Sky-High Spending, Not Bush Tax Cuts, Drives Deficits

Investor's Business Daily ^ | 10/18/12 | John Merline

[IBD editorial writer]

President Obama often talks about the need for a "balanced" approach to deficit reduction, by which he means tax hikes in addition to spending cuts.

At the recent presidential debate, for example, he said, "We've got to reduce our deficit, but we've got to do it in a balanced way. Asking the wealthy to pay a little bit more along with cuts."

The only problem with this approach is that the massive projected deficits over the next 10 years aren't the result of too few taxes. They are entirely the result of too much spending.

Here's the proof.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

Republicans and conservatives need to get our terminology right. We don’t have a “deficit” or a “debt” problem. We have a spending problem. Look at any chart of government spending over the past 100 years. It only truly went down after WWI and WWII and that was due to reductions in military spending. Otherwise, it keeps going up and up and up. Reagan slowed the growth of spending but he didn’t dramatically cut it. We have a government that has a life of its own and that can’t be controlled by elected officials. It just keeps churning along spending more and more and more.

[Gaffer]

Terminology, schmerminology. We are not going to be treated to a full reconciliation of the actual state of financial affairs until this administration has been thrown out of office.

Right now, we are subjected to MASSIVE obsfuscation, MASSIVE confusion, MASSIVE lies and MASSIVE manipulation of government-developed information.

[mo]

At every level..Federal, State and Local-throughout the country...the problem rarely is a lack of taxation.

The spending conduct of elected officials, as well as their regulatory attitudes-which interfere with business growth and development...reflect consistently poor and maladaptive decision-making that is as much, if not more, a national threat to security of the American people as “al-queda” or whomever....

Until the populace demands a level of professional conduct-with attendant penalties for malpractice- from its politicians that we would expect from any other professional serving the public-doctors, lawyers, engineers-people whose decision-making has the potential for substantial adverse personal and community impact when not done responsibly- We the People are stuck with this mess.

[Zakeet]

This is worth a watch if you haven't seen it before: United States Budget Dilemma.

The author of the editorial is exactly correct, spending and not tax cuts is responsible for public sector borrowing ... however, it is impossible at this point to either reduce spending enough or raise taxes enough to avert a hyperinflationary depression.

Replacing the Moron with Mittens is somewhat like having stage 4 pancreatic cancer that has metastasized to the lungs, liver, bone marrow and brain -- and checking out of County General Hospital and into the Mayo Clinic. The action may somewhat reduce the pain and temporarily postpone death, but the final outcome is inevitable. Congress has spent this country into oblivion.

[DManA]

The design of the Bush tax cuts ensured that we’d get the minimum economic bang for the buck.

They were temporary, they were skewed towards the bottom of the income spectrum, it did nothing for the people hit with the AMT (and more people found themselves hit by it).

And he did nothing to lighten the boot of the regulatory state that sits on the windpipe of American business.

[CMAC51]

It doesn’t matter if it is financed through taxes or borrowing, government spending removes money from the private economy. Since the production of goods and services by the goverment is so inefficient compared to the private sector, more money spend by the government is a drag on the economy. Raising taxes does not reduce that drag. The only way to reduce the drag is to reduce government spending.

[A.A. Cunningham]

Not Bush Tax Cuts(sic)

Tax Rate Cuts

You clowns at IBD know better than to perpetuate that tax cut BS.