Can anyone show any leadership in Washington over the debt limit talks? The sole accomplishment over reaching a deal to maintain America's ability to pay its bills is that Congress has agreed to return to work on July 5. This has oddly been hailed as a sign of resolve. Only among politicians is taking one day off for a holiday considered a sacrifice.
It's time for all members of the political game in Washington -- and that includes President Barack Obama -- to get to the negotiating table and hash out a plan that is fiscally sound and will extend our nation's obligations and credit. The pre-planned walkout of talks with Vice President Joe Biden by Rep. Eric Cantor and other Republicans was cynical and unserious.
And President Obama needs to insert himself into the debt limit talks. His scoffing at such a suggestion at last week's news conference underscores his oftentimes reluctance to lead. We didn't elect Vice President Joe Biden to guide this nation out of its fiscal dysfunction. Being the president comes with required leadership responsibilities -- President Obama should meet that criteria.
Both parties in Congress are playing hypocritical games of Chicken Little and playing to their bases' biases to score political points. According to the Democrats, Republicans want to throw Grandma to Dickensian workhouses. According to Republicans, Democrats want to increase spending until economic disaster is triggered by an inability to pay for Social Security, Medicare, etc.
President Obama and the Democrats need to agree that there are spending cuts that can be made. And Republicans need to end their strange, passionate love affair with Big Oil and the super wealthy. Even a bedrock conservative economist such as Ben Stein agrees that the strongest periods of economic growth in our nation's history have occurred when the most wealthy had higher taxes. Oil companies are the reason Americans are paying close to $4 a gallon in gasoline prices; it's ridiculous to allow unneeded subsidies that cost taxpayers $40 billion to continue. And there's no reason to not limit some tax write-offs for Americans earning $500,000-plus a year.
We need statesmen, not poseurs. Time's running short before the debt defaults.
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