We would like to know what you think and are posing this question. Can the US government make the necessary cuts in spending to avoid a shut down of its services in December? Another way of stating this is, will Congress and the President have the guts to make the tough decisions that will a) get the budget under control b) stop the ever-increasing debt c) cut inferior programs and policies that are no longer effective?
In other words, will Congress do its job?
We doubt it and expect there will be a lot of grandstanding and chest beating with very little progress. These bums will not act until there is an absolute crisis and at that point in December, it won't be an emergency.
Additionally, if the Democrats win big this fall, there will be little movement as they will read the results as a condemnation of Republican actions in the House to cut spending and will want to wait until January to make their "necessary" tax increases. If the Republicans win, they will delay everything until the new Congress is seated to make changes to their way of thinking.
So for these reasons, we doubt anything will occur in December. What do you think? We want to hear from you.
Conservative Tom
U.S. faces big tax, budget test at year end: Geithner
Reuters – 1 hour 14 minutes ago
"Greece, Portugal, and Spain have substantially reduced their deficits over the past two years, despite the fact that their economies were stagnant or contracting. And of course, their terrible economic performance can be attributed in large part precisely to those very same austerity measures, as contractionary fiscal policy in each country has depressed their economies. Yet eurozone politicians' obsession with deficit reduction continues -- and continues to have new repercussions every day on the eurozone's economies and governments."
ReplyDeletehttp://streetlightblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/eurozone-austerity-by-numbers.html
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I mention this today because Spain has just officially gone back into recession, and the government intends to do even more austerity in response. Yes, these countries are reducing their deficits, but the WAY they are doing it is depressing their economies even more. Are you still sure you want to follow their formula? Blind spending cuts is not the solution. The solution is to cut spending on things like military that have relatively less contribution to GDP and invest more in things like infrastructure and health that support economic expansion. The goal should be to get spending and revenue balanced at each around 20% of GDP within 10 years, rather than continue deficit spending to 2030 (Ryan budget) or even longer (Obama budget).
--David