Thank You Captain Obvious – Do We Really Need A Deficit Panel?

This past weekend the Obama administration worked incredibly hard [sarcasm included] to establish a deficit panel.  If any American doesn’t realize that we have an unprecedented deficit, they must be living in a cave or a bunker for 60 years.

Obama has named a Republican from the Reagan era, Alan K. Simpson and a Democrat from the Clinton era, Erskine Bowles to lead this new commission established to curtail the deficits that may wind up paralyzing this nation. 

The commission that Mr. Obama plans would have 18 members, 10 Democrats and 8 Republicans. The president would name one other Republican and three additional Democrats, none of whom would be administration officials or lawmakers. For the remaining 12 members, the leaders of both parties in the House and Senate each would choose three lawmakers.

The commission would try to recommend by December — after the midterm elections — how to balance the budget by the fiscal year 2015, not counting interest payments on the debt; those are projected to be nearly 3 percent of the gross domestic product that year, a size that most economists say is the maximum acceptable. Also, Mr. Obama wants a commission to propose longer term changes in revenues and the entitlement programs to rein in a debt projected to be 77 percent of the economy’s output by 2020. A supermajority of 14 of the 18 members would have to concur to reach a deal.

We definitely need to resolve our debt crisis and stop building our deficits taht will enslave younger generations to the government and other foreign investors.  However, I find this interesting since Obama is requesting a commission but he is in fact the one president who has spent more than all others combined in his first year.  He is also creating unsustainable budgets that could create disasterous results in the long-run.  Again, as Michelle Malkin aptly calls it, this is kabuki theater.  This is probably another ploy to appear as if he is working to help, but really has no intention of turning from his ideological partisanship of big spending, high taxing, big government.  None of this surprises me in the least now that Politico is reporting that he is already working on his 2012 campaign.

So far only 3 leading Senate Democrats have been named to the panel and the rest have yet to be named.  This is supposed to be a bipartisan panel, but the Democrats, along with Bowles will have the upperhand with 11 members to 9 Republicans. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has named Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana and Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois to the panel, which is charged with recommending spending cuts and possible revenue increases to bring the deficit to managable levels by 2015.

I trust the current crop of bureaucrats as far as I can throw them, and for a 5′ 0” tall female that’s a pretty short distance!  I’m not sure anybody in our congress knows how spending, business, or finances work from a real world perspective so this will be interesting to watch.

Who knows, maybe this is what Obama meant when he was talking about green shoots and new jobs (bigger government and more commissions that just add to the inefficiency and bureaucracy).