Budget woes

Everyone wants to blast everyone about the deficit. But nobody, and I mean nobody, in either party wants to consider doing anything serious about it. Here, though, is a perfectly straightforward proposal from Kevin Drum in Mother Jones:

But if we were even close to having a sane political class in this country, it wouldn't be that hard to hit this target: (1) Let the Bush tax cuts expire. Nobody was overtaxed in the 90s. (2) Do a conventional fix for Social Security. This would be good for another 1% or so. (3) Get serious about reining in Medicare costs. Squeezing another 1% via Medicare changes wouldn't be that difficult if both parties were willing to treat it as a real problem instead of a chance for demagoguery. (4) Add in a modest assortment of spending cuts (smaller military, unprivatized student loan, reduced ag subsidies) and revenue increases (estate taxes, carbon taxes, financial transaction taxes) and you'd get the rest of the way there. If you don't like these suggestions, feel free to sub in your own ideas here.

For a country as big and rich as the United States, this stuff isn't even very painful. We could do it in a single legislative session and 99% of the country would barely notice the effects. And yet it's the next best thing to impossible. It doesn't speak well for our future.

My modest change would be to craft a series of taxes and tax credits to lower our dependence on petroleum, not for any 'Green' reason, but simply as a necessary step for national defense. But then, I am not part of any political class, sane or otherwise.