Telling the truth about the deficit
If we are to be serious about the deficit, we’ll have to accept both large, painful spending cuts and substantial tax increases, said Robert J. Samuelson at The Washington Post.
Robert J. Samuelson
The Washington Post
The U.S. will never succeed in closing its mammoth budget deficit, said Robert J. Samuelson, until Americans give up our “fairy tales.’’
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Conservatives like to pretend that budgets can be balanced if we just cut “wasteful spending”—farm subsidies, Amtrak, community block grants, and subsidies to NPR and cultural organizations—and change the rules on Social Security and Medicare. But eliminating the “discretionary” programs conservatives hate would save less than $100 billion, when total spending last year was $3.5 trillion. If new taxes are off the table, “do conservatives really want to eliminate the national parks? The FBI? Highways?”
The liberal solution—taxing the rich and cutting defense to the bone—is no less delusional. The top 10 percent already pay 55 percent of all federal taxes; besides, adding a “millionaires’ surtax’’ or higher tax rates would not avert the need for major cuts and entitlement reform.
If we are to be serious about the deficit, we’ll have to accept both large, painful spending cuts and substantial tax increases. Any politician or partisan pundit who says differently is lying, and postponing our nation’s day of reckoning.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Why are meteorologists worried Trump could ruin their forecasts?
Today's Big Question How a conservative push to dismantle a little-known government agency could lead to big headaches for anyone hoping to get a handle on their local weather
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
'Such wrongdoing encourages foreign corrupt practices'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
Can Japan's new prime minister govern effectively?
In The Spotlight A 'popular gadfly' gets the top job
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published
-
Viewpoint: Michael S. Teitelbaum and Jay M. Winter
feature From The New York Times: “Nearly half of all people now live in countries where women, on average, give birth to fewer than 2.1 babies...
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Snowden’s silence on Putin
feature If Edward Snowden truly is a moral paragon, then he should announce that he can no longer stomach Vladimir Putin’s oppressive behavior.
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
The irrelevance of the United Nations
feature Once again, the United Nations has been “rendered impotent by a small group of thugs.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Millions of closeted gay men
feature “What percent of American men are gay?”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
The smug confidence of libertarians
feature Why are most libertarians white dudes?
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Seeing racism for what it is
feature Riley Cooper’s case shows just how poorly he and most other Americans understand “what a racist is.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Searching for a libertarian paradise
feature Not one of the world’s 193 sovereign states—not even a tiny one—has adopted a full-on libertarian system.
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Viewpoint: Juliette Kayyem
feature From The Boston Globe: “It is now clear that the Tsarnaev brothers had no strategic plan but to kill in a very public fashion....
By The Week Staff Last updated