It is simply not economically feasible to cut the US deficit without raising taxes, given that Americans are enjoying their lowest tax burden since 1958.
It\’s politics, not economics, which is the problem here.
You can cut the US deficit quite easily purely through spending cuts. In an economic sense that is. Get shot of the ethanol nonsense, tear up the Farm Bill, stick every federal pension into a 401(k), stick every federal health plan into these new fangled \”insurance exchanges\” and so on.
In economic terms, a piece of piss actually.
It\’s that such actions are politically impossible that is the problem.
To a point. The complicating factor is that the Republicans are pretending that a cuts-only plan can be done without touching pensions, farmers or Medicare, solely through Republican-voter-friendly means such as cutting waste and not spending money on abortions or gay parades. Which is indeed economically impossible – even if all such spending were eliminated, it’d barely touch the deficit.
john b – “To a point. The complicating factor is that the Republicans are pretending that a cuts-only plan can be done without touching pensions, farmers or Medicare”
This is bollocks. The only people talking about pension reform are the Republicans. While one or two Democratic states have snuck anti-Union policies on the quiet, it has been the Republicans that have done the hard yards. As for farmers, it is true that some of the Right have wavered. But it is also true that *only* the Republicans, and especially the Tea Party, want anything done about farm subsidies.
As for Medicare, perhaps this programme needs to be cut. But Social Security is a bigger problem. Again the real issue is that the Left is not offering anything at all. At least the Right is willing to consider some cuts.
“solely through Republican-voter-friendly means such as cutting waste and not spending money on abortions or gay parades. Which is indeed economically impossible – even if all such spending were eliminated, it’d barely touch the deficit.”
I am not sure that is true. Certainly Obama’s new medical spending needs to be wound back. He has increased the deficit as much in the last two years as Bush did in eight. But this sort of spending is still some 20% of the budget. If Washington got out of Gay Pride parades and the like – abolishing the Department of Education for instance – it would go a long way.