Potemkin Statesman

Skipper Kerry has a history of docking his $7 million yacht, the Isabel, in excise tax free Rhode Island. No doubt this millionaire one percenter's careful eye on his own finances earned him a spot on the recently defunct supercommittee. After all, the task of trimming our nation's accumulation of debt by $1.2 trillion over ten years is not the job for a spendthrift New Yorker. Surely, our sober senator and former nominee for president would rise to the occasion and save our republic by making the tough calls to cut projected spending of $44 trillion by a hardly draconian 2.7 percent? As we now know, it wasn't to be.

Post collapse, Senator Kerry took to the hustings placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of one man, Grover Norquist. The problem for our senator is that even a cursory look at the short and ignoble history of the supercommittee proves his charge false. Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania presented a plan that Mr. Norquist called "poison", but was hailed by Democratic Minority Whip Durbin of Illinois as a "breakthrough". The Toomey plan would have raised revenues by $500 billion and cut spending by $900 billion and was supported by all six republican members of the committee. This is exactly the type of balanced approach that President Obama claims to support, yet it went nowhere. As Senator Toomey told Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post "The Democrats insisted on a trillion dollars in tax increases and spending cuts to follow". If that negotiation position sounds familiar, it should. Both President's Reagan and George H.W. Bush took democrats at their word and raised taxes, but the promised spending cuts never happened. Knowing how the story ends republicans justifiably rejected a repeat performance.

While committee democrats never provided a detailed plan for cuts, they did propose more spending. In their proposed framework that entailed $4 in new taxes for every $1in cuts they included $430 billion in spending for Pres. Obama's stalled Stimulus II. Like junkies wanting one last fix they blew up the supercommittee because they just can't quit spending. They also scuttled the Toomey plan because it didn't fit in with President Obama's re-election campaign of running against a do-nothing republican congress. As the left leaning Politico put it "President Barack Obama prides himself on being a clutch player, but he sat happily on the end of the bench as the clock ran out on the supercommittee. Then he took his shot after the buzzer."

Maybe the next time Congress votes to raise the debt ceiling and it will happen sooner than you think; Congress can forgo the charade of a supercommittee and mandate every Washington politician join Spendaholics Anonymous. If the concept of doing right by the American people doesn't motivate them, maybe bruising their egos will. Just picture the next time Senator Kerry graces the set of Meet the Press to rip into evil republicans being compelled to say "Hi. I'm John and I'm a spendaholic".