It’s frustrating because I love so many of your ideas Jared. But while we’re saddled with this demonstrably incorrect conservative idea that the Government has to be run like a household we won’t build the WITT society we’d like.

I am alone on disability with small help from a little part time job ((10) hrs a week and I can’t pay a go-pay! Social security is constantly checking me.

Talk about abuse. I wish someone would publish these wasteful money five-away where everyone can see them. The deficit would probably be reduced be 1/2..I wish, too, that congress would stop this melodrama every year.

At http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=22230

Why not focus on the tremendous gratitude you must feel for the opportunity you’ve been granted to speak for the vast number of Americans who do not have a voice in elite policy determination? As you rightly point out, too much balance can lead to unbalance. We cannot become enthralled with one aspect of the dharma above the others. The peril of false equivalence in Washington is also widely recognized. Knowing that you will inevitably err, why not err on the side of the downtrodden, rather than the powerful?

No one in our nation’s capital completely escapes the insidious corruption, but we are obligated to try mightily. When I lived in DC, I found that, when I deigned to notice, there was always a homeless person or low-wage service worker around to talk to and straighten out my priorities.

If Chained-CPI is “more accurate,” why does BLS say that “[t]he CPI is generally the best measure for adjusting payments to consumers when the intent is to allow consumers to purchase at today’s prices, a market basket of goods and services equivalent to one that they could purchase in an earlier period,” or that the CPI-U is “[o]ur broadest and most comprehensive CPI”? Why does BLS take seriously critiques asserting that the CPI-U understate inflation as it does for ones asserting it overstates it?

First, the old CPI has been set to lower reported inflation below actual inflation for years, Greenspan has been lobbying for this since the late 1980s, at least.

Second, and most important, is that an accurate reporting of CPI among the elderly would be higher rather than lower than the already under reporting standard CPI.

As an aside, I would also note that the “Chained CPI” is pro cyclical: It makes social programs contract when poverty rises, and expand when poverty falls.

Rejigger federal legislation spending priorities, if need be, in the same legislation, so the funds cannot be diverted to other discretionary spending.

In one stroke, this takes the Democrats’ threat of default off the table. If Republicans do it right, and additionally protect the priority of current Social Security and Medicare, Democrats cannot scare seniors, either. If Democrats will not pass it in the Senate, or the President will not sign it — and heaven forbid take the country into default — they are the ones holding solvency hostage, and blame will fall on them.

Also, Republicans should pass their legislative agenda in a second, standalone bill. Repeal Obamacare. Enact the Ryan entitlement reforms. End the EPA’s regulation of CO2 emissions and give the go-ahead to Keystone and fracking. Cut taxes by 5% across the board, while eliminating the deductibility of state and local taxes. Slash discretionary spending 20% across the board, including defence (which would have much less impact on national security with such a weak and misguided Commander in Chief). Authorize the additional (but much smaller) borrowing needed to fund this agenda, but no other.

Lay the groundwork for new bipartisan commissions to discuss selective restoration of spending, or additional cuts and department eliminations, and a new healthcare program focused on the uninsured and opening a national market for healthcare consumers.

Then, Mr. Boehner should take his caucus and leave town. Sell the program in the districts, in the streets, on the airwaves. If the Democrats default on the debt, shut down the government, debauch the currency, or otherwise act extra-constitutionally, the Republicans must fight them on all fronts.

House Republicans won an amazing victory in 2010, the most dramatic change from one party to another since the 1940s. Remarkably, they repeated that victorious performance, in the most stunning and unexpected upset of 2012. (Obama’s victory not that surprising, and Senate Democrats won mainly on social issues).

Democrats want to raise taxes, but want to raise spending even more.

Republicans must stand for the principal of cutting taxes but cutting spending even more.