Years ago when I was a hippy kid traveling in Morocco, I stumbled late at night into a filthy hotel in Tangiers.<\/p>\n
The proprietor showed me a room so disgusting that only sheer desperation made me consider it.\u00a0 Instinct caused me to throw back the bedclothes.<\/p>\n
I found that some feckless soul had been chewing pistachio nuts and spitting the seeds onto the bed.<\/p>\n
I turned to the hotelier and said, “I’ll take the room, but you have to clean up the pistachio shells.”<\/p>\n
The man looked at the shells, then at me, and said, “There are no shells.”<\/p>\n
That moment was a metaphor for American politics since 2000, when George W. Bush began accelerating both the growth and indebtedness of the Federal government at rates never seen before.<\/p>\n
It was a metaphor, too, for President Barack Obama’s budget proposals, which offer no remedy for dangerous levels of government borrowing into the distant future.<\/p>\n
Finally, it was a metaphor for the GOP’s “Pledge to America,” which demands that tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens in our country continue indefinitely.<\/p>\n
All of these politicians have been gesturing feebly at the pistachio nuts on the bed and saying,” There are no shells.”<\/p>\n
They know better, and so do the American people.\u00a0 Even in “liberal” states like New York, a consensus is forming that the time has come for a major and painful realignment.<\/p>\n
Boiled down to its simplest terms, the truth is this:\u00a0 Our taxes are too low and our government is too big.<\/p>\n
On the revenue side, state, local and Federal governments will all have to boost the amount that we pay in taxes significantly — and not just for people who earn more than $250,000.<\/p>\n
The claim made by Mr. Obama that we can turn the corner on this problem with 95% of our citizens avoiding pain is, in a word, ludicrous.<\/p>\n
And those conservatives who claim that we are overtaxed are simply ignoring facts and history. Our tax rates are at the lowest level in post-WW2 history, at a time when we are fighting two wars.<\/p>\n
We are also trying to rebuild our badly eroded infrastructure — everything from highways to broadband networks — and scrambling to revitalize America’ s education and healthcare systems before they collapse.<\/p>\n
That will cost big bucks.\u00a0 More of it will have to come from us, and less from lenders in Asia and the Middle East.<\/p>\n
But at the same time, Americans will have to accept dramatically reduced services from our government.<\/p>\n
The era when we could foist our elderly grandparents onto the taxpayer, or demand that the Federal government support us with Social Security checks for a third of our lifetimes, is coming to an end.<\/p>\n
The day when we could spend more on our military than the next ten nations in the world combined is winding down.<\/p>\n
The idea that public employees can earn more and enjoy better benefits than workers in the private sector — that’s an imbalance that simply can’t be sustained.<\/p>\n
Ideologues on both ends of the spectrum will squawk at these facts.\u00a0 But most Americans see the pistachio nuts for what they are and want something done about them.<\/p>\n
Will the change be painful?\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0 But there’s an old saying:\u00a0 You made your bed, now you have to lie in it.<\/p>\n
Unless we start cleaning soon, we’ll be stuck in this mess for a long time to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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