The New Normal
By DAVID BROOKS
NYT
We’re going to be doing a lot of deficit cutting over the next several years. The country’s future greatness will be shaped by whether we cut wisely or stupidly. So we should probably come up with a few sensible principles to guide us as we cut.
The first one, as I tried to argue last week, is: Make Everybody Hurt. The sacrifice should be spread widely and fairly. A second austerity principle is this: Trim from the old to invest in the young. We should adjust pension promises and reduce the amount of money spent on health care during the last months of life so we can preserve programs for those who are growing and learning the most.
So far, this principle is being trampled. Seniors vote. Taxpayers revolt. Public employees occupy capitol buildings to protect their bargaining power for future benefits negotiations. As a result, seniors are being protected while children are getting pummeled. If you look across the country, you see education financing getting sliced — often in the most thoughtless and destructive ways. The future has no union.
In Washington, the Republicans who designed the cuts for this fiscal year seemed to have done no serious policy evaluation. They excused the elderly and directed cuts at anything else they could easily reach. Under their budget, financing for early-childhood programs would fall off a cliff. Tens of thousands of kids, maybe hundreds of thousands, would have their slots eliminated midyear.
(More here.)
NYT
We’re going to be doing a lot of deficit cutting over the next several years. The country’s future greatness will be shaped by whether we cut wisely or stupidly. So we should probably come up with a few sensible principles to guide us as we cut.
The first one, as I tried to argue last week, is: Make Everybody Hurt. The sacrifice should be spread widely and fairly. A second austerity principle is this: Trim from the old to invest in the young. We should adjust pension promises and reduce the amount of money spent on health care during the last months of life so we can preserve programs for those who are growing and learning the most.
So far, this principle is being trampled. Seniors vote. Taxpayers revolt. Public employees occupy capitol buildings to protect their bargaining power for future benefits negotiations. As a result, seniors are being protected while children are getting pummeled. If you look across the country, you see education financing getting sliced — often in the most thoughtless and destructive ways. The future has no union.
In Washington, the Republicans who designed the cuts for this fiscal year seemed to have done no serious policy evaluation. They excused the elderly and directed cuts at anything else they could easily reach. Under their budget, financing for early-childhood programs would fall off a cliff. Tens of thousands of kids, maybe hundreds of thousands, would have their slots eliminated midyear.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Brooks writes that Seniors vote ... and so do teachers.
Did you see how Governor Walker is motivating state workers ?
On Thursday, the faculty members at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse voted 249 to 37 to join the AFT-Wisconsin statewide labor federation that is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers. They could have done this in 2009, but Governor Walker's budget-repair proposal galvanized the UW-La Crosse faculty's resolve to form a union. They join UW-Eau Claire and UW-Superior who had previously joined.
Second, Brooks talks about cutting federal funding for Education ... hmmm... does that mean we should be skeptical about John Kline's chest-pumping about increase funding for special education through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) ? Kline says he will increase funding for the Part B (Grants to States) program under IDEA by nearly $560 million, restoring funding for the program to the FY-2010 levels. Hmmm... as I recall, he has complained for years that the program was not fully funded ... and now he's just happy with getting it to FY-2010 levels .... and it will be done by decreasing funding for Teacher Quality State Grant program and the School Grant program.
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