Next Question

On Wednesday Ben Bernanke called for plans to address the deficit, providing an institutional punctuation to what is obviously the next great question for our government.

One preparation for that debate is a growing interest in the value added tax. Volcker noted Tuesday that interest in the VAT was rising. And Congressional talk of VAT is reaching CBO:

Today, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf confirmed he's been getting "a lot of questions" about the VAT tax from Congress.

"Many people in Congress are interested in it," he said of the VAT, a national sales tax that adds between 10 and 20 percent to purchases in European countries where it's been implemented. "We've had conversations with a number of members and their staffs."

(CBO link via the Daniel Foster at The Corner.)

Clearly our governing class knows we have an impending problem. The current schedule calls for a report from the President's deficit commission, due sometime after the November election. But there is no reason to wait. The commission's stated purpose is to provide expert and nonpartisan advice. But this isn't some tedious and obscure question, and nothing new about will be learned in the next eight months, so we hardly need some "expert" report. And there is no technocratic, "nonpartisan" answer to questions of fundamental policy.

So never mind the commission. Congress and the President know there is a problem, and they get to work fixing it. If they accomplish nothing more than outlining the broad strokes of the alternative fixes, well, that's what elections are for.