I believe any thinking American would agree that our government spends too much money. These days Washington is just out of control, period. The question today isn't "SHOULD we cut spending?" but "WHAT should we cut?"
Republicans want to cut back on all the social programs on the books, but they'll fight tooth and nail to protect the loopholes granted to their business special interest buddies. Not surprisingly, the Democrats want to do just the opposite. Both parties want to balance the budget on the other guy's back.
Here's my idea: Do we even know the dollar value of all the tax loopholes, subsidies, "favors", etc that are liberally sprinkled all through our 75,000 page(?) tax code and various other "back door" appropriations? I suggest we commission someone (the GAO?...maybe a Big 6 accounting firm?) to go through everything page-by-page, identify each, put a dollar value on each, explain how each is justified, and how it would affect the economy/taxpayers if it went away. We know about some of the high profile ones such as subsidies for the oil companies, big pharma, etc, but we tend to forget things like home mortgage interest deductions and union dues deductions. I wanna know about ALL of 'em. How much do you think they would add up to? $100 billion a year? $500 billion a year? A TRILLION dollars a year?
Do any politicians have the guts to propose something like this? No...didn't think so. They all have their special interests they're covering for, and the LAST thing the special interests want is for the people to find out how badly they're getting screwed.
I'll bet it would be a real eye opener. Then I bet we could make a helluva dent in our deficit!
S
Actually, most economists don't think this is the time to cut back on government spending. People who know more about these matters than me suggest that in bad times only the government can stimulate the economy by pumping money into it. Then people will have more and better jobs that can create taxable revenue. Americans are paying less in taxes now than they were when Truman was in office. The problem is that too few economists are in a Congress flooded with lawyers. Lawyers are best at running up tabs.
ReplyDelete"Lawyers are best at running up tabs." Haha! So true!
ReplyDeleteGood points Steve. The Europeans have been pushing austerity plans on their basket case countries for a few years now with no positive results so far. But at the same time, common sense says we can't keep running up trillion dollar deficits indefinitely. At some point the creditor nations will say "no more". Then we go into meltdown default. That won't be pretty. We have long since ceased being a nation of farmers. Most of us wouldn't know how to grow a can of beans if our life depended on it.
So I guess one option would be to keep spending now to spur on the economy, then when things turn around, grow our way back to prosperity. But how much debt is too much to outgrow?
S
What was it that Reagan said once..."I'm not worried about the deficit - it's big enough to take care of itself."
ReplyDeleteJoking aside, it does need to be dealt with. I like your idea of nerdy accountants looking into this. We could save a lot of money by cutting out the waste, not the programs. I remember a company getting tax breaks/incentives/whatever one time for bringing jobs to Buffalo. They were jobs just above minimum wage. The tax breaks/incentives/corporate welfare amounted to $35,000 PER year PER job for TEN years.
I think we could seriously reduce the deficit if we could get rid of the fraud that accounts for a lot of spending. It's my opinion that many who receive government funds for welfare, food stamps, rent assistance & other social programs probably do not really qualify but there doesn't seem to be any real effort to confirm or quantify - it's more of an attitude of throwing more money at the problem.
ReplyDeleteYou bet...that would be a great start. But it might amount to...who knows...a few billion dollars? We need that times several hundred at least.
ReplyDeleteOne only needs to look at the news from California. Yet another city declared bankruptcy this week. I believe it is the third in that state. Will the federal government someday need to do the same? With all the earmarks and pet programs, year after year, it certainly seems in our future.
ReplyDeletewell, we could stop starting and fighting unnecessary wars, stop supporting repressive regimes in other countries, stop subsidies on profitable companies, make sure the rich pay the same tax rate as our secretaries and teachers. we should also cut congress' pay and get rid of all their perks, especially their government healthcare. we could let all the pot smokers out of jail.
ReplyDeletethe social programs for the poor and disenfranchised and SS are taking hits, now let the other side offer up a sacrifice or two.