Stop spending first.

Nice plan, you should be in charge.

Sorry for the sarcasm, but what’s the point, really. You’re playing their game. I propose 23.43257 percent. I think it’s just the right rate to promote growth, reduce the deficit, give everybody just enough freedom and make everything hunky-dory.

Now his Dad’s proposal to end the empire would likely cut double that. Even then, we’d still be 1/2 trillion short.

When you find someone who can’t stop spending, you don’t give them a credit card. If anyone was really serious, let’s see them refuse to increase the debt limit next month. Now that would be like cutting up the credit card. But I’m sure they’d still find a way to weasel out of it.

Sione

The bus analogy is good. I reckon that bus is going to zoom right off that cliff at full power and tumble into the valley below, where it will explode in pyrotechnic glory (just like they always do on the TV). Awesome! It’ll be amazing to watch, so long as you are not one of the unfortunate souls on the bus.

Sione

In our partisan environment, taxpayers focus upon whether spending is done by the Democrats or by the Republicans, overlooking that both are motivated to spend what is not theirs. Consequently, the taxpayers disregard their interest in not being excessively taxed. Their advantage would be to demand that *the government spend no more in a given year than the revenue it has already obtained*. Since ordinary citizens are limited to spend no more than they have earned, they can understand that the same should hold for government. Such a policy would not require Paul Ryan’s plan, or Rand Paul’s, since when the government’s spending is limited in this way, we don’t need to keep the debt ceiling, or to get promises about future spending.

The obstacle that remains is the 60% of the public who do not pay federal taxes, or pay a negligible amount compared to what they receive in return. From a short-range economic measure, it is to their advantage for the government to go increasingly into debt. Here however, I agree with Samuel Adams “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”

Lew did not ignore the issue of economic growth. That topic was not the subject of the article. What he is directing our attention towards are the fundamentals underlying the budget debate and the nature of that debate as compared with reality.

As far as economic growth is concerned, there aint going to be any. Forget about encountering real growth anytime soon. The US is on the path of economic unravelling. Unfortunately many people are going to get badly hurt by this process. Nevetheless they’ll continue to believe in govt. They’ll place their full faith in that institution and hope it’ll do something to alleviate their suffering. It won’t though. It’ll merely exploit their stupidity and cause them even more pain.

Meanwhile these “debates” will continue to crop up from time to time. Call them an expensive soap opera. You can keep up to date with the latest episode on your TV!

Sione

Not that I don’t want taxes cut (down to, say, zero!) but if I had to pick an order of things to correct then current tax rates would be pretty far down the list (and corporate taxes would come before personal). Stop the wars first and money printing second, followed by getting real with Social Security and Medicare, then take an axe to green subsidies and corporate subsidies in general. Follow that up with getting out of education, liquidating Fannie/Freddie and getting out of trying to incentivize home ownership. Oh yeah, and stop the insane war on drugs, the fascist Homeland Security state, and the massive growth of police forces, surveillance, and data collection.

Then we can talk about cutting tax rates.

Show me a Republican who is serious about any of it not named Ron Paul.