Leo Morris at Opening Arguments posts Opening Arguments: No fiscal discipline? Shocking which quotes Mort Kondracke
If Washington, D.C., politicians were serious about fiscal discipline, especially to prepare for the baby boom retirement crisis, they’d raise taxes and cut spending. But they aren’t serious.
As the debate on budget reconciliation right now shows, Republicans are trying to cut spending some and cut taxes more. Democrats want to raise taxes some and spend a lot more. And the twain shall never meet.
I posted in the comments over there that the twain sort of met during the Clinton administration. Taxes went up some, and I think spending got cut some — at least spending didn’t increase much because of the gridlock between the Democratic President and the Republican Congress. I could go for a bit more gridlock — seems like we’re all safest that way.
Update Sort of related. The Christian Science Monitor has a story about “what the 2005 elections mean.” The article suggests that outgoing Virginia Governor and probable Presidential candidate Mark Warner as well as a Democratic message of “fiscal discipline” are the biggest winners in the 2005 election.
Perhaps the biggest winner out of Mr. Kaine’s victory is Mark Warner, soon-to-be former governor of Virginia. By all appearances – including a trip next week to New Hampshire, host of the first presidential primary – he is thinking of running for president. If Kaine’s victory is in large part an endorsement of Mr. Warner’s four years as governor, then it may also be evidence that the Democrats’ successful model of running centrist Southern governors for president is not dead.
And if Democrats are looking for policy lessons out of Warner’s stewardship of Virginia, they need look no further than an area that used to be a Republican strength: fiscal responsibility.
“What Mark Warner helped to do is transform the political culture of a red state and make it far more amenable to Democratic perspectives,” says Bob Holsworth, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “Clearly, in Virginia and in the South, Democrats have found it successful to run as the fiscally responsible party. Given all the current spending by the Bush administration, there’s an opportunity for that message to resonate nationally.”
For Warner, “fiscal responsibility” translated into spending cuts in some areas and raising taxes in others. He heads for the finish line of his term with approval ratings above 70 percent. Kaine, the current lieutenant governor, benefited from Warner’s record. He even won in conservative Virginia Beach, which Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry had lost by 30,000 votes in 2004.
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