It doesn't matter what taxes are dedicated to what spending, or how the budget is sliced up in to different budgets, or unified in to one.
We have a single federal government. Every dollar it spends is a dollar of federal spending. Increasing a tax, dedicated or not, doesn't cut spending, or eliminate the impact of spending.
On the other side the wars are clearly 'discretionary spending'
All spending is discretionary spending, except perhaps the minimum amount need to keep a central government running and avoid balkanization or anarchy, and maybe payments on the debt.
So called "non-descressionary" spending could be stopped by a single act of congress. The only difference between it and normal spending is that if congress does nothing, it continues.
And you can't argue about SS effect on the deficit, since it is decreasing it.
Every penny spent on social security increases the deficit. Every penny received in any tax, including social security taxes decreases.
Also remember in the not to distant future, even if you consider SS taxes and spending to be one insurable thing, that doesn't have parts that can be considered separately, the program as a whole will contribute to the deficit.
If the wars had a dedicated tax, I wouldn't be able to argue about it's effect on the deficit.
I don't know if you would or not, but you certainly could reasonably do so. Whatever sort of tax arraignments you have made waging a war (or making transfer payments, or spending money in other ways) contributes to the deficit. |
