I was reading the HuffPo yesterday, and I saw this story about how “crazy” it is to have a bipartisan commission to reduce deficit spending and whatnot.  Most of it was a diatribe about how politicians are outsourcing their jobs and that this commission was just another bureaucracy.  I disagree.

Why do we have deficit spending in the first place?  Two real reason: 1) People don’t like to pay taxes (basis of Republican platform). 2) People, as much as they don’t like to admit it, like government services (basis of Democratic platform).  We like our clean air, relative peace and security, our social safety nets, our subsidized education; we just don’t want to pay for it.  Some politicians get elected for getting the government to help the people, and then other politicians get elected because we don’t like paying taxes for those services.

There’s just too many political pressures to have an equitable and balanced budget.  The few times that we have had a balanced budget in the last century were either because the party in power made a really hard decision to either reduce government spending or increase taxes (and then lost power) or the economy outgrew government spending, which increased tax revenues.

A Congressman is not likely to cut a 50 million dollar government program that provides jobs in his district if it means that the budget gets reduced 0.03%.  There aren’t enough moderates in either party, who will say I will take a 5% reduction in government spending for a 5% increase in tax revenues, that will cover a 10% hole in the budget.  And neither party wants to take the heat for raising the retirement age for Social Security, even though people are living a lot longer than they used to.  The 9/11 Commission seemed to work mostly, and maybe this one will.  It won’t solve all our problems, but it’s better than the political system we have now.  At the very least, it will give enough cover for politicians to go to their constituents and say, “It’s not a perfect plan, but it’s the best plan we could agree on.”