That is true, but the main problem right now isn't that we are creating new and expensive programs. The biggest problems are in trying to maintain the old commitments. Those people counting on their SS checks were told to expect increasing payments. So capping spending must result in cuts elsewhere. As currently setup, medicare would cease to function if the number of dollars supporting it was capped for the next ten years. Medical costs would continue to rise and medicare would then cover less and less. Spending caps are nice in theory, but in reality they result in mandatory cuts of other programs.
Agreed. But the reality is that it is easy to tell the public that you are simply going to freeze spending levels for the next 10 years and give everyone a tax cut. Try telling them that you are going to cap total spending, and since you've already committed to SS/Medicare and defense cuts aren't realistic, you're going to be forced to make dramatic cuts in pensions, education, public works, etc. Oh and by the way, even the programs that aren't cut will not receive pay increases even to keep up with inflation. So best case scenario says that anyone working for hte government will be getting an effective 34% cut in pay over the next 10 years. Good luck getting elected on that platform.
Federal pensions SHOULD be cut and the feds never had any business getting involved with education to begin. Are the feds even engaged in any worthwhile public works right now? OK by me most federal employees are overpaid anyway.
You have to normalize the data across various economic conditions. Revenue will fall in a recession and rise in a recovery but to see the effect on how the tax cuts or hikes affected the change in revenue you have to normalize tax revenue as a percentage of GDP. This is basic elementary econometrics. The chart does not say anything about the size of government. Can the republican mind not interpret data correctly? The other points are garbage if you leave out so many other factors such as: -- immigration -- government spending -- interest rates -- productivity gains, foreign trade, etc..
(Tapping with spoon on side of near empty tea glass...) Ladies and Gentlemen, your attention please. We now present our math lesson for today: John Travolta + Olivia Newton-John = Greece. Greece = Greece. USA = Greece. Only unknown part of the equation is when for USA.
Ok, fair enough. Let's have a look at the numbers for 2013. SS/Medicare = 1,823 Billion Defense = 672 Billion Interest = 246 Billion Those are the things that will either stay the same or rise. Everything Else = 1,060 billion IOW... Cut the entire department of education (71bill), That would cover the projected annual increase for the first few years of just medicaid/medicare. After 4-5 years it would only be covering about 1/2 of the health services annual increase. Completely cut out the department of energy and misc. spending. That gets you another 60bill. Enough to cover the projected increase in interest for the first couple years. Where else should we cut? Agriculture Homeland security Labor
you have it all backwards.... we want the green line to go down in an expansion. We are not concerned about the ratio at all. if govt revenues reach new highs why should it care if its percent of the GDP goes down. That is what govt should be shooting for. making govt a smaller part of the economy but still not deficit spending. We are trying to maximize the private sector not govt revenues. which is exactly what the previous tax cuts did. decrease in green line... but increase in govt revenues.
You're getting on the right track, brother Jem. Actually, raising taxes should never even be discussed. We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem! There seems to be this little game going on in the USA and it's being perpetrated by the government. It's called "let's see how much money we can confiscate from the American people before they say no!