This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 24, 2012 - Most people do not realize we are in 2013. For the federal government, 2013 began on Oct. 1.
Think back to the last presidential election in 2008. One month before Barack Obama was elected president, the federal government started spending money under what would become Obama’s first year as president (known as “Fiscal Year 2009”).
By the time the Obamas were waltzing around the dance floor at various Inaugural balls, Fiscal Year 2009 was about one-third over. Two weeks before those balls, the Congressional Budget Office issued a report noting that the deficit for fiscal year would be $1.2 trillion.
The point of this is that if John McCain had been elected president with Sarah Palin as his vice president, they would be confronted with the same deficit — and they would still be dealing with it now.
There is the tendency in politics — particularly in presidential election years — to paint political landscapes in terms of extremes. No doubt a number of readers believe there would have been no deficit under a McCain administration, or, if there were, it would have been a lot smaller: None of that is true.
Here in this current presidential election season, the fantasy of extreme alternatives as viable and feasible options, is built on how voters understand — often in incredibly incorrect ways — how the federal budget works.
I have no idea how to take seriously anything Mitt Romney says about across-the-board tax cuts. Based on what he has said, there would be 20 percent cuts in each of the different income brackets. Somehow, in the end, everything will be just fine.
When I listen to Barrack Obama use the term “balance” to address bringing down the deficit, it’s a word without much substance.
It may be nice — particularly if you are a Democrat — to praise Bill Clinton for having balanced the budget and creating a small surplus while president. What is missing from that thinking is that, without the tax increases of Ronald Reagan, balancing the budget would not have occurred.
In other words there was a bi-partisan effort to bring down the budget and it involved tax increases and spending cuts. The bi-partisanship, in this case, spanned several administrations.
Newt Gingrich made a big deal of his opposition to a withholding tax increase that George H.W. Bush agreed to with the Democrats in control of both houses of Congress in 1990. What Gingrich never addresses is his support for the Reagan tax increases — particularly the withholding tax increases between 1981 and 1986, a period when the Republicans controlled the Senate.
Basically, Gingrich saw an opportunity for the Republicans to take control of both houses in Congress, and the way to do that was to throw a Republican president under the bus and blame a Democratic-controlled Congress for the tax increase. Making believe there were no tax increases under the more popular Ronald Reagan is politically understandable but complete nonsense.
Real movement toward bringing down the federal deficit is painful; programs people hold dear will be affected, individuals will be stuck with more out-of-pocket costs, something previously accepted as a given will be put on the chopping block. Which politician really wants to tell you there is no free lunch.
Quick: How much more should your aging mother pay for her monthly Medicare premium? Since this will help to significantly reduce the deficit, you won’t mind dear mom doing her part. If reducing the deficit can be felt in unpleasant ways on the average voter, why assume a politician wants to be the bearer of bad news?
Joseph Cernik is chair and professor of political science & public administration at Lindenwood University and political analyst for FOX2 News.