re: #52 albusteve

How else do you ever get to a balanced budget? Greenspan is pretty clear that tax cuts won’t pay for themselves.

stop spending money you don’t have…rock science

In theory, cutting spending is a fine idea. Where do you propose we cut spending?

Should we cut unemployment, so that people who are legitimately unable to find a job are now totally unsupported, with the side effect of taking a sizeable sum of money out of the economy and thus losing even more jobs in the services and manufacturing sectors as consumption drops off?

Should we cut food stamps, so that people who literally do not make enough money to feed themselves now have nothing to eat?
How bout this idea: Let’s cut NASA, a tiny fraction of the budget which is in fact one of the nation’s leading research and development centers that develops technologies that more than pay themselves back in the future?
Cut defense spending and end all of our involvement overseas, allowing the enemy to take our place and leaving our allies without guarantees?
Cut money from education, so that in the future our country will be totally out-competed by other nations?
Raise the retirement age or end social security entirely? I’m sure that will be popular!
Stop repairing our roads that are already in bad shape?

I’d love to hear an idea of “cutting spending” that actually trims a significant amount of money off the budget without sacrificing our future. The fact is, while we may be able to trim a little fat here and cut a little there, we absolutely need to raise taxes to pay down this deficit.