Dean Baker: Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Was Doomed From the Start
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
I thought this interview with Dean Baker was interesting. I obviously do not agree with everything that he says, especially regarding the deficits and the attitude of the markets towards them. The US markets are far removed from being efficient mechanisms of capital allocation these days, and as such are unreliable indicators of just about everything except the latest trading fads and speculative excess.
But Mr. Baker touches on one point that gives me much room for thought, and that is the enigmatic president, Barack Obama. His appointments have often seemed eccentric, especially for someone who was elected on a wave of reform sentiment. He largely threw his mandate away in the first year on the very controversial health care reform bill that pleased almost nobody, and was obtuse in its requirement for individuals to purchase private health insurance from monopolistic health management corporations.
But his seeming obsession with trying to teach the seasoned politicians (whoremasters all) of Washington how to act in a bipartisan and selfless manner, as if they would take the least guidance from such a relatively inexperienced upstart, seems designed to fail. It is becoming increasingly difficult to take Obama seriously in matters of reform.
The sad part is that as bad and ineffective Obama and his cronies may be, the same and more can be said of the opposition Republican party. Some people are retreating into mere partisanship these days because they cannot deal with the uncertainty of the situation, but the sad truth is that America is lacking in leadership capable of uniting the people except through greed and fear, a dangerous cocktail in troubled times.
The US has a range of serious problems, but the greatest of these is political reform, and the return to Constitutional, rather than corporate, governance.
"Baker says that the committee, titled the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, was doomed from the start because of the strong views of the co-chairs – Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Although the commission was designed to be bipartisan, Bowles, the Democratic co-chair, is not a typical Democrat. He is a director at Morgan Stanley, one of the banks benefiting from a Wall Street bailout.
Baker says that both co-chairs have expressed hostility toward Medicare and Social Security, two of the nation’s core social programs and demonstrated a loose grip on reality. Alan Simpson, the Republican co-chair and former Senator from Wyoming, said that he wanted to cut off Social Security payments to senior citizens who drive their Lexuses into their gated communities.
Baker counters that while Simpson and his friends may be wealthy, most senior citizens are not, noting average person over 65 lives on less that $30,000 a year. "It’s like appointing someone you knew had racist views to head a civil rights commission," Baker says. "It’s not the sort of thing you’d like to see."
See also: Time to Put the Deficit Commission Out of Our Misery, Dean Baker.
