MB Civic

By Robert Kuttner | Saturday, January 6, 2007 | The Boston Globe

Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect, welcomes the recent commitment by the new Democratic Congress to restore the pay-as-you-go rules that successfully balanced the US budget under Bill Clinton – rules that were systematically ignored and then repealed by The Decider and his handlers to fund outrageous tax cuts for tycoons. What suffered was social spending, leading to disastrous underfunding for Medicare, Social Securtity and even the pet project of Mrs. Decider, the ‘No Child Left Behind’ program, which gets only a fraction of the resources it needs to execute its stated mission. The Democrats should correct both of these outrages.

There is no way to do both of those things – restore fiscal solvency after an orgy of uncontrolled deficit spending and restore support for social services – without tax revenues. Kuttner argues forcefully for a progressive tax system as the only fair and rational way to work through both problems. Convincing and rational stuff…BS

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/01/06/get_serious_democrats/