A Falling Deficit: A Concern and A Relevant Retort

Andrew Rei has responded to a lengthy piece from The National Memo. The National Memo piece is a full six pages and embodies the Memo author’s, Jason Sattler’s views on the falling deficit. As you can see from the title and associated parenthetic comment, Sattler isn’t convinced a falling Deficit as we see the declined today is “all good.” 

The National Memo

By Jason Sattler

5 Reasons The Deficit Has Fallen By Nearly $5 Trillion (And Why That’s A Bad Thing)

March 19, 2014 4:28 pm  

This year’s deficit will likely be $514 billion, down about a quarter from last year’s deficit of $680 billion, which was down by more than a third from the year before.

Read more after break below

“Since 2010, projected 10-year deficits over the 2015-2024 decade have shrunk by almost $5.0 trillion, $4.1 trillion of which is due to four pieces of legislation enacted in the intervening years,” Richard Kogan and William Chen write in a new report for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Excerpt Graphics (2 or 5 “reasons”)

We’ve Cut — A Lot

We Raised Taxes — A Bit

Read more via linked title above

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Andrew Rei

My response: 

While reducing the deficit (and, eventually, the national debt) is a laudable effort, the WAY it’s done is just as important.  

The way the GOP want to do it is by reducing government spending and taxation. That’s the WRONG way to do it. By making government smaller, you allow the wealthy and big corporations to eventually overthrow the government so that they can take over. Our representative democracy would be gone and replaced by something I call a “Fascist Corporate Plutarchy”. Fascist because they adhere to all Fascist principles; Corporate because corporations would take over all of the former functions of government (think the “Robocop” movies, where a big corporation owns and operates the Detroit Police Department, on steroids) and a Plutarchy is a plutocratic oligarchy. A plutocracy is a government by the wealthy and an oligarchy is a government by a very small number of people, not necessarily politicians.  

The CORRECT way to reduce the deficit and the debt is to do what FDR did to get this country out of the GOP and FCP-caused Great Depression: increase government spending and go to a Progressive taxation system, where the wealthy and big corporations pay a higher effective rate of taxes compared to the middle class and smaller businesses. Right now, our federal tax system is “Upside Down”, where the tax percentage and effective rate paid by the wealthy and big corporations is lower than that of the middle class and smaller companies, when they pay ANY taxes, thanks to the Bush 43 tax policies. Successful people and corporations also get “rebates” in addition to paying no taxes thanks to those tax policies put into effect during the Bush 43 administration. Even the Libertarian suggestion of a so-called “Fair Tax” or flat tax is regressive and favors those with more money and higher incomes.  

The postwar economies of the Truman, Eisenhower and Clinton administrations, which featured high taxation on the wealthy and big corporations, boomed, allowing deficits to be eliminated and debts to be repaid. If we’re truly serious about wiping out the deficit and paying down the debt, the first HUGE step that can be taken to achieve those things is to fully repeal the remaining Bush 43 tax policies. Many people wrongly believe that they were repealed in the resolution of the “Fiscal Cliff” nonsense at the beginning of 2013. Until our politicians are willing to do that, especially the GOP, who are stooges for the wealthy and big corporations, any talk about the deficit and debt reduction not including the repeal of those Reverse Robin Hood and Upward Wealth Redistribution tools known as the Bush 43 tax policies is simply hot air.

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