President Obama’s upcoming federal budget proposal will raise your taxes and cut Social Security. It combines the least attractive elements of both parties — people hate that Democrats want tax hikes, and they hate Republicans for wanting to cut Social Security — but it is exactly the kind of governance this country needs right now.
Obama’s budget seeks a compromise for the fiscal 2014 budget that will begin on October 1. The Washington Post reports that the budget, which has yet to be released, will reduce the deficit by $1.8 trillion over the next decade. The budget takes elements from the budget Obama offered to House Speaker John Boehner at the end of last year, a budget House Republicans turned down because it called for $1 trillion in new tax revenue.
The new proposal still raises taxes. You know how liberals are, they can’t drop the silly notion that raising money pays for things. Obama would have the government place limits on tax-preferred retirement accounts for wealthy taxpayers and calls for limits on tax deductions by the wealthy, which could reportedly generate about $580 billion in revenue over 10 years.
But a key feature of the plan is a revised inflation adjustment called “chained CPI.” This would lower annual increases made to a number of government programs, including the untouchable Social Security. This would affect benefits programs aimed at helping veterans, the poor, and the elderly. Since the sequester budget cuts already slashed children’s programs, we had to search harder for vulnerable people in our society to screw over. Democrats will hate all of this, but Republicans love this stuff.
On the other hand, NPR reports that the budget does not touch Medicaid. The administration had previously proposed making billions in cuts to Medicaid, but not this time.
Will the federal budget proposal get approved? Well, it still calls for new tax revenue. Republicans hate that. Democrats won’t mind one bit.
Republicans and Democrats have both made their own budget proposals, separate from the White House. Democrats want to reduce the deficit through a $1 trillion tax hike. Republicans want to reduce the budget by slashing any government program that thinks it’s okay to help others. Obama’s budget calls for a compromise, and there is a chance that one might happen .
A compromise is what we need. Fact of the matter is, the size of our government continues to grow, and with it, the size of our financial burdens. I may be a staunch progressive, but I’m not comfortable with the federal government consuming more and more of our gross national product. Government has grown rapidly over the last one hundred years, and, while the size of government has grown slower under President Obama than under President Ronald Reagan , it continues to grow. Do we allow it to grow until it consumes half of our economy?
At the same time, I view helping others as the single most important thing our government can do. I’m now going to take my personal check and help some old lady down the street, but if the government can take a smaller portion of mine and my neighbor’s to give her a decent life, then that is good governance. It helps all of us to do what we want to do but otherwise wouldn’t. I like knowing the least educated and least able among us can still survive. There should be a support system for people who fall upon hard times. That person could one day be me. It could be you . There’s a reason the recent recession didn’t look as bad as the recessions before it; lets not undo all the progress we’ve made since the Great Depression.
Obama’s federal budget calls for a compromise. It raises taxes. It cuts spending. Passing it would send the message that our government is ready to get serious about finding a way out of this mess. It’s time for both parties to get their heads out of the sky, and it’s time for voters to wake up too. We can’t always get what we want. The president’s budget is just responsible enough where our country doesn’t die trying to.
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