Anything short of an “all of the above” approach to cutting spending will fall terribly short of fixing the debt problem.
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In 2012, Republican Nominee for President Mitt Romney was mocked for claiming that one of the ways he would reduce the national deficit was through cutting PBS. President Obama joked that he had no idea Big Bird of all things was responsible for the national debt. This got to the point where some on the right, such as cartoonist AF Branco, started mocking the mocking of it. In his case, by showing Vice President Biden wearing a Big Bird costume during his debate with Rep. Ryan.
But President Obama was right.
Romney thought that PBS would be something easy to point at and promise to cut, something most Americans either don’t care about or think is ridiculous. This is something politicians do all of the time.
In 2008, Ron Paul called this tactic out in his book The Revolution. The debate that he used as a jumping-off point was the infamous Alaskan Bridge To Nowhere. This bridge went to the Gravina Island and was going to cost the federal government just a hair under $400 million.
The fact is, the federal government was running a deficit in 2008 of over one trillion dollars. Even if we defunded that Bridge (as we did, hence why it was never built), that would still only solve 0.04% of the deficit issue-and that’s being generous.
Do you know what else isn’t contributing to the national debt as much as most people think? Social Security.
Yes, it’s true that in 2040 Social Security will only be able to sustain about 72% of its benefits (although the numbers on that are actually quite hyperbolic, relying on things like people living to, and I’m not making this up, 150 in some cases!). That’s 72% of the benefits of 2040. Social Security benefits grow each year. As such, 72% of the benefits would be equal to about the amount of benefits given in 2013. Is that still an issue? Sure, but it’s not the same one many people think it is.
And who can forget about the military, the only spending the left is fine with cutting. According to them, half of all spending goes to the military. And they’re right. That is, if you only count discretionary spending. Discretionary spending, by the way, only makes up around 60% of spending. Even among discretionary spending, it’s about even as the amount we spend on Social Security and Medicare.
Speaking of Medicare, is it our welfare state that is causing the deficit? Considering most welfare programs in the United States are done by state governments (although not without the occasional block grant), not really. In fact, in states like California, the amount the state government spends on welfare is actually higher than the amount the federal government spends on welfare.
Okay, one last thing, if spending is not the issue, then it must be revenue. As such, we need to reverse all these tax cuts. However, after the Tax Cuts And Jobs Acts, revenue to the federal government actually went up. For that matter, revenue as a percent of GDP during the eras of Eisenhower and Johnson (both of which balanced the budget) was the same if not lower than during Reagan and Bush Jr. (Big tax cuts, also big deficit).
Many progressives point to the Reagan era as evidence that the Laffer curve, the idea that at some point, it becomes counterproductive to tax because it would end up decreasing revenue, is wrong. However, while Reagan did triple the national debt, he also increased spending dramatically as President. This includes the first budget for the fiscal year of 1988, which was over $1 trillion in size.
Why was this? A number of reasons: Some say the arms race, others say Democrats in Congress, and others say it was because Reagan wasn’t as dedicated to cutting spending as he said he was. (He actually used the Keynesian defense of government spending generating revenue when asked by House Speaker Tip O’Neill why he wouldn’t cut military spending.)
Still, others point out Bill Clinton’s famous surplus as evidence that the Laffer curve doesn’t work. However, Clinton did not reject the Laffer curve. If anything, he developed it. Clinton believed that the rate where it became counterproductive to tax was different for different groups of income. Hence why his 1993 Deficit Reduction Act actually cut taxes on the bottom 99% of the population.
So if some line items aren’t causing the debt, and low tax revenue isn’t causing the debt, what is? Well, how about the fact that we spend more overall than we take in.
Notice how when I debunked what was causing the deficit, I didn’t combine anything. The reason being that it’s not as simple as reversing one policy or cutting one line item in a giant budget.
The only President to leave office without any debt was Andrew Jackson, our 7th President, who left office in 1837. Since then, the Civil War, various adventures overseas, the New Deal, the Arms Race, the Iraq War, and post-recession recovery programs have all added to our massive debt. (Not Vietnam though, high spending actually kept our budget balanced during one of our longest wars up until that point.)
Are we ever going to get out of debt? Maybe, maybe not. However, we are never going to end our debt if we only allow a one-dimensional view (or even a fraction-dimensional view) regarding our national debt. It’s a combination of factors causing it, and we can’t fix it just by cutting one social program, building fewer tanks, or raising taxes on those making over $500,000 from 39% to 44%.
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