Telling the truth about the deficit

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.’’

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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.