Patrick Buchanan: the man Conservatives love to hate and hate to love.
Frequently he can be all over the proverbial grid.
Here, he makes a bit of initial sense:
“I used to think it would take a great financial crisis to get both parties to the table, but we just had one,” said G. William Hoagland, a former adviser to the Senate Republican leadership on fiscal policy.
“These days, I wonder if this country is even governable.”
Quoted in the New York Times’ lead story, “Party Gridlock Feeds New Fear of a Debt Crisis,” Hoagland nailed it.
America faces a crisis of democracy.
At its heart is a fiscal crisis [my emphasis]. After the 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion, we are running a 2010 deficit of $1.6 trillion. Trillion-dollar deficits are projected through the Obama years, be they four or eight.
You are being quite kind, Mr Buchanan. Obama is, to me, clearly on his way to a one-term presidency. Has anyone noticed that I have never written these two words together: “president” and “Obama”? They are, to my way of thinking, mutually exclusive.
Buchanan continues:
Long before 2016, however, holders of U.S. public debt will stop buying Treasury bills or start demanding higher interest rates to cover the growing risk of a default.
This week, a smoke detector went off. China
, in December, had unloaded $45 billion of its $790 billion in T-bills. Is Beijing bailing out?
To assure the world we are not Greece writ large, the United States must soon adopt a visible plan for slashing the deficit.
There are three ways to do it. One is through growth that increases the tax revenue flowing into the Treasury and reduces the outflow for safety-net programs like unemployment insurance.
But growth only comes slowly and can take us only so far.
Wait for it — wait for it; Here it comes:
Needed is a combination of big budget cuts and tax hikes. But the only place one can get budget cuts of the magnitude required is from the big entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And the only place to get revenue of that magnitude is by raising taxes on the American middle class.
And here is where Barack Obama hits the wall.
And here is where Mr Buchanan and I part company — as will, I suspect, the bulk of you, my dearest readers.
Tax hikes?
Are you serious, Mr Buchanan? Tax hikes on a federal level?
In a Recession? Bordering on inflation and then hyper-inflation? On the cusp of an actual Depression?
Get set, Americans. To Mr Buchanan you are now Reds:
Republicans are not going to give him a single vote for a tax increase. Not only would this violate a commitment most made to the people who elected them, it would be politically suicidal. For behind the GOP today, and its best hope of recapturing Congress in 2010, are the tea-party irregulars.
And tea partiers now play the role of Red Army commissars [my emphasis] who sat at machine guns behind their own troops to shoot down any soldier who retreated or ran. Republicans who sign on to tax hikes cannot go home again.
As well they should not!
Consider: Arlen Specter voted for the Obama stimulus and faced an immediate primary challenge from Pat Toomey, who took a 20-point lead, forcing Specter to quit the party to survive. Popular Gov. Charlie Crist embraced Obama on a Florida visit and got an immediate primary challenge from Marco Rubio, who now looks to be the next senator from Florida.
The tea-party folks are not into the Gerald Ford politics of compromise and consensus. They have seen what it produces: the inexorable growth of government.
And, on the other hand, we have seen what tax cuts may yield under someone as politically insane and daft as Ronald Wilson Reagan.
One thing Mr Buchanan now properly offers:
Principled conservatives are resisting tax hikes because they believe government has grown too huge for the good of the country. And if that means putting the beast on a starvation diet – no new tax revenue to batten on – so be it. Cold turkey time.
Anticipating gains in November, Republicans will not give Obama any new taxes before then. After November, their ranks swollen by tea-party support, they will be even more intractable.
Where does that leave Obama – and us?
Later this year or early next, to avoid a debt crisis, Obama will ask Congress to raise taxes and pare back entitlement programs.
Republicans will fight the taxes to the last ditch. Democrats, having lost dozens of colleagues in the November massacre, will rebel against the cuts in social spending.
And a paralyzed government will drift closer toward the maelstrom.
And in response to the so-called “maelstrom”?
I say: bring it on.
Nothing would make me happier than a federal government in turmoil and stagnation. But moreover: NOT SPENDING.
Patrick J. Buchanan: you are a complete tool, sir.
BZ
MY ever having ANY cash come back to me via Social Security is DEAD. ANYthing I envisioned having come back to me via Medicaid is DEAD.
So FUCK YOU, federal government. I’ve already prepared. That’s why I advocate absolutely DRACONIAN cuts. Won’t hurt ME because I actually had a VISION for MY future. And it DIDN’T involve ANY form of government.
Plomo o plata?
Brass and lead, brothers and sisters. Brass and lead.
BZ
Damn BZ you sound a bit disgruntled….
As I said in 2006, 2008 and have been saying since… Look at California to see the future.
The problem with this state is exactly the tornado of tax and spend liberal/democratic rule that hit the feds in 2006 when Pelosi became speaker….So who gets the blame? of course it’s the Republicans…Poor Arnie, the RINO tried to appease the libturds and now he’s hung out to dry. Should be a lesson to all Conservatives, STICK TO YOUR FUCKING PRINCIPLES.
Bush: Arnie tried to enact each and every point he promised. He got shot down in flames. Is it any wonder he turned cheek? No; not at all. The boy actually LEARNED from politics.
Everything is gonna have to crash. EVERYTHING is gonna have to crash. On EVERY level. For EVERY thing. We just won’t GET it. EVERYthing is gonna have to crash. You think you’ve seen “bad”?
To quote Jim Morrison:
“I been down so God-damned long; that it looks like UP to me!”
BZ
BZ,
My wife took all my money. My retirement is shot! And I still am for Draconian cuts. That is patriotism for ya.
Taxes will not solve the debt sustainably. It will choke off private sector spending. Also, it will help the Feds avoid the pain. Reducing public spending will increase fiscal sanity and responsibility. That way lies hope. That way lies China not pulling out.
I wonder if China spends much less of its GDP on government than we do. Do you know?
Culturist John:
So can we actually SAY it?
Can we actually say:
CUT CUT CUT CUT CUT!!
??
BZ
Patrick J. Buchanan has stopped clock syndrome: right twice a day, but some times you only get half the gongs.
I never expected SSN to help me or ‘be there’ for my retirement. When disabled from the federal government, barely able to walk a block that was not disabled enough for SSN. And the paperwork that had to be filed was nearly 10″ thick at 8.5×11 paper of medical records, exams, tests, reports… and as I have brain damage and was unable to barely register where I was most of any day, my lady had to help me fill the forms out and SHE had problems: being able bodied and fully aware and awake.
Screw ’em.
I did my 14+ years in the Federal Government and if my medical insurance hits the toilet, then it will be because the federal system has imploded… and I will survive that, too. As I was in a job that required some ‘worst case condition’ thinking, I knew the worst case was an absent DC both physically and digitally. Anyone who doesn’t prepare for that is plain, gonzo, nuts.
I’m sorry but all these nice things of government can disappear in a relative moment’s notice. You help no one, in any way, by making them dependant upon bureaucrats and expecting said bureaucrats to know or even care much about their jobs. I know. Been there, done that, got the retirement pin.
We have over-extended our finances beyond our means as a people. We can cut back, pay back the good money sent, take a huge one-time hit to the debt, and cut the extraneous parts of government out and then work hard on paying down our debt with a very limited government… or you don’t want to think about what happens when we don’t do that. China not only did not BUY T-Bills they started SELLING THEM. Japan is now our largest debt holder, not China.
China is getting the last of the good money while it still floats around and will spend it madly… and collapse as they have been spending madly for two decades. We can recover from a fiscal collapse of the US and China. China can’t.
Yes I would have a hard time surviving such a collapse. Yes I’ve been making decisions about my piss-poor health for decades and how to get by and will continue to do so. I don’t expect the collapse of the fiscal system to be the collapse of the Nation… Americans can learn when their noses are rubbed in it. The next person who wants to rub your nose in it AFTER that, doesn’t get a sweet, nice time.
You want something done? Do It Yourself. If it is worth doing it is worth keeping from government to do it so it gets done right. I put out 10% or so of my income after taxes into charities. I have donated enough to stock a few families by giving to charities my worldly goods. Give me my tax money BACK and I will invest it and give MORE to charity for more good deeds by those dedicated to the lowest cost provision of them. Beats the hell out of government.
“Plomo o plata?” was a question in Spanish asked by Mexican narcotics trafficers of goverment officials. It means “Lead or silver?” The dope dealers offer death to the resisting official or bribes to those who cooperate with them.
Sorry.
There is another area that could provide the kind of deficet reduction: Defense. Social security will need to be adjusted. One answer is to eliminate the cap on colections (currently around 105K) and to means test it. Another way is to raise the retirement age. Reforming healthcare could handle Medicare.
Taxes are inevitable, and it’s not just Obama. It started when W turned surpluses in deficets. China is scaling back because they own a a lot of our debt. Others will buy it as well. Besides Great Britian, we have the least debt to GDP ratio (a little over 110% per annum) than any other industrialised first world economy (including Canada and Germany). Relax and have another beer, BZ. The sky is not falling. You’ll be dead and gone long before the USA can’t get creditors to finance its debt.
Like most conservatives I with Pat on some things, but he always gets me riled on others. I can never be sure when listening to him what words will next flow from his mouth. However, I do like the man!