extreme. With his father, Ron, being the best known Libertarian in the United States, Rand is seen by some as a respecter and protector of individual liberties. But do not be confused: The rights that he wants to protect are those of the gun owner who wants to carry weapons most anywhere. He also favors the rights of the business owner who wants to withhold his goods and services from people he doesn’t like, such as LGBTs. He certainly is nowhere close to championing the rights of women to control their reproductive decisions, or helping the poor with programs to redistribute income.

Rand Paul did something that no other Republican did; he came to Ferguson, Missouri, scene of the August 9, 2014 shooting of unarmed Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson and the subsequent protests and riots. Paul did more than gawk; he met with protestors and actually tried to listen to their grievances.

But we all know that money talks, and that is where Paul’s ideas are a non-starter. As the Washington Post reported on April 10 following Paul’s presidential announcement:

The first policy proposal Rand Paul announced in his big speech declaring his presidential campaign this week was an old-fashioned plan for the federal budget. The Republican senator from Kentucky wants to amend the Constitution to require a balanced federal budget every year.

It’s an old saw. For decades, Congressional Republicans have been carping for a balance budget. They were obviously absent the day that the British economist John Maynard Keynes explained to Franklin Roosevelt and all Americans that a balanced budget can often stifle the growth needed to jump-start a lagging economy. Keynes’ contention was rather straightforward: The federal government has the power to borrow money when necessary, and it should use that power to fund programs to help the unemployed and the poor. As these people get back to work, they will pay taxes that can re-balance the budget.

Some eighty years later, we have learned that even if we are not able to rebalance the budget in the short-run, we are none the worse for wear.

What Franklin Roosevelt and a Democratic Congress did during the New Deal was to borrow to create a variety of agencies that provided job opportunities as well as an economic safety net, namely Social Security. Granted, the big spike in employment did not occur until the U.S. entered World War II, but the mechanism was in place to have government take action that gave a higher priority to helping people, rather than balancing a budget.

When Rand Paul says that he supports a balanced budget, he is really saying the following: “Because we can’t raise taxes on the wealthy, because they are the job-creators of our economy, our only choice is to cut spending if we are to balance the budget.” So let us count the ways in which he would cut the money:

1. Maybe some military spending, because he had previously hinted that he thought this was a good idea, but after he had a big rally in the shadow of a huge aircraft carrier, it seems that military cuts are off the table.
2. Cutting Social Security
3. Cutting Medicare
4. Cutting infrastructure spending
5. Cutting spending on consumer safety.
6. Cutting spending on the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control
7. Cutting spending for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
8. Cutting spending for air traffic controllers
9. Cutting spending for the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program
10. Cutting spending for school lunches

Just this one position by Rand Paul, his support for a balanced budget amendment, show us that he has the mean streak of so many other Republicans and has a callous disregard for people with real needs, particularly economic needs.

Don’t let that edgy part of Rand Paul fool you. Yes, he’s a little bit “anti-establishment,” as most free-thinking people would be. Yes, he has expressed greater reservations about going to war than most other politicians. But when you get down to the particulars of his ideas, he is just another Republican tightwad who holds hostage the needs of the hundreds of millions of Americans who are either poor or in the stagnant middle class. If you want “change you can believe in,” cross him off your list.

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I am part of America’s middle class and I want to pay higher taxes.

Before you call me insane, let me explain that I want to pay higher taxes in the same way that I “want” to work-out, eat less chocolate, and watch less television. I know that regardless of how much I complain while I’m exercising, I know that at the end of the day I will be satisfied that I invested in a healthy future.  This is the ever-important concept of delayed gratification and unfortunately previous generations did not apply this concept to the federal budget.

I’m assuming that everyone knows by now that President Obama has not balanced the federal budget for the last four years. I’m also assuming that the majority of the population knows that our deficit is dangerously high (eg. $16 trillion).  But did you know that our federal budget has only been balanced four out of the last 35 years?  Well, you already knew that if you watched former President Clinton ‘s speech at the Democratic National Convention (I’ll let you guess which administration balanced the budget). Given America’s sordid history of reckless accounting, it should be no surprise that this generation is finally going to have to pay for it.   Please stop saying that we must solve the debt crisis for the future generation and start doing it for your self.

I’m aware that one cannot just simply take the high road and elect to pay higher taxes, but I know that I have the guts to vote for a lower paycheck so that my country does not fail.  There is no realistic way the government can lower taxes or keep them at their current level without slashing federal spending.  We can’t just de-fund PBS, NPR, and Planned Parenthood and call it a day (Federal contributions to those three programs combined make up around 1% of the federal budget).   We would need to eliminate historic programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, which help keep millions Americans afloat. As I mentioned earlier, I am not wealthy. A cut in my paycheck would mean I have to make hard budgeting decisions.  But I am ready and willing to face those circumstances for the betterment of the nation’s status quo. I do not ask what my country can give me; I ask what I can give to my country.

As a college graduate, I am willing to pay more taxes so that the future generation has the same opportunity, regardless of their financial status.  As a daughter, I will make sacrifices to make sure that my parents’ generation has Medicare and Social Security.  As a woman, I want to make sure low-income women are not burdened by the high cost of female-specific health expenses, from contraception to mammograms.  As an American, I want to make sure that the men and women who serve my country come home to the same healthcare privileges that I enjoy.  And as a human-being, I know that we should stop forcing the world’s densely populated and poverty-stricken subtropical regions from reaping the consequences of America’s selfish ignorance to climate change.

We are all aware of the consequences of greed and self-interest yet we refuse to yield any of our income to those who are hurting the most.  Yes, Governor Romney and President Obama, you are correct.  The middle class is hurting.  We are still burdened by Wall Street’s failures.  But we, too, will have to pay for the mistakes of the wealthy if we truly want to see this nation recover.  We must not have a one-sided approach to reducing the deficit.    I understand that the middle class is economically diverse, with incomes ranging from  $32,500 to $250,000 and I apologize for lumping this huge economic class under one umbrella.  There are certainly members of the middle class who cannot and should not pay higher taxes. And, I also understand that members of the middle class can afford higher taxes but don’t trust the government with their hard-earned cash.  But the fact of the matter is that we must raise revenue on those who can afford it while making government programs more efficient and less costly or else we will either lose major government programs, worsen the current economy or both.

We must cross the partisan barbed wire fence and do what is necessary for the nation.  After all, the U.S. credit rating was not downgraded because of the financial crisis; it was downgraded because our politicians failed to unify days before the federal government reached a fiscal cliff. We have spent the past three decades putting ourselves before the benefit of the nation. Raising taxes should not be political suicide.  If you ask me, it’s simply patriotic.

The post Please raise my taxes appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Put two high-level Republicans, two high-level Democrats and a politically savvy moderator around a table for three days, and what do you get? Heated, ideological arguments that lead nowhere, right? Well, not exactly, as the editors of Esquire were surprised to learn last year.

In August 2010, Esquire invited former US Senators Gary Hart [D-CO], Bill Bradley [D-NJ], Bob Packwood [R-OR], John Danforth [R-MO] and MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell to sit down together in New York City for three days.

The plan was simple, says Esquire in its November issue. “A group of former legislators from across the political spectrum would convene, make the hard choices that our current leaders refuse to make, and erase the annual budget deficit by 2020.”

In a fly-on-the-wall background story, Esquire describes the deliberations in blow-by-blow detail. Except that no punches were thrown. Instead, the atmosphere around the table was collegial, respectful, serious-minded and solution-oriented. Participants applied their collective experience and expertise to the tough financial issues that, in today’s Washington pressure cooker, seem impossible to resolve.

According to Esquire, the assembled brain trust touched all of the financial and social hot buttons, but managed to keep their cool and stay above the fray. Trying to balance the budget meant discussing Social Security, Medicare, military spending, taxes, health care, energy policy, farm subsidies, earmarks and other subjects that have become radioactive in Washington.

They would argue, mostly, but also agree and reminisce and speak in Senate shorthand, and unlike the conduct that has come to define our poisonous contemporary political moment, each side would not ascribe the absolute worst motives to the other in order to make its points. No one would be accused of being out to destroy the Constitution. No outlandish conspiracy theories would govern the judgment of the participants. No one’s values would be held as suspect. No one’s very legitimacy would be in question. Rather, these senators were the very picture of spirited and rigorously informed good government.

But this was not just a symbolic, academic exercise. As participants lobbed ideas around the table, says Esquire, “Barry Anderson, a former deputy director of the Congressional Budget Office and the commission’s numbers expert crunch[ed] numbers at lightning speed to provide numerical weight to the commissioners’ plans.”

Reading Esquire’s account of the experiment, one cannot help but feel that America’s deficit problem is eminently solvable—if only we could take politics [meaning self-interest, influence from lobbies, the lust for power and sheer meanness] out of the equation. I know: fat chance. But I once heard a corporate board chairman say that most managers intuitively know exactly what needs to be done to solve a particular problem, but that they lack the will to make it happen. Judging from the conclusions drawn by the Esquire Commission to Balance the Federal Budget—a group of smart, former elected officials who Gary Hart described as “beyond ambition”—the answers are not that hard to figure out. And what surprised everyone was that when the agreed-upon ideas got a thorough, financial reality check, they not only balanced the budget, they created a $12 billion surplus.

You can read the full report of the Esquire Commission here. Among the highlights are:

• Gradually raise the normal retirement age to 70. Projected savings in 2020: $49 billion
• Restructure the military along strategic lines. Projected savings in 2020: $169 billion
• Repeal employer health-care tax exclusion and offer a refundable health care tax credit. Projected savings in 2020: $63 billion
• Increase the federal gasoline tax by $1 per gallon. Projected revenue in 2020: $130 billion

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are 17 more proposals where those came from, and—spoiler alert—the commission not only managed to balance the budget in 2020—they achieved a $12 billion surplus. They not only reformed Social Security—they guaranteed its long-term solvency. And they not only proposed to keep tax rates low—they found a way to keep them at or near their current levels for the next decade. And they did it all in three days.

 

[Originally published on Occasional Planet in November 2010.]

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