Before we get started, I just want to go on the record with this: Marketplace is the best daily news show on public radio by a clear margin. Smart, clear, willing to push back against bullshit, attentive to the entire country, but some bad habits are so wide-spread and so entrenched that even the best journalists lapse.
From Why is it so hard for Congress to deal with the national debt? by Kimberly Adams.
And for all the complexities of the U.S. economy, if Congress really wants to address this, the broad solutions are fairly simple.
“On one hand, you can reduce certain types of spending that hopefully will not have these other negative consequences, like increasing poverty, increasing inequality, etc., etc.,” said Mariely Lopez-Santana, who teaches government and politics at George Mason University. “But on the other hand, you just need more money, right? And how do you get more money? By taxing certain types of people. So in that way, the solution might seem very basic.”
But of course, the political pain comes when you have to decide who loses benefits and who pays more in taxes.
“You have politicians who are all incentivized to go home to their constituents and say, ‘Look at all of the goodies I brought you out of the federal coffers,'” said EJ Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
Promoting more economic growth can ease deficits, but to make a meaningful dent in the debt, Antoni said both parties need to make hard choices about popular programs like defense spending.
“But on top of that, we also need to have some very serious conversations about entitlements,” he added. This means Social Security, Medicare — the things politicians and their constituents don’t like messing with.
The reporter spoke with sources from two institutions, both coming from virtually identical perspectives, both (particularly Heritage) with somewhat checkered histories, and both funded in the past by the Koch brothers. Predictably, (to paraphrase Dorothy Parker) the range of policy suggestions ran the gamut from A to B, hitting the same old talking points that have been in heavy rotation even before anyone had heard of Simpson-Bowles, hard choices and "very serious conversations about entitlements."
Adams (usually a very good reporter) could have provided some context, pointing out that tax increases poll well with pretty much every group except Republican politicians, or that one party has a much better track on the deficit and it's not the one that gets a lot of support from George Mason University or the Heritage Foundation,
Heritage is now just another nest of kooks. And before you say "well, it was always like that" - no, it wasn't. You might not have liked the views it espoused, but it wasn't this. Over 40 years, I've agreed and disagreed with Heritage - but it's no longer a serious place. https://t.co/zJxohje0Ul
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) May 30, 2023
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