Hybrid Plan In Washington DC

    While looking for a blog post to critique, I ran into a few problems initially. First, I don’t lean too far right or left in my conservative views so finding a blog that didn’t come off as “Democrats rule, Republicans drool” (or visa versa) took a while.  (As a side note: I realize blogs tend to be a little more one sided, I was just hoping for something a little more midline). Secondly, with the deadline for a debt ceiling decision looming over our heads, it was impossible to find a blog written about anything else.  I understand this is a big deal, but since I wrote my last blog post on the debt ceiling, I was hoping to vary it up a bit. That and, I am horrible at numbers/math/finances so reading/trying to understand budget articles is somewhat exhausting to me.

    After reading through several blogs and blog posts, I decided to look more into the “hybrid plan” that was mentioned a few times.  When you just read the phrase “Hybrid Plan” you think hey, a compromise! Well yes, and no. After reading the blog posts I realize that the plan really only does two things.  The plan allows us to not default on our loans, which would destroy the economy. It also allows politicians to put aside the tougher issues of the budget debate until AFTER election season.

   

   Here is the “hybrid plan” in a nutshell. 

   1)      No tax increase (happy Republicans) 

   2)     1.5 trillion in cuts versus the proposed 

           2/2.5 trillion (happy  Democrats) 

   3)     Extension of the debt ceiling until AFTER the 

          2012 elections season (happy Obama)

   Now, if I read all of this correctly (and properly understood it), this seems to be a way for politicians to simply put aside the tough issues that couldn’t be decided. In this plan, the Democrats and Republicans aren’t really working together to change anything.  The plan appears to be a way for the 2 sides to say they passed something and then move on, hopefully without upsetting constituents and loosing votes…politics at its finest.   If this plan goes through, we don’t really know where the cuts will be spent and this leaves our economy with a lot of uncertainty.  This seems to be a temporary solution to a much larger problem.  Although, I do have to say that some sort of “deficit commission” could be useful at this point in time.  While I don’t agree with this plan, at least some sort of “compromise” is being attempted as opposed to arguments.

   One thing that stood out about this particular blog post is that it does not read quite as one sided as other posts that I read. It is more left leaning, and that is who the author is writing it towards; but the author stays relatively neutral for the most part which I found important. Overall, I felt that the post was written well for a blog post. There were a few arguments towards the end that showed a more Democratic view point, but I felt informed of both sides while reading.