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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Obama Administration and Sequester Breakdown (State-by-State)

President Obama and his economic team have proactively revisited the looming fiscal “sequester”. The last proposal to House speaker Boehner was met with continued posturing in effort to place total blame for the issue on the resident.  As with any rational leadership recognition of the issue and  its critical om our fragile economy, needs continued efforts to move towards resolution.  If you recall we received reports last week that President Obama called both Boehner and McConnell.  It is duly noted,  we are not seeing like efforts to resolve the sequester from Republicans in Congress.

Multiple news sources are reporting the release of a detailed state-by-state breakdown of the effect of a fully enacted sequester.  The details look dire.  For those who do not feel the march sequester date is a jump-off point for fiscal collapse (Albeit temporary), my unqualified mind tells me, “Who the hell knows the truth and full impact.” Have we been at this point in the past? The answer is “no.”  We are not confident of any theory, theorem, posit, or opinion.  The bottom-line is, why do we have to go there at all?

Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — It’s looking increasingly like the government is about to impose on itself $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts. So as part of its strategy to pressure Republicans into accepting new revenues as part of a deal to prevent the sequester from taking effect, the White House released new reports on Sunday that outline the ugly effects those cuts would have in individual states.

Each state’s report is linked below. But Jason Furman, principal deputy director of the White House’s National Economic Council, pulled out some state-specific examples of the ways the cuts will hurt education, national defense, public health and the economy.

In Ohio, 350 teacher and teacher-aide jobs are at risk, which means 43,000 fewer students will be served, Furman said on a Sunday conference call with reporters. In Virginia, 90,000 civilian Department of Defense employees would be furloughed. About 4,180 fewer children in Georgia would get vaccines and, in Kentucky, 400 fewer victims of domestic violence would end up being served.

Read more 

The state by state breakdown of deficit cuts are as follows (States are reported as posted on Huffington Post)

1. Alabama

2. Alaska

3. Arizona

4. Arkansas

5. California

6. Colorado

7. Connecticut

8. Delaware

9. District of Columbia

10. Florida

11. Georgia

12. Hawaii

13. Idaho

14. Illinois

15. Indiana

16. Iowa

17. Kansas

18. Kentucky

19. Louisiana

20. Maine

21. Maryland

22. Massachusetts

23. Michigan

24. Minnesota

25. Mississippi

26. Missouri

27. Montana

28. Nebraska

29. Nevada

30. New Hampshire

31. New Jersey

32. New Mexico

33. New York

34. North Carolina

35. North Dakota

36. Ohio

37. Oklahoma

38. Oregon

39. Pennsylvania

40. Rhode Island

41. South Carolina

42. South Dakota

43. Tennessee

44. Texas

45. Utah

46. Vermont

47. Virginia

48. Washington

49. West Virginia

50. Wisconsin

51. Wyoming

Additional news source:  USA Today

Why would you place one bit of fiscal faith in the GOP. 

If we forget the past we are doomed to relive it!

Obama’s Deficit According to Maddow

Tonight’s Rachel Maddow Show included an interesting segment on President Obama, the US Deficit and past Deficit History.  I should add Maddow also expend a appropriate amount of broadcast time on the complete fallacy of GOP Budget and Deficit acumen. 

We cut the first 2:25 minutes of the segment as it is about an Obama quip federal governance, peacocks and jerks. The quip was purely focused on humor and did not include the GOP as object of his humor.