Smart Bombs: No ceiling on budget madness

As we get closer to bumping our head on the debt ceiling, here’s a thought that might floor you. If the nation were to follow the long-term deficit reduction plan adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives, Congress would have to raise the debt ceiling repeatedly, because the plan adds $6 trillion in debt over the next decade. Many politicians who say they don’t want to lift the debt ceiling voted for the House plan. And some of them want a balanced budget amendment, which would make the House plan unconstitutional, because it doesn’t achieve balance until 2035.

If this makes sense to you, then I suggest running for office. But I think columnist Matt Miller conveys it well for the rest of us when he wrote about this for the Washington Post:

Remember that great scene in the 1980 film classic, “The Shining,” when the wife comes upon the typewriter of the Jack Nicholson character, who’s supposed to have been working night and day for months on his novel? To her horror, she finds thousands of pages on which Jack has typed, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” formatted in countless, crazy ways. Suddenly his suspected madness becomes all too frighteningly real.

Swapping scripts. It was fascinating to watch Idaho legislators place radical school reform on the fast track and then face a complaint lodged against national health care reform.

After campaigning on the issue and dueling with Hillary Clinton about the particulars, Barack Obama won the presidency, and on Nov. 18, 2008, he ordered his secretary of Health and Human Services to shepherd a plan through Congress. Throughout the following summer, the Gang of Six – three Republican senators and three Democratic senators – held hearings and worked on legislation. In August, opponents staged rallies throughout the country. On Nov. 7, 2009, the House passed a bill. Six weeks later, the Senate passed its version. On March 23, 2010 – one year and four months after launching the effort – Obama signed a bill that reconciled the two versions, and it was criticized as being “rammed down our throats.”

Tom Luna, superintendent for public schools, won re-election in November, with little foreshadowing of the details to come. In late December, he announced his plan to transform education by removing significant collective bargaining rights for teachers, laying off nearly 800 of them, giving laptops to all ninth-graders and requiring high school students to sign up for online courses. About two months later, the Idaho House began taking public testimony, which skewed decidedly against the plan. Opponents staged rallies at the Capitol.

When the final bill was sent back for reworking, Gov. Butch Otter said: “I’ve been disappointed that there was so much misinformation out there resulting in a lot of confusion. And I guess I’ve been disappointed in some ways that folks haven’t done the homework that they should have done on knowing and understanding those bills.”

Misinformation? Lack of homework? Sounds like health care reform critics.

On April 8, Otter signed the final education bill, and a citizens group launched an initiative effort to have the entire effort repealed. One of the organizers said, “The governor and Legislature rammed this plan through. …”

Running on empty. When the prices of food, health care and housing go up, everybody complains. When the price of gasoline goes up, the complaints lead to government investigations that invariably go nowhere. And here we go again.

President Obama announced this week the formation of a task force to investigate possible illegal activity in the wake of gas prices rising to an average of $3.84 a gallon nationwide. Evidence? The prices themselves.

In a press release, Attorney General Eric Holder cited zero evidence of unlawful conduct but did say, “Based upon our work and research to date, it is evident that there are regional differences in gasoline prices, as well as differences in the statutory and other legal tools at the government’s disposal. It is also clear that there are lawful reasons for increases in gas prices, given supply and demand.”

Translation: The administration is pandering to the perception that when gas prices rise to an uncomfortable level, someone must be breaking a law. When prices drop, well, the crooks must’ve taken a vacation and allowed free markets to perform as they should. As with all previous investigations, nothing will come of this.