Obama to Agencies: Make sequester as painful as possible

[logiphage]

As usual, the only think it's POSSIBLE to cut is police, fire, white house tours, and aid to babies and kittensThis despite the fact that there are in fact no cuts at all. Spending still goes up. Debt still goes up

Comments

[randomdiversion]

That would require raising the tax rate on the highest earners by a whopping 4%.

[logiphage]

No with Clinton level spending levels taxes could be cut and still balance the budget.

However I wouldn't be emphatically against an increase in tax, especially if it's equally applied and won't drive more capital away.

Basically you could raise the taxes so long as the rates are lower than any competing tax codes. The rich, and capital can easily move, we don't want to make it advantageous to do so.

Ultimately taxes aren't the problem. It's the spending that causes taxes, inflation or debt. As long as we actually decrease spending, which the sequester doesn't even vaguely do, I'd prefer taxes to inflation, because taxes hit who we decide to hit. Inflation hits wage earners.

Inflation is direct redistribution from wage earners to wall street. This is what any populist with sense should be on about. The extra you spend at the grocery store or the pump or on health care over time has been STOLEN BY Wall steet.

[silly_filly]

But it totally makes sense to cancel all white house tours - those volunteers are expensive. And the FDA boondoggles the Wall Street Journal was talking about are clearly crucial government function - if we start cutting things like that, where will it end?

After all, look how much damage the market has already suffered from the sequestration cuts this week. Won't somebody please think of the children?

[silly_filly]

Sarcasm aside, were Clinton spending levels really low enough to balance the budget now? Of course he was gutting the military in the traditional way of democrats, since obviously there will never be another war, but surely his social entitlements were stupidly overblown? The republicans held the purse strings (which helped hugely) but they have never been as good as resisting spending as they should be

[logiphage]

Yeah we could do it at Clinton spending levels. Of course there's no risk that may happen, both parties have their snouts in the trough and they won't come out so long as there's anything left in the trough. Fortunately for them they can tax the future to fill it.