A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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February 23, 2005Is Support for the BEA a Centrist Position?Lots of good thinking about government policy related to saving at the WSJ Econoblog. Unfortunately, neither party in Washington is ready to make the hard choices that demography and the profligacy of the past require us to make. As I have said before, we now have two parties in Washington, the tax and spend Democrats and the no-tax and spend Republicans. Neither party is fiscally responsible. The concluding thought concerns the BEA: What to do? Last week Mr. Greenspan embraced the idea of returning to the old discipline of the Budget Enforcement Act that contained discretionary spending and instituted pay-as-you-go provisions for new tax cuts and entitlement spending. As you say, the key is to get the hard choices made. Bringing back the BEA seems like a pretty good starting point to me. Worth reading. Maybe supporting a re-emphasis of the BEA could be a centrist position. I also like the idea of companies adding "save tomorrow" programs to make it easier for people to bolster savings instead of following a default path of least resistance. Posted by Brian Keegan at February 23, 2005 09:19 AM Comments
As the CC has defined itself, I can't possibly see how it's not a centrist issue. Fiscal responsibility is one of the cornerstones of the CC, and backing something like this would be a really good idea on our part, IMO. Posted by: Art at February 23, 2005 07:49 PMI completely agree with Art here. From my own perspective and based on the centrists, moderates and Indies that I've heard from over the years, fiscal responsibility is arguably one of, if not the, strongest areas of common ground. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Posted by: Kevin at February 23, 2005 08:19 PMFiscal responsibility used to be a something Republicans believed in. Ah .... those were the days .... Posted by: EG at February 23, 2005 10:25 PMAnd it's largely been moderates over the past 25 years who have supported fiscal sanity. Dole in the '80s during his battles with Reagan/Bush. Clinton in the '90s. Perot. McCain. Those on the poles have much more interest in their ideological goals than in acting responsibly. The liberals want to tax and spend, the conservatives, to tax cut and spend. The deficit and the national debt are key issues in the centrist agenda. Posted by: Dave at February 24, 2005 01:18 AMconservatives don't want to spend (seriously bush is facing lots of heat on lots of issues where he was "reaching out" on econ issues that conservatives feel strongly about). though conservative presidents do when facing re-election, while nearly all congress critters want to spend. sunset provisions for all laws would be a good start, as would rules that prohibit omnibus bills. also, limit the size of expenditures. or require cheques be signed by one or more senior officials, with limits on the value of any one cheque. if the president, the speaker of the house had, the presiden pro-tem of the senate and the relevant cabinet secretary had to sign every cheque (including every employees pay), and couldn't sign a cheque for more than 100,000, the government would have a serious problem spending money. Posted by: hey at February 25, 2005 01:14 AM |
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