Send Washington an extra dime, it’ll spend 20 cents — and borrow the difference.
Send it up to $1 trillion, as President Obama insists, and it’ll spend, and borrow . . . well, God only knows how much. But it’ll be more than the national economy can stand.
It’s time to “pull off the Band-Aid, [to] eat our peas,” Obama exhorted yesterday, presenting himself as the voice of sweet reason in a capital paralyzed by partisan rancor.
Alas, there is no such thing as a free can of peas.
What the president prescribes would raise taxes by at least $1 trillion — and not just on the wealthy, as Obama and congressional Democrats suggest, but on the middle class and small-business owners.
And he would make no significant entitlement reductions — most especially not in ObamaCare, a program the White House refuses to renegotiate, and which represents the largest tax increase in decades.
Republicans, on the other hand, refuse to accept any tax hikes — and good for them.
Again, the country doesn’t have a reve nue problem, it has a spending addiction — which the GOP proposes to begin treating with spending cuts of some $4.5 trillion over the next decade, including drastically needed reform in Medicare and Medicaid.
Democrats, in turn, oppose meaningful cuts and are resisting anything that would substantially alter entitlements. Most important, they won’t accept any deal that doesn’t include major tax hikes.
Both sides seem to understand this: The national debt is so far out of control that the term “mortgaging the future” no longer has any meaning. “Down-on-the-Bowery-broke” is more like it.
Yes, Republicans have made clear that the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling will be raised — but only if Congress shows the will to cut spending, reform Medicare and Medicaid and hold the line on taxes.
And for all the president’s “let’s make a deal” rhetoric, it remains that he and the Democrats are committed to tax hikes — and hostile to spending restraint.
And yet they wonder why the economy remains so weak.
“Eat our peas” indeed.