What's your plan, Democrats?
The New York Post
July 19, 2011
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/what_your_plan_democrats_KNadgDv4fHHYvBGeyzcbOI
The House of Representatives today is expected to offer up yet another way out of the nation's debt-ceiling suspense thriller -- and Democrats (natch) are vowing to reject it.
Even as they offer no clear alternative themselves.
And never mind all the cries of fiscal Armageddon, stiffing Grandma on Social Security and whatever else, if there's no debt deal soon.
Never mind that financial markets slipped nearly another percentage point yesterday -- partly on fears that no deal will be struck in time.
"If the president were presented [the House] bill for signature, he would veto it," the White House said yesterday -- with no counter-offer.
Not exactly the kind of inspiration you'd expect from a hope-and-change president.
The House plan calls for $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years in exchange for a debt-ceiling hike, plus a spending cap equal to 20 percent of GDP -- down from the current, historically aberrant (and unsustainable) 24 percent. It also calls for a balanced-budget amendment that would etch spending caps and tax-hike restraints into the Constitution.
The bill would face a tough road in the Democratic-controlled Senate even before Obama could veto it.
But again, Americans would sure like to know what specifically Dems have in mind for their Plan B. After all, the clock -- they've warned -- is ticking.
Recall, too, that today's bill is the second serious budget blueprint that the House has produced since the GOP took power in January. The Dems' legislative response both times, in effect: zilch.
At what point, exactly, does the White House present its specifics -- or demand some from Capitol Hill Dems?
Surely it doesn't want to see the United States default ... Does it?
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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