Unsquarable Circle

Felipe Calderón responded to the partial success of the budget revenue bill with a call for a broad-based pact to create sustainable revenue sources, rather than submit Mexico to the unsatisfactory haggling of the past several weeks on an annual basis. That's a laudable bit of foresight, but it's hard to imagine all of the relevant groups supporting the same tax regime, which the dissatisfaction with the this week's revenues demonstrates. The right is slamming it for raising taxes on those who already pay, while the left is also tarring it as treasonous because it raises taxes, though surely with their concerns focused on a very different group of taxpayers. In other words, everyone wants their base to pay less, but that's not possible without massively cutting spending or sending Mexico off of the fiscal cliff. Unless Mexico discovers another Cantarell, someone's going to have to pay more.