Adult Conversations or Food Fights

The American people have spoken. It's time to stop kicking the can down the road, have an adult conversation with no fuzzy math or politics as usual and everything on the table.

What! The fiscal crisis isn't any closer to being solved but at least politicians have coalesced around suitable platitudes.

Here's the thing. We've already had the adult conversation with everything on the table. It was called the president's bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, commonly called the Simpson-Bowles Deficit Commission. It would cut the deficit by $4 trillion by 2020.

The problem is after the 11 adults on the 18-member commission warned us the end of the road is here, the can is still in the hands of the preadolescents in Congress who have recommenced the kicking.

The three Republican senators on the panel, led by conservative Tom Colburn R-OK, voted for the final recommendations as did liberal senator Dick Durbin D-IL and moderate senator Kent Conrad D-ND. So did a Democratic congressman and five of President Barack Obama's six picks from academia, business and labor.

These adults made painful choices. The Republicans held their nose and accepted healthcare reforms, increased taxes and slashes in defense spending. The Democrats choked down raising the retirement age, freezing discretionary spending and reducing corporate tax rates. That's just for starters.

Not a soul got close to 100 percent of what he or she wanted. That's what adults do.

Instead, House Speaker John "read my lips, we're going to cut spending" Boehner's three picks, headed by tea party heartthrob, Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan, and two of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's three selections chose to continue their food fight.

In the comprehensive final report, the commission majority reasoned that a formula of 2-to-1 in spending reductions to tax increases with overall spending and taxes each capped at 21 percent of GDP is indispensable. It concluded that wild-eyed, indiscriminate tax cutting is just as irresponsible as wild-eyed, indiscriminate spending.

Back at Chuck E. Cheese's, Boehner's brood are acting out, smashing programs that have little impact on our long range fiscal crisis and potentially damaging economic recovery, and Pelosi's rugrats are holding their breath clinging to every tattered entitlement bankie.

Meanwhile Obama's 2011 proposed budget seems to have totally missed the part where "Fiscal Responsibility and Reform" was his idea to begin with.

Colburn and Durbin are bucking their respective parties and pushing a reluctant Senate to take up the proposals.

But if only three more commission members had voted with the majority, Congress would have been required to debate them. That's all. Debate. Not even vote. Debate. Seven members, four Democrats, three Republicans, and none could put on their big boy pants long enough to do even that.

Pathetic.