Who really wants to balance the budget, cut taxes or raise taxes, and/or cut or increase expenditures, the GOP, the Tea Party or the Democrats?
The GOP says they want to balance the budget, cut taxes and expenditures but it was the GOP which took a balanced budget created by President Clinton and ran it out of control with decreased taxes for the wealthy and the cost of the Afghanistan war and Iraq war. Decreased regulation allowed multiple economic catastrophes to occur.
President Obama allowed the federal deficit to balloon out of control in an effort to save the economy of this country and the rest of the world by saving some of the wealthiest US corporations. At the time it was being considered, several of my Republican friends said this had to be done. I was against it and thought that it would be better to allow some of these companies to go out of business.
Should taxes be raised to pay for two wars and conflicts in a dozen other countries which are never reported in the news? What about raising taxes for entitlements?
The GOP would like to cut taxes for the wealthy and cut entitlements which benefits people who are not wealthy. The GOP would even like to cut Social Security which they continuously refer to as an entitlement in a manner intended to be portrayed as a freebie.
Social Security and Medicare are not freebies, they are legitimate entitlements because they are just like a private annuity that we pay for. In fact, I pay a very substantial amount of Social Security taxes every year. Medicaid is the only entitlement that is a freebie but I don’t want to live in a country that does not provide medical care for people who cannot afford it.
So how can the federal budget deficit be eliminated and the budget balanced? A really good start would be to immediately discontinue all foreign military wars and conflicts. This would save trillions of dollars and allow more money to be spent on military defense. The Bush tax cut for the wealthy should be eliminated, at least temporarily, but not for people earning $250,000 per year and more but for people earning $750,000 per year and more.
Unfortunately, the GOP is allowing the Tea Party to dictate demands And thus preventing any compromise to raise the debt ceiling. If they are successful, they will change their opinions quickly when the Social Security checks for their parents stop coming and Medicare stops paying for their parent’s medical bills. Rather un-American, the Tea Party is not unlike myself. We both want to be dictators, we just have different ideas as to what to do.
