The idea that cutting several tens of billions of dollars out of the federal budget right now will improve the economy makes no sense. There are no doubt some government programmes that aren't worth what we're spending on them. It's always a good idea to cut programmes that aren't worthwhile. Such cuts have nothing to do with the current state of the economy, one way or the other. America faces a long-term debt problem on the order of trillions of dollars, mainly as a result of rising health-care costs and their impact on the Medicare and Medicaid budgets. Rising Social Security obligations and huge defence expenses also play a role. And a very large role is played by the fact that federal taxes in the United States are set at a level that consistently, throughout the business cycle, brings in less revenue than the government spends, by somewhere over 2% of GDP. To ensure the long-term health of the economy and the government, Congress will need to begin to demonstrate that it can enact and stick to long-term spending limits and tax hikes that will close the budget gap on those kinds of scales. I simply don't understand what GOP leaders are trying to accomplish by frantically trying to slash a few tens of billions of dollars out of this year's budget at the last minute, just after they've cheerily approved a whopping tax cut.
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