On the debt: Put up or shut up

Post #100! Yay!

Our mounting national debt is more of a practical consideration than some argument on what the government should and shouldn't do.

If people on the right don't like spending on one thing or another, then they should get specific. That's what people who want to be in charge have to do. Do you cut welfare? Defense? Roads and bridges? If they want lower taxes, they should have to explain why this is better for America.

Most economists (even the Reagan guys) believe that the experiment of lowering taxes didn't do much in the way of increasing the state's revenue. I believe it was never the point-- it was (and is) a cynical backdoor way of achieving that vision of a smaller state.

Instead of facing the political realities of saying "let's cut this program," the GOP's made it into doing you a favor by lowering taxes on the hopes that one day we'll be so far in debt that the government will have to shrink to their liking.

There are spending priorities that this country needs to consider if it wants to stay in charge. It might mean making some big public investments. There are cuts that have to happen. There is revenue that has to come from somewhere other than China.

That's being practical first, ideological second. As self-described "fiscal hawks", the GOP might actually do some good for America if they got that straight.

Right now they seem to believe that anyone who doesn't want to cut everything is the enemy in some ideological holy war. That's a dangerous way to run a country.

We can afford rolling back tax rates to the Clinton era, when we ran a surplus. We can even afford a VAT. We can't afford $14T in debt. Let's put everything on the table and solve the problem.

I don't want to wait for the IMF to come in and peg an inflating, worthless Dollar to the Euro.