Over time it did go up. In the first years following the deficit doubled or tripled as well. If Perry does that we're talking $2.5 trillion to $3 trillion annual deficits. It'll make Obama look like a piker by comparison. Unless, of course, Perry also cuts spending. Something he doesn't seem to want to talk about in any detail.
On the spending side, all it takes is a will to reign in the spending.
We have a Congress without the will, and suspicions about the candidate as well.
One last thing-asking the question “where are these cuts going to come from?” tells me that you are not really a believer that government can and should make some drastic reductions in its spending levels.
That sounds like the kind of comment one would expect from someone who has no idea how to cut the spending either.
Then, we can look at some of these departments like the EPA that don’t really serve much purpose.
The current deficit is running about $1.3 trillion. You know what the EPA's budget for 2011 is? $9 billion. Get real.
I don’t think we’ll be able to agree on this, because we have a fundamental difference of opinion on the affect of tax cuts on an economy. It’s my view-and I believe that is supported by history-that cutting taxes spurs almost immediate economic growth, which brings additional jobs/taxpayers and reduces dependency on programs like unemployment. The statistics show that under Reagan’s 8 years the economy grew by around 30% and receipts to the treasury doubled. These are facts-you can look them up.
Given that tax cuts have been proven to bring economic growth, I don’t see why we shouldn’t do them again, since economic growth is what we need to get us out of a recession and increase receipts to the treasury. You keep claiming that if Perry does this tax plan, the deficit will skyrocket. Given economic growth/jobs is what’s needed to increase the taxpayer rolls, what would your solution be if you don’t believe we can afford to cut taxes?
On spending, you seem to be saying that there’s just no way to reign in the spending because the present Congress hasn’t done so and we don’t know what a new GOP POTUS would do. Then, you ask for specifics, I name one as an example, and you say “oh yeah, that’s only $9 billion, get real.” Well, there’s thousands of specific places that can be cut out of a $4 trillion plus annual budget. As the saying goes, “a billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” I don’t have the time nor the inclination to go over every one, because it would take hours to list them all.
Bottom line-my view is we are staring at financial calamity as a nation if we don’t take drastic action soon. Just a few years ago, we were running $200 billion deficits as opposed to $1.5 trillion. You say no one has the political will to take us back to 2007 spending levels. I say first off that Congress will do it if there is a POTUS that is committed to it, the American people hold their feet to the fire, and they finally come to the realization that we have no choice but to make drastic cuts to the govn’t.
In your world, it seems that all this is impossible. That we are just doomed to keep spending exponentially more every year and by God, we better not cut taxes, cause you know that might increase the deficit (a classic liberal talking point) and it’s already too high. So what do we do? Like I said before, based on your worldview, maybe you’re best bet is to go with the ‘safe’ choice (Romney). That way, we wont have to upset anybody or try to do any heavy lifting and the GOP can at least have control over the govn’t for a while as the country heads over the cliff.