[Please see our Occasional Editorials for a Labor Day message -- "Medicare: Friend of America - Target of Destruction."]
Joint Committee Hearing
"The 12 members of the new joint deficit Super Committee will meet Thursday for its first hearing on the origins, drivers, and potential consequences of U.S. debt."
"For nearly all experts, this is a matter of settled fact. Most existing U.S. debt stems from a combination of Bush administration policies (massive tax cuts, unfunded wars), automatic consequences of the great recession (unemployment benefits, reduced revenues), and President Obama's stimulus bill. The key driver of future debt is health care costs, which will soon make Medicare unaffordable, and the ramifications, should policymakers fail to control the debt in the long run, would be economically catastrophic."
From this humble beginning, we shall have the most important work to be undertaken by Congress in decades. Pay attention to how the Joint Committee deals with our pre-paid public benefits (so-called entitlements). Early ideological posturing will be a bad sign for some kind of deliberate, rational agreement, and perhaps a bad sign for future politics in general. No doubt the GOP Presidential hopefuls get a free pass as President Obama must actually be involved in creating a solution.
States' Rights vs. the US Constitution
A former Boehner staffer has suggested that Rick Perry would be happier with the Confederate Constitution. "Analogies between Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and Confederate President Jefferson Davis are rather obvious in light of Perry’s suggestion that Texas might secede from the union and his wholehearted embrace of the union-destroying doctrine of nullification."
"Rick Perry’s understanding of the Constitution is a whole lot closer to the Confederate Constitution that it is to anything resembling the Constitution of the United States. Rick Perry thinks that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional, but America’s Constitution empowers our nation to 'lay and collect taxes . . . and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States' -- a power which unambiguously enables it to enact essential programs such as Social Security and Medicare."
"The Confederate Constitution only permitted its congress to 'lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises for revenue, necessary to pay the debts, provide for the common defense, and carry on the Government of the Confederate States.' Without the power to 'provide for the general welfare,' Medicare and Social Security would be unconstitutional in the Confederacy."
This tends to support our earlier refection that Mr. Perry's "views of Federal governance border on sedition." HIs views may be supported by some who are very vocal, but they are extreme never the less.
For Your Information
The Conservative Reality-Free Zone
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