Legal Commentary

Judd Gregg = Fiscal Sanity??

By Big Tent Democrat

So A Sullivan tells us:

The great tragedy of the Gregg withdrawal is that this was precisely what he had been selected to achieve. The chance of real entitlement reform - the one thing that can indeed put the US back on a path to fiscal sanity - is real in the first year of an Obama presidency. . .

(Emphasis supplied.) Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Gregg vote for every Bush budget that destroyed our fiscal house? Also correct me if I am wrong, but weren't there budget surpluses (in the hundreds of billions of dollars if memory serves) when a certain William Jefferson Clinton left the White House? More . . .

As for "entitlement reform," (and that means cutting social security, Medicaid and Medicare for those not familiar with the Beltway jargon), what in the world would a Secretary of Commerce have to do with that? I have been lectured far and wide about how important the Commerce Department is (while missing my point that the important functions of the Commerce Department (NOAA, PTO, etc.) are quite independent of the Commerce Secretary), I am pretty sure that Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare do not fall within the Commerce Department.

Of course, it is worth mentioning that Judd Gregg's ideas about "entitlement reform" were simply insane. But hey, when you want to dream about these grand bipartisan "compromises," I think we all know what these folks have in mind - Democrats and progressives capitulating to horrible Republican ideas.

Maybe Obama was in for that. But I hope not.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 13, 2009 (boomark / email).