This political cartoon is all the GOP, Tea Party and Libertarian need to understand to carry the day in DC and build a new political force in the nation that will take on ALL the special interests in DC [H/T Hotair].

It sums up the biggest threat to our children and grandchildren: that being our greedy, wimpy selves. This is the rallying point, where the people take on the DC and Media political industrial complex.

this is THE reason the Tea Party members in the House will not allow another round of kick-the-problem-down-the-road.  They now demand FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE leadership – which is not the same as political leadership.

What we get from the left is naive and immature dogma that is costing us nearly twice our revenue capacity,  and which is actually a cover for a bunch of elites getting rich on the backs of hard working Main Street (see Solandra, etc for examples).  Walls Street and E Street aren’t suffering at all while the nation is in the throws of the worst economic down turn in nearly a century. So we see how government trickle down works – it doesn’t.

Boehner’s blunder was in going to the old pol trick of trying to protect everyone from reality. Which is just another dumb-ass variant on the liberal fiction that government can protect everybody from reality – and their own bad choices.  This ‘oh protect us great leaders‘ schtick is getting old, and the voters would prefer some clear-eyed solutions to the main problem: how we are enslaving our children to pay for our excesses.

As I noted in the prior post, someone at The Weekly Standard nailed the political priority of our times. The author highlighted the core issue:

It should be a matter of acute national embarrassment that our leaders can pretend to be redistributing from wealthy to average citizens when, in fact, they are redistributing in far greater measure from the young and unborn.

…

Whatever the future may hold, it will certainly be populated by many people who are not voters today—the younger generation and the yet unborn. Today’s debts will be repaid by some or all of them, in one way or another—through higher taxes or lower benefits to accommodate payments on the loans, or through loan defaults, or through the partial default of inflation.

If this generation, as we seem wont to do, fails to pay its own bills (and those graciously passed on from the previous generations of freeloaders) we will so burden our children and grandchildren that they will never be able to deal with their challenges in their time and also pay for our own selfishness. This is how grotesque the two national parties have become:

The future is also, in the progressive American mind, a more prosperous and untroubled place—especially if we can just get ourselves through today’s pressing exigencies. This manner of thinking tended to dissolve the distinction between investing for the future and borrowing from the future.

The GOP is just as DC brain-washed as the Dems, as the article points out:

Nevertheless, tax cutting and “no new taxes” became increasingly embedded in Republican electoral strategy. As they did, they took leave of supply-side economics just as completely as demand stimulus had taken leave of its Keynesian origins. Indeed, tax reductions for the masses (but not for the wealthy and corporations) became a matter of bipartisan consensus and competition.

Both parties now assume – from the outset – we cannot pay for our spending and must reach fiscal Nirvana before we can behave responsibly.

What a childish and moronic train of thought! A train of thought that is making everything worse, and harder to undo.

We can and should live within our means. And I think that is the heart-and-soul message/mantra of the Tea Party movement. We have ‘leaders’ in DC spending our children’s futures into oblivion without our consent. And it must end! It will end!

And the path to end this useless and damaging spending is obvious to everyone who lives on Main Street [and who live within their means and understand a wonderful life exists beyond the consumption addiction pushed by the political and media elites]:

I was working at the White House and OMB in those years, and was party to many a late-night argument over two divergent strategies. “Starve the Beast” held that the public would tolerate only so much deficit spending—so cutting taxes would at some point restrain spending as well. “Serve the Check” held that the only way to limit spending was to charge its full price at retail: Set taxes at an average of 20 percent of individual incomes and we would discover whether the public really wanted federal spending of 20 percent of national income.

We now know “Starve the Beast” does not work. Special interests guard their section of the federal trough to the bitter end [see union thuggary in Wisconsin and Michigan], while voters cannot wrap their mind around the size of the hole we have dug ourselves. Not to mention the Pols are scared to death to be bold and honest. So we know the current GOP approach is a failure (even if the GOP leaders refuse to wake up and smell the deficit).

This must end, and that is why Main Street is willing to lead (with higher taxes) IF -and this is a huge ‘if’ – the elite pay as well. And this is not th e’tax the rich’ myth of the liberals. This means cut off the special interests, cut the cost of government and shrink government down to the bare essentials (which is a lot more bare than many realize).

First off, let the tax rates rise on EVERYONE. Bring back the Clinton tax levels – give up on the Bush tax cuts. Then let the miniscule spending cuts hit. Let a peak of reality in.

Then – tax the rich! And I mean the ridiculously rich. Bring on the millionaire tax increases, but do  it by cutting deductions for them so they cannot hide their income and pretend they need government incentives. Cap the mortgage deduction on loans greater than $1,000,000. Cap charitable deductions on incomes over $1,000,000 per year. Remove EVERY SINGLE tax break for the rich – because they can clearly afford to pay full fair. Just stop giving the rich handouts.

Then cut the President’s salary and limit his life time pay. Give Pols 10 years after leaving office to invest and set up their nest eggs, and then pull the plug. Sink or swim. Same for Congressional pay when out of office.

Cut all elected and political appointee salaries [don’t go after the career workers yet]. Cut Congressional staff budgets. Make Senators pay for their portion of international trips out of pocket. If they want to see the world, they pay airfare, hotel and meals for themselves. Their staff the taxpayer can cover.

If the Middle Class can sacrifice, so can those same damn leaders who spent us into this mess.

Finally, everyone pays. I don’t care if it is $100 a year – everyone pays.

Then finally look at wasteful spending where we are losing money and/or making no progress.

As noted above, people will then decide if they want to have runaway spending – since  THEY will have to shoulder the cost. No more borrowing from future generations. Time to Serve The Check!

Tags: Fiscal Cliff