Your post highlights a major part of the problem. Many voters simply don’t understand the entitlement programs aren’t anywhere close to being fully funded. Democrats are simply lying when they state Social Security is a success. It is not, and the facts are plain to see for anyone who cares to look. Based on current rates and demographics, we have an incredibly huge unfunded mandate that is only going to get worse. We are likely to reach the point where we can’t even borrow our way out of it, because it will take an ever increasing bite of tax revenues just to service existing debt.
If every working American (about 175 million) volunteered to chip in an extra $1000 this year, we wouldn’t come remotely close to closing the gag...for this year. It would take something closer to every taxpayer paying $500 extra PER MONTH to balance this year’s deficit!
Voters are simply going to be forced to decide at some point. Either raise taxes A LOT, cut entitlements A LOT, or do quite a bit of both. I’m sure the federal government has all sorts of smart folks analyzing our government spending. The truth is, they can get away with a lot of deficit spending. A government can even create money out of nothing for a time. I just hope the experts have figured this out well enough that it doesn’t all come crashing down before we have a chance to fix it.
good post Citizen. you are correct — a good start would be for the lies and spin to stop. we’re just pushing our debt off and we cannot forever — we may not pay the piper this year but when we do — whoa boy. I have come to the conclusion that people usually do not want the truth — it takes a certain amount of character to be able to recognize a problem AND correct it. I think a lot of Americans have lost that or where never taught that.
anyway, it’s quite possible Democrats are convinced high taxes equal prosperity. I swear I have heard no less than 3 times this past week from different Democrats (one in a Houston Chronicle letter to the editor) the quote:
“taxes were highest in the 1950’s and America was the most prosperous then so a high tax rate is good”.
I realize that it was easier for these folks to repeat that statement (Lord knows where they read or hear it — I’m not Googling it) without intellectually challenging it by putting some critical thinking skills to use. And I know — because I’ve put a lot of thought into this — I can’t fix stupid — so I just move on.