After watching and listening to all the posturing by both parties regarding increasing the country's debt ceiling, I have decided we just need to return to grade school to find the answer.
Weeks of rhetoric has devolved into an incredibly annoying "he said-he said" that is getting us no closer to a vote on increasing the debt ceiling or making changes to our federal government's spending habits. Each time one side stands up in front of a microphone or a camera they immediately begin telling us why their plan is only chance we have to save our economy and how adopting the other side's plans will be the end of the world.
What we all know is the truth is somewhere between both ideologies and with a split between parties in the two Houses of Congress ultimately any agreement will land somewhere between extremes that are being tossed around by both sides.
Since there seems to be a complete lack of statesmen who are willing to do what's right for the country's economy - or at least do it in a timely manner that will keep us from running right up to the brink of default - I have arrived at a solution so simple even grade school kids can understand it and do it every day.
Just like we learned to choose "teams" during our days in grade school, I would propose we follow the same pattern in solving this crisis. Both the Republicans and the Democrats get to designate a team captain. For the sake of this argument, I'm designating President Obama to captain the D's and John Boehner the R's. Anytime you pick teams someone has to get the first pick. Since the D's control the White House and the Senate, I'm giving them the first choice in our debt ceiling, deficit reduction draft.
The way this works - just like it did in grade school - is the D's get first pick. After the D's make their first choice, the R's will get two picks. Then two more picks for the D's and two more for the R's and so on. Rather than put a number of rounds on this draft, we'll call for an end to the when we have successfully raised the debt ceiling AND cut spending by something like $1 trillion dollars.
Nothing is quite as simple as picking items so I'm willing to give a bonus to each side. Just like in a jury selection, I'm going to give each side 2 peremptory challenges to whatever is proposed by the other. These challenges can be used to strike any proposal made by the other side and once something is proposed and challenged by the other side, it can't be brought back up. And remember, each side only has two challenges so they best use them wisely.
Here is how the debt ceiling, debt reduction draft could look:
In the first round, the D's decided to raise the debt ceiling by $1 trillion. While this is a lot more than the R's want, they choose to save their strike and allow the increase to happen. Now the R's get two picks and with their first, they choose a balance budget amendment. The D's don't like the idea so they use their first strike. The R's get another first round pick. With this choice the R's elect to increase the minimum age to qualify for social security. The D's don't want to waste both strikes early, so they let this one pass.
In round two, the R's go first and they here they suggest a repeal of the new health care law. The D's decide this is too much to allow and they use their second strike. This uses up all the D's strikes so the R's get another pick in round two and choose major cuts to Medicare. For their choice in the second round, the D's choose eliminating tax loopholes for oil companies. Here the R's use a strike and the D's get another choice. This time they propose a dramatic reduction in defense spending and R's again use a strike. Now with both sides out of strikes, the D's finish round two by raising taxes on those earning more than $250,000.
In the third round, both sides are out of strikes and the D's get the first choice. With no strikes left, the D's can pick whatever they want such as increasing funding to EPA. The R's will get back-to-back picks and they can also pick whatever they want.
To speed the process along, we put a time limit on how long each side gets to make a pick and the amount of time starts small, say five minutes, and gradually increases starting in round five to a maximum of five minutes. If we commit to spending just 4 hours on this process, we can probably get 12-15 rounds of selections and they should add up a significant reduction in the budget and the debt ceiling will be increased. Both these items prove to be good for the country and both sides will get somethings they want and they'll have to accept somethings they don't want.
While actually negotiating in good faith and accepting that they won't get everything they want through the negotiations would be preferable, this at least provides a solution and would let us get the crisis addressed and move us on down the road.
If this doesn't work, I vote for my friend Terry's suggestion of putting them all outside in the Oklahoma sun without shade or water and making them stay there until they reach a resolution.
