In the debate over the nation’s rising debt, rhetoric trumps reality. In January 2001, the U.S. budget was balanced for the first time in decades and the Congressional Budget Office was forecasting surpluses totaling $5.6 trillion by 2011. A decade later, the national debt is larger, as a percentage of the economy, than at any time in U.S. history except for the period shortly after World War II.
75 percent of the members currently serving in Congress voted for at least one — and in most cases more than one — of three policies that contributed to fully one-third of the $12.7 trillion swing from projected surpluses to real debt:
- President George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts
- Funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
- President Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill
Details via The Washington Post
Anytime a tax cut to the citizens is considered a contributing factor to the deficit, I automatically know where the author is coming from (politcally). We don't have these massive deficits because the people are taxed too little, we have them because congress spends way too much money that they don't have. Fix that side of the equation and you solve the problem.
I don't see it as politicized at all. These are essential facts that should be studied; it's how we got here. If your family is deeply in debt you can cut grandma's pharmacy bills until she doesn't have any medicine at all but eventually someone in the family is going to have to go out and get a job to start bringing some money in to pay the bills. In the last two weeks, I've heard two former Reagan budget people [one of them was John Stockman] who both said we need to start bringing revenues in because" trickle down" in not going to get us out of this mess. When you're are trying to make an importnat decision, study all the facts first.