Tackling the Deficit

Sure is a lot of talk these days about "the deficit".

First, let's remember that there was no deficit when Clinton left office. And let's remember that our current deficit didn't show up yesterday. It's the result of 8 years of George W. Bush spending like a drunken sailor on all things military, while at the same time slashing income taxes and pretending not to notice the reduction in federal revenue. The two biggest components, by far, of our deficit are the two fact-challenged wars Dubya felt compelled to wage, and his unnecessary tax cuts of 2001 and 3003.

Second, please recall that a deficit means that expenses exceed income. Trimming a deficit can be accomplished by increasing income, by decreasing expenses, or by some combination of both.

So, here's The Buster Gammons Fearless Plan For Deficit Reduction and Economic Recovery. It's a hybrid of FDR's New Deal WPA, Paul Krugman economics, and Lewis Black's "Really Big Fucking Thing" theory:

We get the hell out of both Iraq and Afghanistan. All the way out. Right the fuck now. That will allow us to greatly reduce our military expenditures (always a humongous budget category). We won't need more planes, boats, tanks, guns, what have you. We already have shitloads of cutting-edge equipment and technology and we still couldn't catch one old Arab wearing a sheet and fucking sandals! So, sorry, but the military budget has to take a big hit. The generals will howl, of course. Let 'em.

We let all the Bush-era temporary tax cuts expire as scheduled at the end of this year. Not just the top bracket for the well-off top 2% of earners making over $250,000 annually, but for all earners in all brackets. This means me, you, everybody. Obama and most D's would like to cut the baby in half by letting the temporary rates expire only on the $250 K+ people, but make the lower rates permanent for the rest of us. That'd be nice, but if you're really serious about deficit reduction, you need a boost on the income side and so you have to restore all the rates to their pre-Bush levels. (Bush's cuts stimulated nothing and were a stunt anyway -- "Temporary cuts because I can, because it feels good, because it's Republican orthodoxy, and I'll let somebody else worry about the effects later, like when I'm gone.")

We make a huge investment in America's infrastructure. Obama recently said he'd like to spend $50 billion to spruce up our aging and neglected stuff. That's truly a good idea, but not nearly enough. Make it a couple trillion dollars and now we're talkin'! (The American Society of Civil Engineers has said we could easily spend that much.) We have plenty of decrepit roadways, bridges, buildings, tunnels, railroads, runways, pipelines, sewers, etc. Enough to employ millions of people in a necessary endeavor and keep 'em busy for decades.

Yes, that's a whole lot of money, but once this giant public works project really gets going, you've got a lot more people earning decent incomes, which increases personal income tax revenues and Social Security revenues. You've got more people buying more things and going more places, which increases revenue from sales taxes, property taxes, hotel taxes, airfare taxes, gasoline taxes, liquor taxes, etc. To meet the higher demand, more new businesses spring up and more existing businesses thrive, which leads to increases in business income taxes. And on and on.

There you have it. A major investment in our infrastructure is an investment in our own people and our economy. Like my old boss used to tell me: Sometimes you gotta spend money to make money.