Marco Rubio, and Common Sense

Noman hopes that Marco Rubio is for real.  Ironically, his name means "Mark the blonde" in Spanish.  

His Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, while light on substance, was right on sentiment.

Why I Won't Vote to Raise the Debt Limit

Noman imagines that he'll only be able to keep this promise if the vote is so lopsidedly in favor of raising it that he can afford the symbolic gesture.  

The government spends roughly $100 billion per month in excess of its receipts.  Think about that.  Given the $1.3 trillion deficit that President Obama and the Democrats' government is running this year--and they're apparently willing to shut the government down for inability to find $60 billion they can cut--only a couple of months' leeway remain in the existing ceiling before it is reached.  

Unless the scales fall off of every politician's eyes at the same time that they develop intestinal fortitude, the ceiling will be raised.

But, Rubio is right to insist that individual and corporate tax rates be lowered to allow the private sector to reassume the economic protagonism that properly belongs to it, not DC; that costly regulations should be voted on by the people's representatives before being imposed on the citizenry by anonymous bureaucrats; and that future generations lower their expectations regarding entitlements--which, by the way, is one reason we couldn't afford yet another entitlement in Obamacare.  

Noman appreciates and shares Rubio's evident piety towards America for what it is, and always has been, without the need for enlightened socialist reforms to spread the wealth.  You can tell that he, unlike Michelle Obama, has been proud of this country all his life and that he cherishes the opportunities it gave him and his immigrant parents.  

Importantly, he proposes a workable compromise: "No changes should be made to Medicare and Social Security for people who are currently in the system, like my mother.  But people decades away from retirement, like me, must accept that reforms are necessary..."  

That seems reasonable and prudent: more responsibility on the young who can prepare for the future; more deference to the aged who no longer can.

He also proposes that we wind down, and cap, debt at 50% of the economy, and enshrine the principle of balanced budgets in a constitutional amendment.  These seem like advisable prophylactic measures given that the people will need to protect themselves from silver-tongued predators in the future as well as the present.