Such signals raise important questions: Are cuts to Social Security and Medicare part of a grand bargain, modeled on Simpson-Bowles, now within reach? Have political elites agreed on solutions to the deficit problem? All of which brings me back to the public: What about the ordinary people those solutions would affect? What might those effects be? And what do ordinary people have to say about them? On such questions, the media have been mostly silent.
It may be acceptable for media to act as a conduit for politicians and business moguls. Their announcements and pronouncement fit some definitions of news. And it is certainly a press job to air debate and discussion about a proposal as momentous as Simpson-Bowles.
It's not acceptable, though, to merely pass along the notion that the Beltway elites are warming up to something as important and far-reaching as the Simpson-Bowles plan without cluing in the public about what's in store for them if it were to pass. Sound bites don't do it. Neither does explanatory shorthand that describes the proposal so benignly as a "mix of tax hikes and spending cuts." Right now Simpson-Bowles is a solution without explanation. (In coming days, we'll post a Simpson-Bowles explainer on CJR.org that might help reporters and editors.)
Simpson-Bowles is big. In the end the public may well decide that the specific benefit cuts and tax hikes it calls for are fine. And presumably they'll eventually make their feelings about those cuts and hikes, one way or another, known at the voting machine--if they understand them. Udall himself said: "If I couldn't be reelected because Bowles-Simpson made some people mad, I could live with that." That's what democracy is about, isn't it.
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