USA Today on 112th Congress

Normally conservative-leaning USA Today had several choice recommendations for the new Congress taking office in today's editorial.

On health care:

Republicans talk about their "repeal and replace" campaign, but so far they've been long on "repeal" and short on "replace." What's important to remember, though, is that whatever flaws the new law has, repeal would return the nation to an unacceptable status quo. Too many Americans can't get or can't afford medical coverage, and too many who do get it find it taken away when they get seriously ill or lose their jobs.

This is the reality that Obama and the Democrats sought, imperfectly, to change. Rather than refighting old battles or trying to defund pieces of ObamaCare (the GOP fallback position to repeal) the better path is to improve the law that is in place and tackle the cost problem, which unaddressed will drive family insurance premiums to $25,000 within a decade.

On cutting spending:

The problem with the GOP plan is that it would be limited to a narrow sliver of government spending--the 17% of the budget that goes to domestic departments and agencies. Benefit programs such as Medicare and Social Security--which are by far the biggest contributors to runaway spending--would be unaffected. The same would go for the defense budget.

That raises the prospect that cuts could be severe, draconian even, in some areas such as higher education, transportation and law enforcement, while barely qualifying as token gestures in the broader context of $3.8 trillion in overall spending.

On taxes:

Speaking of the deficit commissions, they and non-partisan budget groups agree: it's politically impractical to get federal budget deficits and the national debt under control solely by cutting spending. The major deficit-cutting deals that helped balance the federal budget from 1998 to 2001 combined deep spending cuts with a smaller dose of revenue increases. The deficit panels propose the same approach.

...GOP views on taxes have grown so rock-hard that they threaten needed action on the deficit. GOP gospel is that tax cuts have no effect on the deficit because they pay for themselves in increased economic activity--an idea that has been repeatedly discredited by mainstream economists and budget reality...Now the House's new leaders plan to enshrine the dangerous notion that tax cuts don't count by changing budget rules to make it unnecessary to offset tax cuts.

--Ballard Burgher