Ian Benson
With the fiscal cliff looming on the horizon, the hope that Congressional Republicans and the White House could come together and forge a bipartisan resolution is slowly fading. The House Republicans, led by Speaker John Boehner, proposed their own plan to avoid the looming automatic tax increases and spending cuts, which the Obama administration quickly rejected — just another in a series of partisan claims that the other is insincere about forging a deal to avoid the cliff.
Of course, Boehner’s proposal comes after he delayed voting on a measure approved in the Senate that would give tax cuts to families making less than $250,000 and return tax rates for wealthy households to Clinton-era levels.
The problem seems to be an unwillingness on the part of both parties to compromise across the aisle, begging the question as to whether they even understand what the word means. As Henry Clay said, “a good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied,” yet both Republicans and Democrats stubborn refusal of any plan other than their own is infuriating. They are gambling with the well-being and future of millions of lives, yet they cannot be mature enough to put aside a petty feud.
Erskine Bowles, a Democrat from the Clinton administration, and Alan Simpson, a former Republican Senator from Wyoming, are co-chairs of President Obama’s federal deficit commission. They outlined a series of sweeping plans to avoid the cliff and assist the ailing economy in their 59-page report, “The Moment of Truth.” And while I have not read the whole proposal, my understanding is that it is far from a perfect plan. But so far, it is better than any other option that has been proposed.
Former Senators Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Sam Nunn (D-GA) recently wrote in The Washington Post that a “grand bargain” could be the key to addressing the fiscal cliff. And while the Bowles-Simpson proposal contains flaws, it goes further towards that grand “bargain” than anything presented so far. The perfect proposal is not going to come along, especially with so little time remaining before the cliff kicks in.
Congress and the president’s administration need to ask themselves what is more important to them: their party’s sense of pride or avoiding damage to the people they are sworn to represent. Of course, the answer should be easy, but these things have a tendency to come down to the wire.
What makes this lack of compromise all the more bitter is the fact that the standoff comes regarding tax increases for the nation’s wealthiest two percent. Republicans and Democrats are in agreement that the other 98 percent of the country, those making under $250,000 a year, deserve a tax cut. The holdup is a paltry two percent of the American population.
One of the parties needs to sacrifice a little and put the wellbeing of the 98 percent in front of their party ideologies. The extreme left wing and the extreme right wing are playing a game of chicken right now, where reason is being trumped by politics. The issue is, instead of putting their own necks on the line, it is our heads on the chopping block.