Re: Why have a good number of your senators take blame when they have no real power in the commission?

Is your objection based on that premise alone OR do you object simply on the basis that a recommendation from a commission would almost surely include tax increases* and would provide political cover for those tax increases and thus make their passage more likely?

1) Would you favor or oppose a commission if Republicans had equal representation and equal power?

2) What if Republicans would have enough power to block any recommendation that did not get a majority of the votes of Republican commission members?

3) Do you think it’s realistic (politically) to think that, if the right blocks any compromise that includes both tax increases and reductions in projected spending, there is a decent chance that the long-term fiscal imbalance problem will be solved entirely by reducing projected non-Defense spending (or even all on the spending side including Defense)?

* It’s important to note, by the way, that much of what would be viewed by most people as tax increases — reduction/elimination of tax deductions/credits such as those pertaining to mortgage interest or health insurance benefits — would really be, in effect, reductions in spending (subsidies), because in terms of effect on all involved, that’s the nature of tax expenditures.

As for Conrad and the commission, wouldn’t be surprised if they recommended huge tax increases. The whole purpose of the commission is to provide political cover for the Senators not involved in the commission. They’ll say something like, “I’m only doing what the commission recommended, they’ve studied the matter thoroughly and I have to vote for a tax increase”. Hahaha, right. That’s why Republicans didn’t want to be a part of the commission at all. Why have a good number of your senators take blame when they have no real power in the commission? The way it’s structured, Democrats have the majority and will control the outcome. There’s no reason to get involved in that commission when everyone knows it will recommend tax increases.

Re: No one is happy that we need to borrow another $1.9 trillion in the next year or two, but the alternative–default–is unthinkable.

Actually, there is a third option, one that does not cause or risk default yet provides another shot at creating the budget commission: a smaller, shorter-term measure to increase the debt limit, but require another vote in the very near future — as in a month or two prior to the November elections perhaps — on increasing the debt limit. That’s what Conrad and others achieved last December, giving them the shot at the commission earlier this week, and it’s an option that could have done so again (if it had been offered and passed, of course).

Instead, per CNN:

Conrad and several of the moderate Democrats who had been resisting the increase earlier ended up voting for it on Thursday.

Conrad said he got written assurances that Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., would bring the presidential commission’s recommendations to a vote before the end of the year.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/01/28/senate-hikes-debt-cap-by-1-9-trillion/

As for Pelosi’s written commitment, I hope the paper it’s written on is worth something, because otherwise Conrad may be holding something completely worthless. If I were Conrad I wouldn’t go around waving it in the air a la Neville Chamberlain and claiming to have achieved “fiscal responsibility for our time” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time