Legal Commentary

It's The Tax Policy, Stupid

By Big Tent Democrat

If you care about deficits, you have raise taxes, particularly on the well off. Paul Krugman writes:

The current Obama budget calls for defense spending of 3.4% of GDP by 2016; you can make the case that the number should be closer to 2%. But that’s not enough to avoid hard choices about health care and revenue. If you can’t see how it’s possible both to believe that we waste a lot of money on the military, and to believe that ending that waste would make only a modest contribution to our fiscal problem, I can’t help you.

While I generally agree with Krugman's point, by the same token, a hundred billion here and a hundred billion there and all of sudden you are talking about real money. But the point stands, the biggest impediment to addressing the deficit remains our tax policy. When Democrats give up on tax policy, as President Obama did when he made The Deal, what's left is Grover Norquist's dream, drowning government in a bathtub.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 20, 2011 (boomark / email).