What’s wrong with the President’s deficit reduction commission?

By Tom Quiner

I sincerely appreciate the thought put into solving America’s debt crisis by the President’s deficit reduction commission.  Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson and the rest of the panel worked hard at trying to solve the mess created by our Congress.

To be clear, Congress is the blame. They have the power of the purse. They have spent recklessly, especially the last ten years, especially the last two years.

To be clear, both parties have contributed to the mess. Quiner’s Diner has presented ongoing analysis of how we got here.

But the big idea of the commission is that this country is going to have to live with dramatically higher levels of spending and taxation than ever before. The commission doesn’t touch the new health care entitlement enacted by Congress last term. It slows down the growth of some long term spending, but nonetheless forces us to live with a higher spending baseline than ever before.

I don’t trust Congress with our money. They spend too much of it unwisely. They are a drain on our economy and job creation.

Just look at the recent government stimulus spending.  It was supposed to bring the unemployment rate down. Instead it went up. It went up again last week.

The problem is spending.

We’ve given Congress and the federal government too much power. Let’s develop a plan to return spending to its historic levels of closer to 20 percent of GDP.