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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (588044)	9/29/2010 3:19:22 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574483

The tax cuts didn't put any crisis in the budget. If the only budgetary change was the tax cut we'd be fine in terms of the deficit, in fact we would have a surplus. The problem is that spending more than doubled (in nominal dollar terms but there hasn't been a lot of inflation in the last decade). Then they added to the strategic problem with entitlements like part D. True. If considered a separate entitlement (rather than part of Medicare) it would be much smaller than Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security, but its still a new program (or an extension of an old one) that adds to spending, and the entitlement nature of it makes it worse since it automatically increases without needing new action by congress. all of which was done on borrowed money Even with our huge deficits, the majority of federal spending is covered by taxes. I don't think its reasonable to single out specific programs and say they are all done on borrowed money. The 2010 budget is for $3.55 trillion, with estimated receipts of $2.381 trillion, or 67 %. So I'd say 33% of that spending was done on borrowed money, just like a third of all other spending is on borrowed money. .republicans are referring to these as "tax increases" Because that's what having higher tax rates is. and neither side really knows how to cut spending without alienating one or more important electoral constituency Tax increases also cause political alienation. It seems like we will have to have some level of political alienation to restore fiscal sanity. and you and I are wasting time discussing the veracity of a CBO report....frankly at this point, W_GaS (who gives a s...?). There are bigger fish to fry... I guess, but its a pretty big fish. If you don't accept it as solid, then there is much less backing for stimulus payments, and we can help reduce the deficit by avoiding such stimulus to the extent we still can now, and almost completely in the future.