Proscribed limited choices in the political debate
We will have to have benefit cuts. Just because we will. There is no other option and the Democrats are just being obstinate in not accepting what we all know will have to happen which is benefit cuts. Pat Moynihan said so! You Americans who will depend on Social Security top keep the wolf from the door are just going to have to deal. That’s the way it is.
Taxes? What are these taxes you speak of?
A large part of the problem is that too much of the Democractic Party, including most, if not all of the Washington insiders have given up having any semblance of an ideology, prefering to be “pragmatic”. In this they are of course not alone; most of the centre-left has this problem. Being pragmatic means accepting the common wisdom, accepting the status quo and this means that certain classes of solutions to various problems are immediately off the table. Which is why you won’t see tax raises as a solution to the supposed crisis in social security, or why little if anything that impedes big business will ever be proposed by the Democrats in Washington.