Sidebar: One American Voice speaks the Truth

Recently on the Facebook PolitiFact page, a commenter by the name of Paul Hugenberg posted a link to his own Blogspot blog which has the same formatting as mine....Paul is a newbie like me, he will learn as he goes along, I am sure (first piece of advice: learn how to use the "Insert Jump Break").  But he had something to say about the "promises" of the Republicans/Tea Partiers who will most likely score a big victory this November.  This paragraph pretty much says it all:

"Second, it is impossible to fill its promises of bringing our debt under control. The debt is about $14T today. Let us say the GOP is going to be more fiscally conservative and run “smaller deficits” than we see today. Although that is a promise made by the Democrats, we will assume that the Republicans will really do it because they stump it so often. Boehner wishes to return to Bush-era budgets. That era ran $900B deficits. I hate to be an antagonist, but a $900 deficit still adds to the debt. But I’ll run with it. Under GOP control, 2011 will see a budget with a $900B deficit, and the debt rises to almost $15T. In this case, less is more. Less of a deficit still leaves more of a debt. In order to reduce the national debt, mathematically you need to spend .01 less than you bring in. The government pulls in receipts of approximately $2.4T. We spend about $3.7T. That means we need to eliminate 1.3T from the budget to even begin considering a reduction. Here’s the hard part: 2/3 of our spending is entitlement spending (also called mandatory) – the money that is nondiscretionary and based on our stated rights and constitutional duties. One third is discretionary. 1/3 of $3.7T is $1.25T. Therefore, in order for one red penny to be paid against our debt, the entire amount of discretionary spending must be eliminated. That, my dear friends, is NOT going to happen."

This is akin to getting a monthly paycheck and after paying your house and car note, having nothing left for food, gas and expenses of just living--discretionary expenses, so you put it all on your credit card.  This is how our government is spending right now.  So you either have to move into a smaller home (reduce expense), OR get another job (increase income) so you will have something to spend for discretionary expenses.  What other alternatives are there?  When "wasteful spending" is brought up, getting back to the monthly paycheck/house and car note scenario, this is like you're going to stop buying snack foods to keep your food budget down--you're still buying the food with nutrition on your credit card.  You might say, well, you've got to start somewhere, but it isn't going to solve your basic problem.

There's a lot of argument about "another job", which can only be read as "higher tax revenue."  Most Republicans would like you to believe that lowering taxes will increase revenue, because consumers will have more money to spend, which will increase jobs...of course along with the much balley-hooed "trickle down" by giving cuts to wage earners making over $250K a year.  The Democrats have a lot of evidence that this doesn't work, although I believe it has more to do with tax cuts in the Keynesian sense when Bush did it.  I do believe in the Laffer Curve as fundamental for finding the point of optimization between tax cuts and tax revenue. 

Nevertheless, you hardly see anyone publicly point out this "inconvenient truth" not even the tea partiers, who seem to want the best of both worlds.  Especially in the mid-cycle elections.  Just a few people like myself and Mr. Hugenberg.  More later.