Where is the politician or group of politicians (or their supporters in the populace) who are saying something like “lets lower this year’s expenditures to 2007 (or even 2008) levels across the board first, then we can argue over how to reallocate”? This would cut expenditures by 25-30% and more than halve the deficit. This is inflation adjusted. No one is saying this as far as I can tell. How did we ever survive without this much spending before? I guess it was a miracle. Under Truman, we did cut expenditures by almost 2/3rds in two years (1946-47), so we know it is possible. Think of all the newly “unemployed” soldiers that had to be absorbed back into the economy. How was that possible without Government largess? Can anything be more ridiculous than the absurd budget projections being made from now to the year 2030 and even 2080? How about a projection for next year that simply pushes down the spending line back a couple of years—is that really so hard?
Call me doubtful and call me skeptical. My biggest concern is we live in a Pogo world where we have “met the enemy and it is us” as we cycle from one party to the other in an ever recurring long day’s journey into night. The Tea Party movement consists of largely self described independents—called swing voters for a reason. That’s fine and maybe this is a threshold turning point. If so, it really would be historic. It can happen, but it has not yet happened. It would be foolish to just believe the historic tendencies of both parties are not as they have always been, at least until proven otherwise.
