The draft recommendation by the Deficit Reduction Panel surprised me. Not only did it say many things that needed to be said, but it attacked many of Washington's sacred cows.  It's about time someone did that -- after all, Washington has too many.

Personally, I like their idea of simplifying the tax system to get rid of loopholes and breaks.  Of course, we know that won't fly -- companies stand to lose too much money.  Google alone ("Do no evil, pay no taxes") paid an effective tax rate of 2.4% last quarter.  If they contribute 1 year's tax savings to lobbying to keep their tax breaks -- that is about $1 BILLION to use for lobbying.  According to an article on Bloomberg, the government loses out on nearly $60 billion annually due to these loopholes.  Individuals will lose breaks as well, such as the mortgage income tax deduction.  Some will pay more, some will pay less.  It's a trade off.

But I see the real threat to this is not the corporations.  Its America itself.  There was a brief period of American greatness based around "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."   It got us to the moon, an achievement which we have yet to surpass or even come close to.  That era is long gone.

What has replaced it is frightening.  It's a society where nobody wants to take responsibility or contribute.  It's been replaced by a call where everybody pays too many taxes and nobody is willing to accept cuts to their programs.  You can't cut social security or medicare -- it's not fair that our seniors might have to be willing to share the burden.  You can't cut a military procurement program like the F-22 that the military wants to cut -- 44,000 jobs might be lost to save $44 billion.  You can't cut the military 'cos that makes us look weak.  You can't cut farm subsidies -- the farmers have waaaay too big a lobby and they worked hard for those subsidies.  I could go on and on...

What can you cut?  You can cut education because children don't have a lobby to fight for them.   You can cut the EPA, because it makes rules that cost big business money while improving everybody's lives.  You can cut Medicaid because nobody wants to fight for the poor these days.  You can only cut things that don't have lobbies working for them.  You can only cut things that don't have lots of money which gets dumped into campaign funds.  And who says you can't buy democracy?

If we are going to solve this mess, then there are 2 things that are clear:  (1) you're going to pay more taxes, and (2) you're going to have to suffer with some of the cuts.  Personally, I say yes, raise the taxes.  Do it gradually over a period of time so there isn't a big shock to the system.  And let's debate what we're going to cut as a nation, but let's keep the lobbies and special interests out of the debate.