Joke of a Sham Actually Sham of A Joke

Today the front page of the New York Times features an obituary for the Congressional Deficit Committee. Should anyone be surprised at the collapse of a committe whose goal was to reach a political compromise that would reduce the National Debt by several trillion dollars, when half the membership represented a political party that has made a refusal to compromise its modus operandi?

Democrats insist that they were closing in on the framework of an agreement, but that Republicans backed away from their willingness to accept significant revenue increases in exchange for cuts in the growth of entitlement programs. They said Mr. Boehner sealed the fate of the panel on Thursday by offering a package that had a mere $3 billion in new revenue, far less than an earlier Republican plan.

Assuming a 3 trillion dollar debt reduction goal, that’s a 1000 to 1 ratio of spending cuts to “revenue increases.” That’s the amount of “compromise” the GOP is willing to show… not a 10 to 1 ratio of cuts to revenue increases, not a 100 to 1 ratio of cuts to revenue, but a 1000 to 1 ratio. And what remains to be seen is what these revenue increases consisted of. The New York Times areticle is careful not to refer to them as tax increases. Most likely they consisted of scaling back some trivial tax deduction or other.

And what were the Democrats offering?

Serious negotiations did not begin until Oct. 25, when Democrats offered a proposal to reduce deficits by $3 trillion over 10 years through a combination of spending cuts and $1.3 trillion of revenue, largely from tax increases.

The Democratic proposal included as much as $500 billion of savings in health care programs, higher Medicare premiums for high-income beneficiaries and use of a less generous measure of inflation that would reduce annual cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security benefits.

A plan consiting of 57% cuts and 43% tax increases. The plan included cuts to treasured Democratic programs such as Medicare and Social Security, among other things.

When the Republican proposal consists of a 1000 to 1 ratio of cuts to revenue increases, while the Democrats’ proposal consists of a 57% to 43% ratio of cuts to revenue increases (yes, more cuts than tax increases, even in the Democratic plan) it’s pretty clear that only one of the two parties is at the table to get something done.

Still, you can expect that the mainstream media, as a whole, will do its best to apportion the blame equally.