Obama, Reid and Boehner are highly paid representatives of the American People. They are servants, not masters of the People. So far, they have made a mess of post-election bargaining over a resolution to the so-called fiscal cliff.
I have suggested repeatedly in this column that the fiscal cliff offers more of a solution to America’s debt crisis than anything so far on the negotiating table. The fiscal cliff offers a 3 per cent reduction in the government deficit for 2013. Small though that is, it is larger than any reduction currently under negotiation.
However, that reduction will be achieved crudely, with spending cuts applied not to entitlement programs but to regular government spending. Since the entitlement programs drive the long-term debt crisis, it is better to impose cuts there now than later, when the cuts will be devastating. So the ten days to January 1, 2013 should be utilized effectively by leading political representatives.
I suggest that Barack Obama, Harry Reid and John Boehner should sacrifice this Christmas with their families and hole up in The Willard Hotel. That hotel is the appropriate location, since the misuse of its lobby for rent-seeking purposes by President Ulysses S. Grant and those seeking favors from his corrupt administration gave rise to the term ‘lobbying’ . Now is the time to reverse that image and to ban all lobbyists, political staffers and other misfits from negotiations designed to benefit the nation as a whole by seriously confronting the problem of the national debt.
