[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by PaulS

Jim, it comes across as hate. And when many people see that they feel that there is no point in discussing anything further.

Your last para. can easily be flipped and the same thing said about the cons. The hard choice is to have tax incr. AND spending cuts. The cons. have signed pledges that they will not raise taxes $.01 and if they do, Grover N. will be on every talking head's show that night. You might not realize it but there are lots of people on the "public teet" who are not libs. Look at the whole mid - west. They get far more in taxes back then they pay in taxes.

"The hard choice is to have tax incr. AND spending cuts"

I agree 100 percent!

(1) WHERE is the proposed democratic budget that calls for significant tax hikes and significant spending cuts? Nowhere, that's where. THey absolutely have not proposed such a budget.

(2) if you do the math, there is NO WAY we can generate anywhere near $60 trillion of additional tax revenue in the next, say, 50 years. I agree we need more tax revenue, but the vast majority has to come from spending. Paul, in 2012, we're adding another trillion to the deficit. It would be almost impossible to generate enough additional tax revenue just to break even for this year alone, let alone start making a dent in the debt.

I have heard Obama say that if we eliminate the Bush tax cuts on the rich, that might generate another $90 billion in revenue. Let's examine that.

As I said, in the upcoming year, Obama is spending $1 trillion more then he takes in. So even IF we did get that additional $90 billion, that's less than one-tenth of what we need just to break even this year, nowhere near enough to pay down any of our existing debt.

But let's pretend there is no deficit this year (which as I said, there is). Let's pretend that every penny of that $90 billion would be allocated to pay down our debt (which it wouldn't, some would be spent on other pet projects), and let's pretend we don't have to pay any interest on that $60 trillion (which we do). Do the math...if we reduce that $60 trillion debt by $90 billion a year, it will take 667 years to pay down that debt. 667 years.

Conclusion: tax hikes are so insignificant, it's almost not worth talking about. The vast majority of the fix, therefore, has to be spending cuts.

(3) I agree we need additional tax revenue. When liberals want more revenue, they automatically think of increasing rates. But Clinton and Bush showed us that, in certain situations, lowering tax rates can increase tax revenue. If you lower tax rates, but the economy grows by more than the tax cut, you get more revenue. That's win-win. Obviously, there is such a thing as tax rates that are too low. But liberals seem to think that if you increase tax rates by x%, you will automatically increase tax revenue by the same x%. That's demonstrably false.

No hate in this post, right? Just verifiable numbers.

What do you think?