Some Election Updates Part II

This post is more of the national variety, but the Republican party just pushed out their "Pledge to America and there's been a tooon of commentary about it already.

Its probably not noteworthy to say there's nothing much in it. And I know its too much to ask that they would put serious policy in a document like that especially if they will probably win a lot of seats back no matter what they do this election time.

But just so everyone is perfectly clear that the Republicans are not really serious about balancing the budget check out this commentary:

"On taxes, it promises to 'stop all job-killing tax hikes' -- that is, to retain all of the Bush tax cuts-- but says nothing about the comprehensive tax reform that will be needed to raise new revenues and balance the budget without avoidable damage to growth. The Pledge maintains the pretence that spending cuts can do all the necessary fiscal lifting -- and even here it is slippery. It promises to 'roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels', which seems fair enough. But it also promises 'common-sense' exceptions for "seniors, veterans, and our troops". Those common-sense exceptions are the whole ball of wax. The idea that you can control public borrowing without higher taxes and by squeezing only non-defense discretionary spending is, I'm afraid, delusional."

And this is the troubling part about the Republican party right now. They claim they can balance the budget by cutting taxes. They talk the talk about their drive to cut government spending, but they lack any serious proposals on how to do so. And then demogogue the Democrats who really tried to inject modest Medicare cuts in the health care bill.

I wish we had a saner political environment right now.