This Matt Miller column in today's Washington Post is a must-read regardless of your political ideologies. Regular readers of my blog (all two of you!) know how big a fan I am of Matt Miller's pragmatic thinking or, as he puts it in his weekly radio show, 'Radical Centrism'. In today's column, he spells out the reasons why neither the Obama budget nor the Ryan budget is intellectually honest about the deficit and is really pandering to its own political agenda. A great point from the column:
"Paul Ryan proposes that the federal government spend $40 trillion over the next 10 years, as opposed to Barack Obama’s $46 trillion. The first thing to note is that there is thus about a 15 percent difference in the size of government envisioned by our two major parties. This difference matters greatly, of course, but shouting aside, this is a fight taking place between the 40-yard lines on either side."
My personal thought on this is although the president's budget is much closer to Ryan's budget, his preference would likely be what was proposed in the Simpson-Bowles Commission Report. That's just my hunch; I'm not basing it on any information confirming or denying it. Unfortunately, the President won't get it today from a Republican Party set on the emotional victory of making him a one-term president. The problem this would raise isn't that Republicans don't have the nation's best interests in mind. The real issue with the sport of politics being what it is, a Republican President in 2012 would only work between the 40-yard lines for four more years in hopes of securing a re-election, pushing off further necessary pain until 2016 at the earliest, which may be too late.
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