"President Obama's decision to appoint Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson to his bipartisan commission on government spending is politically shrewd and, in terms of policy, potentially helpful.
It is shrewd in that he is doing what he has been urged to do, which is bring in wise men. Here are two respected Beltway veterans, one from each party. It shows the president willing to do what he said he'd do when he ran, which is listen to other voices. The announcement subtly underscores the trope "The system is broken and progress through normal channels is impossible," which is the one Democrats prefer to "Boy did we mess up the past year and make things worse." And the commission gets some pressure off the president. Every time he's knocked for spending, he can say "I agree, it's terrible. Help me tell the commission!""
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703315004575073793778656392.html
President Obama has proved to be the most 'politics as usual' President one could imagine. He trotted out a 90 year old playbook, updated only by substituting anthropogenic global warming for some other excuse for why government should take control, and marketed all of it as 'hope and change.' I told anyone who cared to listen my big problem with Senator Obama the candidate was he presented himself as something different when in fact he was the same old thing - a statist with a statist's plans for more government in every conceivable arena. Handsome, brilliant, articulate, charismatic, and accomplished, yes. But a change agent? Only to the extent that completing the re-making the USA in the Euro model of a more massive centralized state is different than not completing it. It's the same battle that's been faught since this nation's birth - Federalism, Confederacy or Centralized National Government, and he wants more centralized government.
The latest play from the standard book of political diversion, is a subsitution for leadership since there's no play in the Statist playbook that will work for the President right now, is a 'bipartisan commission' on Federal spending.
Well, why not? These have worked out for us so well in the past!
Ms. Noonan's point is this is camoflage for his inability to do what he wants to - but he must do SOMETHING. I do think the system is rigged in favor of more spending all the time. But I doubt there's any commision that can or will propose the constitutional restrictions that will be needed to fix the US Government's structural problems. How about amendments to the Constition that would permit the line item veto? Or an amendment which would restrict Federal funding which moves money from one state to another (IOW, immediately end all pork barrel spending)? Or an amendment which would prohibit the government from committing to spend money which will be taxed to those not yet born (talk about your taxation without representation!)? How about no Federal pensions or guaranteed health care benefits (lump sum payments upon retirement only, or salary paid for the sole purpose of retirement funding) - so that Federal employees get to face the same uncertainties as the citizenry they are supposed to have served (instead of becoming a protected class which is paid from the citizenry's productivity no matter how massively the politicians disrupt the economy)?
Whatever the polticians do to mollify the masses who accurate percieve, for the present, that the political class is incompetent to the task of planning our lives and spending our taxes, it will fail unless structural changes - changes which rebuild the Founders' concepts of limited Federal Government - are implemented.
Until that time, political Darwinism ensures that only those politicians who can talk about fiscal responsibility whilst funneling as much money as possible to their constituency - local and national - will survive.
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