….Americans are skeptical with good reason and that level of distrust will not go away if all we get is another bipartisan approach to kicking the debt problem down the road. In case you have forgotten, we raised the debt ceiling as recently as February 2010.
When will we gain control of our budget? We routinely hear about trillions in spending cuts, yet we spend more and more each year. Lip service is paid to cutting back, but we all know that spending cuts never, ever happen in Washington DC.
With a slowing economy, the argument is often made that government has to step in and do something. As you can see from the list above, our government has been doing exactly that. Yet, those policies have been ineffective so far.
We know from bitter experience that a “cut” is nothing more than a reduction in the rate of spending increase. We also know that a “cut” in the future will never happen.
However tax increases are real and immediate.
[blockquote]However tax increases are real and immediate.[/blockquote]
And tend to be longlived. As the author of this article points out, even if the income redistributionists got their fondest wish and raised income tax rates on “the rich” (with the top 5% of taxpayers in 2008 starting at $159,000, even below where Obama and Biden were willing to suggest during the campaign) up to confiscatory levels, we wouldn’t begin to put a dent in this year’s deficit, to say nothing of the long-term deficit once Obamacare really kicks in.
The problem is overspending.