redblack
government spending as a percentage of GDP has been dropping since obama took office. GDP growth has been slower, of course, but it’s still rising.
the problem is that government revenue as a percentage of GDP has been flat or falling, too.
like i’ve said before – yeah, we need to cut spending. but you can’t cut your way to a balanced budget. it’s impossible. with a roughly $3.6 trillion budget, and a $1.1 trillion deficit, you’d have to cut almost half of the budget merely to balance it and start paying the interest.
we have to grow government’s share of GDP until we get to a manageable and sane place.
and in the interest of improving the dialogue and civility, i understand what you mean by “entitlement,” skeeter. but i still hate that term.
you’d feel the same way if i started calling the mortgage interest deduction an entitlement, even though everyone with the ability to do so takes advantage of it. some more than others. does that make the rich more entitled than the middle class?
people pay good money in good faith into social security and medicare for 40 years or more, and they expect to see a return. no, it isn’t a retirement plan; they should plan on that on their own. but those programs are designed to be there so that no matter how bad shit gets, pensioners always have enough money to keep them from dying on the streets.
those programs can be tweaked to make them more solvent, but they shouldn’t have a meat axe taken to them just to square the ledger sheet.