How Many Ways to Skin a Cat . . . Make That Reduce a Deficit
In a post-election analysis in today’s Washington Times, Cal Thomas wrote that “Republicans reverted to fear tactics about Democrats raising taxes: but added “Democrats probably will try to raise taxes (they call it "pay as you go").”
Well, there is an easier ways to reduce a deficit, which is to cut spending. But do most people know where all the federal spending occurs? In this paper, Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation provides an extensive set of numbers and charts to answer that question. For example, even though revenues have increased by 109% and spending has grown at 97% since 1990, the deficit has increased from $221 billion in 1990 to $318 billion in 2005, including surpluses in 1998 – 2001. The biggest spending problem has been the growth in so-called entitlement spending, which have grown more than 132%.
Another way to look at how much is being spent at the federal level, Riedl shows, is the amount of spending per household. In inflation-adjusted terms, spending per household has grown from $20,000 in 1990 to almost $22,000 today. American taxpayers need to tell their members of Congress to cut the spending rather than raising taxes, or, if you prefer, ‘paying as you go.’