The Sad Truth: Neither Republicans Nor Democrats Are Serious About Spending
More: Medicate's Chief Actuary Says Ryan's, Not Obama's, Plan Would Contain Costs and "Bend the Curve"

Good post by Allah on the basics.

Demagogy on the right -- that our financial problems are due only to Obama care and some overspending on foreign aid -- promises solutions that are easy, popular, and utterly ineffectual.

Yes, we need to cut the things the popular-message right says we need to cut.

And we have to cut quite a bit more than that, too.

Yes, we should do the easy stuff first, because you can't get to the hard stuff without doing the easy stuff -- but at some point, seriously, our leaders have to begin leveling with people, as Tom Coburn does, but few others do.

I don't know -- does Glen Beck talk about this at all? Or does he just sort of say Social Security is unconstitutional or something and leave it that? If so, that seems to be a safe, comforting position to take -- by implying action that everyone knows can't ever happen, he's basically saying let it lay.

Where are the thought-leaders on this? Limbaugh, Levin, etc.? It's relatively easy and popular to tell people things they already pretty much believe. It's hard to tell people things they don't want to hear -- but need to.

I don't know if they do or they don't. But if an equal number of Republicans and Democrats say "don't ever touch Social Security, not a tiny bit," while yipping and yapping about UN funding, I don't know. Seems like the vaunted right-wing shadow media isn't doing a very good job of telling truth to people if so few understand the basics of this.

Voucher Fever: The fever no one has. No one's seriously arguing for Ryan's plan except for Ryan and Coburn (and Sarah Palin, a bit).

Here's a fix, which both the CBO and now Medicare itself says would actually work, but the party of fiscal responsibility isn't talking about it. Just allowing Ryan to allude to it... a bit.

Hmmmmm... curious writes:

Oh for gosh sakes, you have to take politics completely out of the discussion. He has to have Bill clinton and George W. Bush have a heart to heart talk with the american people with charts and graphs and THE TRUTH. Last I noticed they are both well respected and one from each of these stupid political parties.

posted by Ace at 05:18 PM

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