November 08, 2010
In the next month we will see reports from three commissions on what we should do about the budget deficit. The remarkable aspect of these commissions is that they are composed entirely of people who were unable to see the $8 trillion housing bubble, the collapse of which wrecked the economy. In fact, the commission members think that their prominent role in driving the economy to ruin makes them especially qualified to tell the rest of us what we should do with Social Security, Medicare, and other key programs.
There is no reason that we should have affirmative action for ignorance.
Someone who could not see the onset of the biggest economic disaster in 70 years obviously has little grasp of basic economic relationships.
These are not the sort of people who should be setting economic policy.
Furthermore, the timing of these reports are an incredible insult to the American people. We have elections to decide items like the future of Social Security and Medicare. If the members of these commissions were acting in good faith they would have issued their reports three months ago with the goal of having them feature prominently in the election debate.
Instead these commissions hope to act in the darkness, pushing their agenda among inside Washington circles outside of the view of the electorate. Congress should absolutely do nothing on any of these commission reports until at least January when the new Congress takes power. Then, it can have committee hearings and have the issued aired in full public view. That is the way things work in a democracy.
This article originally appeared on POLITICO’s Arena Digest.
