CBO Report is Damning for Ideologues - Right and Left [View all]

[michigandem58]

The Congressional Budget Office released its 2013 long term budget outlook on Tuesday. The document is the most significant vindication of President Obama's economic policies to date, both enacted and proposed, and it is the most damning thing to the president's economic critics, both Left and Right. The CBO reports that thanks to the president's strong leadership in investing in America's future and raising taxes on the wealthy, by 2015, the deficit will have been cut by 80% relative to the size of the economy from when President Obama took office...

As people live longer and longer - which is a good thing - they will utilize Social Security and Medicare longer and longer. That's just a fact, and adjustments will have to be made if these programs are to continue to keep the promise of a social safety net in perpetuity. And no, waiting until we reach ever closer to the brink to try a 1983 Reagan-style solution raising the retirement age isn't the answer, as some Leftist ideologues still suggest.

Our long term fiscal challenges can be solved with fairly modest changes to the safety net and the tax code. But that will not happen with intransigence and rigidity coming from both the Right and the Left. It will not happen if the Right never budges an inch on taxes. It will not happen if we liberals do not provide our president with the breathing room he needs, accusing him of selling out at every turn. And if it doesn't happen, we will edge closer and closer to the edge, and the closer we get to the edge, the more drastic the changes will need to be.

Liberals can choose between the president's sensible proposals to adjust the programs while protecting the vulnerable, or we can wait until we get to the brink and a Republican president forces changes we hate, ala Reagan who raised the retirement age, dumped double the burden on the self-employed, and taxed social security and unemployment benefits, with Democrats' help. We have a choice now. But we won't have that choice forever. The clock is ticking.

http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2013/09/cbo-report-makes-clear-why-grand.html