The President’s re-election (More Discussion V)

In my last post "The President’s re-election (More Discussion IV)" I continued the debate with Roger Streit of West Orange, NJ. Even before this I had considered discontinuing the publication of these debates, but an enthusiastic interjection from Michael A. Cerrato, J.D. Esq. of Westville, NJ who exclaimed “Wow, this is a great exchange” encouraged me to keep sharing the debate with my readers.

When I posted "The President’s re-election (More Discussion IV)" I had thought that this would conclude the debate, But now I received another very provocative presentation from Louise Mayo, Ph.D, Professor of History Emeritus, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who wrote:

I have been following your complex discussions with interest. I found your comments about gun ownership very helpful and learned some things I did not know about gun ownership. 

I did want to comment on the debt discussion and its significance. First, in answer to your query, the debt was 40% of GDP at the height of the Great Depression. It rose to 120% by the end of World War II. (It's about 102% today - up from 98% in 2010). Clearly the economy improved as the debt rose as a result of government money injected into the economy. Your, I assume, sarcastic suggestion that we could quadruple our Defense budget would actually work. That is, any money creating jobs and income would be effective when the economy is weak. Presumably, however, there are better long-term ways to accomplish the same ends -- infrastructure building and repairs, education, research etc. The experience of FDR in his second term when he cut back too soon and threw a recovering economy back into a severe recession and the British experience today show that attempts to lower debt and balance the budget on the backs of a weak economy are counter-productive. Borrowing rates will never be as low again as they are now. Interest on debt as a share of GDP has been declining and is now 1.5%. Due to low interest rates, only 2% of the principal goes to service the debt, down from 7% in the 1980s. We should be investing in those long-term improvements I mentioned earlier. We could cut back on real waste, try to identify ways in which we can save money in the health care system, close some tax loop holes and then, think about more serious savings to kick in once the unemployment rate falls below, perhaps, six percent.

My response thereto was rather lengthy and therefore rather than burdening the reader with too long a post, I am saving my rebuttal for my next post, which will be entitled "The President’s re-election (More Discussion VI)."

In the meantime at the risk of causing this discussion to go on ad infinitum I still invite:

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued II)

In my last commentary entitled "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued)," which I urge the reader to re-read, as well as the start of this analysis entitled "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward" I concluded with a quote from the Center for Policy Research on the Ryan budget and the James B. Stewart article defending it:

We have people who want to be part of the inside Washington conversation who praise the budget's courage and integrity. Then we have people who believe in arithmetic who call it what it is: a piece of trash. By the way, Paul Ryan is a very nice guy.

Then again we have another so-called New York Times “centrist” columnist, David Brooks, whose many fulminations have long ago turned me off. I gave up on him many years ago when he advocated what he called a “flat/fair tax” which to me was, and is, an oxymoron. By definition, for the rich and the poor to pay the same tax can never be fair, though I have since then come to wonder whether our present system, isn’t even worse, with the lower earners paying a higher % of their income than the rich.

In any case here is Brooks' “centrist” take on the Ryan plan. He admits:

The Ryan budget would cut too deeply into discretionary spending. This could lead to self-destructive cuts in scientific research, health care for poor kids and programs that boost social mobility. Moreover, the Ryan tax ideas are too regressive. They make tax cuts for the rich explicit while they hide any painful loophole closings that might hurt Republican donors.

But then having said that, he gets to what really upsets him, and it isn’t the outrages of the Ryan plan. Instead he rips into the President for criticizing its (The Ryan Plan’s) “real deficit-reducing accomplishments” (My careful reading of the plan does not reveal any such accomplishments unless you count the unspecified cuts in expenditures, and even then there is not one iota of an increase in revenue) as “trickle-down, … social Darwinists.” To be sure that is strong language, but that hardly makes it inappropriate, for a document that devastates our social safety net and severely cuts taxes for the rich. Mr. Brooks takes particular exception to the term “Social Darwinist” describing it as, as “a 19th-century philosophy that held, in part, that Aryans and Northern Europeans are racially superior to brown and Mediterranean peoples.” That may be the way it was once used, but Brooks should, and undoubtedly does know, that its meaning in 20^th century America is as The Atlantic describes it:  

“a term in Richard Hofstadter's 1944 book ‘Social Darwinism in American Thought’ which correctly describes it as a ‘phase in the history of conservative thought’ where ‘nature would provide that the best competitors in a competitive situation would win, and that this process would lead to continuing improvement.”

As we can see Brooks’ attack on the President is ad homonym and without foundation. But that is the way of the so-called middle.

But Mr. Brooks is such a symbol of this so-called middle (I call it a phony middle) that I have to dwell a little longer on Brooks’ writing. As early as June 13, 2011 in an article headed “Pundit Under Protest” he writes, as is his wont, with such an evenness, without regard to facts, as to make the article pathetic. Like any politician without principle, only worse, he knows that his audience likes to hear that there is no difference between the parties. He tries to oblige. He starts out by identifying the malaise that has gripped the country. He writes:

The number of business start-ups per capita has been falling steadily for the past three decades. Workers’ share of national income has been declining since 1983. Male wages have been stagnant for about 40 years. The American working class — those without a college degree — is being decimated, economically and socially. [Emphasis added]

           

Mr. Brooks states a crucial fact, without focusing on a crucial date: 1983. What happened in 1983? Well nothing in particular, except that it was the second year of the Administration of Ronald Reagan, when the country was set upon a dramatic new course, with the mantra being from then on: “ Government is not the Solution – Government is the Problem” and for the next 38 years, except for first two years of the Clinton Administration, that was the guiding principle of our government. It does not follow, that these polices were the cause of the condition that Brooks describes, but one would think that a discussion of that possibility might have been in order. But never mind that. Let’s see what else he says.

Here is what he says about the Republican agenda:

The Republican growth agenda — tax cuts and nothing else — is stupefying boring, fiscally irresponsible and politically impossible… Republican politicians don’t design policies to meet specific needs, or even to help their own working-class voters. They use policies as signaling devices — as ways to reassure the base that they are 100 percent orthodox and rigidly loyal. Republicans have taken a pragmatic policy proposal from 1980 and sanctified it as their core purity test for 2012.

Well so far so good! But of course, being Brooks there is always, “On the other hand.” So here is what he says about Democrats.

…they offer practically nothing. They acknowledge huge problems like wage stagnation and then offer... light rail! Solar panels!... They still have these grand spending ideas, but there is no longer any money to pay for them and there won’t be for decades. Democrats dream New Deal dreams, propose nothing and try to win elections by making sure nobody ever touches Medicare. (Emphasis added)

Boy, what an indictment. But is it true? It may be true of some of the base, but it is not true of the Obama Administration and it is not true of the Democratic Party’s program. It is a contrived caricature. Let us take Medicare. The President proposed and Congressional Democrats passed over almost unanimous Republican opposition $132 billion worth of cuts from Medicare Advantage over 10 years, for which Republicans have been denouncing them as having taking money out of Medicare, if one can believes the hypocrisy. (I am not here going to discuss the merits or lack thereof here – but cite it simply to belie Brooks.)

In addition, months before Brooks falsely alleged that Democrats were unwilling to touch Medicare, in March of 2012 Obama offered as part of a deficit reduction deal with Speaker Boehner, just that, or as the New York Times reported:

The White House agreed to cut at least $250 billion from Medicare in the next 10 years and another $800 billion in the decade after that, in part by raising the eligibility age. The administration had endorsed another $110 billion or so in cuts to Medicaid and other health care programs, with $250 billion more in the second decade.

The offered deal included revenue enhancements, and fell apart when Boehner could not sell that part to his Tea Party-dominated Republican House caucus.

But how can Brooks, say, (with a straight face) “by making sure nobody ever touches Medicare.” The answer can only be that Brooks is no more concerned with facts than the Republicans who he is always defending, or at least falsely equating with a President and a party that is actually trying to do something.

As for Brooks’ assertion that “…they offer practically nothing,” “'Let's look at the record” in the immortal words of Al Smith: Mr. Brooks does not have to look at what has been proposed, just at what has been achieved, which because of Republican obstructionism is much less than what has been proposed. See the accomplishments as of November 25, 2009 here.

More has been accomplished since then, but of course upon the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Democrats and the President lost their 60-vote majority in the Senate. With a unanimous Republican determination that nothing will pass with less than 60 votes – which means a vote of 59 in favor, 41 against, or even 35 against, defeats a bill, not much more can be accomplished, and with Republicans capturing the House, gridlock is the order of the day. But here again the suggestion that both parties are at fault for not being willing to compromise, belies the facts. Even tax cuts proposed by the Administration, are blocked, even though the Republican mantra is that tax cuts are always good, but I guess they mean only for the rich.

But Tom Friedman, writing in the New York Times, isn’t much better. He thinks that the solution to all our problems is a third party. See my discussion entitled "The Media And Their Columnists."

We will never solve any problems if we constantly seek a false equivalency between the parties, or seek magic from outside them. Let the facts take us where they may, but let us not indulge in a false delusion in an effort not to have to choose. That leaves as either not voting, or voting on the basis of Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, or throwing our vote away on a third party.

But before I close this subject I must examine one more column by Brooks. It is dated April 16, 2012 and is entitled “The White House Argument.” I suggest the reader examine it before my next post. It is one of Brooks’ best jobs yet at sophism. But like all his others, it does far better at obfuscation than at clarification.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward (Continued)

In my last post "The Inscrutable Center Keeps Moving Rightward" I concluded with: “Next time I will focus on the so-called Ryan budget, which isn’t really a budget, and discuss how the so called Middle, in the face of this Rightward drift, or is it a Rightward dash, makes excuses and drifts further and further right in an effort to stay in the new Middle."

So first the Ryan budget: Most of the publicity has been given to what the Ryan outline for a budget (his plan) would do to Medicare, but the media has given the impression that it would leave Social Security alone, save for raising the retirement age. That would be nice, but it isn’t so. First Ryan and many of his allies want us to believe that there is no trust fund, that all the money we have paid and are paying in Social Security payroll taxes have already been stolen; that they are no more than an additional tax for the general treasury. That just because the money has been invested in Treasury IOUs backed by the full faith and credit of the US, that it is not a debt that has to be honored. See Charles Krauthammer’s delusional rationality for this here and all the other Right Wing blogs that you can find by Googling “Social Security lockbox.”

But the lockbox exists (it is usually referred to as the trust fund) and will continue to exist, unless and until Ryan, (and Romney who has endorsed the Ryan plan) and their friends manage to get legislation through Congress that would indeed steal it. The only non-partisan source for this information is the Social Security Administration, who on their website explain the trust fund, how it is invested and how long it will last. In a PDF document which you can find here (highlighted at page three) the Social Securities Administration sets forth that the trust fund will be adequate for full payments till 2027, but the Disability insurance fund would have to reduce payments as early as four years from now. (Social Security by the way is not just for seniors.)

I have been urging some adjustments now because 2027 is not that far away, and the sooner we act the smaller the adjustments that would have to be made, and we need to assure the young that the Social Security taxes they are paying will not be stolen from them in a system that will not exist when they come of age.

However, according to the Ryan/Romney plan there is no trust fund, meaning they plan to divert it toward wiping out the deficit, rather than reducing the deficit with other cuts, (there are many that are in fact desirable) or (God forbid) taxes on the well off. According to the Huffington Post, Ryan/Romney creates an unprecedented new fast-track procedure to ram through Social Security benefit cuts. To quote from the Post’s article:

                       

Under Ryan's plan, any year Social Security is not in 75-year balance, the president and Congress would have to legislate changes that bring it to solvency through an "expedited process."            

In effect, Ryan would free up Social Security for fast-track cuts by turning it into a regular line budget item. Since Social Security is not part of the general budget, has its own revenue stream, and is forbidden by law from borrowing, it has always been dealt with separately from the rest of the budget. In fact, Ryan had to create a new fast-track process to trigger cuts for Social Security alone, because by law, it is excluded from fast-track reconciliation procedures for the general budget.  

Further, projections of Social Security's solvency change every year, which means that Ryan's plan could force big changes to Social Security based on very short-term variations in the program's finances.

The Ryan “budget”, as endorsed by Romney, then takes the Bowles-Simpson Plan, (there really is no such plan, since the necessary votes for a plan to be put forth were not forthcoming) - and which has not been given support by any member of Congress, and cherry-picks it. He proposes to enact the cuts in the plan, without enacting the revenue enhancements, and he goes far beyond the Bowels-Simpson plans proposals. In fact, by the time he is through Bowels-Simpson is no longer recognizable.

The proposals of the Bowels-Simpson plan have never been fully vetted, but the Ryan plan simply cherry picks them, and proposes benefit cuts over and above the savings that would result from raising the retirement age to 69, which I support as necessary. Incredibly, according to the Huffington Post it cuts benefits for 60% of "Very Low" earners, those with average annual earnings of $10,771 (for graph illustrations see here), reduces benefits for all by changing the cost of living formula, which would take a bigger and bigger bite out of the small benefit now given by Social Security each year, even as fewer and fewer retirees have the benefit of an employers pension, and erodes the link between earnings and benefits.

As for the Ryan/Romney plan on Medicare, which has gotten far more publicity, it would simple do away with the program and substitute for it a voucher system that would do no more than provide a small subsidy toward buying private insurance.

To put it simply and bluntly, the proposals in the Ryan plan are as far Right as could be imagined on the benefit side, and on the revenue side propose a drastic cut in tax rates, which is set forth in detail, and which are supposed to be made up by reductions in unspecified tax expenditures. Why unspecified? I suggest because they are like the bird in the bush. They are not serious, yet the media and the pundits evaluate this proposed “budget” as though the unspecified cuts in tax expenditures were real.

So one would think that the so-called Middle would denounce this document as a fraud and as a Trojan horse for the most Right Wing destruction of our safety net and our most basic regulatory system for the safety of our air, water, pharmaceuticals, etc. But what have they been saying?

Well, let us look at James B. Stewart writing in the New York Times with the title “…Ryan Plan, It’s a Place to Start.” Can anybody who fully and fairly analyses the Ryan/Romney plan truly argue that it is a place to start. Has Mr. Stewart bothered to read the proposals rather than its propagandistic claims? 

In endorsing it he quotes this claim:

The plan stands on two pillars: tax reform and reducing the long-term deficit by reining in entitlement spending… it contends that “the social safety net is failing society’s most vulnerable citizens” and is “poised to unravel in the event of a spending-driven debt crisis”. The tax code, it goes on, “has become a broken maze of complexity and political favoritism; it is overgrown with special-interest loopholes and characterized by high rates, both of which stifle economic growth and job creation.”

And then goes on to say:

“Does anyone, Democrat or Republican, seriously disagree?

Well, No! But what has that to do with the actual proposals in the Ryan plan as outlined above. Mr. Stewart goes on to say that Ryan is a nice guy and if the plan is bad, it is because he has no choice given the stand of his colleagues. So because Ryan is a nice guy, (whatever that means) we should embrace an outrageous plan on the assumption that he doesn’t really mean it. Duh!

Mr. Stewart goes on to say: “The question is what would happen to the big break that the wealthy now get — the lower rate on capital gains.” Yes, that is indeed the question! What is there that makes this “plan” (more accurate than “budget”) appealing, if so basic a question is not answered. All Mr. Stewart can offer is that the Club for Growth has criticized it –so it must have merit.

Fortunately an article that appeared on the website of the Center for Policy Research exposes the Stewart article for what it is. In a short article it demolishes the Stewart contentions and concludes rightly:

We have people who want to be part of the inside Washington conversation who praise the budget's courage and integrity. Then we have people who believe in arithmetic who call it what it is: a piece of trash. By the way, Paul Ryan is a very nice guy.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

The Deficit – One Big Hoax or a Looming Catastrophe?

I have spent five blog postings discussing the deficit as one big hoax. I did so not because I think that it is something that can be ignored, but rather because as used by the Republican Party, (and their ostensible tail that wags the dog, the Tea Party) it was being used not because of a real concern about the consequences of the deficit, which after all they created with malice aforethought, but rather as a weapon with which to try to destroy our safety net, and I spent those many words demonstrating this.

To summarize, they inherited a huge surplus from the Democratic Clinton Administration and turned it into a huge deficit, one even larger than it appeared because so many expenditures, such as the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan were taken off- budget, as was the drug enhancement in Medicare, which, by the way, President Obama has restored to the budget, making the deficit seem larger by comparison.

Their Vice-President, Dick Cheney, famously declared: "Reagan proved deficits don't matter."

And the famous Ryan budget, which provides for the abolition of Medicare ostensibly to reduce the deficit, in fact increases the deficit, something that our media has not, to my knowledge, even mentioned. I had to go the The Economist to get the shocking fact that the Ryan budget not only does not reduce the deficit, but in fact increases it by $6 trillion over the next decade.

It was for that reason, as well as an article in the financial advisory letter of Fidelity Monitor that I called the Deficit a Big Hoax.

But if the reader will return to my blog posting entitled "The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part I)" they will find near its end the statement: “But let me be clear! The deficit does matter! It needs to be reduced over time. But there is no urgency about doing this, and it can, and should be done with some targeted cuts, which I will identify hereafter, and with mostly revenue enhancements.”

Here I must refer to a comment, which I received from Edwin S. Bernstein Esq. of Boynton Beach, Florida, who wrote in response to my post referred to above,

“I think that the deficit matters…. We do need to balance our budget…”

If Bernstein had read my post to the end, he would have found my comment quoted above that deficits matter, but more important I take exception to his statement that “We do need to balance our budget…”

The fact is that the last time we had a truly balanced budget was in 1969 (Clinton’s surplus depended on counting the Social Security surplus in the budget, though the projection of surpluses in future years was real) and during this whole time it was never a problem. However, at some point the size of the deficit matters, though where that point lies is problematic.

The idea of a Balanced Budget amendment is sheer lunacy and would put our economic policy into a straight jacket. In supporting this, proponents often try to compare the US Government either to a corporation or to family budget. It should be fairly obvious that neither comparison is apt, since the responsibilities of the government are entirely different from either. But even if we were to accept the comparison it must be noted that neither a business, nor a family, ever manages without debt. Large businesses borrow to acquire assets they need, or to expand, and small businesses often have to borrow just to meet their next payroll. In addition both businesses and families strive to increase their income, while Republican dogma prescribes a deliberate lowering of income or revenues, The extent of borrowing can easily be seen if one looks at the corporate bond market, and few families could buy a car, not to speak of a house, without borrowing. The municipal bond market shows the need for borrowing by municipalities. Our infrastructure, whether of highways or railroads, or for that matter our electric grid could not have been built without borrowing. And can anyone imagine an emergency, such as a major war, requiring large outlays, leaving us with a Constitutional restraint requiring unimaginable tax increases or abject surrender and the proposed Constitutional Amendment would make the imposition of tax increases blockable by a small minority.

The problem we face is not the size of our present deficit but the size of our debt projected into the future, if we had done nothing, (and the much criticized deficit reduction agreement the President has signed off on, has reduce this looming catastrophe) and if we do nothing, we face a non-sustainable deficit, which I will discuss in greater depth hereafter.

But before I do this, (and this will once again have to be a multi-part presentation) I want to examine the oft-repeated charge that the Obama Administration, while it may have inherited a large deficit, made it much larger through irresponsible policies. Thus if we compare the last Bush budget in 2008 with Obama’s first budget in 2009, we find that the 2008 budget had a deficit 460 billion. In 2009 Obama’s budget showed a deficit of 1.41 trillion or an increase of $950 billion, a staggering increase, and one that Republicans, and even some news organization, have been pointing to with disapproval. But rarely if ever have we seen a breakdown of how this increase occurred. Once again the media doesn’t give us the facts. But they can be found through hard work.

-$320 billion were due to declines in tax receipts due to the effects of the recession
-$245 billion—resulted from outlays for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and net payments to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
-$200 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA)
-$185 billion due to increases in primary budget categories such as Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, Social Security, and Defense – including the war effort in Afghanistan and Iraq, which had previously been off budget.
-While the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (also known as the stimulus bill) was estimated to be $787 Billion at the time of passage, only some of it kicked in 2009, with some in 2010 and later, which is why only $200 billion of the $787 billion are shown above.

See the Congressional Budget Office Monthly Budget Review .pdf and here.

For those who may be interested in how the stimulus bill broke down $288 Billion was in the form of tax incentives, $155.1 billion for Health Care, $100 billion for education, $82.2 billion was for Aid to low income workers, unemployed and retirees, $105.3 billion was for Infrastructure Investment, $7.2 billion was for Government buildings and facilities, $10.5 billion was for Communications, information, and security technologies, $21.5 billion was for Energy Infrastructure, $27.2 billion was for Energy efficiency and renewable energy research and investment, $14.7 billion was for Housing, $7.6 billion for Scientific research and $10.6 billion was for miscellaneous items. See here and footnotes therein.

The CBO estimated that enacting the bill would increase federal budget deficits by $185 billion over the remaining months of fiscal year 2009, by $399 billion in 2010, and by $134 billion in 2011, or $787 billion over the 2009-2019 period. Ibid.

As for its effectiveness several independent macroeconomic firms, including Moody's and IHS Global Insight, estimated that the stimulus saved or created 1.6 to 1.8 million jobs and forecasted a total impact of 2.5 million jobs saved by the time the stimulus is completed. The Congressional Budget Office considered these estimates conservative. The CBO estimated according to its model 2.1 million jobs saved in the last quarter of 2009, boosting the economy by up to 3.5 percent and lowering the unemployment rate by up to 2.1 percent. Congressional Budget Office Monthly Budget Review .pdf and Ibid.

For the 2010 fiscal year the spending came to $3.456 trillion with tax receipts of $2.162 trillion, or a deficit of $1.294 trillion, which is a decrease in the deficit $116 billion.

(For those who may not be used to such astronomical figures, a trillion is 1,000 billion)

Given these figures it is hard to fault the Obama Administration for creating either the present fiscal shortfall or the projected one.

However, a review of the Congressional Budget Office projections gives us pause about the future. The CBO gives us a number of projections, the rosiest of which, makes a number of assumptions, not the least of which is that none of the Bush tax cuts would be extended beyond 2012, which is when they are currently set to expire. Since they will expire unless Congress extends them this could not be blocked by Republicans. However, the President pledged in his campaign that only those making less than 250,000 would be exposed to higher taxes. If this campaign promise were kept a large chunk of revenue would be lost. Furthermore, for the purpose of this projection they assume that the alternative minimum tax, which is impacting more and more middle class voters would not be adjusted, which is almost inconceivable, because if allowed to continues in its present form, it would make a mockery of the graduated income tax. Assuming these unlikely scenarios the CBO projects that government spending on everything other than the major mandatory health care programs, Social Security, and interest on federal debt (emphasis added) would decline to the lowest percentage of GDP since before World War II. See the highlighted portion of CBO’S 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook.

But not only are these projections based on some unlikely specific tax scenarios, they assume that the tax receipts would rise to 23% of GDP, a level that has not been seen in decades and much higher than the taxes under the Clinton Administration, and even than they do not include Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security spending. These are specifically excluded in the projections, which I believe is the correct approach. I believe that these programs should be taken out of the deficit projections, and should be treated as problems separate and distinct from the budget and the deficit.

In a way they already have been for the way the government budget is calculated masks the impact of these programs on the total budget or even on their own viability. An examination of the CBO’s paper entitled: "The Impact of Social Security and Medicare" shows the impact these programs have on the Federal budget. As the paper explains:

“Under the Congressional Budget Office's latest budget projections for the next 10 years, those trust funds are estimated to run sizable surpluses. However, those surpluses reflect more than an excess of dedicated revenues over spending. A substantial portion results from internal transfers between Treasury accounts--credits from the general fund of the Treasury to the trust funds. Thus, although the trust fund surpluses may accurately reflect the programs' spending authority, using them to gauge the programs' budgetary impact distorts their net effects..."

Similarly, from 2003 to 2026, instead of running a cumulative surplus totaling $6.5 trillion, as estimated by the Social Security and Medicare trustees, the programs would run a cumulative deficit totaling $6.6 trillion.

Therefore I will defer a discussion of these programs until my next post.

But before I close I feel it my duty to disclose the pessimistic projections by the CBO. Under what they consider the most likely scenario given the realities of the political process, the CBO projects that; “Debt as a share of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) would exceed its historical peak of 109 percent by 2023 and would approach 190 percent in 2035” See: CBO’s 2011 Long Term Budget Outlook .pdf a portion of which has been both highlighted and underlined in the document referred to.
Clearly the Bush Tax cuts must not be extended, and not just those for people earning over $250,000, and the cuts provided for in the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA), are an essential component of getting our deficit under control, without undermining our Social Safety net.