kublikhan wrote:How about this radical idea: generate enough in taxes to pay for what we spend. This tax plan puts us further in the red. Everyone wants government services. But no one wants to pay for them. If you are cutting revenue, you need to cut outlays as well.
I second that, and add enthusiastic clapping sounds.
Both sides of the aisle cause deficit problems over time. They like to spend more than the voters want to pay in taxes. And overall, the voters like that, even while they claim they don't.
Two of the worst repeat actions in this area, IMO, are the GOP insistence, again and again that lowering tax rates doesn't increase deficits. Except that history seems to show that it strongly tends to, over time. And the democrats like to claim that increasing spending doesn't increase deficits (as long as the spending is in the form of their pet projects, of course). (Both sides claim their ideas are so great they override common sense, but at the end of the decades, math and the debt says to the tune of many $trillions, and counting, that they don't).
And this goes on and on and gets worse and worse, and we keep ELECTING the same clowns that behave like this.
I keep wanting some kind of unbreakable Graham-Rudmann law on steroids that forces automatic cuts of EVERYTHING if the clowns in the beltway won't do the job with honest CBO scored math (say, over a decade so they can deal with real financial emergencies like the 2008-2009 mess). If they anger everyone, and it threatens their re-election, then maybe that will bring about some adult fiscal decision making on the spending AND the taxing that is done.
Of course, since only a tiny fraction of people truly want to solve that problem, it hasn't any real chance of happening.
At least both sides can continue to blame each other in 3 to 5 decades when we look like Puerto Rico (the way we're going) and no one wants to loan us more money at remotely affordable interest rates. That will be SO helpful.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.