You Want To Fix The Deficit? Start Here

More deficit fear-mongering from Peggy Noonan:

But this is an interesting time. It's easy to say that concern about federal spending is old, because it is. It's at least as old as Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. But the national anxiety about spending that we're experiencing now, and that is showing up in the polls, is new. The past eight years have concentrated the American mind. George W. Bush's spending, the crash and Barack Obama's spending have frightened people. It's not just "cranky right-wingers" who are concerned. If it were, the president would not have appointed his commission. Its creation acknowledges that independents are anxious, the center is alarmed—the whole country is. The people are ahead of their representatives in Washington, who are stuck in the ick of old ways.

You'd think the whole country was up in arms about the deficit. I guess she missed last week's NYT/CBS poll which found this:

4. What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?

• Health Care 13%
• Economy 25%
• Jobs 27%
• War 3%
• Deficit 4%

There are, of course, three major reasons that our debt and deficit have exploded. The first is that Bush spent like a drunken sailor, needlessly involving the country in two major wars, for example, and lowering taxes on the rich who we would later bail out using middle-class tax dollars.

The second is that Republican policies directly led to the greatest economic collapse that most Americans have ever seen, and that collapse cost trillions in bail-outs and lower tax revenues due to unemployment and reduced economic activity.

The third is because we have out of control costs in two areas-our bloated, insane military budget and skyrocketing health care costs. The American people understand this, as the poll makes clear. And as Noonan should know, any column which purports to address the deficit problem and makes no concrete calls for reducing these two problems is simply dishonest.

It is painfully obvious that these are the reasons we are so deeply in the red. And the solutions are equally obvious-massive cuts to the military budget, and true systemic health care reform. The question isn't what to do-its whether our ruling elite will let us do it.