The Farce Continues

The disgusting posturing and political theater continue in Washington D.C. this afternoon. Why did we have to have this financial crisis heading into an election year? Seriously now. Everyone down in D.C. is playing CYA for 2012 and ignoring the bigger, structural problems we need to confront as a nation.

The facts are pretty grim- I think I read somewhere that something like 49% of Americans don't pay any tax at all. The tax code is insane, bureaucratic and completely incomprehensible and has created a situation where taxes aren't actually raising much revenue at all. To me, the heart of this mess is tax reform. I don't care how big or small you want the government- I think we can all get onboard with the notion that we'd like some government and we'd like that government to do certain things and how do you pay for that in a fair and equitable way?

I keep coming back to the consumption tax. We are, after all, a nation of consumers- and the more disposable income one has, the more one can presumably consume. Basically, the more shit you buy, the more taxes you pay. Obviously things like food would be exempt from this- and there's even the potential for a free economic boost every year if you would say, declare August a tax free month for the purposes of back-to-school shopping. I'm not an economist or a tax lawyer so there are probably a bunch of good arguments out there against this, but to me, this is simple, it's fair, it's guaranteed revenue for the government and more importantly it encourages people to think about what they buy a little bit. (FairTax has a whole load of more professional, intelligent sounding information on this- it's well worth a peek.)

And now where are we? Same place we've been all along- nowhere. The House is going to vote on $2.4 trillion debt ceiling increase and $2.4 trillion in cuts to balance it out, cap expenditures and vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment. President Obama went on television this morning and... well, I don't know. His assertion that 80% of Americans want higher taxes to solve the deficit crisis is a bit questionable to me and the reactionary ideology that permeates the Left continues to frustrate me greatly. When is liberalism going to move into the 20th Century? Why do they insist on defending the policies of the 1930s and the 1960s? I want liberalism to move beyond the New Deal and the Great Society and figure out what's next. The 'Left', such as it is, has never had a period of intellectual retrenchment similar to what Conservatives went through in the 50s and 60s. It's a generational discussion, a generational debate- only no one is talking.

In short, everybody is failing. It's a total group effort up in Washington and it's frustrating. We don't need big, bloated, 20th Century government anymore. We don't need small, tiny privatized government either. We need a lean, mean, flexible machine for the 21st Century. President Obama keeps talking about 'smart government.' When are those words going to stop being rhetoric and start being the real change in Washington that he promised us?