Ross Douthat writes about the fiscal commission's working paper:
The fact that so many Democrats look at Simpson-Bowles's vision of a future where the government takes in substantially more revenue than it does today and see a dreadful sell-out to the right tells you something important, and depressing, about liberal intransigence where the future trajectory of federal spending is considered.
While that's a lovely straw man, it's not what worries liberals. Contrary to Douthat's weird ideas, liberals don't want bigger government; they want government that accomplishes government-appropriate tasks and does that well. Douthat's analysis only makes sense if you assume that liberals are merely the polar opposite of conservatives, just out to create a state that raises the most revenue ever. It's just not accurate.
Actual liberal concerns about the fiscal commission plan are based around the imbalance between spending and revenue and concerns about enforceability -- spending caps don't guarantee that cuts will be well-targeted, but tax law reform goes into effect immediately. While we await a more comprehensive distributional analysis, it appears that the wealthiest people will come out of this deal with lower taxes than they went in, while other, less politically influential groups face spending cuts. That's unacceptable. If Douthat wants to answer actual liberal objections instead of caricatures, he should explain why only $80 billion of revenue from tax reform goes toward deficit reduction and the rest goes toward lower rates.
Particularly, he should explain to the people who lose in this grand bargain -- working-class people who will have to work longer until retirement, veterans who will pay for their own health care, the federal employees who will be laid off -- why the hard choices being made for them are matched with dramatically lower tax rates for the rich at a time when their tax burden is historically low and inequality is historically high.
It's particularly galling to hear Douthat talk of liberal intransigence on spending, since conservatives in government have been trying to "starve the beast" through overspending and under-taxation for nearly two decades. Just remember this: While intransigent liberal Barack Obama spent his political capital on a deficit-reducing health-care bill, conservatives were attacking efficiencies in Medicare and promising to extend tax cuts without paying for them.
-- Tim Fernholz
