It's both.

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- With out god, life is everything.
- God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller as time moves on..." Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- You can pray for me, I'll think for you.
- When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Clearly, if your income drops, don't buy the bass boat.

Certainly sounds reasonable. But don't go trying to throw common sense into this mess. That no one was happy with the Bowles-Simpson proposal leads me to believe they were at least on the right track.

The key is "across the board", be it budget cuts or tax increases. Everything needs to be on the table. The problem lies with the spineless politicians on both sides who fear disenfranchising a sizable portion of their constituency, negatively effecting their re-election. Compromise with the opposition party generally doesn't fare well in primaries.

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Do you have a reliable source to back this?

Non sequitur.

Just because taking all of the wealth of the top 10% would not balance the budget does not mean that it is a spending issue. It is a spending and revenue issue.

Besides, nobody is talking about taking all of the wealth of anybody. What is being proposed is returning the top marginal rates to where they were in the 1990s, which, by the way, was the last time we balanced the budget. Imagine that.

EDIT: By the way, are your numbers correct? They don't look right to me.

And Spending was under control.
Do you have a real idea of how much is a TRILLION?
(I do not mean that as an insult, but the number is tossed around like its just a number)
Obama's spending has added trillions of $$ to the deficit. Is that sustainable?

We can always find ways to spend more. I know I can, and I'm spending my own money. Just imagine how easy it is to spend money that gets you re-elected and doesn't cost you anything in reality. Of course politicians over spend.
We must have a mechanism that STOPS them from doing it.

How do you feel about Obama and the democrat leadership reversing themselves on raising the debt ceiling? To me it just partisan politics--w/o regard to principle.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

The numbers are correct. Here's an article explaining it. It's a bit tongue-in-cheek, but bullets are accurate and it's more fun to read than the Economist version: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/262045/there-aren-t-enough-millionaires-kevin-d-williamson

BTW, you might want to research in which year federal government revenues peaked at the highest levels ever. It was 2005 - after the Bush tax cuts were enacted. Tax rates affect people's behavior, and the tax rate which nets the maximum revenue isn't the highest number.

OOOOOh
Progressives are not going to like that article.
It does a pretty good job of describing why there are just not enough rich people to balance the budget by confiscating their wealth.

Its a spending problem.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

We do have a mechanism to stop it, we need the American people to get off there lazy to busy to turn out at the poll butts and vote all these clowns out of office if they can't fix this by the next election cycle. Because of their laziness the American people have exactly the government they deserve.

This isn't party politics everyone in Washington is guilty regardless of there party affiliation.

Its no different than managing a company, if you have a group of horrible employees that cost you a ton of money you fire them. Next election cycle forget playing this stupid political game and fire everyone in office if they can't fix this! If the next group can't fix it either fire them too!

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Really? According to the National Review article, Obama's 2012 budget results in a deficit of $1.1 trillion, not all of which is his fault. How do you get to "trillions"?I wasn't aware that they had done that.

You can say that all you want, but I don't think you will persuade anybody unless you come up with facts to support it. A modest increase in the top marginal rates will raise a boatload of money without imposing undue hardship on anyone. Combine that with spending cuts and other measures devised by people smarter than me and maybe we can get ourselves on better footing.

Very informative article, although I think he is playing some numbers games. For example, he calculated the ratio of the deficit to the number of households making over $250,000 and came up with a huge number per household. That is an interesting calculation, but it seems odd to run a calculation in which households making $250,000 are lumped in with households making a thousand times that much. Not saying that his numbers are wrong, but they might not give a balanced picture.

I was also interested in his argument that raising taxes on the rich won't work because they are so good at avoiding taxes. He might have been ahead of the game by leaving that argument out.What would the revenue have been in 2005 without the Bush tax cuts?That's true. The optimum tax rate is also not the lowest number.

Basically, you are talking about the Laffer curve: here is the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

One of the more interesting statements is in the section titled "Other Empirical Data" stating that US federal tax revenues have been essentially constant at 19.5% of GDP from 1950 through 2007, regardless of the very significant changes in tax rates. (In the 1970s the maximum personal income tax rate in the US was 93%). Refer to the article on Hauser's law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser%27s_Law History in the US would seem to indicate that it will be impossible to raise tax revenue to eliminate the deficit.

Indeed.

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Hattie,

The American electorate did this last November with the most dramatic election swing in at least recent history.
Yet the "republican leadership" has not gotten the message, and of course dems didn't accept the message.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags