Since the Reagan era, some conservatives have hoped to shrink government by "starving the beast." Refuse to raise taxes, they figured, and eventually spending would have to fall.
It's beginning to look as though the new team may have a similar strategy, in reverse: Increase spending, and eventually taxes will have to be raised.
No official has articulated that to me as a strategy. But look at the evidence.
George Bush bequeathed to President Obama a nation heading slowly but surely toward fiscal disaster. Because of an aging population and rising health-care costs, spending -- primarily on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- will steadily rise in coming years, as the nonpartisan and authoritative Congressional Budget Office explained in a report last month. Revenue is not projected to rise nearly as quickly. The result, if the government does not alter course: crushing debt that could lead to hyperinflation, prolonged depression, or both. Poor people would suffer most, and there would be many more of them.
"The systematic widening of budget shortfalls projected under CBO's long-term scenarios has never been observed in U.S. history," the CBO pointed out in its usual dry style. And: "All in all, the U.S. economy could contract sharply for a long period."
Obama's response has been to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem -- and make it worse. I'm not talking about his record-breaking stimulus plan, which was essential (if not ideally shaped) given the recession he also inherited. Rather, it is Obama's long-term budget that would more than double the projected deficit over the next 10 years, to $9 trillion, by extending most of the Bush tax cuts and limiting the alternative minimum tax while creating new programs and entitlements (to college tuition scholarships, for example) and refusing to cut back on existing ones. - Washington Post Story
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