[smc]

Originally Posted by tslust

The whole issue about raising corperate taxes or taxing the rich, is BS. The government needs to CUT SPENDING. As of early 2009 (the ecconomic situation has further deteriorated) if we had a total freeze on government spending and had a 100% Feeral tax, it would still take ten years to pay off the debt.

I'm all for cutting government spending. But I bet we won't agree on the cuts to make.

Let's get real about this deficit. The U.S. federal budget deficit today doesn't even come close to the percentage of the economy it was in, say, 1943, when it accounted for

30.3%. The Congressional Budget Office's most dire projection is that it will be 5.8% in fiscal 2014. This deficit business is a made-up catastrophe. Yes, it's large, but by no means insurmountable. When Reagan was president in 1983, the deficit was 6% of the economy, and by 1998 it had been turned into a surplus.

The call for drastic cuts are simply part of the strategy to shrink government, not the deficit. If deficit reduction was serious, the screamers of doom would be calling for cuts in the parts of the budget that are significant, and not stupid-ass stuff like the National Endowment for the Arts. But Romney, for instance, wants to increase the budget for the Pentagon -- the base budget for which has increased by nearly doubled in the last decade.