Thursday, November 19, 2009

He's Lame Evan Bayh These Standards

Yes, The Hoosier Daddy of ConservaDems is back, polishing his Sensible Centrist hall monitor badge over at CNN today, complaining about the national debt:
The path of least resistance that we have trod for so long is the path to national weakness. If you have the same people and the same process, you are going to get the same results. 
For this reason, I will vote "no" on raising the debt ceiling unless Congress adopts a credible process to balance our books and eliminate the red ink.
Oh, so now Evan F'ckin Bayh is Evan F'ckin Bayh, Fiscal Conservative?  My ass.
There are, however, some issues to consider. For example, it was none other than Evan Bayh who recently voted to "reform" the estate tax, cutting taxes for the extraordinarily rich, at a cost of $750 billion over the next decade. To pay for it, he recommended ... nothing. The costs would simply all be added to the deficit. Given this, I hope he'll forgive my skepticism about his credibility on the subject of fiscal responsibility.
For that matter, I know everyone is always supposed to believe at all times that "both sides are equally to blame," but Bayh's shorthand is lazy and wrong. Democratic policymakers cut the deficit and created a surplus. Republican policymakers were the single most fiscally irresponsible officials in American history. Yes, Dems are running high deficits now, but only because the alternative is a wholesale economic collapse. Skipping over this history is, at best, misleading.

It's also worth keeping in mind that the president's budget proposals already project deficit reductions, and health care reform would further bring significant reductions to the deficit.

But perhaps the biggest question I have for Bayh is: why wait? If the Indiana senator and his cohorts wants to put together a deficit reduction strategy, why not put pen to paper and present a plan?
Because the only thing "fiscal conservatives" hate more than "red ink" is pissing off their corporate constituents by cutting industry subsidies...or pissing off voters by raising taxes.

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