Just when it seemed that America was on the brink of being forced into fiscal responsibility the Gang of Six rides into town and makes life safe again for government to live beyond our means.
Reason provides what is largely missing from Washington DC:
Yesterday, the so-called Gang of Six—a cadre of Republican and Democratic Senators working independently from the administration and Congressional leadership—released a proposal to reduce the projected federal deficit by $3.7 trillion over the next decade. According to The Washington Post, it “requires lawmakers in the coming months to cut agency spending, overhaul Social Security and Medicare, and rewrite the tax code to generate more than $1 trillion in fresh revenue.” It’s so…so…bipartisan. But maybe not in an entirely good way.
In a nice overview of the plan, Cato’s Dan Mitchell points out that, as usual, the headline deficit reduction figures don’t represent real reductions from current spending levels; instead, they’re cuts from projected growth. There are a few things to like about the plan, however, including its reduction of both the top personal and corporate tax rates and its obliteration of the CLASS Act.
But many of the particulars are still vague, especially when it comes to health care. Despite what the Post suggests, there is no major overhaul of Medicare. The plan calls for $200 billion in overall health care savings, but from where? We don’t yet know.
Call us crazy but we get a bit leery when a plan to “increase revenue” and cut spending can’t pinpoint where exactly those spending cuts are going to be. Because we all know where the revenue increases are coming from. Our paychecks.
– Written by Kip Hooker at TheVitaminPress.com
Source: Reason.com
