Taxes are down--but don't try to convince a Tea-bagger!

[MrMentalFitness]

Spending is off the charts--but don't try to convince Obama's butt sniffers.

Now, I was going along just fine and dandy today until you put that image in my head. Now it's all I can think about.

 

[Rita]

Calling it the way I see it-

Critics of our elected officials from the left want to end the tax cuts AND cut spending.

Critics of our elected officials from the right want to cut spending. When u point out to them that the tax breaks should end they tell you to keep cutting spending.

This traces the history of a republican talking point, "Washington does not have a revenue problem. Washington has a spending problem." - Boehner; Majority Leader Eric Cantor; Orrin Hatch; and whoever else got the memo.

"Not a revenue problem, a spending problem": Tracing the history of a Republican talking point. - By David Weigel - Slate Magazine

On March 28, 1982, Reagan addressed the National Association of Realtors in Washington. His first tax cuts had been passed into law. The economy was still in the dumps. Unemployment was 9 percent. The eggheads wanted to know why, during a recession, they shouldn't worry about shrinking tax revenue when defense and entitlement costs were ballooning. ..... "We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we have not taxed enough," said Reagan, "but we have a trillion dollar debt because we spend too much."

... When Reagan spoke to Realtors, taxes were far higher than they are now. The top marginal rate—there were then 12 rates—was 50 percent. The bottom rate was 12 percent. But Reagan's tax cuts didn't shrink the debt, and they didn't increase tax revenue as a percentage of GDP. In 1981, tax receipts were 19.6 percent of GDP; outlays were 22.2 percent. For the next six years, as Reagan agreed to some tax increases, revenue stayed lower and outlays stayed higher. It wasn't until 1987, the year after a massive tax simplification that cut the rates and the number of brackets, that outlays fell below where they had been in 1981. It wasn't until 1998 when revenue got back to that level.

... We have a spending problem and a revenue problem. And if you talk about one, and not the other, you're not taking either problem very seriously.


It is their standard way to drive their message - if you say it often enough, it becomes true.


.

 

[30ashopper]

I'll believe a party is serious about the debt problem when they present a plan that balances the budget within four years or so. Neither party has done this, so IMHO, neither should be given any credit. Here's a quote from wikipedia on the 2012 budgets that sums things up for me:

"The Obama administration's spending request contains $2.627 trillion in receipts and $3.729 trillion in outlays for 2012. The Republican plan contains $2.533 trillion in revenues and $3.529 trillion in outlays."

No matter which party you go with, both aim to add another trillion in debt in a little over a year. Epic fail.

 

[scooterbug44]

The only true failure is doing nothing IMO.

I would love it if we balanced the budget in 4 years, but I'll settle for slightly longer.

What I will not find acceptable is the continuation of the nonsense as the politicians dance around the REAL issues preventing that from happening.

 

[AndrewG]

I'm all for tax increases only if we are forced to cut spending and wasteful entitlements. Increasing taxes with no real attempt to slash spending is what usually happens. It has to change.