Conservatives are used to having the political playing field tilted against them. The (predominantly) liberal media and the iron triangle of congressional staff, government programs and professional left-wing interest groups pretty much ensures that our public discourse skewers left. But rarely have the terms of our debate been as upside down as they are now.
House Republicans are being blamed by the media for their supposed intransigence in the debt-limit fight. Yet they are the only ones who have offered up — and passed — a real plan (“Cut, Cap and Balance”) to avert a looming debt crisis while simultaneously raising the debt ceiling.
The Senate hasn’t done that; the so-called Gang of Six hasn’t done that; and President Obama hasn’t done that. No, only House Republicans have acted with probity and responsibility to avert fiscal Armageddon.
If the Senate doesn’t like the House plan, that’s fine. Let the Senate pass its own plan. Senate and House conferees can then reconcile their differences, just as they do for all other legislation.
The reconciled bill can be sent to Obama for his signature. And if Obama doesn’t like what Congress sends him, he needs to put forth his own plan. Thus far, however, the president hasn’t done that. He’s more interested in speechifying than in legislating. He’s more interested in scoring political points than in solving problems.
Again, this is how the legislative process is supposed to work. It’s not House Republicans who have disrupted that process; it’s Harry Reid, Senate Democrats and President Obama, all of whom are more interested in vilifying their political opponents than in averting a fiscal disaster.
Of course, you wouldn’t know any of this from listening to the legacy media, which has been shamelessly acting as the public relations arm for President Obama and the Democrats. In the media’s upside-down world, House Republicans are the problem — even though House Republicans are the only ones who have actually done something to solve the problem!
“Blame Republicans for [the] debt crisis,” declares Charlie Cook in National Journal. “If Republicans expect Democrats to go along with entitlement cuts, the GOP has to be willing to go along with some revenue increases.”
That sounds reasonable, but it’s not: America doesn’t have a revenue problem, we have an entitlement spending problem — and, more specifically, a healthcare entitlement spending problem.
“It is absolutely impossible to raise taxes fast enough or high enough to keep up with this growth” in healthcare entitlements, explains Yuval Levin in National Review Online. “Unfortunately,” Levin adds, “the president is not willing to do anything about this [problem]. The Medicare reforms he was reportedly willing to consider — raising the Medicare retirement age by two years, employing yet more price controls, a little more means testing — just don’t get anywhere near the real problem.”
This is the real news that our legacy media ignore. Instead, we get Orwellian stories that turn the news on its head. This is a disservice to American democracy and a disservice to the American people. We should expect better of the Fourth Estate.
John R. Guardiano is a writer and analyst in Arlington, Virginia. He writes and blogs for a variety of publications, including FrumForum, the American Spectator and The Daily Caller. Follow him at his personal blog, ResoluteCon.com, and on Twitter @JohnRGuardiano.
