Is deficit debate a new political dawn?
Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles think it may be a new day in American politics, one where politicans who hike taxes and alter Social Security stay in office.
Simpson, a former Republican senator, tells MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he sees evidence of change whenever he strolls through an airport: “I can tell you, we used to get lots of signals. I get more thumbs up now than other digits.”
The pair, co-chairs of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, have proposed cutting the U.S. budget deficit by reducing defense spending, eliminating tax breaks, hiking the gasoline tax and altering Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Those kinds of measures have been a presciption for political suicide up to now, although the recommendations call for lower tax rates overall.
But with voters agonizing over joblessness, the deficit and growing economic powers like China, Simpson and Bowles believe the public wants to hear straight talk about the country’s problems and the steps needed to set things straight.
“Congress people used to believe if they came up here they’d get punished for making tough decisions. I think it’s just the opposite today,” Bowles says. “They will be severely penalized if they take a walk and don’t make these tough decisions and don’t get real.”
Simpson warns specifically against a current argument that says you can eliminate the deficit by banning earmarks, attacking waste, fraud and abuse, and scaling back foreign assistance.
Tea Party ‘warriors’ take aim at Florida Senate race
Conservative Tea Party activists had loads of fun in Boston last month helping Scott Brown chuck Teddy Kennedy’s forever-Democratic Senate seat into Republican waters.
Now the painted warriors hope to stage a reenactment of Florida’s Dade Massacre, with Republican Gov. Charlie Crist playing the ill-fated Maj. Dade.
A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows Crist 12 percentage points behind former state House Speaker and Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio in Florida’s Republican primary contest for the U.S. Senate. Rubio leads Crist 49 percent to 37 percent.
Rubio’s lead is only just outside the poll’s 5 percentage point margin of error, and 11 percent of the 449 people surveyed say they’re undecided. But the numbers suggest a fundamental change in voter sentiment since August, when Crist’s support stood at 53 percent. Rubio and Crist both hold a double-digit lead over likely Democratic nominee, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, in the general election campaign to replace retiring Republican Sen. Mel Martinez.
Rubio’s fortunes present an important test of the Tea Party movement’s ability to draw votes. But there may be more than that at stake. Pundits say the Tea Party movement needs national leadership to become a true force in American politics. A Senate victory for Rubio could help give them that in time for the 2012 presidential election campaign.
But is the Tea Party movement really without leaders? An article in The New Yorker magazine points out the involvement of former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. It also notes that some well-heeled lobby groups and think tanks, including Americans for Tax Reform, the Club for Growth, Campaign for Liberty and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, sponsored the Tea Party march in Washington last September.
Photo Credits: Reuters/Brian Snyder (Boston Tea Party Reenactment); Reuters/Mark Wallheiser (Charlie Crist); Reuters/Larry Downing (Dick Armey)
Americans should support any movement that will bring back our constitutional rights that have been allowed to degenerate due to both the Republican and Democratic parties. If the tea parties will do this than more power to them. Perhaps it will even bring about a third party that will be middle of the road with independents which will blunt the influence of both liberals and conservatives.
