Blogs For Victory

Showing exceptional GOP unity on the issue – from Politico:

No deal to raise the debt ceiling is complete without an amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced federal budget to prevent Congress “from hijacking the promise of American prosperity,” two Senate Republicans are arguing as a bipartisan group of congressional leaders heads to the White House on Thursday.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) say that while deep budget cuts and caps on future spending are key to warding off “fiscal calamity,” an amendment to the Constitution forcing the federal government to spend only what it has is essential…

If there is such a thing as a “liberal Republican” these days, it is Senator Snowe.  At best, she’s only a couple steps to the right of Joe Lieberman.  But, in the end, balancing the budget is no longer an ideological issue for anyone with sense – in 2011, you are either in favor of a balanced budget or you are an idiot or you are a corrupt tool of the Ruling Class.  Pick which one you are, because those really are the three choices.

We simply cannot keep spending as we are – even if you want to go as liberal as you can and demand tax hikes, the fact of the matter is that we cannot increase the tax burden to cover our $1.5 trillion deficit or, indeed, anything more than a fraction of that.   Even supposing you could find, say, $100 billion in tax hikes which wouldn’t kill the economy, that wouldn’t be nearly enough to ensure eventual balance to the budget and re-assure the world that there really is no chance of a US default at some point.  No, we need to bring that deficit down by hundreds of billions of dollars and we need to do it right away…and that means very, very large cuts in spending.  What gets cut is a matter for debate and compromise – that there must be cuts is just common sense.

But, right now, Obama and his Democrats are trying to work it out that we don’t need to cut spending, at least not in any meaningful sense and that  tax on “millionaires and billionaires” (which start, it would seem, at $250,000 per year) will fix the problem.  I say we let them stick with that – let Obama keep whining about corporate jets and refusing to face the truth…let him and the Democrats carry that in to 2012, if they want.  We on the GOP side must stand firm for massive spending cuts…and Snowe’s position shows that this is what is happened.  Let them batter against the truth; we’ll hold to it and if necessary we’ll fight 2012 out on the matter of spending and taxes.