Corker threatens to hold debt ceiling hostage to arbitary spending�cap

Corker and McCaskill introducing the second worst idea in Washington.

Ezra Klein calls this the second worst idea in Washington. That idea is Senator Bob Corker's and Seantor Claire McCaskill's arbitrary spending cap.

There?s talkthat the McCaskill-Corker spending cap will be the cost of raising the debt ceiling. This would be, to put it simply, completely insane. Spending caps are bad policy, and the McCaskill-Corker spending cap ? which holds spending to 21.5 percent of GDP, or three percentage points lower than it is right now ? is a badly designed spending cap. But beyond all that, it?s laughable to posit it as a compromise: It?s arguably the most radically conservative reform that could be made to the federal budget. More extreme, by far, than Paul Ryan?s plan....

Saying "America has a spending problem" is saying "I don't understand the budget and don?t want to learn anything further about it." We have a health-care costs problem, an aging problem and a taxing problem. But a spending cap has nothing to say about any of these problems.... A spending cap is an effort to deny our real problems, not to fix them. It allows politicians to sound tough and solutions-oriented without forcing them to actually develop any solutions.

It's fine to not be among those who really don't understand the budget and how it works, but it's not fine to then write a really, really bad piece of legislation on the budget. And a really, really destructive idea if Corker holds to his threat to hold the debt ceiling hostage to this inane proposal.

He told CNBC:

"I have found that it?s irresponsible not to be responsible prior to a debt ceiling increase," said Corker. "If we don?t have something that dramatically changes spending in this country and gets it in line, I will not vote for a debt ceiling increase."

This arbitrary spending cap, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities "would force draconian cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and many other programs while making it harder for the nation to recover from recession." It caps total federal spending to 20.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), the average from 1970 to 2008. It ignores the demographic and economic changes the nation has undergone in the past 40 years, and "does not account for fundamental changes in society and government: the aging of the population, substantial increases in health care costs, and new federal responsibilities in areas such as homeland security, veterans? health care, and prescription drug coverage for seniors."

Claire McCaskill has vowed to protect Social Security. If she wants to really protect Social Security, she needs to abandon the disastrous Corker-McCaskill spending cap. There's probably no hope of getting Corker to abandon his bone-headed hostage-taking, but a Democrat should have nothing to do with it.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/msGJJxNqzCo/-Corker-threatens-to-hold-debt-ceiling-hostage-to-arbitary-spending cap

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